History of Malaysia

 The Malay Peninsula has long benefited from its central position in the maritime trade routes between China and the Middle  East. Ptolemy showed it on his early map with a label that translates as "Golden Chersonese", the Straits of Malacca as  "Sinus Sabaricus".

 The earliest recorded Malay kingdoms grew from coastal city-ports established in the 10th century AD. These include  Langkasuka and Lembah Bujang in Kedah, as well as Beruas and Gangga Negara in Perak  and Pan Pan in Kelantan. It is thought that originally these were Hindu or Buddhist nations.  The first evidence of Islam in the Malay peninsula dates from the 14th century in  Terengganu, but according to the Kedah Annals, the 9th Maharaja Derbar Raja (1136-1179  AD) of Sultanate of Kedah converted to Islam and changed his name to Sultan Muzaffar  Shah. Since then there have been 27 Sultans who ruled Kedah.

 There were numerous Malay kingdoms in the 2nd and 3rd century A.D., as many as 30  according to Chinese sources. Kedah – known as Kedaram or Kataha, in ancient Pallava or  Sanskrit – was in the direct route of invasions of Indian traders and kings. Rajendra Chola,  who is now thought to have laid Kota Gelanggi to waste, put Kedah to heel in 1025 but his  successor, Vir Rajendra Chola, had to put down a Kedah rebellion to overthrow the invaders.

 The Buddhist kingdom of Ligor took control of Kedah shortly after, and its King Chandrabhanu used it as a base to attack Sri  Lanka in the 11the century, an event noted in a stone inscription in Nagapattinum in Tamil Nadu and in the Sri Lankan epic,  Mahavamsa. During the first millennium, the people of the Malay peninsula adopted Hinduism and Buddhism and the use of  the Sanskrit language until they eventually converted to Islam, but not before Hinduism, Buddhism and Sanskrit became  embedded into the Malay worldview. Traces of the influences in political ideas, social structure, rituals, language, arts and  cultural practices still can be seen to this day.

 There are reports of other areas older than Kedah – the ancient kingdom of Ganganegara, around Bruas in Perak, for instance  – that pushes Malaysian history even further into antiquity. If that is not enough, a Tamil poem, Pattinapillai, of the second  century A.D., describes goods from Kadaram heaped in the broad streets of the Chola capital; a seventh century Sanskrit  drama, Kaumudhimahotsva, refers to Kedah as Kataha-nagari. The Agnipurana also mentions a territory known Anda-Kataha  with one of its boundaries delineated by a peak, which scholars believe is Gunong Jerai. Stories from the Katasaritasagaram  describe the life of elegance of life in Kataha.

 In the early 15th century, the Sultanate of Malacca (Malay: Kesultanan Melaka) was established under a dynasty founded by  Parameswara, a prince from Palembang, who fled from the island Temasek (now Singapore). Parameswara decided to  establish his kingdom in Malacca after witnessing an astonishing incident where a white mouse deer kicked one of his hunting  dogs. He took it as a sign of good luck and name his kingdom "Melaka" after the tree where he was resting under. At its  height, the sultanate controlled the areas which are now Peninsula Malaysia, southern Thailand (Patani), and the eastern  coast of Sumatra. It existed for more than a century, and within that time period Islam spread to most of the Malay  Archipelago. Malacca was the foremost trading port at the time in Southeast Asia.

 In 1511, Malacca was conquered by Portugal, which established a colony there. The sons of the last sultan of Malacca  established two sultanates elsewhere in the peninsula - the Sultanate of Perak to the north, and the Sultanate of Johor  (originally a continuation of the old Malacca sultanate) to the south. After the fall of Malacca, three nations struggled for the  control of Malacca Strait: the Portuguese (in Malacca), the Sultanate of Johor, and the Sultanate of Aceh. This conflict went on  till 1641, when the Dutch (allied to the Sultanate of Johor) gained control of Malacca.

 Britain established its first colony in the Malay peninsula in 1786, with the lease of the island of Penang to the British East  India Company by the Sultan of Kedah. In 1824, the British took control of Malacca following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824  which divided the Malaya archipelago between Britain and the Netherlands, with Malaya in the British zone. In 1826, Britain  established the crown colony of the Straits Settlements, uniting its three possessions in Malaya: Penang, Malacca and  Singapore. The Straits Settlements were administered under the East India Company in Calcutta until 1867, when they were  transferred to the Colonial Office in London.

