A Brief History Over the centuries, the living here has always been easy enough to attract a steady stream of immigrants. Bountiful food sources might have made Malaysia an inviting place for the contemporaries of Java Man — in 230,000 b.c. But thus far, the country’s earliest traces of homo sapiens, found in the Niah Caves of northern Sarawak, are fragments of a skull dating to 40,000 b.c. On the peninsula, the oldest human-related relics (10,000 b.c. ) are Stone Age tools of the Negritos. These small, dark Melanesians are related in type to Australian aborigines and are confined today to the forests of the northern highlands. By 2,000 b.c. , these timid, gentle nomads hunting with bow and arrow were driven back from the coasts by waves of sturdy immigrants arriving in outrigger canoes equipped with sails. Mongolians from South China and Polynesian and Malay peoples from the Philippines and the Indonesian islands settled along the rivers of the peninsula and northern Borneo. They practiced a slash-and-burn agriculture of yams and millet, a technique that exhausted the soil and imposed a semi-nomadic existence from one jungle clearing to another. Families lived in wooden longhouses like those still to be seen today among the Iban peoples of Sarawak. Another unit was added on to the communal dwelling each time a marriage created a new family. Other tough migrants from the South Seas settled along the coasts — sailors, fishermen, traders (for the most part pirates) — known euphemistically as orang laut (sea people). Indian Influence In the early centuries of the Christian era, the peninsula’s advantageous position made it an ideal way-station for trade with Bengal and southern India, and attracted Indianized colonies from the Mekong valley of Indochina. Their rulers introduced Buddhist and Hindu culture, Brahmin ministers to govern, and an elaborate court ritual. What is now the northern state of Kedah benefited from the plow and other Indian farming practices. An Indian traveler described the prosperous Bujang Valley settlement as “the seat of all felicities. ” From its golden era, a ninth-century Hindu temple, the Candi Bukit Batu Pahat, has been restored on the southern slopes of Mount Jerai. On the east coast in Terengganu and Kelantan, the weaving and metalwork still practiced today trace their origins to this early colonization. So do the region’s wayang kulit shadow plays inspired by the dramas of the ancient Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. Srivijaya, most powerful of the Indianized colonies and a center of Buddhist learning, built a maritime empire from its base on the island of Sumatra. With the orang laut pirates as allies, Srivijaya controlled the Straits of Melaka (known in colonial times as Malacca), a key link between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Its colonies on the peninsula’s west coast brought with them the Malay language (Malayu was the name of a state on Sumatra). As Srivijaya declined in the 14th century, the Malay peninsula was carved up among Cambodia, Thailand, and the Javanese Hindu empire of Majapahit. Around the year 1400, fighting over the island of Singapore drove the Srivijaya prince Parameswara to seek refuge up the peninsula coast with his orang laut pirate friends in their small fishing village of Melaka. The Glory of Melaka In the early days, if you were not a pirate or a mosquito, Melaka was not much of a place to live. The land was infertile, just a swampy plain, the river small and sluggish. But it had a sheltered harbor, protected from the monsoons by neighboring Sumatra. Later, the strategic location and deep-water channel close to the coast brought in the bigger vessels of the trade-wind traffic crossing the Indian Ocean. The first to realize the larger commercial potential, as so often throughout the country’s subsequent history, were the Chinese. In 1409, under a new directive from Emperor Chu Ti to pursue trade in the South Seas and the Indian Ocean, a Chinese fleet of 50 ships headed by Admiral Cheng Ho called in at Melaka. They made Parameswara an offer he could not refuse: port facilities and an annual financial tribute in exchange for Chinese protection against the marauding Thais. In 1411, Parameswara took the money to Beijing himself, and the emperor gratefully made him a vassal king. Twenty years later, the Chinese withdrew again from the South Seas trade. The new ruler of Melaka, Sri Maharajah, switched his allegiance to the Muslim trading fraternity by marrying into the Muslim faith, wedding the daughter of a sultan in Sumatra. Islam won its place in Malaya not by conquest — as had been the case in North Africa and Europe — but by trade, dynastic alliances, and peaceful preaching. Bengali peddlers had already brought the faith to the east coast. In Melaka and throughout the peninsula, Islam thrived as a strong, male-dominated religion of individuality, offering dynamic leadership and preaching brotherhood and self-reliance — all qualities ideally suited to the coastal trade. At the same time, Sufi mystics synthesized Islamic teaching with local Malay traditions of animistic magic and charisma, though Islam did not become the state religion until Muzaffar Shah became sultan of Melaka (1446–1459). But the key figure in the sultanate was Tun Perak, bendahara (prime minister) and military commander. He expanded Melaka’s power along the west coast and down to Singapore and the neighboring Bintan islands. He also had orang laut pirates patrolling the seas to extort tribute from passing ships. After allied district chiefs had repelled assaults from Thai-controlled armies from Pahang, Tun Perak personally led a famous victory over a Thai fleet off Batu Pahat in 1456. To smooth things over, the sultan sent a peace mission to the Thai court and, for extra coverage, an envoy to China, reconfirming Muzzafar Shah’s title as most obedient vassal. By 1500, Melaka had become the leading port in Southeast Asia, drawing Chinese, Indian, Javanese, and Arab merchants away from the hitherto vital port of Pasai in Sumatra. Governed by the great bendahara Mutahir with more diplomacy than military force, the sultanate asserted its supremacy over the whole Malay peninsula (except for the northernmost Thai-held Patani region) and across the Melaka Straits to the east coast of Sumatra. Prosperity was based entirely on the entrepot trade: handling textiles from India, spices from Indonesia, silk and porcelain from China, gold and pepper from Sumatra, camphor from Borneo, sandalwood from Timor, and Malay tin from Perak. Court life was luxurious, though Islamic scholarship did find a place next to worldly pleasures. The Malay aristocracy preferred to leave commerce to foreigners, principally to Tamil and Gujarati Indians, Javanese, and Chinese. Portuguese Conquest In the 16th century, Melaka fell victim to Portugal’s anti-Muslim crusade in the campaign to break the Arab-Venetian domination of commerce between Asia and Europe. The first visit of a Portuguese ship to Melaka in 1509 ended badly, as embittered Gujurati merchants poisoned the atmosphere against the Portuguese. Two years later, the Portuguese sent their fleet, led by Afonso de Albuquerque, to seize Melaka. No match for the Portuguese invaders, the court fled south, establishing a new center of Malay Muslim power in Johor. Albuquerque built a fortress, which he named A Famosa (“The Famous”), and St. Paul’s church on the site of the sultan’s palace. He ruled the non-Portuguese community with Malay kapitan headmen and the foreigners’ shahbandar harbor-masters. Relations were better with Chinese and Indian merchants than with the Muslims. The 130 years of Portuguese control proved precarious. They faced repeated assault and siege from neighboring Malay forces, and malaria was a constant scourge. Unable or unwilling to court the old vassal Malay States or the orang laut pirates to patrol the seas, the new rulers forfeited their predecessors’ commercial monopoly in the Melaka Straits and, with it, command of the Moluccas spice trade. They made little effort, despite the Jesuit presence in Asia, to convert local inhabitants to Christianity or to expand their territory into the interior. They hung on for private profit. The original colony of 600 men intermarried with local women to form a large Eurasian community, served by African slaves and living in an elegant luxury that won their trading post the name “Babylon of the Orient. ” The Dutch Take Over Intent on capturing a piece of the Portuguese trade in pepper and other spices, the Java-based Dutch allied with the Malays in 1633 to blockade Melaka. The trade blockade was to last eight years, and ended in a seven-month siege. The Portuguese surrendered in 1641, wracked by malaria and dysentery and denied their usual reinforcements from Goa. By then, the city had become a stagnant backwater. Unlike the Portuguese, the Dutch decided to do business with the Malays of Johor, who controlled the southern half of the peninsula together with Singapore and the neighboring Riau islands. A trade treaty gave the Dutch command of the spice trade but reserved Johor’s rights in tin exports from Perak, Selangor, and Klang. Without ever retrieving the supremacy of the old Melaka sultanate, Johor had become the strongest Asian power in the region. For the Dutch, Johor provided a buffer against other Europeans. Meanwhile, fresh blood came in with the migration into the southern interior of hardy Minangkabau farmers from Sumatra, while tough Bugis warriors from the east Indonesian Celebes (Sulawesi) roved the length and breadth of the peninsula. The Minangkabau custom of freely electing their leaders provided the model for rulership elections in modern federal Malaysia. Their confederation of States became today’s Negeri Sembilan (“Nine States”), with Seremban as its capital. The name Minangkabau itself means roughly “buffalo horns” and is reflected in the distinctive upward curving roof in museums and government offices built in the traditional Minangkabau style. The Bugis were energetic merchants and great sailors. With the Dutch concentrating once more on Java and the Moluccas in the 18th century, the Bugis took advantage of the vacuum by raiding Perak and Kedah, imposing their chieftains in Selangor and becoming the power behind the throne in Johor. The Bugis in Johor’s administration provided much of the spirit in that State’s independent stand in the 19th and 20th centuries. Throughout this