From Revolutionary Base to Site of Memory: Sun Yat-Sen’s Penang Heritage and the Making of a Nanyang Revolutionary Sacred Site

(Daripada Pangkalan Revolusi Ke Tapak Peringatan: Warisan Sun Yat-Sen Pulau Pinang Dan Pembinaan Tapak Suci Revolusi Nanyang)

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This article examines how Penang came to be remembered as a "Nanyang revolutionary sacred site" of Sun Yat-sen's overseas revolutionary movement. Existing scholarship has largely reconstructed the factual history of overseas Chinese support for the 1911 Revolution, but less attention has been paid to the historical process through which Penang's revolutionary role was transformed into a durable commemorative identity. Drawing on the concepts of the "invention of tradition," lieux de mémoire, cultural memory, and heritage-making, this article argues that Penang's symbolic status was produced through four interrelated processes: the relocation and management of revolutionary organisations under pressure from rival forces in Singapore; the cross-class mobilisation of Penang's Chinese community; the post-revolutionary heritagisation of Sun Yat-sen-related sites; and the selective organisation of memory that simplified or silenced politically complex figures and historical ambiguities. By analysing Penang as both a revolutionary base and a constructed site of memory, this study contributes to the history of the 1911 Revolution, Malaysian historiography, overseas Chinese political mobilisation, and heritage studies in Southeast Asian Chinese communities. It shows that Penang's revolutionary heritage matters not only as a record of anti-Qing activism, but also as a public-history resource through which Malaysian Chinese identity, local heritage interpretation, and heritage tourism continue to be negotiated in a multiethnic national landscape.