Sources on the Cocos Malays: Reading List / Bibliography

In 2022 I published my book, The Cocos Malays: Perspectives from Anthropology and History. While I was researching it, I tried to keep a list of sources I came across. I've tried to keep adding to this to create the list below. 

William Clunies-Ross with his wife Clara Clunies-Ross and children  [between 1908 and 1921]
Clunies Ross family photography collection.

Sources on the Cocos Malays:
 An Annotated Bibliography

The following reading list is dedicated to sources that might be useful in studying the history and culture of Cocos Malays, specifically of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The referencing style is rigorously inconsistent. For the purposes of this blog  "Primary" includes documents, archives, and self-published works. "Secondary" includes scholarly and works that are not self-published. However, I am certain that my division of "Secondary" and "Primary Resources" is untenable according to a post-structuralist undergrad essay I wrote, but I can't find that essay right now.  Anyway, with so few entries, I need your help. Please send me suggestions!

Audiovisual sources

Many tourism-type videos can be found on YouTube. But there are also some seriously good documentaries:

1. "The World of Cocos Malay Music and Dance". Created by David Irving and Jenny McCallum this provides amazing insight into Cocos Malay music and dance.
2. "Australia's Forgotten Islands". This was produced by SBS. It documents Cocos Malays' attempts to be recognised as 'indigenous'
3. "Cocos Malaise" produced by the Dateline program from Australian broadcaster, SBS. Argues that, through White racism, Home Islanders have been sorely treated after integration with Australia. No longer available on SBS website but can be seen on YouTube.
4. "Dynasties: Clunies Ross". Australian broadcaster ABC produced this documentary about the Clunies-Ross family, which effectively ruled the Cocos (Keeling) Islands for over 150 years. 

The author of the website noted "The road sign reads Sauchiehall. That's also the name of one of the busiest shopping streets in Glasgow!!". The flags are apparently for QEII's 1954 visit.

Secondary Sources: Important Contributions

Here are secondary sources that may be useful, depending on your research direction:

