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The emergence of a workers' and anarchist movement

The British Malaya, which consisted of the Straits Settlement colony (Singapore, Penang, Malacca), the Federated and the Non-Federated Malay States under the British protectorate, at the beginning of the 20th century, turned into one of the centers and a kind of foreign base of the Chinese revolutionary movement. Chinese immigrants began to appear on the Malay Peninsula in the first half of the XIX century, but at the end of the century their inflow increased sharply. The main area of their employment was tin mines, and then timber harvesting and other industries.

Timor, the most distant colony of Portugal, served as a place of deportation for prisoners since beginning of the XVIII century. From the end of the XIX century, political prisoners were also sent to the island. 

The leftist movement in Dutch East Indies emerged first under the influence of the Social Democratic and Socialist currents of the Netherlands. Anarchist ideas were little known (1), although one of the first critics of the Dutch colonial system was the writer-anarchist Eduard Douwes Dekker, known under the pseudonym "Multatuli" (1820-1887). Working in the years 1842-1856 in the colonial administration in the Dutch East Indies (even before his turning to anarchism), he became acquainted with the brutality of colonialism and made accusatory speeches, works of art and articles, trying to raise public opinion against the colonialists. At the beginning of the 20th century, the texts of Multatuli exerted a significant influence on the anarchist and syndicalist workers in the Netherlands (2).

"The end of the Spanish Civil War ", the German anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker remembered, "was a prelude to an even greater disaster of international scale ... Condemning the Spanish people to death, one tored down the dam, which alone could prevent World War II. Prophetic words of Alexander Herzen: "You do not want revolution - well, so get war" has been reaffirmed "[1]. On 1 September 1939, the second imperialist world war outbroke.

 The “first” International Workingmen´s Association was founded in 1864 through the initiative of workers themselves but also with some participation of “politicians”. Organizationally, it was built as an association of workers´ unions.