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.
