The modern-day nations of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei only became independent in 1963, 1965 and 1984 respectively. Before that, their history was inextricably linked with events in the larger Malay archipelago, from Sumatra across Borneo to the Philippines.
Unfortunately, little hard archeological evidence in the region pertains to the prehistoric period, while events prior to the foundation of Melaka are known only from unreliable accounts written by Chinese and Arab traders. For an understanding of the formative fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there are two vital sources: the Suma Oriental (Treatise of the Orient), by Tomé Pires, a Portuguese emissary who came to Melaka in 1512 and used his observations to write a history of the region, and the seventeenth-century Sejarah Melayu, the “Malay Annals”, which recount oral historical tales in a poetic style. Portuguese and Dutch colonists who arrived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries supplied written records, though these tended to concern commercial rather than political or social matters. At least there’s a wealth of information from British colonial times that, despite an imperialistic bias, gives detailed insights into Malay affairs.
The oldest remains of Homo sapiens in the region, discovered in the Niah Caves in Sarawak, are thought to be those of hunter-gatherers, dating back some 40,000 years; other finds in the Peninsular state of Kedah are only 10,000 years old. The variety of ethnic groups now found in both east and west Malaysia – from small, dark-skinned Negritos through to paler Austronesian Malays – has led to the theory of a slow filtration of peoples through the Malay archipelago from southern Indochina. That theory is backed by an almost universal belief in animism, celebration of fertility and ancestor worship among the various peoples.
The Malay archipelago acquired a strategic significance thanks largely to the shipping trade, which flourished as early as the first century AD. This was engendered by the two major markets of the early world – India and China – and by the richness of its own resources. From the dense jungle of the Peninsula and northern Borneo came aromatic woods, timber and nipah palm thatch, traded by the forest-dwelling Orang Asli with the coastal Malays, who then bartered or sold it on to Arab and Chinese merchants. The region was also rumoured to be rich in gold, leading to its being described by contemporary Greek writers as “The Golden Chersonese” (chersonese meaning “peninsula”). Although gold was never found in the supposed quantities, ornaments made of the metal helped to develop decorative traditions among craftsmen, and survive today. More significant, however, were the tin fields of the Malay Peninsula, mined in early times to provide an alloy used for temple sculptures. Chinese traders were also attracted by the medicinal properties of various sea products, such as sea slugs, collected by the Orang Laut (sea people), as well as by pearls and tortoise shells.
For their part, the indigenous peoples acquired cloth, pottery, glass and absorbed the beliefs of those with whom they traded. From as early as 200 AD, Indian traders brought their Hindu and Buddhist practices, and archeological evidence from later periods, such as the tenth-century temples at Lembah Bujang, suggests that the local population not only tolerated these new belief systems, but adapted them to suit their own experiences. Perhaps the most striking contemporary example of such cultural interchange is the traditional entertainment of wayang kulit (shadow plays), whose plots are drawn from the Hindu Ramayana.
While trade with India developed very early, contact with China was initially less pronounced due to the pre-eminence of the Silk Road, further north. Only in the eighth and ninth centuries did Chinese ships first venture into the archipelago. By the time Srivijaya appeared on the scene, a number of states – particularly in the Kelantan and Terengganu areas of the Peninsula – were sending envoys to China.
The inhabitants of the western Peninsula and eastern Sumatra were quick to realize the geographical advantage afforded by the Strait of Malacca, which provided a refuge where ships could wait for several months for a change in the monsoon winds. From the fifth century onwards, a succession of entrepôts (storage ports) were created to cater for the needs of passing vessels. One such entrepôt eventually became the mighty empire of Srivijaya, eminent from the start of the seventh century until the end of the thirteenth, and encompassing all the shores and islands surrounding the Strait of Malacca. Its exact location is still a matter for debate, although most sources point to Palembang in southern Sumatra. Srivijaya’s stable administration attracted commerce when insurrection elsewhere frightened traders away, while its wealth was boosted by extracting tolls and taxes from passing ships. Srivijaya also became an important centre for Mahayana Buddhism and learning. When the respected Chinese monk I Ching arrived in 671 AD, he found more than a thousand monks studying the Buddhist scriptures.
Political concepts developed during Srivijayan rule were to form the basis of Malay government in future centuries. Unquestioning loyalty among subjects was underpinned by the notion of daulat, the divine force of the ruler (called the Maharajah), which would strike down anyone guilty of derhaka (treason) – a powerful means of control over a deeply superstitious people.
The decision made around 1080 to shift the capital, for reasons unknown, north from Palembang to a place called Melayu seems to have marked the start of Srivijaya’s decline. Piracy became almost uncontrollable, and even the Orang Laut, who had previously helped keep it in check, turned against the Srivijayan rulers. Soon both local and foreign traders began to seek safer ports, and the area that’s now Kedah was a principal beneficiary. Other regions were soon able to compete by replicating the peaceable conditions and efficient administration that had allowed Srivijaya to thrive.
Srivijaya’s fate was sealed when it attracted the eye of foreign rivals. In 1275, the Majapahit empire of Java invaded Melayu and made inroads into many of Srivijaya’s peninsular territories. Sumatra and Kedah were raided by the Cholas of India, while the Thai kingdom of Ligor was able to extract tributes of gold from Malay vassals, a practice that continued until the nineteenth century. Moreover, trading restrictions in China were relaxed from the late twelfth century onwards, making it more lucrative for traders to bypass the once mighty entrepôt and go directly to the source of their desired products. Around the early fourteenth century Srivijaya’s name disappears from the records.
With the collapse of Srivijaya came the establishment of the Melaka Sultanate, the Malay Peninsula’s most significant historical period. Both the Sejarah Melayu and the Suma Oriental document the tale of a Palembang prince named Paramesvara, who fled the collapsing empire of Srivijaya to set up his own kingdom, finally settling on the site of present-day Melaka.