1. Ackrill, Margaret. 1984. "The origins and nature of the first permanent settlement on the Cocos‐Keeling Islands," Australian Historical Studies, 21:229-243. Purports to identify a "significant historical error". The author clearly has a sharp intellect. 
2. Ackrill, Margaret. 1994. "British imperialism in microcosm: the annexation of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands." Economic History working papers (18/94). Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
3. Adelaar, Sander. 1996, 'Endangered Malayic isolects: the case of Salako, Sri Lanka Malay and Cocos Malay', in JT Collins & H Steinhauer (eds), Endangered languages and literatures in Southeast Asia, Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology, Leiden.
4. Adelaar, Sander. 1996. "Malay in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands" in Reconstruction, Classification, Description. Festschrift in honor of Isidore Dyen, Bernd Nothofer (ed.), Hamburg: Abera Verlag (Asia Pacific).
5. Armstrong, Patrick. 1991. Under the Blue Vault of Heaven: A study of Charles Darwin’s Sojourn in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands Indian Ocean. Centre For Peace Studies, Nedlands, WA. As the title indicates, Darwin is the focus of this book. Cocos Malays are, understandably, incidental to the text.
6. Brockman, Rosemary Ann. Captives on Cocos : the origins and evolution of the plantation community of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. M Phil thesis. Murdoch University. 1981. Essential reading. Also available here.
7. Bunce, Pauline. 1988. The Cocos (Keeling) Islands: Australian atolls in the Indian Ocean. I found this book the best starting place for researching the Cocos Islands.  I think this book provides the best overall picture of the islands' geography, history, wildlife etc. 
8. Bunce, Pauline. 1987. Cocos (Keeling) Islands: Cocos Malay culture. West Island, Cocos (Keeling)Islands Department of Territories. Essential reading.
9. Bunce, Pauline. 2012. "Out of sight, out of mind...and out of line. Language Education in the Australian Indian Ocean Territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands". In Vaughan Rapatahana, Pauline Bunce, English Language as Hydra.  Multilingual Matters, Bristol, Buffalo and Toronto, 2012, xxv + 275 . This chapter concerns the status of Cocos Malay language in relation to the education of Cocos Malays students on Home Island
10. Castles, Ian. 1992. First Counts for Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands: 1991 Census of Population and Housing. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra.
11. Dutt, Srikant. "The Cocos-Keeling Islands".  Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Sep., 1981), pp. 476-483. Provides an overview of history from WWI to the 1970s. Thanks to Russel Palmer for sending this to me! 
12. Gibson Hill, C.A.  1947, “Notes on the Cocos-Keeling Islands”. Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Vol. 20. Part 2, p. 162 . Essential reading.
13. Gibson Hill, C.A., 1952, "Documents relating to John Clunies Ross, Alexander Hare and the early history of the settlement on the Cocos-Keeling Islands". Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.  Vol.25 No. 4/5 pp.1-306. Essential reading.
14. 
15. Gibson Hill, C.A.. The Colourful Early History of the Cocos Keeling Islands. Apparently, this is a reprint of "Documents relating to John..." above.
16. Wan Hashim, Wan Teh & A. Halim Ali. Rumpun Melayu Australia Barat.  1999. Penerbit UKM: Bangi. ISBN 967-942-437-5 (paperback). Written in Malay, this book apparently describes the Cocos Malays who have emigrated to Western Australia. Thomas Barker helped me get it from Malaysia, thanks Dr Barker! 
17. Hobson, Valerie (2008) Our island home: the story of the circumstances which led to the Cocos Malays relocating to Western Australia – some via Christmas Island. Sydney: Frontier Services. Since the 1970s,  Cocos Malays have migrated to Western Australia. Some of their stories of relocation are collected in this publication.
18. Hughes, J.S. Kings of the Cocos. 1950, Methuen
19. Hunt, J.G. 1989. The revenge of the Bantamese: factors for change in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands 1930-1978. PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.
    Essential reading. This thesis is downloadable in three parts: Part 1 (-p. 86), Part II (pp .87-184), and Part III (p. 185-end).  His bibliography, "The Revenge of the Bantamese" provides some promising theses and other sources.
20. David R. M. Irving (2019) Strings across the ocean: practices, traditions, and histories of the Cocos Malay biola in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Indian Ocean, Ethnomusicology Forum, 28:3, 283-320. David Irving conducted fieldwork on Home Island in the 2010s looking among other things at the violin (biola) and how Cocos Malays have made it theirs. 
21. Irving, DRM 2023, 'Transplanted Musics in a Plantation Society: Performing Arts on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, 1826–1955', in J Sykes & J Byl (eds), Sounding the Indian Ocean: Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape, University of California Press, Oakland, California, pp. 251-273. 
22. Kerr, Alan. A Federation in the Seas: An account of the Acquisition by Australia of its external territories."Chapter 11: Cocos (Keeling) Islands)", pp. 267-313. This chapter covers the legal and diplomatic aspects of the transfer of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands from the UK to Australia. This transfer was announced in 1951 and became operative in 1955. Original documents relating to this transfer can be found on pp. 292-313.
23. Keyser, Arthur Louis, 1922. People and places; a life in five continents. Read around pp. 205-206.
24. Lapsley, Tony. 1983. Cocos Malay syntax. Unpublished MA thesis, Monash University, Melbourne. Tony Lapsley was a translator with the Cocos Malay contingent that went to the UN in 1984 to announce integration with Australia. This thesis describes the grammar of the Cocos Malay language/dialect.
25. McCallum, Jenny. 2020. Being Distinctive: Cocos Malay Islamic Music in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Mainland Australia, and Beyond. Musicology Australia, 42 (1), 1–21.
26. Mowbray, Martin (1997) "The Cocos (Keeling) Islands: A study in political and social change," Australian Journal of International Affairs, 51:3, 383-397. Discusses changes wrought by the Australian government and the UN in the 1970s. Essential reading. 
27. Mowbray, M., 1997. Decolonization and Community Development on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Community Development Journal, 32(4), pp.321-331. Covers matters of administration, sovereignty, and law in the period from the visit of a UN Mission in 1974 up to the 1990s. The focus is on community welfare and participation.  
28. Mullen, Ken. 1974. Cocos Keeling--The Islands Time Forgot.
29. Saunders, G. 1980. Seekers of kingdoms: British adventurers in the Malay Archipelago. Brunei Museum Journal  137–54. In the 1800s, various Europeans, and especially British men, decided to set up kingdoms for themselves in Southeast Asia. This article, written for the historian, describes Alexander Hare and his founding of a settlement in the Cocos Islands.
30. Smith, T.E. . 1960. "The Cocos-Keeling Islands: A Demographic Laboratory". Population Studies, 14 (2), pp. 94-130. Written for demographers, this article describes factors which increase and decrease the population of Home Island (e.g. fertility, disease, migration etc.).
31. Sonderberg, C (2014) 'Cocos Malay', Journal of the International Phonetic Association vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 103-107. Provides linguistic analysis of Cocos Malay as spoken on Borneo.
32. Souter, Gavin 'Cocos: a history of the Cocos (Keeling ) Islands and the Clunies Ross Family.' According to the National Library of Australia, "Souter was commissioned by John Clunies-Ross to write a history of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, but it has not yet been published. The series contains the complete handwritten manuscript." I would love to read this unpublished manuscript. Presumably, it is the basis of Cocos Chronicles. 
33. Tahmindjis, Phillip, 1985. "Australia, the Cocos Islands & self-determination." Queensland Institute of Technology Law Journal, 1. In the 1984 Act of Self-Determination, the Cocos Malays of Home Island voted that the Cocos Islands should become part of Australia. Written for a legal studies audience, this article assesses this Act and what it says about the interaction of international and Australian law. Thus it says little about events on Cocos, which only form a background to a technical discussion of law.
34. Tarling, Nicholas. The Annexation of the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand Vol. 8, Iss. 32, 1959. Describes how, in 1857, the British annexed the Cocos (Keeling) Islands by accident.
35. Welsh, A 2001, 'Verbal Affixes of Cocos Malay', Masters (Preliminary) thesis, Bundoora, La Trobe University.
36. Welsh, A 2015 'Cocos Malay Language Since Integration with Australia', Shima: The international journal of research into island cultures, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 53-68.
37. Welsh, Alistair (1999). 'The Cocos Malay Language', Pelangi: An Educational Magazine about Indonesia, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 6-9.
38. Wood Jones, F. (1912)  Coral and Atolls; a history and description of the Keeling-Cocos Islands. London: Lovell Reeve & Co., 1912. Essential reading.

