In our last InsideGMT article we covered the British counterinsurgency campaign in Palestine between 1945-1947. Just as the British were withdrawing from Palestine, labor unrest was rising in the British colony of Malaya. In July 1948, the British declared a state of emergency against the rising unrest and violence being organized by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). The British Way: Malaya covers this conflict, one of the most famous counterinsurgency victories of the 20^th century. The British campaign between 1948-1960 is still used as a model for Western counterinsurgency theory, and other counterinsurgency campaigns during the Cold War tried to emulate the British success in defeating the MCP. This article will highlight some of the major mechanics and themes covered in The British Way: Malaya.

An Introductory Game to the COIN Series:

The British counterinsurgency campaign in Malaya was highly influential in the development of population-centric counterinsurgency theory, one of the core arguments put forth in many of the modern COIN volumes that ties the victory condition of Government and External Counterinsurgent factions to winning the Support of the population (e.g. Andean Abyss, A Distant Plain, and Fire in the Lake). The lessons of Malaya were organized into Robert Thompson’s Defeating Communist Insurgency, and were subsequently incorporated into counterinsurgency field manuals. French colonial counterinsurgency would serve a similar influential role, being derived from David Galula’s famous book, Counterinsurgency Warfare, and the French War in Algeria (see Colonial Twilight).

Given the Malaya campaign’s influence on subsequent counterinsurgency theory, we thought it would serve as a great shorter introduction to the counterinsurgency model and mechanics featured in most modern era COIN volumes. The British Way: Malaya introduces players to many of the core COIN system mechanics with a faster, more accessible, and lower player count experience. This will allow players wary of the complexity or length of pre-existing COIN volumes to try the series, before hopefully moving onto other volumes that interest them. Like with COIN factions in other series games, the British faction will primarily focus on denying Control from the MCP, protecting settlers’ interest in the Economic Centers, and building up Support across the peninsula to slowly push the MCP toward the jungle fringes at the border with Thailand. However, the British faction is not simply a copy of existing COIN series Government factions, possessing a few unique features.

First, the British heavily used population relocation and regroupment of the main portion of the population supporting the MCP, the Chinese squatters living on the edge of jungle fringes and working in many of the rubber plantations and tin mines throughout the peninsula. Over the course of the conflict, the British relocated over 80% of the Chinese squatters (over 400,000) into protected sites known as “New Villages”, and also regrouped 600,000 to 650,000 rural workers. The purpose of this strategy was as much to forcibly sever the population’s connections with the MCP as it was to “protect” the population from the MCP. In the British Way: Malaya, British players have the option to use the historical strategy of forcible relocation. With the Resettle Special Activity, the player places a New Village counter into any British Controlled province and shifts the space toward Opposition (forcibly relocating people from their homes was not surprisingly unpopular). New Villages block MCP Rally and Extort actions and also blocks any Opposition in the space counting toward MCP Victory, since the population is being closely guarded by the British. The British remove a New Village when there are no MCP in the space and it has been shifted to Support (usually by Pacify). This rule models the British strategy of loosening restrictions and declaring the area a “white area” once MCP activity had been sufficiently reduced.

Second, the British strategy over the course of the Malayan Emergency evolved over three major phases, with the shifts being commonly associated with a few key commanders. The British Way: Malaya includes a British Commander Track that alters the number of spaces in which the British may conduct certain Special Activities and Operations, reflecting these changes in strategy. At the start of the conflict, the British strategy is described as one of “Counter-Terror”, where the British responded to MCP activity with large Sweeps and Reprisals against villages (although unlike German Reprisals of the Second World War, these usually “only” consisted of punitive burnings and fines, not massacres or hostage taking). The most controversial event of the British campaign occurred during this period: the massacre of 24 laborers by British forces at Batang Kali. Some refer to this incident as Britain’s My Lai.

By 1950, the British switched to their second major strategy, the famous “Briggs Plan”, which implemented the forcible relocation into New Villages described above. Then in 1952, the British implemented a “hearts and minds” strategy under the new commander, Gerald Templer, building off the population control gained through the forcible relocation to shift an increasing portion of the peninsula to “white areas”, or in game terms, Pacifying spaces toward Support. The British Commander Track will nudge players to follow the historical strategy of first breaking down MCP Control with Sweeps and Reprisals, then severing their connections with population using Resettle and New Villages, and finally building enough Support to isolate the MCP and declare victory. However, players are not forced to follow this strategy and should be ready to react to challenges from the MCP and opportunities offered by the Event deck.

An Isolated Insurgency: 

The Malayan Communist Party (MCP) is a fairly straightforward communist insurgency, similar in strategy to others featured in the COIN series. However, one of the biggest challenges with designing a game on Malaya is making the historical result possible—a fairly crushing MCP defeat—while still making the MCP faction interesting and competitive to play. This is due to the MCP insurgency possessing many weaknesses compared to other insurgent groups such as the Viet Cong or Taliban. The MCP were isolated for two major reasons. First, they were externally isolated, in that they did not receive any external assistance besides using the sparsely populated border areas with Thailand as a sanctuary. Players may find it useful to place Bases in Thailand since they are safe from British forces, but Bases in Thailand are also far from populated areas in Malaya where they would be more useful. Although inspired by Mao’s victory in 1949, the MCP did not receive assistance from Communist China, as the Viet Minh did in their contemporaneous war against the French in Indochina.

The MCP were also isolated internally, by primarily drawing their support from the Chinese squatter population in rural areas and failing to draw support from the larger Malayan majority or the Chinese population in urban areas such as Singapore. The MCP’s narrow range of support enabled the British to aggressively target their support base using the population control methods discussed above. The MCP may remove New Villages by clearing all British forces from spaces with Attack and may also remove them in areas where they already outnumber the British with Intimidate, but the New Villages nonetheless pose a serious threat by cutting the MCP off from the most populated provinces on the peninsula. The MCP’s lack of support with the ethnic Malayan majority, who the British primarily recruited their local police from, means that the MCP do not possess the Subvert Special Activity like the Viet Cong in Fire in the Lake or Taliban in A Distant Plain. Instead, the MCP’s Intimidate may only remove Police, not replace them.

Although the MCP were isolated both externally and internally, making the British goal of cutting of their supply significantly easier, the insurgency still posed a serious threat to the British and forced them to adopt the drastic population control strategy of large-scale forced relocation. Therefore, to make the MCP faction interesting and competitive to play, the British Way: Malaya actually focuses on the early period from 1948 to 1954 rather than the entire conflict (which did not officially end until 1960). These were the years where the MCP posed the greatest threat to British rule, and the MCP’s performance during this critical period determined how easily the British and the newly independent Federation of Malaya were able to isolate the insurgency between 1955 and 1960.

We hope that players find the The British Way: Malaya a useful introduction to the series for new players or a way of getting the classic modern COIN experience in a quick two-player format for series veterans. It also presents several new features, such as British population resettlement into New Villages and ways for the MCP to respond to this threat. In the next article, we’ll continue in chronological order and provide an overview of The British Way: Kenya.

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Previous Articles: 

The British Way: Introduction to the Multi-Pack

The British Way: Palestine