As well placed as its Sumatran predecessor, with a deep, sheltered harbour and good riverine access to lucrative jungle produce, Melaka set about establishing itself as an international marketplace. The securing of a special agreement in 1405 with the new Chinese emperor, Yung-lo, guaranteed trade to Melaka and protected it from its main rivals. To further ensure its prosperity, Melaka’s second ruler, Paramesvara’s son Iskandar Shah (1414–24), took the precaution of acknowledging the neighbouring kingdoms of Ayuthaya and Majapahit as overlords. In return Melaka received vital supplies and much-needed immigrants, which bolstered the expansion of the settlement.
Port taxes and market regulations were managed by four shahbandars (harbour masters), each in charge of trade with certain territories. Hand in hand with the commodities trade went the exchange of ideas. By the thirteenth century, Arab merchants had begun to frequent Melaka’s shores, bringing with them Islam, which their Muslim Indian counterparts helped to propagate among the Malays. Melaka’s prestige was enhanced both by its conversion to Islam, making it part of a worldwide community with profitable trade links, and by territorial expansion which, by the reign of its last ruler Sultan Mahmud Shah (1488–1528), included the west coast of the Peninsula as far as Perak, Pahang, Singapore, and most of east coast Sumatra.
The legacy of Melaka’s golden age reaches far beyond its material wealth. One significant development, the establishment of a hierarchical court structure, was to lay the foundations for a system of government lasting until the nineteenth century. According to Malay royal tradition, the ruler, as head of state, traced his ancestry back through Paramesvara to the maharajahs of ancient Srivijaya; in turn Paramesvara was believed to be descended from Alexander the Great. The ruler also claimed divinity, a belief strengthened by the kingdom’s conversion to Islam, which held sultans to be Allah’s representatives on earth. To further secure his power, always under threat from the overzealous nobility, the Melaka sultan embarked on a series of measures to emphasize his “otherness”: no one but he could wear gold unless it was a royal gift, and yellow garments were forbidden among the general population.
The Melaka Sultanate also allowed the arts to flourish; the principal features of the courtly dances and music of this period can still be distinguished in traditional entertainments today. Much more significant, however, was the refinement of language, adapting the primitive Malay that had been used in the kingdom of Srivijaya into a language of the elite. Such was Melaka’s prestige that all who passed through the entrepôt sought to imitate it, and by the sixteenth century, Malay was the most widely used language in the archipelago. Tellingly, the word bahasa, although literally meaning “language”, came to signify Malay culture in general.
It wasn’t long before Europe set its sights on the prosperous sultanate. At the start of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese began to take issue with Venetian control of the Eastern market. They planned instead to establish direct contacts with the commodity brokers of the East by gaining control of crucial regional ports. The key player in the subsequent conquest of Melaka was Portuguese viceroy Alfonso de Albuquerque, who led the assault on the entrepôt in 1511, forcing its surrender after less than a month’s siege. Aloof and somewhat effete in their high-necked ruffs and stockings, the Portuguese were not well liked, but despite the almost constant attacks from upriver Malays, they controlled Melaka for the next 130 years.
There are few physical reminders of the Portuguese in Melaka, apart from the gateway to their fort, A Famosa, and the small Eurasian community, descendants of intermarriage between the Portuguese and local women. The colonizers had more success with religion, however, converting large numbers of locals to Catholicism; their churches still dominate the city.
Portuguese control over Melaka lasted for well over a century, until it was challenged by the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), or Dutch East India Company, who were already the masters of Indonesia’s valuable spice trade. Melaka was the VOC’s most potent rival, and the company’s bid to seize the colony succeeded in 1641 when, after a five-month siege, the Dutch flag was hoisted over Melaka.
Instead of trying, like the Portuguese, to rule from above, the Dutch cleverly wove their subjects into the fabric of government. Each racial group was represented by a kapitan, a respected figure from the community who mediated between his own people and the new administrators – often becoming wealthy and powerful in his own right. The Dutch were also responsible for the rebuilding of Melaka, much of which had turned to rubble during the protracted takeover of the city; many of these structures, in their distinctive Northern European style, still survive today.
By the mid-eighteenth century, conditions for Melaka’s trade with China were at their peak: the relaxation of maritime restrictions in China itself had opened up the Strait for their merchants, while Europeans were eager to satisfy the growing demand for tea. The Chinese came to Melaka in droves and soon established themselves as the city’s foremost entrepreneurs. Chinese settlement in the area and, in some cases, intermarriage with local Malay women, created a new cultural blend, known as Peranakan or Baba-Nyonya – the legacies of which are the opulent mansions and unique cuisine of Melaka, Penang and Singapore.
A number of factors prevented Dutch Melaka from fulfilling its potential, however. Since their VOC salary was hardly bountiful, Dutch administrators found it more lucrative to trade on the black market, taking backhanders from grateful merchants, a situation that severely damaged Melaka’s commercial standing. High taxes forced traders to more economical locations such as the newly established British port of Penang, whose foundation in 1786 heralded the awakening of British interest in the Straits. In the end, Melaka never stood a chance: the company’s attention was distracted by other centres such as Batavia (modern-day Jakarta), the VOC “capital”, and by the kingdom of Johor.
Through the second half of the seventeenth century, a new ethnic group, the Bugis – renowned for their martial and commercial skills – trickled into the Peninsula, seeking refuge from the civil wars that wracked their homeland of Sulawesi (in the mid-eastern Indonesian archipelago). By the start of the eighteenth century, they were numerous enough to constitute a powerful court lobby, and in 1721 they took advantage of factional struggles to capture the kingdom of Johor, now based in Riau. Installing a Malay puppet sultan, the Bugis ruled for over sixty years, making Riau an essential port of call on the eastern trade route; they even almost succeeded in capturing Melaka in 1756. But when Riau-Johor made another bid for Melaka in 1784, the Dutch held on with renewed vigour and finally forced a treaty placing all Bugis territory in Dutch hands.