Primary Sources 

1. Clunies-Ross. The Clunies-Ross Chronicle. Published by the last 'King', this book chronicles many of the events during his rule. It was apparently written by Gavin Souter.
2. HMS Beagle, the ship carrying Charles Darwin, visited April 1-12, 1836. Three diarists kept an account of the visit, Darwin himself, Captain FitzRoy, and Syms Covington (Darwin's assistant). This wonderful Blog is essential reading. It lays out the three writer's entries for each place the Beagle visits. This makes it easy to compare their impressions of each place visited.
   You can find the Syms Covington journal by itself online. 
3. Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence Report on UN involvement with Australia’s Territories (1975). Some Senators got together to try to work out how Australians should respond to the pressure from the UN regarding the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and other territories of Australia. They were struggling to deal with the legal and political consequences of UN involvement. This document records their discussions, tables crucial documents (from the UN and other agencies) and presents Senators' findings. It is divided into:
    Part 1 (671 pages). A transcript (i.e. Hansard) of the discussions between the senators at their formal meetings to discuss the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in relation to the UN. Documents they 'table', that set for discussion, are also included; and,
    Part 2 (678 pages). More transcript (Hansard) and documents right up to page 907. After this, the Senators' report begins. 
4. Cocos Capers. A Collection of stories written by residents and visitors, mostly from the Australian mainland. 
5. Bruce Clunies-Ross, Cocos Maritime History: A History of the Ships and Boats of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean. This manuscript is sold at the Cocos Tourism office.
6. Clifford, Hugh (1902) The Romance of a Scots Family.  Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. A gushing fluff piece.
7. Cocos (Keeling) Islands Act 1955.
   http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cia1955198/
   This is the act that enabled "acceptance of the Cocos or Keeling Islands as a Territory " of Australia
8. United Nations Department of Political Affairs, Trusteeship and Decolonization. "Issue on Cocos (Keeling) Islands" No 11, April 1978.
   http://www.un.org/en/decolonization/pdf/decolonization/decon_num_11.pdf
   This provides great insight into how the UN perceived the issues leading up the Act of Self-determination.
9. The Cocos (Keeling) Islands – Fact sheet 103  The National Archives of Australia has prepared this overview of some of the archives possessed by Australia relating to the Cocos Islands.
10. "Chapter 8  Commonwealth Infrastructure On The Indian Ocean Territories"
    https://www.cgc.gov.au/attachments/article/52/Chap%208%20Cwlth%20infrastructure%20.pdf
    Provides useful information on the construction of houses, wharves, roads and other critical infrastructure.
11. Cocos (Keeling) Islands Annual Report 1983-84. Department of Territories and Local Government. Australian Government Publishing Service Canberra 1984.
    I haven't accessed the Annual Reports yet, but they should provide helpful info about the last 3 decades.
12. Bureau of Statistics 2 001 population for Cocos Keeling Islands. Page 12 lists the 1996 population on census night as 655 and then, in 2001, 621.
    http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/90B4C67311FFFBD0CA256C310083BE38/$File/2015.5_2001.pdf
13. Bureau of Statistics, 2011 data on Cocos Keeling Islands. Lists the total population as 550. Some of the census data appear inaccurate; i.e. they are hard to reconcile with my impressions from living here.
    http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/communityprofile/910053009?opendocument&navpos=220
14. Cocos (Keeling) Islands--Interpretation Plan 2008 http://www.ga.gov.au/webtemp/image_cache/GA21022.pdf This document is intended to describe how Home Island heritage might be best displayed to tourists etc. Doing this also provides useful information on Home Island's heritage.
15. Wynne, "When there was trouble in paradise." Reporters write the piece, but editors choose the title.  So don't let the cliched title put you off. This is a superb piece of journalism.
16. United Nations "Decolonization", no. 11, 1978.
17. United Nations "Decolonization" no. 21, 1984.

