Written in 1977, this classic work by Syed Hussein Alatas is an early critique of knowledge production that relies on colonial records, which shows how identity narratives were linked to colonialist action in Southeast Asia. Notes:

“A colonial scholar, journalist, or author is one with a colonial mind whether refined or vulgar. The products of such a mind labouring under the negative influence of ideology can best be evaluated by the method of the sociology of knowledge. The roots of the distortion of native character can be traced and a comparison with reality made in this manner. An attempt is made here to correct the image of the native created in the colonial period by those in power. For Malaysia, this is not merely an exercise in historical scholarship: there is a pressing need to correct the colonial image of the Malays for this image still exerts a strong influence among an influential section of non-Malays, and it has also influenced a section of the Malay intelligentsia.” (p. 16-17)

“The colonial status system was a novel creation of colonial capitalism. The details differed in certain places and according to the dominating system, but in broad outline the status system was the same. In the economic system a similar situation prevailed with the European at the top, the foreign Asian in the middle, and the native at the bottom.” (p. 19)

“In his [1843] report, de Mas recommended certain drastic measures with the object of keeping the Philippines as a Spanish colony. The natives should be taught to respect and obey the Spaniards. “To achieve this it is necessary to keep the former in such an intellectual and moral state that despite their numerical superiority they may weigh less politically than a bar of gold…”” (p. 56)

“The negative image of the people subjugated by western colonial powers, which dominated the colonial ideology, was drawn on the basis of cursory observations, sometimes with strong built-in prejudice, or misunderstandings and faulty methodologies. The general negative image was not the result of scholarship. Those who proclaimed the people of the area indolent, dull, treacherous, and childish, were generally not scholars.” (p. 112)

“I have sufficiently exposed the roots of the image of the lazy native to demonstrate that it was an important element in the ideology of colonial capitalism. It was a major justification for territorial conquest, since the degraded image of the native was basic to colonial ideology. Imperialists of different times and nationalities have shared many common ideas. Thus the American social philosopher Benjamin Kidd, an imperialist, compared the inhabitants of the tropics to a child, in the same manner as some Dutch imperialists considered the Javanese. Similarly he claimed there could never be a good native government. Like the Spanish friars who blamed the Filipinos for the moral deterioration of the Spaniards, Kidd blamed the natives for pulling the white man down. This served as the ideological justification for bad colonial government. Kidd went to the extent of saying we had no right to expect a good European colonial government. He gave the followings reasons: “In climatic conditions which are a burden to him; in the midst of races in a different and lower stage of development; divorced from the influences which have produced him, from the moral and political environment from which he sprang, the white man does not in the end, in such circumstances, tend so much to raise the level of the races amongst whom he has made his unnatural home, as he tends himself to sink slowly to the level around him.’ The colonial ideologists frequently stressed the inability of native governments to exploit the natural wealth of the country.” (p. 215)