Pangkor island off the coast in Perak and in the Straits of Malacca is now internationally known as a holiday resort with inexpensive but high-quality seafood.

To those who have studied the history of the Pacific War, the island is better known as a staging post for the Allied forces' Southeast Asian Command in Sri Lanka and India.

Special operation agents like the legendary John Davis and Lim Bo Seng were sent into Malaya in submarines in 1943 to be received by equally legendary communist operatives like Chin Peng, who took them to hideouts in Ipoh and Bidor. It was the time of Operations Gustavus.

Long before the adventures of Chin Peng, Davis and Lim were heard, a mysterious structure had already come up in Pangkok that is now known as the Dutch Fort. This conjures up images of thrilling stories of the years of Dutch colonialism in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Why did the Dutch build a fort there? What were the attractions in Perak which brought the Dutch there long before the British arrived?

Many theories, from commercial to political, military and geo-strategic, have been advanced. Almost certainly, the Dutch did not build the fort for holiday-making or to store seafood.

In its search for an educated answer, the Ipoh-based Perak Academy has invited historian Prof Barbara Watson Andaya to speak in Ipoh on Saturday.

She will explain how she discovered the Perak material in Dutch archives in the late 1960s, the challenges of using it and how - after 30 years - she might approach the topic now.

Watson's name is not new to students of the history of Malaya/Malaysia. In schools or universities, many would have read A History of Malaysia (2nd edition; Hawaii, Hawaii University Press, 2001; first published in 1982) which she co-authored with her husband Leonard Y. Andaya.

She is also the author and editor of other books on Malaysia, the Malay world and Southeast Asia, and now director of the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies of the University of Hawaii.

Centre of excellence

The talk is the latest in a series of public lectures organised by the academy, a non-profit organisation formed by a group of prominent Perak residents like lawyer Chan Kok Keong. It aims at making the state "a centre of excellence in though, culture and technology".

Its earlier talks had included one by Peter Elphick, the author of three highly acclaimed, albeit controversial, books on the Japanese invasion of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore.

The first which he co-authored with Michael Smith, Odd Man Out: The Story Of The Singapore Traitor (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), names British military officer Patrick Heenan as a Japanese spy who sold the air defence plans of northern Malaya, causing its complete destruction in the first two days of the invasion.

The destruction is now identified as a major reason for the speedy advance of Imperial Japanese troops from Kota Baru, Pattani and Songkla to Singapore. According to Elphick, Heenan was later arrested, taken to Singapore for court martial and 'privately' executed two days before the tragic and ignominious fall of Winston Churchill's 'Impregnable Fortress'.

Elphick' s second book, Singapore The Pregnable Fortress: A Study in Deception, Discord and Desertion (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1995) is acclaimed by British historian Lawrence James as "one of the best and most illuminating books about the Second World War to have appeared in many years".

However, it is also controversial among Australian war veterans because Elphick asserted that a major cause of the fall of Singapore was the mass desertion and indiscipline of the Australian troops.

The third, Far Eastern File: The Intelligence War in the Far East -1945 (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1997) is a study of Japanese espionage systems, operations and personalities in Japan, China, Indochina, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore, and how the United States, Britain, Free France, Australia and Nationalist China took counter-measures.

At yet another talk, retired teacher Chye Kooi Loong presented a reconstruction of the 'Battle of Kampar', a memorable skirmish between the advancing Japanese and the retreating British and Indian troops during the Malayan Campaign. The battle was fought from Dec 29, 1941 to Jan 2, 1942.

According to Battlefield Guide: The Japanese Conquest of Malaya and Singapore (Ian Ward & Ralph Modder, Singapore, Media Masters, 1989), Kampar was "the strongest British defence" in the Malayan Campaign.

Other talks were on the evolution of the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange, globalisation, palm oil, currency control, magic, crime prevention and urban planning.

The academy's publications include Perak Peril (Chan Kok Keong. ed., 2004) and Kinta Valley: Pioneering Malaysia' s Modern Development (Abdur-Razzaq & Khoo Salma Nasution, 2004).

The latter acknowledges that " Kinta was built by Cantonese and Hakka miners and migrants, Malay aristocrats and rubber smallholders, Sumatran political refugees and journalists, European administrators, Ceylonese pressmen and printers, Singhalese jewelers, Tamil railway-builders and money-lenders, Japanese photographers, American Methodist missionaries, South Indian food-sellers and petty traders, Hokkien shopkeepers, French Catholics and European educationists".

It seems the academy is heralding a Perak renaissance by attempting to rediscover the historical richness, diversity and plurality of the 'silver state'.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia. He is a former DAP member of Parliament for Kampar (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily (now Sin Chew Daily). He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.