Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

is the Executive Director of Penang Institute. His recent books include The Eurasian Core and its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World (ISEAS 2016).

331 posts

System of Government in the Straits Settlements, 1942

5 min read

Mills’ work is most probably the last scholarly analysis of how the British Empire was run east of the Indian subcontinent written just before it all came...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Cheah Cheng Hye

11 min read

Cheah Cheng Hye, alumnus of Penang Free School, has been called the Warren Buffett of the East. Although he claims that gives him way too much credit, the reaso...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Inhabitants of Penang, 1803

4 min read

The 38-page typewritten volume was conceived more as a report to the East India Company and the British Government in London than as a public document. Certain...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Marks of a Sincere Malaysian Leader

4 min read

There is an anecdote told among close acquaintances of the late Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s feared and respected Deputy Prime Minister and Home...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Jefferey Sachs: Growth & Equality are Compatible

9 min read

Penang Institute held the fourth event in its “Penang in Asia” Lecture Series on October 20, 2012. The honoured speaker was Prof Jeffrey D. Sachs. P...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Of Birds and Buffaloes, Alligators and White Ants, 1816

5 min read

As soon as it gets dark on this mountain [Penang Hill], there arises on every side, a singular concert of birds and insects, which deprived us of sleep for th...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Penang Economic Outlook

30 min read

We live in a time when giant economies have had to experience how fragile they can be. The global crisis that began in 2008 has been going on for quite a few...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Smoking opium in Penang, 1854

4 min read

It destroyed countless lives and countless families, and came to be associated with Chinese culture despite the trade being run largely by the British as part o...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

At Home with the Peranakan Chinese

3 min read

Hybridity is the essence of cultural development, and it is largely for political and economic reasons that the process of cultural definition is carried, large...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Malaysians Take Charge

12 min read

The consolidation of oppositional forces in general, not only party-based ones, has been extraordinary. This makes the status quo untenable; something that the...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Slowing Climate Change

10 min read

As the Norwegian Nobel Committee correctly noted when announcing its decision to award the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Cl...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Watershed Elections for Malaysia

13 min read

Malaysia’s Arab Spring happened in September 1998 when former Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was arrested. By refus...

by Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng