Word: malay
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Indian Ocean. The main island, with a population of 500, has been ruled more or less benevolently like a feudal fiefdom for the past 145 years by descendants of a Scottish sea captain named John Clunies-Ross. He settled in the coconut-growing islands in 1827, imported Malay workers from Java to harvest the copra for export, and in 1886 his grandson obtained a grant in perpetuity to the islands from Queen Victoria...
...Cocos Islands have posed a troubling question for Australia: whether or not to impose the benefits -and the ills-of civilization on the islanders. Britain ceded sovereignty over the islands to Australia in 1955, and Canberra simply assumed that the Malays were content with Clunies-Ross rule. No one knew for sure, of course; the present ruler, John Clunies-Ross, a fifth-generation descendant of the islands' original settler, forbade the Australian administrator to set foot on Home Island, which he considers his private domain. Canberra's comfortable ignorance was jolted three years ago when a group...
...Australian government sent an investigator to the Cocos, but his report was kept secret until last month, when it suddenly surfaced as a political issue. The report compares the Malay workers to slaves of a benevolent plantation owner in the pre-Civil War U.S. South. "Although they appear happy and contented," the report says, "they seem to be very servile." The Malay workers call Clunies-Ross "Tuan Besar," meaning "Big Master." For their labor, the Malays are paid six Cocos rupees a week (about $2) in plastic tokens redeemable only at Clunies-Ross's own store. Clunies-Ross...
Even so, the placid, good-humored Malagasy people, an assortment of Malay-Polynesians and Africans, hardly complained until a year ago. Then, a violent revolt in the south against the regime of President Philibert Tsiranana left 800 dead. Tsiranana, an ailing autocrat who had ruled his country since its independence from France in 1960, responded by jailing 500 troublemakers. He also blamed it all on the U.S. embassy and expelled the American ambassador as well as five members of the embassy staff...
Separate Development. If they had any say in the matter, the 12 million native Taiwanese would undoubtedly prefer a government of their own-though most of them are of mainland Chinese stock (200,000 are aborigines, chiefly Malay). It is considered treason for them to talk of independence, but their case rests on the fact that Taiwan was ruled as a fully integrated province of China for only 13 years-from 1886 to 1895, and 1945 to 1949. Thus the island has in effect been separated from the mainland for more than 70 years-and an international doctrine of "separate...