 Sultan Abdul Samad Building in Kuala Lumpur houses the High Court of Malaya and the Trade Court. Kuala Lumpur was the  capital of the Federated Malay States and is the current Malaysian capital.
 Kuala Lumpur, the capital and largest city of MalaysiaDuring the late 19th century, many Malay states decided to obtain British  help in settling their internal conflicts. The commercial importance of tin mining in the Malay states to merchants in the Straits  Settlements led to British government intervention in the tin-producing states in the Malay Peninsula. British gunboat  diplomacy was employed to bring about a peaceful resolution to civil disturbances caused by Chinese gangsters, and the  Pangkor Treaty of 1874 paved the way for the expansion of British influence in Malaya. By the turn of the 20th century the  states of Pahang, Selangor, Perak, and Negeri Sembilan, known together as the Federated Malay States (not to be confused  with the Federation of Malaya), were under the de facto control of British Residents appointed to advise the Malay rulers. The  British were "advisers" by name but in reality they were the puppet masters behind the Malay rulers.

 The remaining five states in the peninsula, known as the Unfederated Malay States, while not directly under rule from London,  also accepted British advisors around the turn of the 20th century. Of these, the four northern states of Perlis, Kedah,   Kelantan and Terengganu had previously been under Siamese control.

 On the island of Borneo, Sabah was governed as the crown colony of British North Borneo, while Sarawak was acquired from  Brunei as the personal kingdom of the Brooke family, who ruled as white rajahs.

 Following the Japanese occupation of Malaya (1942-1945) during World War II, popular support for independence grew.  Post- war British plans to unite the administration of Malaya under a single crown colony called the Malayan Union foundered  on strong opposition from the Malays, who opposed the emasculation of the Malay rulers and the granting of citizenship to  the ethnic Chinese. The Malayan Union, established in 1946 and consisting of all the British possessions in Malaya with the  exception of Singapore, was dissolved in 1948 and replaced by the Federation of Malaya, which restored the autonomy of the  rulers of the Malay states under British protection.

 During this time, rebels under the leadership of the Communist Party of Malaya launched guerrilla operations designed to  force the British out of Malaya. The Malayan Emergency, as it was known, lasted from 1948 to 1960, and involved a long  anti- insurgency campaign by Commonwealth troops in Malaya. Against this backdrop, independence for the Federation within  the Commonwealth was granted on 31 August 1957 (see also Hari Merdeka).

 In 1963 the Federation was renamed Malaysia with the admission of the then-British crown colonies of Singapore, Sabah  (British North Borneo) and Sarawak. The Sultanate of Brunei, though initially expressing interest in joining the Federation,  withdrew from the planned merger due to opposition from certain segments of the population as well as arguments over the  payment of oil royalties and the status of the Sultan in the planned merger.

 The early years of independence were marred by conflict with Indonesia (Konfrontasi) over the formation of Malaysia,  Singapore's eventual exit in 1965, and racial strife in the form of racial riots in 1969. The Philippines also made an active claim  on Sabah in that period based upon the Sultanate of Brunei's cession of its north-east territories to the Sultanate of Sulu in  1704. The claim is still ongoing.

 After the May 13 racial riots of 1969, the controversial New Economic Policy - intended to increase the share of the economic  pie owned by the bumiputras ("indigenous people", which includes the majority Malays, but not always the indigenous  population) as opposed to other ethnic groups - was launched by Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak. Malaysia has since  maintained a delicate ethno-political balance, with a system of government that has attempted to combine overall economic  development with political and economic policies that favour Bumiputras.

 Between the 1980s and the early 1990s, Malaysia experienced significant economic growth under the premiership of Tun Dr  Mahathir bin Mohamad. The period saw a shift from an agriculture-based economy to one based on manufacturing and  industry in areas such as computers and consumer electronics. It was during this period, too, that the physical landscape of  Malaysia has changed with the emergence of numerous mega-projects. The most notable of these projects are the Petronas  Twin Towers (at the time the tallest building in the world), KL International Airport (KLIA), the Sepang F1 Circuit, the  Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), the Bakun hydroelectric dam and Putrajaya, a new federal administrative capital.

 In the late 1990s, Malaysia was shaken by the Asian financial crisis as well as political unrest caused by the sacking of the  deputy prime minister Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. In 2003, Dr Mahathir, Malaysia's longest serving prime minister, retired in  favour of his deputy, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, commonly known as Pak Lah.