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Malaysia Irredenta: A Case for Pan-Malayan Unity by Wenceslao Q.

Speech by Wenceslao Q. Vinzons, entitled ‘Malaysia Irredenta’ on 12 February 1932 at 20th Annual
Oratorical Contest of the College of Law, University of the Philippines.
The cyclic rise and fall of people in Providence’s immutable nomination. The crumbling ruins of castle walls and the struggling remnants of once
powerful empires bear witness to this divine law. In a vain attempt to attain immortality, man has transmitted through the memory the storied
splendors of by-gone civilizations. He clutches with the instinct of life at the barest threads linking his inglorious present with his glorious past. He
lives over the conquests and wars of his ancestors, and in the tremulous fancy of his imaginings invests himself with the pretensions of
greatness. He reconstructs in his mind the wisdom of his sires. He sets himself to the task of recreating the civilization that was prompted by this
inexhaustible source of inspiration effects the redemption of his race.

In our struggle for emancipation from foreign control, during the centuries that our nationality has been repressed, our political outlook was
circumscribed by narrow national boundaries. Towards the waning years of the regime of Spain, our enlightened patriots reconstructed our
history and envisioned for us a future. We broke ourselves as a nation united by the bond of common traditions. Thirty years we have devoted for
the strengthening of that bond. For thirty years, by the development of means of communication, the establishment of schools, the growth of
commerce and trade, and exploitation of natural resources, we have nurtured our national consciousness until we have forged ourselves into a
people that would rise and fall together through all the ages to come. But in the thirty years that we have grappled with internal problems, events
have transpired in international relations which we, ignorant of their signiGcance, have failed to notice. We do not comprehend the recurring
changes in the evolution of nations which have transformed the PaciGc Ocean into a vast stage of the world’s unfolding drama. The destiny of the
:
nation and of the allied races in the oceanic islands is inextricably linked with these world affairs, in this stupendous political readjustment now
beginning in the Far East. At this stage of our national history, let us, by expanded ambitions, prepare for ourselves a place of eminence and
leadership in the world’s great here after.

Picture in your minds, ladies and gentlemen, an immense body of water extending mile after mile between four continents and connected with the
rest of the globe by the eddying currents to waters equally vast. Place on this limitless expanse tiny points hardly perceptible to the eye, and
surround it with great land masses and high mountains which stupefy even you, their own creator. Put on each diminutive isle small brown
peoples hardly aware of the magnitude of creation about them, ignorant of when and whence they come, laboring like beasts for alien masters,
without ambitions–therefore without a future. Then conceive for the surrounding masses countless millions of hardy, ambitious men, proud of a
glorious history, scheming for world conquests, and looking with the hungry eyes of the panther at the helpless humanity in the ocean midst. And
you, ladies and gentlemen, have the Pacific (https://kawahbuku.com/titles/playing-for-malaya-a-eurasian-family-in-the-pacific-war/) Ocean of the
twentieth century, the center of activity, commercial and political, the crossroads where the conMict of nations rages in all its fury.

We are in a situation where we cannot disentangle ourselves from Asiatic complications. With the benign protection of the United States, we have
been kept away from the conMict. But we indulge in self-deception when we ignore our inability to resist aggression; we jeopardize the interests of
posterity when we fail to prepare for their defense; we invoke eternal curse on our heads when we continue in a policy of isolation contrary to the
normal course of events. For the same power which has kept away from Oriental entanglements may, by its growing interest in the Sino-Japanese
imbroglio, precipitate us into the conMict. We hear the roar and din of revolution. The teeming masses, from the Himalayas to the China Coast, are
shaking the foundation of the old order of things forging ahead in humanity’s march toward the millennium. Three hundred million Indians have
hoisted the standard of revolt to wrest their government from foreign control. They have cast aside all differences, and identiGed themselves in a
common cause. China, with her colossal proportions, with her four hundred million inhabitants, and her vast wealth in natural resources is
redeeming herself from the chaos of civil war. Imperialistic Japan is making her last bid for Asiatic leadership. If she succeeds in her Manchurian
venture, she will have the Orient at her feet and the ocean for her dominion. Failing in this, she will cast her eyes to the south and mark for her only
possible preys the weak and disunited oceanic islanders, the small brown peoples living in a hundred thousand islands from the rugged shores of
Madagascar to the beetling crags of Easter Island.

I have portrayed for you, tonight, ladies and gentlemen, our national dilemma. We cannot ignore the magnitude of this problem. We are situated
where shot and hell will rain the hardest in a PaciGc war. We are impotent by reason of our number and our lack of means of protection and
defense. With the instinct of the man in the last death throes with the waves, we look in the waters around us. We recall stray hits of historical
knowledge which have trickled down through the years. Was there not in some distant past a race of Malayan Vikings? Were they not rulers of the
seas and of the emerald isles, renowned for political genius? Did they not distinguish themselves by their dauntlessness in war and their
achievements in peace? These recollections remind us of the possibility of the establishment of a nation that would consolidate a hundred million
peoples into a Republic of Malaysia.

