From World City to the World in One City: Liverpool through Malay Lives

From World City to the World in One City examines changing geographies of Liverpool through and across the lives of Malay seamen who arrived in the city during its final years as a major imperial port.

Bunnell demonstrates how Malay Liverpool was anchored in the specific locality of a clubhouse in the Liverpool 8 area of the city. The life histories and memories of the people who met at the Malay Club provide a novel window into the geohistorical transformation of Liverpool through its fluctuating commercial and social connections with Southeast Asia over more than half a century. Bunnell traces the maritime geographies of seafaring Malay men and Liverpool when the city was still a prominent imperial port. He then examines the post–maritime phase of both Liverpool and the lives of the Malay seafarers who settled there. Finally, the book considers recent and ongoing culture–led economic development in Liverpool, and its implications for Malay ex–seamen, their families and Malaysian citizens living in the city.

From World City to the World in One City draws upon interviews and participant observation in Liverpool, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as a range of archival, documentary, literary and popular cultural sources.

List of Figures

List of Abbreviations and Acronyms

Glossary of Non–English Terms

Acknowledgements

Prologue

1 Introduction: Locating Malay Liverpool

Worlds of Connection, Worlds in Cities

Sites and Routes of Fieldwork

Organization of the Book

2 From the Malay World to the Malay Atlantic

Liverpool in the Alam Melayu

Malays in the New York of Europe and in New York

The Malay Atlantic

3 Home Port Liverpool and Its Malay Places

Somewhere worth Staying?

Remembering Cosmopolitanism and its Limits

Home and Away

Places to Be Malay

4 Merseyside Malaise and the Remaking of British Malaya

Transationalization and Malaysianization

Student Connections: From Kirkby to the Inner City

Urban Malaise

5 Diasporic (Re)connections

In Search of Lost Ancestors

Diaspora Envy and Worldly Malay–ness

Old Malays versus the Islamized New Malay

6 Relocating Expectations of Modernity

Kuala Lumpur: Journeys to the New Centre of the Malay World

Tandas–ization: Excremental Transition in Malacca

Returning to Singapore: From Third World to First

7 Community in the Capital of Culture

The Place of Community

Glasgowing and Beyond: Towards Multicultural Regeneration

Marking Malays(ia) on the Map of the World in One City

8 The Last Hurrah: From Independence Celebrations and Interculturalism to Club Closure

Merdeka on the Mersey

Performing Malay–ness on Jermyn Street

Community Conflict and Urban Interculturalism

Death in the Place of Community

9 Conclusion: Catching up with Kuala Lumpur?

Comparative, Conceptual and Methodological Returns

Key Lifepaths

Bibliography

Index

Tim Bunnell is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Malaysia, Modernity and the Multimedia Super Corridor: A Critical Geography of Intelligent Landscapes (2004) and co–editor of Cleavage, Connection and Conflict in Rural, Urban and Contemporary Asia (2013).