In spiritual terms, the Minangkabau, hailing from western Sumatra, had what the Bugis lacked, being able to claim cultural affinity with ancient Srivijaya. Although this migrant group had been present in the Negeri Sembilan region since the fifteenth century, it was in the second half of the seventeenth century that they arrived in the Malay Peninsula in larger numbers. Despite professing allegiance to their Sumatran ruler, the Minangkabau were prepared to accept Malay overlordship, which in practice gave them a great deal of autonomy. Although the warrior Minangkabau were not natural allies of the Bugis or the Malays, they did occasionally join forces to defeat a common enemy. In fact, over time the distinction between various migrant groups became less obvious as intermarriage blurred clan demarcations, and Malay influence, such as the adoption of Malay titles, became more pronounced.
When Melaka fell to the Portuguese, the deposed sultan, Mahmud Shah, made for Bintan island in the Riau archipelago, just south of Singapore, where he established the first court of Johor. When, in 1526, the Portuguese attacked and razed the settlement, Mahmud fled once again, this time to Sumatra, where he died in 1528. It was left to his son, Alauddin Riayat Shah, to found a new court on the upper reaches of the Johor River, though the kingdom’s capital was to shift repeatedly during a century of assaults on Johor territory by Portugal and the Sumatran Sultanate of Aceh.
The arrival of the Dutch in Southeast Asia marked a distinct upturn in Johor’s fortunes. Hoping for protection from its local enemies, the court aligned itself firmly with the Dutch, and was instrumental in their successful siege of Portuguese Melaka. That loyalty was rewarded with trading privileges and assistance in securing a treaty with Aceh, which at last gave Johor the breathing space to develop. Johor was the supreme Malay kingdom for much of the seventeenth century, but by the 1690s its empire was fraying under the despotic rule of another Sultan Mahmud. Lacking strong leadership, Johor’s Orang Laut turned to piracy, scaring off trade, while wars with the Sumatran kingdom of Jambi, one of which resulted in the total destruction of Johor’s capital, weakened it still further. No longer able to tolerate his cruel regime, Mahmud’s nobles stabbed him to death in 1699. Not only did this change the nature of power in Malay government – previously, law deemed that the sultan could only be punished by Allah – but it also marked the end of the Melaka dynasty.
During Melaka’s meteoric rise, Brunei had been busily establishing itself as a trading port of some renown. The Brunei Sultanate’s conversion to Islam, no doubt precipitated by the arrival of wealthy Muslim merchants fleeing from the Portuguese in Melaka, also helped to increase its international prestige. When geographer Antonio Pigafetta visited Brunei with Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition of 1521, he found the court brimming with visitors from all over the world. This, indeed, was Brunei’s “golden age”, with its borders embracing land as far south as present-day Kuching in Sarawak, and as far north as the lower islands of the modern-day Philippines. Brunei’s efforts, however, were soon curtailed by Spanish colonization in 1578, which, although lasting only a matter of weeks, enabled the Philippine kingdom of Sulu to gain a hold in the area – and thus put paid to Brunei’s early expansionist aims.
At the end of the eighteenth century, Dutch control in Southeast Asia was more widespread than ever, and the VOC empire should have been at its height. Instead, it had somehow become bankrupt. Defeat in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1781–83) lowered Dutch morale still further, and when the British, in the form of the East India Company (EIC), moved in on Melaka and the rest of the Dutch Asian domain in 1795, the VOC barely demurred; it was dissolved five years later.
Initially, the British agreed to a caretaker administration whereby they would assume sovereignty over the entrepôt to prevent it falling under French control, now that Napoleon had conquered Holland. By the time the end of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe put the Dutch in a position to retake Melaka, between 1818 and 1825, the EIC had established the stable port of Penang and – under the supervision of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles – founded the new settlement of Singapore. The strategic position and free-trade policy of Singapore – backed by the impressive industrial developments of the British at home – threatened the viability of both Melaka and Penang, forcing the Dutch finally to relinquish their hold on Melaka to the British, and leaving Penang to dwindle to a backwater. In the face of such stiff competition, smaller Malay rivals inevitably linked their fortunes to the British.
The British assumption of power was sealed by the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1824, which apportioned territories between the two powers using the Strait of Malacca and the equator as the dividing lines, thereby splitting the Riau-Johor kingdom as well as putting the brakes on centuries of cultural interchange with Sumatra. This was followed in 1826 when Melaka, Penang and Singapore were unified into one administration, known as the Straits Settlements. Singapore replaced Penang as its capital in 1832.
Raffles had at first hoped that Singapore would act as a market to sell British goods to traders from all over Southeast Asia, but it soon became clear that Chinese merchants, the linchpin of Singapore’s trade, were interested only in Malay products such as birds’ nests, seaweed and camphor. But passing traders were not the only Chinese to come to the Strait. Although settlers had trickled into the Peninsula since the early days of Melaka, new plantations of pepper and gambier (an astringent used in tanning and dyeing), and the rapidly expanding tin mines, attracted floods of workers eager to escape a life of poverty in China. By 1845, half of Singapore’s population was Chinese, and likewise principal towns along the Peninsula’s west coast (site of the world’s largest tin field) and, for that matter, Kuching, became predominantly Chinese.
Allowed a large degree of commercial independence by both the British and the Malay chiefs, the Chinese formed kongsis (clan associations) and triads (secret societies). The Malays, too, were hardly immune from factional conflicts, which frequently became intertwined with Chinese squabbles, causing a string of civil conflicts: in Penang in 1867, for example, the triads allied themselves with Malay groups in a bloody street battle that lasted several days.
