Emily or Emma Sadka (1920 – 19 July 1968) was an Iraqi-Singaporean historian and researcher specialising in the Political History of the Malayan region, which she taught at the University of Malaya (Singapore) and in Australian universities.
Early life
Sadka was the eldest daughter of Sassoon Samuel Sadka and his wife, Sarah, Jews originating from Baghdad. She was the grandniece of Moshe Sadka, the Chief Rabbi of Baghdad, and the cousin of Singapore Chief Minister, David Marshall.
She studied at the Raffles Girls' School from 1928 to 1935, then joined the special Scholarship Class at Raffles Institute, in 1935, at the age of 16. She was underage for the examination at that time and sat again the following year. In December 1937, it was announced that she had won the British Malayan Queen's Scholarship that provided pass to and back from England, together with the cost of education at Oxford, Cambridge, or any other university, for up to four years. She had been the first Jewish woman to have won this scholarship. Other winners were Lim Chong Eu (18) of the Penang Free School who would go on to become Chief Minister of Penang, Chin Kim Hong (19) of the King Edward VIII School in Taiping and Mohamed Ismail bin Mohamed Ali (19) of Victoria Institution in Selangor. She read modern history at St. Hilda's College, Oxford where she obtained a B.A. (First Class Hons.) in History in 1941.
She learnt Russian and the Scandinavian languages and in 1942, won a Carnegie Grant to carry out research in Soviet Administration in the former Czarist colonies of Central Asia. In 1946 she had attended the London County Council evening classes in literature and current events and gave a series of talks on the Soviet Union for the Marylebone Literary Institute. She had also served on the committee of the International Youth Centre in London. By September 1947, she was in Australia on break, her work on the subject was nearing completion, and she was planning the presentation of her Ph.D. thesis to take place in England in 1948.
Career
University of Malaya
She joined the University of Malaya as Assistant Lecturer in August 1951.
In June 1953, she was elected Secretary of the Malayan Historical Society (Singapore) under Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson.
Sieveking Expedition
In August 1953, the only woman in the team, Sadka, having resigned, left on an expedition headed by Acting Director of Museums Dr. G. de G. Sieveking, to investigate the ancient settlement of Kota Batu, a site at Johore Lama, up the Johore River, and probe the remains of two boats embedded in the river's banks.
Pieces of 17th to 18th century Chinese pottery were found among the remains of one of the boats. A local in the area showed them a bowl of Siamese origin that had been found filled with gold coins. According to that owner the coins were subsequently melted down and the gold, sold.
Besides Sadka and Sieveking, the expedition also comprised Dr. Paul Wheatley of the University of Malaya, Dr. C. A. Gibson-Hill of the Raffles Museum, Tony Beamish of Radio Malaya, M. W. F Tweedie of the Singapore Museum, Oswald Theseira of the F.M.S. Museum, Naval Commander-in-Chief (Far East Station) Vice Admiral Sir Charles Lambe, John Senior of the British Army, Wong Lin Ken, Clement Hon, Wang Gung Wu.
The excavation made an important find. This was the first time that the use of masonry in Malay fortifications had been recorded. Of equal importance, the expedition's surveys allowed for more accurate orientation of the internal geography of that settlement. The remains of an ancient Chinese trading ship were also a result of the excavations there.
Journal of Sir Hugh Low
Sadka believed that Hugh Low, third British resident at Perak, was "one of the greatest of Malaya's administrators," but noted that he had been neglected by writers of Malayan history, with only passing references made in the notes made by Swettenham and Winstedt. At that time his private papers could not be located and much of Perak's official records, and those of the Colonial Secretary's Office in Singapore had been destroyed during the Japanese Occupation of Malaya. The only thing, remaining at that time was the first volume of his handwritten journals, at that time kept at the Federal Secretariat in Kuala Lumpur [and now kept at the National Archives of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur], that spanned his first eight weeks in Perak (19 April to 15 June 1877). Sadka worked on deciphering, and transcribing and correcting the text of this manuscript. It was published, two years later, in 1955.