Modern Malaya was born in a time of war and revolution. This book is an account of the ways in which its people sought to create a nation from a plural society caught in the flux of crisis and social change. A central purpose of the doctoral thesis in which this book had its genesis was to analyse the extent to which the late colonial state shaped the political landscape of independent Malaya. This early emphasis has been retained. The anatomy of late colonialism that follows is a contribution to the comparative history of western expansion and retreat. But as I spent more time in Malaysia the book became an exercise in Southeast Asian social history. The achievement of independence is examined, not primarily through the metropolitan mind of colonialism, but through the struggle within Malayan society for its soul. Many of the ideas and forces this brought to prominence still dominated political life during the late 1980s and 1990s - a period of great change in Malaysia - and my comprehension of them has been coloured by what Malaysians had to say about them at the time. The first lesson of my own historical schooling was that every history is foremost a history of its own making. Other authors have begun to rewrite Malaysian history in new directions, and I hope I have done credit to the richness of their work.