period, the east coast states enjoyed a relatively tranquil prosperity, Terengganu notably thriving from its textile industry and trading in pepper and gold with the Thais, Cambodians, and Chinese. The British, under the private auspices of the East India Company (EIC), were beginning to poke their noses into North Borneo. And Then, the British Until the end of the 18th century, England had projected little interest in Malaya, though the EIC had made an abortive attempt in 1773 to use North Borneo as a base for its China trade. That changed in 1786, when the Sultan of Kedah granted company representative Francis Light rights to the island of Penang and the strip of mainland coast opposite Province Wellesley (now Seberang Perai) as a counterweight to the pressing demands of the neighboring Thais and Burmese. Unlike Portuguese and Dutch trading posts in the region, Penang was declared a duty-free zone, attracting many settlers and traders. An added lure was Francis Light’s decision to import large quantities of opium from India. By 1801, the population was over 10,000, most of them in the island capital, which was named Georgetown. In 1805, a dashing EIC administrator, Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, came out to Penang at the age of 24. His knowledge of Malay customs and language, broad-ranging interests in zoology, botany, and cartography, as well as a humanitarian vision for the region’s future, made him a vital factor in Britain’s expanding role in Malay affairs. He served as lieutenant-governor in Java and Sumatra, during which time he wrote a History of Java. But Raffles secured his place in history by negotiating with the Sultan of Johor the creation of the Singapore trading post, in 1819. Singapore became the capital of the Straits Settlements — as the EIC called its Malay holdings incorporating Penang and Melaka — and was the linchpin of Britain’s 150-year presence in the region. The Straits Settlements were formed after the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824). This colonial carve-up partitioned the Malay world through the Melaka Straits. The peninsula and Sumatra, after centuries of common language, religion, and political, cultural, and social traditions, were divided. The islands south of Singapore, including Java and Sumatra, went to the Dutch. Peninsular Malaysia and northwest Borneo remained under the British, but their influence was limited. From 1826, British law was technically in force (except for Muslim custom), but in practice few British lived in the Straits, and Asian community affairs were run by merchant leaders serving as unofficial kapitans. Apart from the few Malays in the settlements’ rural communities of Province Wellesley and the Melaka hinterland, most still lived inland along the middle reaches of the rivers, away from the coastal marshlands dominated by the orang laut pirates. Unity among them and the east coast communities trading with the Thais, Indochinese, and Chinese came from their shared rice economy, language, Islamic culture, and political and social customs inherited from the Melaka sultanate. After the painful experience of the American Revolution, the EIC conducting business from the islands of Penang and Singapore epitomized the British policy of insulating colonies from local politics. Province Wellesley merely acted as a mainland buffer for Penang, and Melaka similarly turned its back on affairs in the hinterland. When Kedah and Perak sought British help against Thailand, the British sided with the Thais to quell revolts — anything for a quiet life. But in the 1870s, under the Colonial Office, the handsome profits gained from exporting Malayan tin through Singapore forced the British to take a more active role in Malay affairs. The lucrative tin mines of Kuala Lumpur in the State of Selangor, of Sungai Ujong in Negeri Sembilan, and of Larut and Taiping in Perak were run for the Malay rulers by Chinese managers providing coolie labor. Chinese secret societies waged constant gang wars for the control of the mines, bringing production to a halt at a time when world demand for tin was at a peak. In 1874, Governor Andrew Clarke persuaded the Malay rulers of Perak and Selangor to accept British Residents as advisors in their State affairs. In return, Britain offered protection and mediation in the conflicts. It began badly. Within a year, the high-handed Resident in Perak, James Birch, was assassinated after brazen efforts to impose direct British government. Subsequent British advisers served on a consultative State council alongside the Malay ruler, chiefs, and Chinese kapitans. Birch’s successor in Perak, Hugh Low (1877–1889), proved more diplomatic. He spoke Malay, was familiar with local custom and religion, and respected chiefs and peasants alike. The reforms he got the ruler to accept — organizing revenue collection, dismantling slavery, regulating land — were precisely the changes Birch had sought but for which his arrogant approach got him murdered. The peninsula’s unity was enhanced by the expanding network of railways and roads. Governor Frederick Weld (1880–1887) extended the residency system to Negeri Sembila n and the more recalcitrant Pahang, where the Sultan Wan Ahmad was forced to open the Kuantan tin mines to British prospectors. For Johor, astute, tough-minded Sultan Abu Bakar avoided protectorate status by going to London to negotiate a straight alliance, getting a Consul rather than a Resident. In exchange, he agreed not to extend Johor’s rule to neighboring states. This cooperative spirit guaranteed him access to Singapore as a market for Johor’s agricultural products. A Federation of Malay States — Selangor, Perak, Negeri Sembilan, and Pahang — was proclaimed in 1896 to coordinate an economic and administrative organization. Frank Swettenham became first Resident-General of the Federation, with Kuala Lumpur as the capital. The White Rajahs of Borneo In the 19th century, Borneo remained relatively undeveloped. Balanini pirates, fervent Muslims, disputed the coast of northeastern Borneo (modern Sabah) with the sultanate of Brunei. Sarawak’s coast and jungle interior were controlled by the Iban — Sea Dayak pirates and Land Dayak slash-and-burn farmers. (The Dayaks practiced head-hunting, a ritual that was believed to bring spiritual energy to their communities. ) The region was unproductive and without great resources, except for the Sarawak river valley, where the Chinese mined for gold and antimony. Brunei chiefs traded the metals through Americans in Singapore. In 1839, the governor of Singapore sent James Brooke (1803–1868) to promote trade links with the Sultan of Brunei. He had been an audacious cavalry officer in the Anglo-Burmese wars and now exploited the situation for his own benefit. In exchange for helping the regent end a revolt of uppity Malay chiefs, Brooke was made Rajah of Sarawak in 1841, with his capital in Kuching (founded by the Malays just 11 years earlier). He tried to halt the Dayaks’ piracy and head-hunting while defending their more “morally acceptable” customs. His attempts to limit the opium trade met with resistance by the Chinese in Bau, who revolted. His counter-attack with Dayak warriors drove the Chinese out of Bau and across the Sarawak border. Thereafter, Chinese settlement was discouraged and did not achieve the commercial dominance it enjoyed on the peninsula. In 1863, Brooke retired to Britain, handing Sarawak over to his nephew Charles. More reserved and remote but a better administrator and financier than his uncle, Charles Brooke imposed on his men his own austere, efficient style of life. He brought Dayak leaders onto his ruling council but favored the time-honored colonial practice of divide-and-rule by pitting one tribe against another to keep the peace. Northeast Borneo (Sabah) was “rented” from the Sultan of Brunei by British businessman Alfred Dent. Dent was operating a royal charter for the British North Borneo Company — a charter similar to that of the EIC. In 1888, Sarawak, Brunei, and what is now Sabah were at last grouped together as a British protectorate, North Borneo, but it did not gain the status of a crown colony. On to the Twentieth Century The British extended their control over the peninsula by putting together the whole panoply of colonial administration — civil service, public works, judiciary force, police force, post office, education, and land regulation — with teams of British administrators, teachers, engineers, and doctors to go with it. At the same time, the tin industry, dominated by Chinese using labor-intensive methods in the 19th century, passed increasingly into Western hands, who employed the modern technology of gravel pumps and mining dredges. Petroleum had been found in northern Borneo, at Miri, and in Brunei, and the Anglo-Dutch Shell company used Singapore as its regional depot for its oil supplies and exports. But the major breakthrough for the Malay economy was the triumph of rubber, when Singapore’s new garden director, Henry Ridle (“Rubber Ridley” to his friends, “Mad Ridley” to all doubting Thomases) had developed new planting and tapping methods and painstakingly spread his faith in rubber around the peninsula. World demand increased with the growth of the motor-car and electrical industries, and sky-rocketed during World War I. By 1920, Malaya was producing 53 percent of the world’s rubber, which had overtaken tin as its main source of income. The Malay ruling class again took a back seat. Together with effective control of the rubber and tin industries, the British now firmly held the reins of government. The sultans were left in charge of local and religious affairs, content with their prestige, prosperity, and security. The census of 1931 served as an alarm signal for the Malay national consciousness. Bolstered by a new influx of immigrants to meet the rubber and tin booms of the 1920s, non-Malays now slightly outnumbered the indigenous population. The Great Depression of 1929 stepped up ethnic competition in the shrinking job market, and nationalism developed to safeguard Malay interests against the Chinese and Indians rather than the British imperial authority. Though hampered by the peninsula’s division into the States and the Straits Settlements, relatively conservative Muslim intellectuals and community leaders came together at the Pan-Malayan Malay Congress in Kuala Lumpur in 1939. In Singapore the following year, they were joined by representatives