Malaysia. Museums, history and culture in Malaysia By Abu Talib Ahmad Singapore: NUS Press, 2015. Pp. 328. Tables, Maps, Illustrations, Abbreviations, Glossary, Bibliography, Index.

Museums, history and culture in Malaysia By abu TALIB AHMAD Singapore: NUS Press, 2015. Pp. 328. Tables, Maps, Illustrations, Abbreviations, Glossary, Bibliography, Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463416000631 This book provides an overview of an area which has, until now, been relatively neglected: museums and public history in Malaysia. Through a survey of a number of the institutions that have sprung up as part of a postcolonial museumising boom, Abu Talib Ahmad analyses the extent to which their exhibits support or challenge national historical narratives. His consideration of the impact of political and cultural developments from the 1960s to the present offers a revealing perspective on contemporary Malaysian attitudes towards history and heritage. The National Museum in Kuala Lumpur forms the starting point for the study. Since 2007, this institution has focused solely on history, incorporating many of the exhibits formerly displayed in the now-defunct National History Museum. The book's extended introduction describes both museums' foregrounding of nationalist, Malay-centric narratives which are designed to complement the national history curriculum and to support official nation-building aims. The author then introduces the numerous provincial and thematic museums on which the rest of the book focuses, and outlines the study's central goal: to examine the 'contests and challenges between and within museums' across peninsular Malaysia, comparing the narratives represented in a range of provincial and memorial museums with those in the national museum, and with one another (p. 40). The book's chapters are ordered thematically, each discussing the representation of a particularly contested aspect of Malaysian history in a range of museums, and assessing the influence of competing political pressures. The contested topics covered include the pre-Islamic history of the region, including indigenous and Hindu-Buddhist cultural influences; the arrival and spread of Islam within Malaysia; the Melaka Sultanate and its significance for Malay identity; the Japanese Occupation; the memorialising of prominent individuals from politics and popular culture; and, the representation of cultural heritage and the monarchy in the post-independence period. These discussions are supported with detailed descriptions of the exhibitions in question and their development over time. Throughout Museums, history and culture in Malaysia, a number of key issues recur. The influence of political agendas--both central and provincial--on museum narratives is clearly drawn out. In the chapter dealing with the Japanese Occupation, for example, the author contrasts the 'official' narrative of the war years, which emphasises the positive consequences of the Occupation for Malaysia's journey to independence and minimises Japanese responsibility for local suffering, with the more diverse local experiences that are foregrounded in the war museums in Kota Bharu and Penang. …