'A very salutary effect': The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949

The counter-insurgency lessons commonly drawn from the Malayan Emergency ignore strategy in the opening phase or dismiss it as characterised by mistakes committed in a policy vacuum. This article argues that the British army pursued a deliberately formulated counter-terror strategy until circa December 1949, aiming to intimidate the civilian Chinese community into supporting the government. Mass arrests, property destruction, and forced population movement, combined with loose controls on lethal force, created a coercive effect. The consequences of these policies were mounting civilian casualties, which the government allowed to continue because its intelligence assessments suggested they were militarily effective.