Such lawlessness was detrimental to commerce, giving the British an excuse to increase their involvement in local affairs. A meeting involving the chiefs of the Perak Malays was arranged by the new Straits Governor, Andrew Clarke, on Pulau Pangkor, just off the west coast of the Peninsula. In the meantime, Rajah Abdullah, the man most likely to succeed to the Perak throne, had written to Clarke asking for his position as sultan to be guaranteed; in return, he offered the British the chance to appoint a Resident, a senior British civil servant whose main function would be to act as adviser to the local sultan, and who would also oversee the collecting of local taxes. On January 20, 1874, the Pangkor Treaty was signed, formalizing British intervention in Malay political affairs.
Perak’s first Resident, J.W.W. Birch, was not sympathetic to the ways of the Malays; his centralizing tendencies were opposed by Abdullah when he became sultan. Fearful of a Malay rebellion, senior British officials announced that judicial decisions would from now on be in the hands of the British. This went against the Pangkor Treaty, and furious Malays soon found a vent for their frustration: on November 2, 1875, Birch was killed on an upriver visit. Only with the appointment of the third Resident of Perak, the respected Hugh Low, did the system start to work more smoothly.
Other states soon saw the arrival of a Resident, and agreements along the lines of the Pangkor Treaty were drawn up with Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang during the 1880s. In 1896, these three and Perak became bracketed together under the title of the Federated Malay States, with the increasingly important town of Kuala Lumpur as the capital.
By 1888 the name British Malaya had come into use – a term that reflected the intention to extend British control over the whole Peninsula. Over subsequent decades, the economic and administrative powers of the Malay sultans were eroded, while the introduction of rubber estates in the first half of the twentieth century made British Malaya one of the world’s most productive colonies. The rapidity and extent of the British takeover in the Peninsula was unprecedented, aided by advances in communications.
The extension of British power brought further unrest, particularly in the east coast states, where the Malays proved just as resentful of British control as in Perak. A set of skirmishes took place in Pahang in the early 1890s, when Malay chiefs protested about the reduction of their privileges. After one powerful chief, Dato’ Bahaman, was stripped of his title by Pahang’s Resident, Hugh Clifford, the Dato’ led a small rebellion that soon became the stuff of legends. One fighter, Mat Kilau, earned a place in folklore as a hero who stood up to the British. From this time, Malays would interpret the uprisings as a valiant attempt to safeguard their traditions and autonomy.
By 1909, the northern Malay states of Kedah and Perlis had been brought into the colonial fold. In 1910, Johor accepted a British general-adviser; a 1914 treaty between Britain and Johor made his powers equal to those of Residents elsewhere. Terengganu, which was under Thai control, was the last state to accept a British adviser, in 1919. These four states, together with Kelantan, were sometimes collectively referred to as the Unfederated Malay States, though they shared no common administration.
By the outbreak of World War I, British political control was more or less complete. The Peninsula was subdivided into groups of states and regions with the seat of power split between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
The Anglo-Dutch Treaty did not include Borneo, where official expansion was discouraged by the EIC, which preferred to concentrate on expanding its trading contacts rather than territorial control. The benefits of Borneo did not, however, elude the sights of one British explorer, James Brooke (1803–68). Finding lawlessness throughout the island, Brooke persuaded the Sultan of Brunei to award him his own area – Sarawak – in 1841, becoming the first of a line of “White Rajahs” who ruled the state until World War II. Brooke quickly asserted his authority by involving formerly rebellious Malay chiefs in government, although the interior’s tribes proved more of a problem. Subsequently Brooke and his successors proved adept at siphoning more land into the familial fiefdom.
Though the association between the British and James Brooke was informal (Brooke was careful not to encourage European contacts that might compromise his hold), trade between Singapore and Sarawak flourished. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the British attitude had altered; they chose Brooke as their agent in Brunei, and found him a useful deterrent against French and Dutch aspirations towards the valuable trade routes. Eventually, in 1888, Sarawak, North Borneo (Sabah) and Brunei were transformed into protectorates, a status that entailed responsibility for their foreign policy being handed over to the British.
The legacy of James Brooke was furthered by his nephew Charles Brooke in the second half of the nineteenth century. Like his uncle, Charles ruled Sarawak in paternalistic fashion, recruiting soldiers, lowly officials and boatmen from the ranks of the tribal groups and leaving the Chinese to get on with running commercial enterprises and opening up the interior. Vyner Brooke, Charles’s eldest son, became rajah in 1917; his reign saw no new territorial acquisitions, though there was a steady development in rubber, pepper and palm-oil production. The tribal peoples mostly continued living a traditional lifestyle in longhouses along the river, while the end of their practice of head-hunting was followed by some degree of integration among the area’s varied racial groups.
By way of contrast, the British North Borneo Chartered Company’s writ in what became Sabah encountered some early obstacles. The company’s plans for economic expansion involved clearing the rainforest, planting rubber and tobacco over large areas, and levying taxes on the tribes. Resistance ensued, with the most vigorous action, in 1897, led by a Bajau chief, Mat Salleh, whose men rampaged through the company’s outstation on Pulau Gaya. Another rebellion by Murut tribespeople in 1915 resulted in a heavy-handed response from British forces, who killed hundreds.
By the start of the twentieth century, the majority of the lands of the once-powerful Sultanate of Brunei had been dismembered – the sultanate was now surrounded by Sarawak. But the sultan’s fortunes had not completely disappeared and with the discovery of oil, the British thought it prudent to appoint a Resident. Exploitation of the small state’s oil fields gathered pace in the 1930s following investment from British companies.
