ACSI 2026 HIST PRELIM P2 QP

Name: ________________________________ ( ) Class: ________________ Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION 2026 YEAR FOUR (O-levels) HISTORY PAPER 2 (2174/2) Monday 17 August 2026 1 hour 50 mins INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES • Do not open this exam paper until instructed to do so. • Answer all questions in Section A, and 2 questions in Section B. • Type your answers in the Digital Answer Booklet on the laptop. • Be careful to indicate all questions attempted correctly. • The maximum mark for this exam paper is [50 marks]. Section A: __________/ [30 marks] Section B: __________/ [20 marks] Total marks obtained: __________/ [50 marks] Parent/ Guardian’s Signature and Date: ____________________ This question paper consists of 7 printed pages (including this Cover Page).

2 Section A: Source-Based Case Study Question 1 is for all candidates. Study the Background Information and the sources carefully, and then answer all the questions. You may use any of the sources to help you answer the questions, in addition to those sources you are told to use. In answering the questions you should use your knowledge of the topic to help you interpret and evaluate the sources. 1 (a) Study Source A. What can you infer from the source? Explain your answer. [5] (b) Study Sources B and C. How similar are the sources? Explain your answer. [6] (c) Study Sources D and E. Does Source D make you surprised about Source E? Explain your answer. [6] (d) Study Source F. How useful is the source in showing the aims of the British government for British Malaya? Explain your answer. [5] (e) Study all the sources. ‘The defeat of the communists during the Malayan Emergency was bound to happen.’ How far do these sources support this view? Use the sources and your knowledge to explain your answer. [8]

3 The Malayan Emergency BACKGROUND INFORMATION Read this carefully. It may help you answer some of the questions. Following the end of the Second World War, the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) launched an armed insurgency to establish a communist state in Malaya. In response, the British declared a State of Emergency in June 1948 and implemented a combination of militar y, political and socio- economic measures to defeat the Communist insurgents. These included the Briggs Plan, which resettled over 500,000 rural Chinese into New Villages to isolate the Communist guerrillas from their civilian support network, the Min Yuen. The British also introduced food control measures, identity cards, propaganda campaigns and constitutional reforms to win the "hearts and minds" of the people. Although the Communists continued to receive support from some civilians through persuasion, coercion and underground networks, British policies gradually weakened the insurgency by reducing its access to supplies, intelligence and recruits. Was the defeat of the communists during the Malayan Emergency bound to happen? Source A: A photo featuring a member of the Malayan Home Guard manning a checkpoint on the edge of a New Village during the Malayan Emergency. The Malayan Home Guard was a volunteer local defense force t hat protected rural communities, estates, and New Villages from communist insurgents.

4 Source B: An extract from a speech delivered in the British Parliament on 27 February 1952 during a debate on the situation in Malaya. As we all know … the emergency… a well-organised Communist rebellion — has been in existence now for … three-and-a-half years… they are supported and supplied by many thousands of active members of the Min Yuen, the civilian Communist organisation on which they rely for supplies, information and recruits… These 500,000 squatters, with their families, have now been moved into village settlements under the Briggs Plan where they are within the range of administrative control. Nevertheless, they are still helping the Communists. We have therefore failed to achieve the most important object of the whole policy of squatter resettlement… the promise to give them a legal title to their land, permanent or long- term, has not yet been implemented… Nothing would do more to win these people over than the security afforded by a legal title to their holdings and a guarantee that they will no longer be liable to eviction. Source C: Extracted from a webpage written by an academic with the National Library, Singapore in 2019. His research interests include Malayan history, especially the 1948 Malayan Emergency. These are some of the ingenious methods that people in the New Villages used to smuggle out essentials to the insurgents: – The bicycle frame was a favourite tool for smuggling supplies. In a village near Kluang in central Johor, two soldiers who dismantled a bicycle belonging to a nine- year-old boy found rice and antibiotic pills hidden in the bicycle frame. – Night soil carriers s muggled items out of the villages by stashing them in false bottoms of their buckets, while rubber tappers did the same by hiding rice at the bottoms of pails containing latex. Many people living in the New Villages were caught between a rock and a hard place… they were also not entirely safe from the clutches of the communist insurgents… those who were either neutral or opposed the goals of the communists were coerced into aiding them or faced reprisals – even death – if they did not cooperate.

5 Source D: An extract from the autobiography of Chin Peng, Communist leader during the Emergency, published in 2003. I have seen it stated by people who have written about the Emergency that we constantly used brutal tactics to ensure the support of the Min Yuen. Such accusations are grossly distorted and the result of very effective government propaganda. Without questi on we employed controlling measures… but that was certainly not the general rule. Government propaganda, of course, played up such aspects and distortions became solid beliefs… We exerted harsh punishments on those who wilfully set out to betray us; that is true. I make no apology for that. It was war. But the overwhelming percentage of the urban and rural work forces were solidly behind us and had been so since the Japanese occupation days. It would have been totally counter-productive for us to brutalise roundly those on whom we were so dependent. Source E: An extract from a British leaflet by a Communist in Malaya, Lam Swee, in October 1950. Dear Comrades: I surrendered at Bentong , Police Station in Pahang on June 27, 1950. Many of you may not understand why I took this step... The M.C.P. says that they are fighting for the interests of the people. But what they are doing are murders, robberies and destroying the peaceful living of the people without any reason at all. They forced the people to follow the lawless path and caused thousands to desert their families and to move about in hunger... Dear Comrades! I do not want to see the M.C.P. continue to use such treacherous and poisonous schemes to end your precious lives... It has been almost four months since my surrender. During these months I have seen how those who have surrendered in various States have be en treated. I am therefore in the position to tell you that we have all been treated well by the Government.

6 Source F: Extracted from a recorded speech broadcast to Australia by Sir Gerald Templar, on 12 October 1952, at a time when Australia was providing military support to Britain’s campaign against the Communist insurgency. You have only to travel through the length of Malaya now to see how ridiculous is the claim that this Communist insurrection is a national uprising to break free from the British