Archives

1. The National Library of Australia's Guide to the Papers of Sir John Clunies Ross has a bunch of papers. They  "consist primarily of autobiographical writings of Clunies-Ross referring especially to his relations with Alexander Hare."
2. Singapore Museum interviews with Roderick Maclean, administrator on the Cocos Islands. 
3. In relation to the above, it will be recalled that Charles Darwin visited Cocos.  Darwin's ship captain was a man named FitzRoy. FitzRoy published a diary of his trip with Darwin Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle. Afterward, John Clunies Ross made fun of this, writing what he called an appendix to FitzRoy's book. Because John Clunies Ross is making of Fitzroy, his writing is sometimes called a "Satire" others call it the "Preface". Whatever it's called it is about 87 pages long. In it John Clunies Ross pretends to be FitzRoay. Photos of John Clunies Ross's writing can be found and read online through Trove. The handwriting is hard to read, but luckily it has been transcribed by the Darwin Project. 
4. Raffles papers at British Museum.
5.  Australian National Archives. Go to their photo search and search "Cocos" or similar. Paul Tickell put me onto this great source of digitized photographic images of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. I need to be wary as Christmas Island and Cocos Islands photos are intermingled.

Cocos Malays of Sabah, Borneo

1. On the Cocos Malays in Borneo http://portal.softbox.com.my/v7/kampungkokos/index.php/en/history.html

Noor Aziah Mohd AriffinNurul Ain OsriNurul Hamiruddin SallehNurul Hamiruddin Salleh, Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) of Cocos Malays in Tawau, Sabah

Historical Fiction

Mateer, The Quiet Slave recounts the events immediately following settlement on the island in 1826 from the perspective of a fictional female slave

Barley, The Man Who Collected Women

Secondary Sources/
Publications I've been involved in:

Feyrel, R., Saldin, M., Winarnita, M., Thomas, P., Welsh, A., Herriman, N., -"Australia's Malay History and Heritage"

Herriman, N. and Winarnita, M. (2012) ‘Sinetron Keeps Links with Indonesia Alive: Despite Isolation and Multiple Migrations the Cocos Malays Maintain a Resilient Culture’, Inside Indonesia 109: Jul-Sep 2012. This article argues that Home Islanders' connection with Indonesia is facilitated by watching soap operas! 

Winarnita, M. and Herriman, N. (2012) Caring and Family: Marriage Migration to the Malay Muslim Community of Home Island (Cocos Keeling Islands)’, Indonesia and the Malay World, 40 (118), pp. 372-387. In many local marriages, a spouse has had to migrate to Home Island. Written for scholars in the social sciences, this article analyses marriage migration on Home Island.

This  Blog: “Cocos (Keeling) Islands Fieldwork” documents my experience of anthropological fieldwork as a way to approach Cocos Malay culture.  The National Library of Australia (NLA) requested to archive this Blog on Pandora. (As NLA’s website explains “PANDORA, Australia's Web Archive, was set up by the Library in 1996 to enable the archiving and provision of long-term access to online Australian publications.”) So my Blog is now available on the PANDORA Archive.