In the first quarter of the twentieth century, the British encouraged hundreds of thousands of immigrants from China and India to come to Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak, North Borneo and Singapore. They arrived to work as tin miners or plantation labourers, and Malaya’s population in this period doubled to four million. This bred increasing resentment among the Malays, who believed that they were being denied the economic opportunities advanced to others.
A further deterioration in Malay–Chinese relations followed the success of mainland Chinese revolutionary groups in Malaya. Malayan Chinese joined the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) from 1930 onwards and also formed the backbone of postwar Chinese movements that demanded an end to British rule and what they perceived as special privileges extended to the Malays. At the same time, Malay nationalism was gathering its own head of steam. The Singapore Malay Union, which held its first conference in 1939, advocated a Malay supremacist line. A year earlier, the first All-Malaya Malays Conference, organized by the Selangor Malays Association, had been held in KL.
Landing in Kelantan in December 1941, Japanese forces took barely two months to sweep down the Peninsula and reach Singapore. The surrender of the British forces there in February 1942 ushered in a Japanese regime that brutalized the Chinese, largely because of Japan’s history of conflict with China; at least 25,000 people were tortured and killed in the two weeks immediately after the surrender of the island by the British military command. Allied POWs were rounded up into prison camps; many of the troops were subsequently sent to build the infamous “Death Railway” in Burma.
In Malaya, towns and buildings were destroyed as the Allies attempted to bomb strategic targets. But with the Japanese firmly in control, the occupiers ingratiated themselves with some of the Malay elite by suggesting that after the war the country would be given independence. Predictably, it was the Chinese activists in the MCP, more than the Malays, who organized resistance during wartime.
December 1941 also saw the Japanese invade Sarawak, beginning with the capture of the Miri oil field. Although the Japanese never penetrated the interior, they quickly established control over the populated towns along the coast. The Chinese in Miri, Sibu and Kuching were the main targets: the Japanese put down rebellions brutally, and there was no organized guerrilla activity until late in the occupation. What resistance there was arose from “Z Force”, namely Major Tom Harrisson and a team of British and Australian commandos, who in 1945 parachuted into the remote Kelabit Highlands to build a resistance movement.
In North Borneo, the Japanese invaded Pulau Labuan on New Year’s Day, 1942. Over the next three years the main suburban areas were bombed by the Allies, destroying most of Jesselton (modern-day KK) and Sandakan. Captured troops and civilians suffered enormously – the worst single outrage being the “Death March” in September 1944, when 2400 POWs were forced to walk from Sandakan to Ranau.
In September 1945, just prior to a planned Allied invasion to retake Singapore, the Japanese surrendered following the dropping of atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The surrender led to a power vacuum in the region, with the British initially having to work with the MCP’s armed wing, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), to maintain order in many areas. Violence occurred between the MPAJA and Malays, particularly against those accused of collaborating with the Japanese.
Immediately after the war, the British introduced the Malayan Union, in effect turning the Malay States from a protectorate into a colony and removing the sovereignty of the sultans. Another effect was to give the Chinese and Indian inhabitants citizenship and equal rights with the Malays. This quickly aroused opposition from the Malays, the nationalists among whom formed the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) in 1946. Its main tenet was that Malays should retain special privileges, largely because they were the first inhabitants, and that the uniquely powerful position of the sultans should not be tampered with.
UMNO’s resistance led to the Malayan Union idea being replaced by the Federation of Malaya. Established in 1948, this upheld the sultans’ power and privileges and brought all the Peninsula’s territories together under one government, apart from Chinese-dominated Singapore, whose inclusion would have led to the Malays being in a minority overall. Protests erupted in Singapore at its exclusion, with the Malayan Democratic Union (MDU), a multiracial party, calling for integration with Malaya – a position that commanded little support among the Chinese population.
After the Japanese surrender in Borneo, the Colonial Office in London made Sarawak and North Borneo Crown Colonies, with Vyner Brooke offering no objection. Sarawakians were torn over the change in arrangements, however: while the ruling assembly, the Council Negeri (composed of Malays, Chinese, Iban and British), had voted to transfer power to Britain, some Malays and prominent Iban in Kuching opposed the move. Protests reached a peak with the assassination in Sibu in 1949 of the senior official in the new administration, Governor Duncan Stewart. But on the whole, resentment at the passing of the Brooke era was short-lived as the economy expanded and infrastructure improved. Britain also signed a Treaty of Protection with the Sultan of Brunei, who remained the chief power in the state while Sarawak’s high commissioner took on the purely decorative role of governor of Brunei.
Many Chinese in the Peninsula were angered when the country changed status from a colony to a federation, effectively making them second-class citizens. According to the new laws, non-Malays could only qualify as citizens if they had lived in the country for fifteen out of the last twenty-five years, and they also had to prove they spoke Malay or English.
Following the communist takeover in China in 1949, most Malayan Chinese ceased to look to China; the more political among them founded a new political party, the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA). Some local Chinese, however, identified with the MCP, which under its new leader, Chin Peng, declared its intention of setting up a Malayan republic. Peng fused the MCP with the remains of the MPAJA, and, using arms supplies that the latter had dumped in the forests, from June 1948 he launched sporadic attacks on rubber estates, killing planters and employees as well as spreading fear among rural communities. This civil conflict, which lasted until 1960, was euphemistically called the Emergency for insurance purposes; planters would have had their policies cancelled if war had been officially declared. At its peak, around ten thousand of Chin Peng’s guerrillas were hiding out in jungle camps, using a support network of Chinese-dominated towns and villages in the interior. In many cases inhabitants were cowed into submission by means of public executions, though many poor rural workers identified with the insurgents’ struggle.
Although the Emergency was never fully felt in the main urban areas, British rubber-estate owners would arrive at the Coliseum Hotel in KL with harrowing stories of how “communist terrorists” had hacked off the arms of rural Chinese workers who refused to support the cause, and of armed attacks on plantations.