But the Malays have slept the sleep of the condemned. Not for one, nor for centuries, but for what seems an eternity. Their origin is shrouded in
mystery. They only have a tradition of having come from the sea. A fantastic though not improbable theory would make the Malays the
inhabitants of a great continent in the present ocean basin which sunk countless ages ago. They have with them the remnants of a once
advanced civilization; they possess a highly developed language more widely-spread than those of the Greeks and the Romans. One would
establish an aYnity among the American Indians, Polynesians, and Malays, and striking similarities in language, traditions of a home in the sea
and general dispersion, physical conformation and general character would seem to support the theory. It is not groundless to conclude that that
these races are probably allied and at a period beyond the recollection of man shared a common home. But when the ocean waters submerged
their continent, when the dreamy slumber of primeval ages overpowered all signs of activity, they slowly went down in the scale of civilization.
More united racially than either the Indians or the Chinese, yet they have not formed a powerful modern state. Originally one in tongue; now they
speak a confusion of dialects. Self-centered in their philosophy, repressed by long isolation, unmindful of their brilliant history, they have failed to
conceive the dream of a free United State, of a redeemed Malaysia.

Our racial history is marked by the occasional display of the genius of remote ancestors. Under the inMuence of Hindu culture, the Shri-Visayan
empire consolidated a vast territory from Formosa to Ceylon, and embracing to the south Java and the Moluccas. The magniGcent ediGces in
Sumatra and the palaces of Angkor Thom are eternal monuments of its grandeur. In the wake of the Shri-Visayan empire, followed the more
extensive conquests of the kingdom of Majapahit (https://kawahbuku.com/titles/gayatri-rajapatni-the-woman-behind-the-glory-of-majapahit/).
Malayan soldiers fought against the hordes of Kublai Khan and founded a settlement in distant places. The Polynesians, too, have had their day of
nation-building, and when the white man came with his Bible and rum bottle, he found in nearly every island an organized government. Hawaii had
a constitution ever since Captain Cook abused Hawaiian hospitality. Fiji, Tahiti, and Samoa each had a stable government before the advent of
missionaries. The Malays of Madagascar had consolidated themselves into a powerful kingdom and had established more churches than were
found in Paris when a French man-of-war annexed the territory in the name of Catholic France. But the white man with his Maunted principles of
liberty, equality, and fraternity, suppressed native governments and substituted therewith foreign rule. While preaching a religion of peace, he
introduced muskets and dynamite; intent upon the promotion of human happiness, he has met native resistance with Gre and sword,
depopulating villages with warships and canons. He has tried to eradicate all vestiges of the natives’ past and unduly emphasize the grandeur of
his own.
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By maintaining our individuality against the successive impacts of physical and cultural invasions, we have evolved into a race well-Gtted for self-
government and state-building. We have a splendid heritage of sufferings and persecutions under alien rulers; a heritage of the best of Western
religion and thought superimposed on the best traditions and customs of the East. Add to these advantages our generous endowments from
nature; the fertile lands which await the hands of the toiler; our mines of gold, coal, and iron ore which at present are more industrial potentialities
rather than concrete wealth. A uniGed Malaysia extending from the northern extremity of the Malay Peninsula to the shores of New Guinea, from
Madagascar to the Philippines and to the remotest islands of Polynesia, will be a powerful factor in the oceanic world. Such an achievement will
vindicate us from the contumely of alien peoples. It will belie the charge that we are densely incapable of organization, a race devoid of the genius
of government, averse to hard labor and industrious habits, improvident and indolent in disposition, fond of cockGghting and childish sports,
inveterately addicted to gambling, and altogether lacking those qualities which are indispensable to a people that would rise to a place of
responsibility in the great family of nations.

The plan which I propose to you tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is not entirely of a novel impression. It was the original state before the home of
our civilized ancestors was swallowed by the waves. It was executed in a way when the Shri-Visayan and Majapahit empires ruled the sea. It was
the proposed by the Hawaiian parliament in 1879 and conceived in 1898 by Apolinario Mabini in his idea of a “Federation Malaya”.

The gods release a challenge to the teeming millions of Malaysia. It Gnds echoes in the only Malayan state of Siam, is transmitted throughout the
Straits Settlements, coursing with greater intensity among PaciGc Islands. It found expression when the Javanese resisted Dutch arbitrary rule in
the Moluccas; when the Chief Tamasese of Samoa dared an English Gring squad; when the Philippines revolted against Spain and resisted
American invasion. It will likewise Gnd expression, when we shall extend our vision beyond our territorial boundaries, when every Malay nation will
raise itself from its local peculiar interests, when every islet will resound with the hymns of glories of forgotten empires; when we in the vision of
United State work in concert to adopt a common language and overcome our frailties, so that by our renewed racial vitality we may give birth to a
new nationalism, that of Malaysia redeemed.

As I impart to you tonight, ladies and gentlemen, the burden of my message, I feel that a shadow of doubt has crossed your minds. You must have
shaken your heads in unbelief in a dream which because of the immensity of its proportions seem to defy reality; which by reason of its
magnitude seems to be preposterous and absurd; which by its strange advocacy of the union of far distant peoples lost in the vastness of the
ocean expanse, may for a moment be considered as highly improbable project. But your answer to this challenge will be your verdict on the
capacity of your race for civilization, and your vision of a redeemed Malaysia will be the salvation of your posterity.

Reference
Article taken from Gaite, Ranavalona Carolina Vinzons . Wenceslao Q. Vinzons: A Youth to Remember (Mimeograph at University of the
Philippines Library).

Excerpt Source
“Lampiran 1.” Ed. Ismail Hussein. Tamadun Melayu: Menyongsong Abad Kedua Puluh Satu. By Ismail Hussein, Ghazali ShaGe, and Wan Hashim
Wan Teh. 2nd ed. Bangi: Penerbit UKM, 2001. Print.

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