THE STORY OF MALAYSIA....

MALAYAN HISTORY TO 1963

Malaya, now the largest component of the Federation of Malaysia occupied the Malay Peninsula, which extends south-southwest from the narrow Isthmus of Kra to Singapore, which was not part of Malaya. There is archaeological evidence of human occupation at least 5,000 years ago, and it is clear that the peninsula was one of the routes by which the prehistoric peoples of Indonesia, Melanesia, and Australia travelled on their way south to their ultimate destinations, and that successive waves of people left some of their number in the northern part of the Malay Peninsula.

The Stone and Bronze Ages
The earliest known inhabitants of Malaya had physical characteristics that suggest an affinity to present-day Melanesians and Papuans. They lived in caves, made rough stone tools, and were probably in undisturbed possession until a little before 2000 BC, when a people with a Neolithic culture arrived from the north, possibly from southwest China. These were farmers, kept domestic animals, and were skilled in pottery making and in selecting and working stone to make tools and ornaments.

Evidence of a Bronze Age culture, dating from about 250 BC, has been found in two widely separated places in Malaya, at Klang and on the Tembeling River in Pahang. This is known as the Dong Son culture. Two bronze gongs and three large bronze bells are among the most important articles of this period that have been discovered. They were almost certainly brought into the country from Sumatra or Indochina.

The Iron Age and the proto-historic period
Archaeological discoveries belonging to the Iron Age period can be divided into two categories, those probably representing the indigenous population and those brought in by settlers. The earliest and most mysterious of these discoveries is the collection of beads found at Kota Tinggi, in Johore, about 20% of which have been identified as of Roman origin and dating from the first two or three centuries AD. This probably indicates a foreign settlement on the Johore River at a very early date.

The most important settlements of foreigners on the west coast during this early period were near Kedah Peak, where colonies of southern Indians lived from the 4th to the 12th century AD. At Kuala Selinsing, in northern Perak, considerable quantities of wheel-made pottery, gold ornaments, cornelian and glass beads, and shell ornaments have been found, alongside skeletons of proto-Malay types, which point to the conclusion that this was an important indigenous settlement probably flourishing about AD 800. The only other material evidences of indigenous settlements during the proto-historic period are slab graves and iron implements found in Perak, Selangor, and Pahang, dating probably from the 10th century AD.

From early in the Christian era there were merchant ships plying between India and China, some of which put in at river mouths in the Malay Peninsula. The reports that these traders carried back to their native lands are the main source of historical information about this early period.

Though in the centre and south of western Malaysia there are few traces of continuous occupation except by pre-urban tribes before the 15th century, there is ample evidence of Malay settlements in the north, notably in Kedah, Singgora, and Ligor, from a very early date. At one period they formed part of the ancient Buddhist kingdom of Lankasuka. Kelantan, Terengganu, and Pahang can also be identified from early Chinese records as Malay settlements of some importance, reaching a high standard of culture and wealth.

Malay kingdoms of the Archipelago
The main source of Malay power seems to have stemmed from the island of Sumatra, across the Strait of Malacca. Here a very powerful Malay kingdom, with its capital at Palembang, finds a place in Chinese records as early as AD 600. This was an Indian-influenced Buddhist state and is best known by its Sanskrit title of Srivijaya. This kingdom conquered Lankasuka, Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu, and Pahang some time before 800, and its ruler became the overlord of the Malay Peninsula as well as of a substantial part of eastern Sumatra.

At the same time, also based on eastern Sumatra, was another Malay kingdom, which was later known as the kingdom of Menangkabo, but which was originally referred to as Malayu. Though this kingdom never controlled any part of the Malay Peninsula, it was probably the first Malay kingdom to adopt Islam as its religion, and in 1281 envoys from Malayu to China had Muslim names.

Colonists from Palembang founded a separate island kingdom of Tumasik (Sanskrit Singapura; modern Singapore) some time between 1200 and 1300, but this, together with Palembang, Malayu, parts of Borneo, and the whole of the occupied portions of the Malay Peninsula, was overrun and destroyed between 1360 and 1365 by Majapahit, Java’s last Hindu kingdom. The Majapahit king made no attempt to occupy the Malay Peninsula after his conquest, but traces of Majapahit influence are still to be found in Kelantan and Patani.

The Malacca sultanate
The destruction of Singapore by Majapahit led to the rise of Malacca (now called Melaka). At first a fishing village, occupied by ‘sea gypsies’ (aboriginal orang-laut), it attracted fugitives from Tumasik, among them its dispossessed ruler, Parameswara. The new Malay state he founded was beset with enemies, chief among whom was Siam (Thailand). Appeals to the Chinese emperor for protection resulted in the raising of the title of the Malay ruler to that of king of Malacca in 1405, and freed him from any dependence on the Siamese.

During the 15th century the kingdom of Malacca flourished. Its trade developed, and its influence extended as far north as Patani and even over the coastal regions of western Sumatra. The main conversion of the Malays to Islam also began in this century. Parameswara was a Hindu when he came to Malacca; the conversion to Islam was gradual, probably beginning under Parameswara’s successor, and was not completed until the 17th century when Iskandar Muda, sultan of Acheh, took a leading part in spreading Islam to the Malay Peninsula itself.

The arrival of the Europeans
In 1511 a Portuguese fleet sailing under Afonso d’Albuquerque conquered the kingdom of Malacca. Its ruler, Sultan Mahmud, fled to Johore and there established the kingdom of Riau Johore. The Portuguese held Malacca for over a century. Though they attempted, largely unsuccessfully, to convert the people they had conquered to Christianity, their main concern was trade, and they allowed the Asian communities in Malacca a fairly wide measure of self-government within prescribed limits.

In 1641 the Portuguese were defeated by the Dutch, who were also principally interested in trade. The Dutch held Malacca until 1795, when, during the French Revolutionary Wars, the British took possession of the territory. Malacca was later returned to the Dutch (1818), but the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 recognized the Malay Peninsula as being within the British sphere of influence, and in 1825 the Dutch exchanged Malacca for Benkoelen, on the west coast of Sumatra.

Riau Johore, the Bugis, and the Menangkabo state
The kingdom of Riau Johore, founded in the early 16th century by the fugitive sultan of Malacca, loosely took in all parts of Malaya over which the Portuguese did not have effective control. Weak and poor, it was chronically unstable. The murder of its sultan in 1699, marking the extinction of the royal line of Malacca, and the periodic invasions of the Bugis from Sulawesi (Celebes), began the disintegration of the Riau Johore kingdom. The Bugis established themselves in Selangor, and in 1722 became de facto rulers of the Johore kingdom.

During the 18th century the Malay Peninsula lost all semblance of cohesive government and was split up into a number of weak and mutually hostile states. A Menangkabo migration to Malaya from Sumatra had begun in the 16th century, and in 1773, when, threatened by Bugis domination, they united under a Sumatran prince of Menangkabo descent. This state should have become extremely powerful, since it could produce more tin than any other state in the peninsula, but 18th-century Bugis interference and 19th-century Siamese invasion, coupled with internal dissension, kept it in a condition of constant weakness.

The coming of the East India Company
The efforts of a former British naval officer, Francis Light, brought Penang under the control of the British East India Company in 1786. Penang had hitherto formed part of Kedah, and the sultan hoped that its cession would bring him British aid in the event of any attack on Kedah by the Bugis of Selangor or the Siamese. In 1821, however, the Siamese invaded and conquered Kedah, though the sultan was reinstated in 1842.

In 1826 the East India Company concluded an agreement with Siam, the essential clause of which provided for non-interference by Siam in Perak, Selangor, Kelantan, and Terengganu. But the threat of Siamese encroachment in northern Malaya was not finally removed until the Anglo-Siamese treaty of 1909, in which Siam transferred to Britain all its rights in the northern states.

The acquisition of Singapore
In 1824, as the result of an earlier agreement between the British East Indian administrator Stamford Raffles, the Temenggong of Johore, and Sultan Hussein, Singapore was ceded in perpetuity to Britain. This treaty was destined to convert a mangrove swamp into one of the world’s greatest ports, and to change Johore from forest and jungle into a prosperous state. Raffles’s ‘Grand Emporium’ rapidly justified his hopes. A year after its cession the population numbered 10,000, and by 1823-24 the total trade handled by the free port that Raffles established stood at almost 11.5 million Malay dollars in value.

Further acquisitions and the creation of the Straits Settlements
The island of Pangkor and the Sembilan island were ceded to Britain by Perak in 1826, and this cession was confirmed in 1874, when the strip of territory on the mainland opposite, known as the Dindings, also became British. In February 1935 the Dindings territory was ceded back to the state of Perak.

In 1805 Penang was made a separate British East Indian ‘presidency’, of equal rank with Madras (now Chennai) and Bombay (now Mumbai), but was reduced to a lieutenant governorship subordinate to Bengal in 1830. In 1825 Singapore and Malacca were incorporated with Penang under one governor, forming the core of the Straits Settlements, with Penang remaining the seat of government. In 1836 the seat of government of the Straits Settlements was transferred to Singapore.

The transfer to the British crown
From the founding of Penang in 1785 down to 1858, the constitutional history of the Straits Settlements is part of the history of the East India Company. Malaya, like India, suffered under the evils and disadvantages of being administered by a trading company, and, despite the work of Raffles, many reforms were long overdue. But in 1858, in the wake of the Indian Mutiny, the East India Company was abolished, though at least its occasional firmness in foreign policy had saved most of the Malay Peninsula from subjugation by Siam.

With the abolition of the East India Company the Straits Settlements fell automatically under the India Office for a brief spell. Then in 1867 the British government, bowing to local agitation, approved their transfer to the Colonial Office.

Raffles had strongly favoured British expansion in the Malay Archipelago. With his disappearance from the scene, his policy became largely dormant until it was awakened in the last quarter of the 19th century by the rivalries of the great European powers and by the demands of British and Chinese capital seeking fresh fields for expansion, coupled with the discovery of rich mineral resources in the hinterland.

But though the five decades after 1824 have been described as ‘half a century of inactivity’, this is true only in so far as British policy towards the Malay states was concerned, for here a policy of non-intervention was strictly enforced. Singapore, however, grew with remarkable rapidity, Penang developed at a modest pace, and only Malacca stagnated. Meanwhile, in the Malay states of the west coast, the rulers’ authority became increasingly weakened, and to the troubles caused by court factions was added the disturbance caused by Chinese immigration in the tin-mining areas.

Greater British intervention
Apart from in the Straits Settlements, local state chiefs had been allowed to retain considerable political autonomy. However, in the 1870s, after the opening of the Suez Canal, British policy became more active. The period 1874-1914 is marked by the gradual establishment by treaties of the British protectorate over the Malay states.

With the transfer of the three settlements of Singapore, Malacca, and Penang to the Colonial Office in 1867, the governor and leading citizens in the Straits Settlements were able to represent the deplorable conditions in the western Malay states more effectively, and to press for a new policy of intervention. Civil war was causing loss of trade in the Settlements, and piracy was rife in the Strait of Malacca. Serious factional fights occurred among Chinese miners in Perak, and there were rival claimants to the sultanate.

The combination of these pressures forced the British government to undertake a more positive rule in the affairs of the interior. In November 1873 Sir Andrew Clarke arrived in Singapore with the task of reporting what steps should be taken by the colonial government of the Straits Settlements to promote the restoration of peace and order, and especially to examine the question of appointing British officers to reside in the states.

The appointment of British residents
Perak’s situation demanded and received priority. In January 1874 Clarke temporarily settled the succession by the treaty known as the Pangkor Engagement, and secured the agreement of Sultan Abdullah to the appointment of a British resident who was to advise on the collection and control of all revenues and on the general administration of the state. The heads of the Chinese factions were present and they signed a bond to disarm completely and to keep the peace.

Before the end of 1874 residents had also been appointed in Selangor and Sungei Ujong, the most prosperous member of the Menangkabo confederation, and a measure of peace and order had been restored. British ‘advice’ was later extended to the rest of Negeri Sembilan, and to Pahang in 1887, and the four states were united as the Federated Malay States in 1895, with a capital in Kuala Lumpur. Perak joined the federation in the following year.

In the development of the residential system the diplomacy and skills of such men as Hugh Low in Perak and Frank Swettenham in Selangor and Perak Perak (and later as the first resident general) did much to establish firm administration and to reconcile the Malay ruling class to the new regime.

Treaties between Britain and the Malay states
Both the Federated Malay States and the states of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, Terengganu, and Johore, which remained outside the federation, continued under a separate form of administration from the Straits Settlements and were never declared British territory. Relations with Johore were regulated by a treaty in 1914.

All the treaties between Britain and the Malay states were substantially similar. The states agreed to accept British protection and to have no dealing with foreign powers except through Britain, and Britain guaranteed the states protection against attack by foreign powers. The agreements also provided for the appointment of a British officer in each state whose advice had to be taken except in matters concerning Malay custom and religion.

Economic development
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which enabled the sea journey from Britain to be completed in 42 days instead of 116, encouraged an increase in trade. Economic development on the mainland of the Malay Peninsula came in two phases. During the last quarter of the 19th century demand in Britain and the USA encouraged the rapid growth in tin production, necessitating the construction of a railway. The rubber boom, beginning early in the 20th century and almost entirely dependent on the rise of the automobile industry, gave Malaya its second great export staple.

The demand for tin and rubber brought a new level of prosperity to the western states, and the population increased rapidly. Chinese miners had been encouraged to enter the tin-mining areas by earlier Malay rulers and chiefs, but now they poured in of their own accord, and by the middle of the 20th century were to be almost as numerous as the Malays themselves. South Indian labour was recruited by the owners of the rubber estates, and by the 1920s Malaya was exporting more than 200,000 tonnes of rubber annually.

Constitutional developments
In the Federated Malay States a federal council had been created by Sir John Anderson in 1906. A high commissioner presided over the council, which consisted of the four rulers, the resident general, the four British residents, and four unofficial members nominated by the high commissioner. The membership remained unchanged until 1927, when the rulers withdrew, the officials were increased to 13, and the unofficial members to 11. The proceedings of the council then began to adopt something of the British aspect of government and opposition.