The British were slow to respond to the threat, but once Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Briggs was put in command of police and army forces, Malaya was on a war footing. Briggs’ most controversial policy was the resettlement of 400,000 rural Chinese – mostly squatters who had moved to the jungle fringes to avoid the Japanese during the war – as well as thousands of Orang Asli. Although these forced migrations were successful in breaking down many of the guerrillas’ supply networks, they alienated many Chinese and Orang Asli who had previously been sympathetic to the British.
The violence peaked in 1950 with ambushes and attacks near Ipoh, Kuala Kangsar, Kuala Lipis and Raub. The most notorious incident occurred in 1951 on the road to Fraser’s Hill, when the British high commissioner to Malaya, Sir Henry Gurney, was assassinated. Under his replacement, Sir Gerald Templer, a new policy was introduced to win hearts and minds. “White Areas”, perceived as free of guerrilla activity, were established; communities in these regions had food restrictions and curfews lifted, a policy that began to dissipate guerrilla activity over the next three years. The leaders were offered an amnesty in 1956, which was refused, and Chin Peng and most of the remaining cell members fled over the border to Thailand where they received sanctuary.
The impact of the Emergency on the Orang Asli of the interior was dramatic. All but the most remote tribes were subject to intimidation and brutality, from guerrillas on one side and government forces on the other. In effect, the Orang Asli’s centuries-old invisibility had ended; the population of Malaysia was now aware of their presence, and the government of their strategic importance.
The Orang Asli had no choice but to grow food and act as porters for the guerrillas, as well as – most important of all – provide intelligence, warning them of the approach of the enemy. In response, the government implemented a disastrous policy of removing thousands of Orang Asli from the jungle and relocating them in new model villages in the interior, which were no more than dressed-up prison camps. Hundreds died in captivity before the government dismantled these settlements. By then, not surprisingly, active support for the insurgents among the Orang Asli had risen – though allegiances switched to the security forces when it became clear the guerrillas were heading for defeat. Government attempts to control the Orang Asli during the Emergency turned out to be the precursor to initiatives that persist to the present day, drawing the Orang Asli away from their traditional lifestyle and into the embrace of the Malaysian nation-state.
The Emergency had the effect of speeding up political change prior to independence. UMNO stuck to its “Malays first” policy, though its president, Tuanku Abdul Rahman (also the chief minister of Malaya), won the 1955 election by cooperating with the MCA and the Malayan Indian Association. The resulting bloc, the UMNO Alliance, swept into power under the rallying cry of Merdeka (Freedom). The hope was that ethnic divisions would no longer be a major factor if independence was granted.
With British backing, merdeka was proclaimed on August 31, 1957 in a ceremony in Kuala Lumpur’s padang – promptly renamed Merdeka Square. The British high commissioner signed a treaty that decreed that the Federation of Malaya was now independent of the Crown, with Tuanku Abdul Rahman the first prime minister. The new constitution allowed for the nine Malay sultans to alternate as king, and established a two-tier parliament, comprising a house of elected representatives and a senate with delegates from each state. Under Rahman, the country was fully committed to economic expansion, with foreign investment actively encouraged – a stance that has survived to the present.
Similarly, in Singapore the process of gaining independence acquired momentum throughout the 1950s. In 1957, the British gave the go-ahead for the setting up of an elected 51-member assembly, and full self-government was attained in 1959, when the People’s Action Party (PAP) under Lee Kuan Yew won most of the seats. Lee immediately entered into talks with Tuanku Abdul Rahman over the notion that Singapore and Malaya should be joined administratively. Tunku initially agreed, although he feared the influence of the far left in the PAP.
In 1961, Tuanku Abdul Rahman proposed that Sarawak and North Borneo should join Malaya and Singapore in an enlarged federation. Many in Borneo would have preferred the idea of a separate Borneo Federation, although the Konfrontasi was to make clear how vulnerable such a federation would be to attack from Indonesia. Rahman’s suggestion was, however, not fuelled by security concerns but by demographics: if Singapore were to join the federation, the country would acquire a Chinese majority. This made the two Borneo colonies useful as a counterweight to Singapore’s Chinese.
Although Abdul Rahman had wanted Brunei to join the Malaysian Federation, Sultan Omar refused when he realized Rahman’s price – a substantial proportion of Brunei’s oil and gas revenues. Brunei remained under nominal British jurisdiction until its independence on January 1, 1984.
In September 1963, North Borneo (quickly renamed Sabah), Sarawak and Singapore joined Malaya in the Federation of Malaysia – “Malaysia” being a term coined by the British in the 1950s when the notion of a Greater Malaya had been propounded. Both Indonesia, which laid claim to Sarawak, and the Philippines, which claimed jurisdiction over Sabah as it had originally been part of the Sulu Sultanate, reacted angrily. Border skirmishes with Indonesia known as the Konfrontasi ensued, and a wider war was only just averted when Indonesian President Sukarno backed down from taking on British and Gurkha troops brought in to bolster Sarawak’s small armed forces.
Within the federation, further differences surfaced in Singapore during this period between Lee Kuan Yew and the Malay-dominated Alliance over the lack of egalitarian policies; many Chinese were concerned that UMNO’s overall influence in the federation was too great. Tensions rose on the island and racial incidents developed into full-scale riots in 1964, in which several people were killed.
These developments were viewed with great concern by Tuanku Abdul Rahman in Kuala Lumpur, and when the PAP subsequently attempted to enter Peninsular politics, he decided it would be best if Singapore left the federation. This was emphatically not in Singapore’s best interests, since it was an island without any obvious natural resources; Lee cried on TV when the expulsion was announced and Singapore acquired full independence on August 9, 1965. The severing of the bond between Malaysia and Singapore has led to a kind of sibling rivalry between the two nations ever since.