from Sarawak and Brunei. Teachers and journalists urged the revival of the common Malay-Indonesian consciousness, split by the Anglo-Dutch dismemberment of the region in the 19th century. This spirit became a factor in the gathering clouds of war. The Japanese Occupation (1941–1945) The Pacific War actually began 70 minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor, on Malaysia’s east coast, near Kota Bharu. It was there, at 15 minutes past midnight local time on 8 December 1941 (when it was still 7 December on the other side of the International Dateline in Hawaii) that Japanese troops landed from assault vessels on Sabak Beach (see page 97). Japan coveted Malay’s natural resources, namely rubber, tin, and oil, and the port of Singapore through which they passed. A “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” as Japan called it, would be the ultimate aim of this invasion. And as in Burma, the Philippines, and Indonesia, Japan appealed to Malay nationalism to throw off the Western imperialist yoke in a movement of Asian solidarity — an “Asia for the Asians” spearheaded by Japan’s Imperial Army. Not expecting a land attack, Commonwealth troops on the peninsula were ill-prepared. Indian infantry inflicted heavy losses from their bunkers on the beaches but finally succumbed to the massive onslaught. The landings were launched from bases ceded to the Japanese by Marshal Pétain’s French colonial officials in Indochina and backed up by new high-performance fighter planes. More Japanese infantry poured in from Thailand to capture key airports in Kedah and Kelantan. To counter the Kota Bharu landings, the British overseas fleet’s proudest battleships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, sailed north. But without air cover, they were spotted off the coast of Kuantan and sunk by Japanese bombers. The Singapore naval base was left empty. Kuala Lumpur fell on 11 January 1942, and five weeks later the island of Singapore was captured. Northern Borneo was quickly overrun, but the oil fields of Miri and Brunei were pre-emptively sabotaged by the British and Dutch. If Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners of war in Malaya was notoriously brutal, the attitude towards Asian civilians was more ambivalent. At first, the Japanese curtailed the privileges of the Malay rulers and forced them to pay homage to the emperor of Japan. But then, to gain their support, the Japanese upheld their prestige, restored pensions, and preserved their authority at least in Malay custom and Islamic religion. The Chinese, especially those identifying with Mao Tse Tung’s combat against the Japanese, were at first massacred in the thousands, but later courted as middlemen for Japanese-run business operations. From 1943, Chinese communists led the resistance in the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army, aided by the British to prepare an Allied return. The Japanese wooed Malay Indians as recruits for a short-lived “Indian National Army” to fight the British in India. Insurrection and Independence The Japanese surrender left in place a 7,000-strong resistance army led by Chinese communists. Before disbanding — and stashing its weapons in the jungle — the army wrought revenge on Malays who had collaborated with the Japanese. This in turn sparked off a brief wave of racial violence between Malays and Chinese, dramatizing the ethnic conflicts that would hamper the post-war quest for national independence. To match their long-term stake in the country’s prosperity, the Chinese and Indians wanted political equality with the Malays. Nationalists in the new United Malays National Organization (UMNO) resented this “foreign” intrusion imposed by 19th-century economic development. To give the Malays safeguards against economically dominant Chinese and Indians, the British created the new Federation of Malaya in 1948. Strong central government under a High Commissioner left considerable powers in the hands of the States’ Malay rulers. Crown colony status was granted to Northern Borneo and Singapore, the latter excluded from the Federation because of its large Chinese majority. The Chinese, considering that they had been more loyal to the Allied cause in World War II, felt betrayed. Some turned to the radical solutions of the Chinese-led Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Four months after the creation of the new Federation, three European rubber planters were murdered in Perak. They were the first victims in a guerrilla war launched from jungle enclaves by communist rebels using the arms caches left there by the disbanded Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army. The British sent in massive troop reinforcements, but the killing continued, mainly European managers in the tin and rubber industries. The violence reached a climax in 1951, with the assassination of High Commissioner Henry Gurney. His successor, General Gerald Temple, stepped in to deal with the “Emergency. ” He intensified military action, while cutting the political grass from under the communists’ feet. Templer stepped up self-government, increased Chinese access to full citizenship and admitted them for the first time to the Malayan Civil Service. Under Cambridge-trained lawyer Tunku Abdul Rahman, brother of the Sultan of Kedah, UMNO’s conservative Malays formed an alliance with the English-educated bourgeoisie of the Malayan Chinese Association and Malayan Indian Congress. Amid the turmoil of the Emergency, Chinese and Indian community leaders were eager for compromise. The Alliance won 51 of 52 seats in the 1955 election on a platform promising an equitable multiracial constitution. Independence or merdeka (freedom) came in 1957, and the Emergency ended three years later. The Alliance’s English-educated elite seemed to imagine that multiracial integration would come about through education and employment. With a bicameral government under a constitutional monarchy (see page 15), the independent Federation made Malay the compulsory national language and Islam the official religion. Primary school education might be Chinese, Indian, or English, but secondary education must be Malay. Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first prime minister, reversed his party’s anti-Chinese policy by offering Singapore a place in the Federation. With the defeat of Singapore’s moderate Progressive party by left-wing radicals, Tunku Abdul Rahman feared the creation of an independent communist state on his doorstep. As a counterweight to the Singapore Chinese, he would bring in the North Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak, granting them special privileges for their indigenous populations and funds for the development of their backward economies. To embrace the enlarged territory, the Federation took on the new name of Malaysia in September 1963, but Singapore soon clashed with Kuala Lumpur over Malay privileges that Singapore, with its multiracial policies, sought to dismantle. Its effort to reorganize political parties on a social and economic rather than ethnic basis misread the temper of the Malay masses. Communal riots broke out in 1964, and Tunku Abdul Rahman was forced by his party’s right wing to expel Singapore from the Federation. Singapore wept all the way to the bank, its port and service industries making it, after Japan, the wealthiest country in Asia. In 1967 Penang was hit by serious riots, which highlighted the fact that political and social harmony could not be taken for granted. Four days of racial riots in the Federal capital in 1969 led to the suspension of the constitution and a state of emergency. The constitution was not restored until February 1971. The riots proved to be a warning for the government, with legislation passed at the time such as granting special rights to Malays and even restrictions on public gatherings. Tun Abdul Razak took over the post as Prime Minister upon the retirement of Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1970. Abdul Razak had earlier played a key role in combating the Communist insurrection years earlier. Under his administration, emphasis was placed on improving the status and position of the Malays and “other indigenous peoples. ” The government’s aim was to broaden the distribution of wealth held by Malays to be undertaken over a 20-year period. The Malay language, Bahasa Malaysia, was also officially encouraged. Upon Tun Abdul Razak’s death in 1976, the post of prime minister was taken up by Datuk Hussein Onn, a son of the founder of the UMNO. Under the Prime Minister Hussein, the UMNO party strengthened its position, which came as Malaysian exports were also growing. Combined political and economic strength set a sound base for Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, when he took up office in July 1981. Under “the businessmen’s Prime Minister,” Dr. Mahathir, Malaysia has achieved remarkable prosperity as the economy built on the gains of the earlier post-war decades. The profitability of rubber has declined somewhat, but tin has continued as an important source of income. This has been supplemented by the spread of lucrative palm oil plantations, the discovery of rich new reserves of petroleum and natural gas off the north coast of Borneo and the east coast of the peninsula, and development of manufacturing and tourism industries. Timber, which in the 1970s and 1980s brought valuable revenue to Malaysia as a whole and to Sabah and Sarawak in particular, has been cut back to preserve and replenish the dwindling rainforests. In more recent years, manufacturing, and in particular electronics, has represented a new direction away from dependence on commodity exports. While occasional ethnic tensions arise, they rarely flare into the kind of violence such rivalries foster elsewhere in the world. The main upset now has been political protests amid aspirations and concerns over political change. Into the 21st Century Malaysia enters the next millennium a wealthy and increasingly economically sound and prosperous country, with the goal of becoming a fully developed nation by 2020. Elections are due to be held in 2000, and the issue of who will succeed Dr. Mahathir has already begun to come to the fore in political debate. Hoped-for economic revival after the Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s is also likely to set the stage for further progress, in a country well-placed for their being able to enjoy the good life.