COLONIAL GENESIS OF HILL STATIONS - GENTING EXCEPTION

In the three decades since Joseph E. Spencer and William L. Thomas Jr published their pioneering essay on the highland resorts of tropical Asia, it has become an article of faith that hill stations invariably owed their origin and early development to colonialism. Recent scholarly investigations clearly confirm the popular idea that the large majority of such centers in S and SE Asia originated as specialized outposts of European settlement. Most hill stations seem to have developed near strategically located colonial garrisons or in the vicinity of embryonic administrative towns in upland provinces. All hill stations in time acquired a distinctive identity derived from their characteristic role as health and recreation centers. The paper describes the development of the Genting highlands, established more than a decade after independence from the UK, and founded by two Asians. It alone among the major hill stations of S and SE Asia is a postcolonial origin, the product of Asian enterprise, and a center of legalized gambling.-from Authors