History of Malaysia

Peninsular Malaysia

In prehistoric times, the region was inhabited by aboriginal people. In the 2nd century BC settlers arrived from south China. Around the beginning of the 1st century AD, Indian traders began settling in Kedah and along the west coast of the peninsula. Hinduism and Buddhism were introduced during this early period; the Indian kingdom of Kunan was founded in the 1st century AD and Buddhist states developed to the east. The Javanese controlled the peninsula around 1330–50. The port of Malacca was founded in the 15th century; its rulers converted to Islam and traded with Muslim merchants, and Islam replaced Buddhism across present-day Malaysia.

The Sultanate of Malacca was seized by the Portuguese in 1511 but, a century later, they were driven out by the Dutch in alliance with the Sultan of Johor. The peninsula then became a Malay kingdom ruled by Johor. In 1786 the Sultan of Kedah granted the island of Penang to the British East India Company for use as a trading post; less than a decade later, the British took Malacca from the Dutch. In 1819 the British also acquired Singapore. Penang, Malacca and Singapore were ruled directly by Britain as the Straits Settlements.

By a series of treaties between 1873 and 1930, the British colonial administrators took control of the foreign affairs of the nine Malay sultanates on the peninsula. In 1896 the Federated Malay Sates (Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Perak and Pahang) came into existence, with Kuala Lumpur as the capital. The sultanates of northern Borneo – Brunei, Sabah and Sarawak – also became British protectorates.

Immigrants from southern China and southern India came to work in tin mines and on the plantations, facilitating the peninsula’s transition from a trading outpost to a commodity producer. The British introduced rubber farming towards the end of the 19th century.