A History of Malaysia by Barbara Watson Andaya and Leonard Y. Andaya
I have a feeling that I will spend a portion of my life in Malaysia, and yet the country is still indecipherable to me after already having spent a couple of years here. There are things that still make me wonder how things work, especially when considered from the perspective of ethnicity balance and the relationships between each group. I still don’t understand the concept of being a Malaysian, with its hodgepodge of languages, beliefs and cultures. It is best to turn to history for that, especially when it’s written without bias and it is tremendously well-researched.
To tell you the truth, I haven’t read much on Malaysian history so much of what is written here is quite new to me, and shows how much I’m a newbie to this country still. For example, I didn’t realise there was a difference between Malays and Orang Asli, that the concept of being “Malay” is more varied than I initially thought. We need to go back years and years for that. The Andayas started the book right in the beginning — from the earliest traces of humanity found in the region. Some of the bones found in the peninsula date back 10,000 years, evidence of tools are dated back 74,000 years. Though we know little about this time, we know that human history runs deep in this land.
I am Indonesian born and the ties between Malaysia and Indonesia interest me deeply. From time immemorial, before Europeans got their hands dirty in Melaka, the region was dominated by the Sriwijaya kingdom which tied together the Malay peninsula with Sumatra. Sriwijaya was a bridge between the merchant trade of India to China. Along the way, Hindu influences also come to the region this way and much latter, Islam from Gujarat. This part of the world thus, has always been an important trading post not just for goods, but for cultures, languages and beliefs.
The entrance of the Europeans brought a new era to the region, up to this point still fragmented by other kingdoms who plainly just cannot get along. The Javanese kingdom was a constant pest to Sriwijaya, the Ayutthayas upstairs often flex their prowess South of the peninsula, not to mention the Bugis who are just wreaking havoc in different parts of Indochina. Many historians consider the taking of Melaka in 1511 as the beginning of Malaysia as we know it. It definitely had an impact, but the makeup of the peninsula with its range of cultures make this more complex.
I won’t rehash the history of the European pillaging of the Malay peninsula, but sure to say that each of the colonial powers which sat on the region had different influences on their own and managed the region in their own styles. Unsurprisingly, it was the English with their “indirect rule” which had the most success until the Japanese came to power during World War II. The Portuguese rule was unmemorable aside from the initial conquest, the Dutch with the VOC are primarily commercially minded like leeches but really had no interest in the locals. The English officers often need to communicate in Malay to hold posts in Malaya.
It was the case of Sarawak and North Borneo (now Sabah) that interested me. I didn’t know that for a long time Sarawak was ruled by white rajahs, which is ironic considering the diversities of the ethnic groups. James Brooks, whose rule considered the preservation of local customs, was an interesting case of benevolent rule, if you want to call it that. Sabah and Sarawak play such a key role in the definition of what it is to be Malay, that it makes this ethereal identity more ambiguous. The term “Bumiputera” becomes an umbrella term for Malaysians of Malay descent and of ethnic and aboriginal tribes in the country. This has an undertone: if you’re not one of us, you’re one of them.
Yet, the ethnic makeup in Sarawak alone is rich and diverse. The authors pointed out that the Malay identity are often equated to those who claims Islam as their religion, but this is not the case for many ethnic groups. The success of evangelism means that for many, such as Bidayuh and the Ibans, have adopted Christianity. For a long time, the proportion of Malays to the Chinese were about equal, but at some point, the Malays emerge as the dominant ethnic group.
The Chinese themselves are richly diverse (an unavoidable word that we use a lot to describe Malaysia), with different groups speaking different dialects — the Hakkas, the Tionghoas, the Hokkiens, the Cantonese all coming from different villages. In the beginning, the Chinese workers came as tin miners, bringing their own knowledge and in the process accumulating wealth and bringintheir own knowledge and in the process accumulating wealth and bringing their families and communities over.
The rise of the Malay Chinese is well documented, and with each societies having their own records, we know more about it now than in the last century. Malay Chinese was the target and the battleground for the CCP and GMD from mainland China, as it descends into proxy war. All the while the Chinese communities bicker among themselves and making dubious alliances with other Malay groups. Yet, the Chinese due to their business nous and work ethic managed to be the financially dominant group in the region.
It is this tension between the Chinese and the Malays and the Indians that define the country of Malaysia. The Andayas with academic objectivity managed to include the events which define these divisions, from independence, the race riots of May 13, to the birth of the party politics. It is still the tension that I think is still defining the country, especially with the recent events which culminated in the 1MDB scandal. The political landscape is now defining the cultural landscape, and while Malaysia is a country tolerant of others’ beliefs, there are signs that ethnic tensions are shifting the country still every day.
I’m also glad that the discussion of the Malay language is covered in all angles in the book. Bahasa Melayu shares a lot of similarities with Indonesian, yet pertaining its own colour and tone. While for a long time, English was the administrative language of Malaya, it was not until after independence that it came into full force into the public education system, even replacing English at a tertiary level. I’m amazed to this day how Malaysians are multi-lingual and the history of the region alone contribute to a lot of that, but as plenty of Malaysians identify more with their family’s culture than the national identity, many Malaysians resort to speaking in English with each other. There are positives and negatives in this: it’s good in a sense that it gives everybody a common ground with such an international language, it’s not as good as there are no attachments to your national identity with the language.
It all has to do with education from the beginning, and the fact that there are schools servicing different ethnic groups also create these cultural divides that we see today. Education and language go hand in hand. The Andayas also did a remarkable job in breaking down the pedagogical history of the independent Malaysia, as well as the effects to how things stand today.
I can ramble on and on in this country that I am living and yet still trying to figure out. The deeper you dive into Malaysian history, or at least, the history of the region, the more amazed you’d be on the kaleidoscopic nature of the place. The Andayas don’t plan on publishing a fourth edition of the book, but they were compelled to the third due to the ever-changing nature of the Malaysian political and cultural landscape. By the way things are going now with its ever-increasing complexity, they may be compelled to do a fourth.