Singapore’s exit from the Malaysian Federation was not enough to quell ethnic tensions. Resentment grew among the Malaysian Chinese over the principle that Malay be the main language taught in schools and over the privileged employment opportunities offered to Malays. After the Alliance lost ground in elections in May 1969, Malays in major cities reacted angrily to a perceived increase in power of the Chinese, who had commemorated their breakthrough with festivities in the streets. Hundreds of people, mostly Chinese, were killed and injured in the riots that followed; KL in particular became a war zone with large crowds of youths on the rampage. Rahman kept the country under a state of emergency for nearly two years, during which the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA) was used to arrest and imprison activists, as well as many writers and artists, setting a sombre precedent for authoritarian practices still followed today.
Abdul Rahman never recovered full political command and resigned in 1970. That September, the new prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, initiated a form of state-orchestrated positive discrimination called the New Economic Policy (NEP), which gives ethnic Malays and members of Borneo’s tribes favoured positions in business and other professions. Also under Razak, a crucial step was taken towards Malaysia’s current political map with the formation in 1974 of the Barisan Nasional (“National Front”, usually abbreviated to BN), comprising UMNO plus the main Chinese and Indian parties and – since the 1990s – parties representing indigenous groups in Sabah and Sarawak. This multiethnic coalition has governed the country ever since.
Provisions in the New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced in the wake of the 1969 race riots, became known as the bumiputra policy as they were intended to provide a more level economic playing field for Malays, Orang Asli and the indigenous peoples of east Malaysia (bumiputra means something like “sons of the soil” in Malay). In terms of wealth, these communities (as well the Indians) were lagging far behind the Chinese. This was partly the result of colonial policy: the immigrant Chinese made strides as businesspeople in the towns, while the Malays were either employed as administrators or left to get on with farming and fishing in rural areas, while the Indians toiled on the railways and the plantations.
The policy has been moderated, renamed and rejigged over the years, but basically awards bumiputras, in particular the Malays, privileges such as subsidized housing and easier access to higher education and civil-service jobs. The bumiputra policy has undoubtedly achieved a reasonable degree of wealth redistribution, though a less laudable consequence has been the creation of a super-rich Malay elite. What’s more, the policy is deeply resented by the non-beneficiaries. The Indians are especially aggrieved, having never been wealthy; the Chinese have continued to rely on their own devices in business while shunning the public sector, where they feel the odds have been stacked against them.
Despite the policy’s undoubted popularity among Malays, Mahathir and his successors have questioned the wisdom of allowing the system to continue indefinitely, fearing that it has fostered complacency in the very communities it is meant to help. The difficulty for all UMNO leaders is that any meaningful retreat from the policy requires political daring. Only the opposition, which generally wants to reform Malaysian politics in a nonracial mould, has attempted to make progress in this regard, though it is just as risky an enterprise for them.
The dominant figure in Malaysian politics since independence has been Dr Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister from 1981 until 2003. Even Malaysians not generally favourably disposed towards the BN credit him with helping the country attain economic lift-off; under Mahathir, industrialization changed the landscape of regions like the Klang Valley and Johor, manufacturing output eclipsed agriculture in importance, and huge prestige projects like the Petronas Towers and KLIA were completed. Mahathir meanwhile kept his supporters happy with a raft of populist pronouncements, including railing against the West for criticizing Malaysia’s human-rights record (he claimed that by what he termed “Asian values”, prosperity was valued more highly than civil liberties). Less well remembered is the fact that Mahathir’s tenure also saw the extensive use of the ISA in what became known as Operation Lalang when, in 1987, more than a hundred politicians and activists were detained following tensions between UMNO and Chinese political parties over matters to do with Chinese-language education. These arrests were bad enough, but more durable in its effects was state action to curb press freedom. Especially notable was the government’s closure of the pro-MCA English-language Star newspaper for several months; when it reopened, many of its senior managers had been replaced.
In 1997, the economy suffered a major setback when Malaysia was sucked into the Asian economic crisis, which began in Thailand and Korea. Mahathir took personal charge of getting the economy back on track, sacking his deputy and finance minister Anwar Ibrahim in 1998. A former student leader and once an espouser of progressive Islamic policies, Anwar had enjoyed a meteoric rise upon joining UMNO and had been groomed to succeed Mahathir, though relations between the two subsequently soured. The nation was stunned when, within a week of his dismissal, Anwar was arrested on corruption and sexual misconduct charges; a succession of mass demonstrations in his support ensued. Anwar’s treatment in detention became the subject of much concern when he appeared in court on the corruption charge sporting a black eye. He was eventually found guilty – leading many observers to question the independence of the judiciary – and sentenced to six years in jail. In 2000, he was also found guilty of sodomizing his driver and sentenced to nine years in prison.
Meanwhile, Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, formed a new party, Keadilan (“Justice”, sometimes also called PKR), which has contested subsequent elections in alliance with other opposition parties, including the Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party (DAP) and the Islamist PAS.
Momentously, in 2003, Mahathir resigned and handed power to Anwar’s replacement as deputy prime minister, Abdullah Badawi. Hailing from Penang, Abdullah (often referred to as Pak Lah) is a genial man, in marked contrast to his abrasive predecessor, and he asserted himself effectively, winning a landslide general election victory in 2004. Soon after, Anwar’s sodomy conviction was overturned and he was released, though he remained barred from standing for parliament until 2008 as his corruption conviction was not quashed.
As a relatively new broom, Abdullah enjoyed much goodwill early on; it was hoped he would make good on his promises to sweep cronyism and corruption out of Malaysian politics. But as time wore on, authority seemed to ebb away from his government in the face of crises and scandals.
