John Michael Gullick

J.M. Gullick was born in Bristol in 1916. He attended Taunton School and won a scholarship to study Classics at Christ's College, Cambridge, from where he graduated with a Double First, and served as captain of college boats. After graduating, Gullick entered the Colonial Administrative Service and was sent to Entebbe as the Second World War was breaking out in 1939. After serving as aide-de-camp to Sir Philip Mitchell for a short period, he went to Teso District as third assistant district commissioner. In 1940, Gullick joined the King's African Rifles and participated in the Abyssinian Campaign. At the end of the campaign he held various roles in the military administrations in Cairo, Madagascar and Malaya, where he served for six months in the British Military Administration in the state of Negeri Sembilan.

When civilian government was restored in Malaya in 1946, Gullick was transferred to the Malayan Civil Service and served as state secretary for Negeri Sembilan. When the Federation of Malaya was formed in 1948, he joined the secretariat in Kuala Lumpur. He held various positions in the Defense and Internal Security Department, Rural and Industrial Development Authority and the Malayanisation Committee, on which he worked closely with Onn Jaafar and Tunku Abdul Rahman.

In 1956, Gullick returned to England and took up a position as company secretary with The Guthrie Group, a company with concerns in rubber plantations in Malaysia. He left Guthries in 1962 and embarked on a legal career as a solicitor He joined the firm of E.F. Turner & Sons in 1963 and by 1974 had risen to senior partner. After making partner, he left the firm to lecture on company law, publishing what became the standard work on the subject for students preparing for examinations, entitled Company Law.

J.M. Gullick, while in Malaysia, combined his official career with academic study of the history and culture of Malaysia. He was a prolific writer and continued to publish into his old age. In addition to the scholarly monographs, such as Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya (1958) and numerous specialist articles in journals, he also published introductions to Malaysian history intended for a general audience.