New Books In Geography

Gazi Mizanur Rahman’s In the Malay World: A Spatial History of a Bengali Transnational Community (Cambridge University Press, 2024) offers the first sustained historical study of Bengali migration to British Malaya from the mid-nineteenth century to the late twentieth. Drawing on archival research in South and Southeast Asia, as well as oral histories and travel accounts, Rahman reconstructs the formation of a transnational Bengali presence that has been largely overlooked in the broader literature on Indian migration. The book argues that Bengali migrants—across class, religion, and occupation—constituted a distinct group within the South Asian diaspora in the Malay world. Colonial administrators often reduced them to the generic category of “Indian,” but Bengalis in Malaya included plantation workers, lascars, domestic servants, professionals, and traders. They moved through varied migration routes and formed diverse community institutions, including mosques, cultural associations, and legal aid networks.