The most sensational of these was the affair of Altantuya Shaariibuu, a Mongolian woman who went missing in the KL area in 2006. Her remains, which had been blown to bits with explosives, were soon discovered, and it transpired that she was an associate of a defence analyst with links to Najib Tun Razak, Abdullah’s deputy. The case created a stink around the government, and two policemen, members of an elite unit protecting politicians and other senior authority figures, were subsequently sentenced to death for her murder. the bottom of the economic pile.
In February 2008, Abdullah called a snap general election for the following month – when Anwar Ibrahim was still barred from standing. If the timing was maximally convenient for Abdullah, the result was anything but: the BN was duly returned to power, but on its worst showing since its formation in 1974. This time, the BN failed to win more than two-thirds of seats in parliament, which had hitherto afforded it the right to tinker with the constitution. To make matters worse, the opposition alliance unseated the BN in an unprecedented number of state assemblies, not just in largely Malay Kedah, where voters had previously flirted with PAS, but also in cosmopolitan, prosperous Selangor, Penang and Perak.
In the wake of the election, amid euphoria and recrimination, everything in Malaysian politics seemed to be up for grabs. Perhaps the worst news for Abdullah was how badly the BN fared in the Peninsula, home to three-quarters of the population: its majority there was wafer-thin, and it took just one out of eleven seats in KL. Only victories by the BN-allied parties of Sabah and Sarawak had secured the coalition a working majority.
Unfortunately for Abdullah, things got no better for the BN in the aftermath of the polls, as the various affairs that had come to light beforehand played themselves out like a tragicomic drama. Against this turbulent backdrop, Anwar Ibrahim made a triumphant return to parliament in August 2008, his wife resigning her seat so that he could stand in a by-election. Just prior to all this, however, Anwar was sensationally arrested once again on a charge of sodomy, this time involving a young aide of his. Allowed bail, Anwar took up his new role as leader of the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, while having to make appearances in court. Then in 2009 Abdullah Badawi stepped down, to be replaced by his deputy Najib Tun Razak.
In 2012, Anwar was cleared of the second sodomy charge, freeing him to play a frontline role in the impending polls, which took place in May 2013. It proved to be another watershed election, though not quite as the opposition would have liked. For the first time, the combined opposition parties won more than half the popular vote, but the first-past-the-post voting system meant the BN achieved a workable majority in the federal parliament, as well as recapturing the state assemblies in Kedah and Perak. The opposition’s next significant move was an attempt to shoehorn Anwar into the chief minister’s job in Selangor, the most developed state in the Federation and their one true showcase. But that was thwarted when, in March 2014, his acquittal on the second sodomy charge was overturned on a government appeal. In February 2015, the Federal Court – the highest in the land – upheld the government’s appeal, and Anwar was sent to prison once again at the age of 67. Under the electoral rules, he was thus removed from front-line politics for an extended period, even though he is likely to be released in mid-2018.
It seems clear that Malaysia is entering ever more uncertain waters. On the one hand, the country remains a working example of a multiethnic, multicultural state. On the other, it is also a collection of little powder kegs, any one of which could spark a conflagration at any time. Scarcely a year seems to go by without some new corruption scandal involving politicians or officials who eventually get off scot-free, and none has been as shocking as the 1MDB affair, which erupted in 2015 with allegations that prime minister Najib had somehow received billions of ringgit siphoned from 1MDB, a state-owned investment company. The ramifications are wide-ranging, with international criminal investigations ongoing into potential money-laundering, though no one had been called to account at the time of writing. In the US, Najib’s stepson has been under scrutiny over whether he used any 1MDB money to fund his film production company, and in 2016 the Department of Justice launched legal proceedings to try to recover some US$1 billion in misappropriated 1MDB funds. Domestically, Malaysia’s attorney general was investigating the matter when he was replaced; months later, that replacement gave Najib a clean bill of health, raising eyebrows. There was more scepticism when the head of Malaysian’s Anti-Corruption Commission chose to step down early and was replaced with an official who had previously worked for the new attorney general.
Malaysia’s official news agency has reported that Saudi donors provided the billions in Najib’s bank accounts, an “explanation” that, if true, raises grave questions as to why a politician is in receipt of massive backdoor donations from foreigners. Whatever the eventual fallout of 1MDB, Najib, with his patrician roots – his father was Tun Abdul Razak, Malaysia’s second prime minister – has proven an ineffectual, bland leader. Gone are the well-meaning but ultimately fruitless reformist noises of the Abdullah Badawi era. Although Najib has repealed much-hated legislation which provided for detention without trial, he has also done an about-face on a promise to do away with the Sedition Act. This could in principle be used to imprison anyone questioning the country’s ethnic or religious policies – though the suspicion is that it will never be used against the Malay Right, and is only being kept on as a thinly veiled threat against non-Malay secularists and intellectuals.
But the opposition looks unlikely to capitalize on Najib’s weakness, appearing ever more like a marriage of convenience between parties with some sharply contrasting views. So while the rural BN coalition is vulnerable in the Peninsula, it continues tobe sustained by rural voters in East Malaysia. Ironically, partly because of the 1MDB affair, Mahathir has now joined the opposition’s ranks in a new Malay party, Pribumi Bersatu, meaning he is now on the same side as the deputy he fell out with, Anwar.
If Malaysia is sleepwalking towards crisis or stagnation, at least Malaysian democracy is enjoying a small renaissance. The press is less cowed now about reporting the policies of opposition politicians, and civil rights organizations are campaigning ever more vocally, as borne out by several massive Bersih (Malay for “clean”) demonstrations in KL in recent years, calling for an end to corruption and electoral fraud. Thorny issues around race and religion, long swept under the carpet in the name of economic progress, are being debated with some rancour but also more purposefully, which could ultimately lead to the country taking a more enlightened path.