Head Hunters in the Malayan Emergency (Hardback)
The Atrocity and Cover-Up
Imprint: Pen & Sword Military
Pages: 224
Illustrations: 27 mono illustrations
ISBN: 9781399057417
Published: 4th October 2023
(click here for international delivery rates)
Need a currency converter? Check XE.com for live rates
Other formats available - Buy the Hardback and get the eBook for £1.99! | Price |
---|---|
Head Hunters in the Malayan Emergency ePub (17.9 MB) Add to Basket | £6.99 |
Head Hunters in the Malayan Emergency investigates the infamous political scandal sparked after horrific photographs of war crimes during the Malayan Emergency were leaked to the British press. These photographs depicted British forces and their allies in Malaya scalping corpses and posing with decapitated human heads. The subsequent scandal, involving British generals, police, trade unions, and even Winston Churchill, led to the further discoveries that British forces had deployed over 1,000 men from Bornean headhunting tribes to Malaya, were publicly displaying corpses to terrify Malaya's civilian population into submission, and that photographs of such atrocities had become popular souvenirs among British troops.
Using newly uncovered photographs, eyewitness accounts, and government documents, this research is the first ever attempt by any historian to create a complete history of the British-Malayan Headhunting Scandal, its political consequences, the stories of those involved, and its attempted cover-up.
As featured
RUSI VIC QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER Volume 23 Issue 2 – June 2024
"An enlightening coverage of a rather macabre topic that must be acknowledged as having taken place in ‘the civilised 20th century’."
RUSI Defence Systems Journal
Read the full review here.
About Mr Dan Poole
Dan Poole is a historian based in Oxfordshire, England. He is active in both Uncomfortable Oxford and the International Brigades Memorial Trust, with his research covering the Malayan Emergency, the British Foreign Office, and the biographies of British Marxists. Recently he won a research grant to write a biography for Black-British anti-fascist, Charlie Hutchison.