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of Self-Determination by the Cocos Malays, I wrote “Australia’s Malay population” (2014). This article describes the historical context in which the local population voted to integrate into Australia in 1984. It was published in ANU’sNew Mandala and attracted a wide readership and numerous historically relevant comments.

 

I was interviewed for five radio segments by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). These were broadcast through the Australian state of Victoria on successive weekdays in 2015 (if I remember the year correctly).

La Trobe Asia interviewed me on their Asia Rising podcast about Cocos Malay culture and relations between Cocos Malays living on mainland Australia and in Malaysia. I talked specifically about the exchange of fresh seafood from Cocos Islands for sate from Katanning, Western Australia. I called it an “esky economy” because these products are sent in Styrofoam iceboxes, which are called ‘eskies’ in Australia. df

 

I expanded the “esky economy” idea in the Asian Studies Association of Australia’s Asian Currents Blog. My article was entitled “Seafood, sate, and spouses—giving and receiving among the Cocos Malays” (2015).

 Herriman, N. and Winarnita, M.  (2016) ‘Seeking the State: Appropriating Bureaucratic Symbolism and Wealth in the Margins of Southeast Asia’, Oceania, 86 (2), pp. 132-150. This article is a theoretical analysis that further the debates between Foucault’s ‘art of government’ and James Scott’s 'art-of-not being-governed' ideas. The argument is based on fieldwork in the Cocos Keeling Islands and two other South East Asian locations. The article elicits the different ways that the Cocos Malays bring the State into their everyday lives.

I worked with a number of scholars on the political aspirations of Cocos Malays.  The resulting piece: “A group of Southeast Asian descendants wants to be recognized as Indigenous Australians” (2018) was published by The Conversation in both English and Indonesian. 

 

Thematic guide to sources

Alexander Hare.

Hare was the first 'king' of the Cocos Malays from c. 1812- c. 1830, information can be found in dedicated articles and in passing in books including the following.

Gibson-Hill, C.A., Raffles, Alexander Hare & Johanna van Hare. Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1955, Vol. 28, No. 1 (169), pp. 184-19. Useful info regarding Hare before his time on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

Irwin, G. (1955). Nineteenth-Century Borneo A Study in Diplomatic Rivalry, Brill. Useful info on Hare can be found in chapters 1 & 2 of this book, which is available free online. 

Hannigan, Tim. Raffles & the British Invasion of Java. Prof Adrian Vickers suggested I read this. According to the cover, the book describes "Nineteenth-century Java as seen through the eyes of a soldier of the British Empire". Chapter 9 is entitled "Mutiny and Mangos" and describes Raffles' relationship with Alexander Hare, who first settled on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

Oats, David. 1999. "Alexander Hare in the East Indies: A Reappraisal". The Great Circle, Vol. 21, No. 1 (1999), pp. 1-15.  (Published by: Australian Association for Maritime History). Extremely useful. Seeks to show that Hare wasn't as bad as he has been painted. Also provides useful detail about Hare's life. 

Runciman, Steven. 1960.  The White Rajahs: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946. 

Smith, Andrew. 2013. "Borneo's first "White Rajah": new light on Alexander Hare, his family and associates" Borneo Research Bulletin. Prof. Gerrell Drawhorn alerted me to this article. Extremely useful. As a bonus, it has great info on archives at the end.

Christmas Island

Burstyn, H. L. (1975) ‘Science Pays Off: Sir John Murray and the Christmas Island Phosphate Industry, 1886-1914’, Social Studies of Science, 5(1), pp. 5–34. Some useful information about the discovery of phosphate and the formation of the phosphate company can be found in this article. 

Gibson-Hill, C. A. (Carl Alexander) 1949, "The early history of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean," Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, March 1949, Vol. 22, No. 1 (147) (March 1949), pp. 67-93

Hunt, John, 2011. Suffering through strength: the men who made Christmas Island

World War II

Crusz, Noel, The Cocos Islands Mutiny, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, WA, 2001. This probably relates to the isolated Ceylonese mutiny in WWII. If so, I expect it would have little information regarding the Cocos Malays.

Rossam, Ken. Operation Pharos: A History of the Allied Airbase on Cocos (Keeling) Islands During World War II. Woodfield Publishing (Oct 2000)