There was no further constitutional change until the Japanese occupation of Malaya (1942-45) ended. Throughout the first half of the 20th century government remained extremely decentralized, with each state possessing considerable autonomy. But British control was paramount, and already some Malays were demanding a greater voice in the affairs of their country.

The Japanese invasion
Any further constitutional developments were put on hold by the Japanese invasion of Malaya in December 1941. In 1940 the Japanese had taken over French Indochina by agreement with the collaborationist Vichy government, and it was from Indochina that Japan launched its surprise blitzkrieg attack down the Malay Peninsula.

The unprepared British forces were forced into a rapid southward retreat, withdrawing to the supposedly impregnable fortress of Singapore. However, Singapore’s defences were all directed towards the sea, and the Japanese came by land. The British in Singapore, recently reinforced by the arrival of many Australian troops, were forced to surrender on 15 February 1942, leaving Japan occupying the whole of Malaya.

The defeat of the British at the hands of an Asian power opened the eyes of many Chinese and Malays to the myth of European superiority. However, the Japanese occupation was not generally welcomed, and armed resistance to the Japanese was conducted by pro-communist Chinese guerrillas.

In August 1945, when the Allies were preparing for a campaign for the liberation of Malaya, the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought about the unconditional surrender of the Japanese. In September 1945 a British military administration was established under the Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia, whose headquarters were in Singapore.

The establishment of the Federation of Malaya
In January 1946 the British government published proposals for a Malayan Union, which would unite the whole of the peninsula (except Singapore, which was to become a separate colony) under a governor and a strong central government, and which considerably curtailed the authority of the rulers and the states. These proposals were strongly resisted by the Malays, who rapidly formed a political organization, the United Malay National Organization, with branches all over the country. Their attitude was supported by a group of retired Malayan civil servants in England, including Frank Swettenham, and the scheme for a Malayan Union was abandoned.

In its place the Federation of Malaya Agreement was signed in Kuala Lumpur on 21 January 1948, and came into force on 1 February of that year. This agreement provided for a high commissioner and a federal legislative council containing 75 members, 50 of whom were unofficial. A considerable degree of authority was restored to the rulers, acting in consultation with their state executive councils, and a form of common citizenship was created for all who acknowledged Malaya as their permanent home and the object of their undivided loyalty. Within this framework the settlements of Penang and Malacca remained British territory, and Singapore became a separate colony under its own governor.

The communist revolt
The year in which the Federation was inaugurated saw the outbreak of a serious communist revolt (see Malayan Emergency). The communists - who had mounted a campaign of active resistance to the Japanese - had hoped to gain control of the country in September 1945, but they were forestalled by the arrival of the British military administration. During the next two years they made increasingly determined efforts to paralyze the economic recovery of the country, and finally launched a campaign of violence and murder in which the principal targets were British rubber planters and tin miners, and those Chinese who actively opposed them. A state of emergency was declared in June 1948. Captured documents have shown that the communists had hoped to declare a communist republic on 3 August 1948.

The number of active communist guerrillas probably never exceeded 7,000, the majority of them Chinese, but they proved an elusive enemy. In spite of increasingly effective measures, a communist hard core was still in armed revolt in July 1955, when a general election was held to elect 52 unofficial members to the federal legislative council. All except one of those elected were members of the Alliance Party led by Tunku (Prince) Abdul Rahman, who then became chief minister.

Subsequently the Alliance Party, a coalition of the major communal organizations (United Malay National Organization, Malaysian Chinese Association, Malaysian Indian Congress, and, at the formation of Malaysia, Sarawak Alliance and Sabah Alliance) dominated Malayan, and then Malaysian, politics.

On 9 September 1955 Tunku Abdul Rahman’s government declared an amnesty for the communists, thereby fulfilling an election promise, but this was withdrawn in February 1956 after rejection by the communists and some fruitless attempts at negotiation. The number of active guerrillas dwindled until in 1960 the state of emergency was declared at an end. Their remarkable decline since 1948 was due to the effective action of the security forces and, after 1955, to the counter-attraction that Tunku Abdul Rahman’s administration had for the great majority of Malaya’s people, including those of Chinese origin.

Malayan independence
The Alliance Party was pledged to press for immediate Malayan independence. In January 1956 the chief minister led a Merdeka (independence) mission to London where, in February, agreement was reached with the colonial secretary bringing self-government into effect and envisaging full independence for the Federation within the Commonwealth by 31 August 1957. Early in March 1956 an independent commission was appointed to make recommendations for a form of constitution for a fully independent and self-governing Malaya. In May 1957 the chief minister again took to London a delegation in order to reach final agreement on independence for the Federation.

Malaya became an independent state on 31 August 1957 and remained a member of the Commonwealth. Malaya’s relations with Britain after independence remained close. In 1963 the country became part of the Federation of Malaysia.