In Part 1 of this essay series, I talked about the seafaring history of pre-Colonial Malay kingdoms and the multicultural influences that shaped them.

One of the prevailing themes I spoke about was the issue of sovereignty and privilege. The Malaysia we know today comprises thirteen states and three federal territories. Of these, nine were independent absolute monarchies. Some states, like Penang, Sarawak and Sabah, took their modern shape as leased territories to European interests. Other states were dependencies of the existing Sultanates, or as is the case with the Peninsular’s northern states, sometimes vassals of Siam.

Like other colonies that eventually became modern nations, the basis for our geographic boundaries was not divisions along historical lines, but simply what made sense to incoming powers at the time. Some historical border disputes continue to haunt us today. In 2013, Sabah was invaded by loyalists from the Sultanate of Sulu (in the present-day Philippines) claiming historic rights to parts of the state. If we learnt anything from this, it’s that our borders are not just more porous than we thought, but also more fluid. Real people don’t see the invisible dots on the map, but that doesn't mean the borders they recognise are ones we’re comfortable with either.

The diverse aborigines of the Peninsular and Borneo shared deep connections with our ancient kingdoms. Apart from filling the role of community representatives in local courts and non-Malay officers, the traditional forest and marine products for trade were collected and supplied by aboriginal peoples on both sides of Malaysia. Certain aboriginal groups, notably the Orang Laut, formed the core maritime forces for the Malaccan Sultanate and its dependencies. Further down this essay, I will talk about their subsumption into Malay society and the contentious issue of Bumiputera status in particular.

Non-Malay communities who were not traditional to Malaysia included migrant merchants and sailors from around Asia and the Middle East. This older generation of migrants were migrants in the true sense. They had the time they needed to amalgamate themselves in local culture, their children identified themselves as locals, and they were here to stay.

Malaysia’s modern racial divisions are bound with the story of our migrants. This includes all our migrants, from the regional peoples of the Malay Archipelago and Southeast Asia, to the Chinese, Indians, Arabs and other communities that sought their fortune here, including the Europeans. The region offered reliable sources of raw material to fuel their industries as well as new spheres of influence. Much is made of how the Europeans insinuated and outright forced local Sultans to accept their increasing supervision. What often goes untold is how local courts used incoming European influence for their own profit.

Our present-day Conference of Rulers is a mere shadow of the nine historic Sultanates. Bloodlines ran across the Straits of Malacca from Sumatra and down the Peninsular. Power grabs and succession crises between feuding princes pulled communities apart and created new competing states. Pirates, led by cast-off nobles or their allies, were a frequent threat to merchants who failed to dock at their ports. Numerous kingdoms sought protection from Imperial China as well as Siam, sometimes even from each of these powers against the other.

By the 17th and 18th centuries, new economic opportunities in tin mining and plantation farming also saw different states opening up land to non-Malay migrants for development. High demand for tin and products like gambier and pepper from Europe helped drive the switch from trade in traditional forest and marine products to these new commodities. The first wave of economic migrants en masse was encouraged by Malay Sultanates seeking to profit from the new European markets. While landowners were often linked to the Malay nobility, foreign migrants became the primary leasers and workers, even dominating occupations previously held by Malays and indigenous peoples.

Control over this sudden influx of migrants still lay in community leaders who liaised with the local courts, but unlike their predecessors, cultural insularity was increasingly the norm. Some, like indentured Chinese coolies beholden to clan and secret society rivalries, had little incentive to mingle outside of their communities. Others, like the Minangkabau and Bugis, developed settlements on the Peninsular that grew so large, they were able to declare their own states.

Both the Minangkabau and the Bugis developed different versions of Malay culture and practised very distinct political systems. The Minangkabau are famously matrilineal and clan-based. Although the Minangkabau territories on the Peninsular were initially part of the Johor-Riau Sultanate, by 1785, the local clans declared Negeri Sembilan’s first Yang Dipertuan Besar (paramount ruler). The Bugis nobility also declared Selangor’s independence from Johor-Riau and became a Sultanate in its own right. Extensive intermarriage between both communities and Malays blurred some cultural differences between them, but especially for the Bugis, entrenched them firmly in the venal succession politics of the Malay royals.

When the Dutch and British first arrived, local Sultans saw them as another force through which they could give their cousin-princes and rival kingdoms comeuppance. By the 17th century, Malacca had been captured by the Portuguese, scattering the remnants of its Sultanate to Johor and Riau, and emboldening rival states in the Malay Archipelago. The Dutch, followed by the British, were keen to access trade opportunities in the region and had no qualms about siding with factions they thought could give them an edge.

Naturally, the ousted descendants of Malaccan royals in Johor lost no time in soliciting Dutch assistance to recapture Malacca from the Portuguese and thwart their rivals in Aceh. When Dutch influence waned in the 19th century, British interests in the Peninsular and Borneo took over, and as our popular historical narratives note, the British were remarkably more bullish about pursuing advisory positions for themselves in local courts, with the overt intention of taking over the local economy.

The coming of the British is noteworthy to the racial narrative in the way their migration policies strained local capacity to breaking point. As they aggressively opened plantations and mines, and transformed Singapore into both a major trading hub and centre of operations, they began needing different forms of labour to keep up with their expansion. Lower-ranking civil service roles were initially filled by English-speaking Ceylonese who were familiar with the British administrative style. Sikh police forces were drafted to maintain security. Chinese entrepreneurs and thousands of indentured Chinese coolies helped open, run and maintain the very plantations and mines crucial to the local economy. Eventually, falling tin prices saw a decline in incoming Chinese migrants. To overcome worker shortages, programmes to bring in large numbers of cheap South Indian labourers were initiated.

Because the British now assumed primary responsibility for these migrants, the need for maintaining meaningful contact between all these racial groups and the Malays significantly dwindled. It didn’t help that many migrant labourers were transients, returning to their native homelands after set tenures. Although a significant number would settle here as our modern Malay, Chinese and Indian communities in the long term, the inconsistent nature of this new migration pattern played handily into keeping the different ethnicities apart. The idea of transient migrants with few roots in Malaya would also feed into a persistent, growing narrative of disloyal non-Malays displacing the local population.

These new migrants included people from the Malay Archipelago who were not necessarily ethnic Malays. To the British, however, the differences between Malays, Bugis, Minangkabau, Acehnese and other ethnic groups from the region were moot — they were all eventually subsumed into ‘Malay’ for census purposes. This included a small section of aboriginal peoples like the Orang Laut and Orang Asli who associated with Malay culture enough to be counted a part of it.

Overwhelmingly, the aboriginal peoples on the Peninsular and Borneo were invisible to early colonial sources. The arrival of commercial farming and mining virtually decimated their traditional trade in natural products (and most of their interaction with outsiders). This, plus their traditional territories deep within the forests, meant that their voice was seldom regarded in censuses, much less matters of state.

The story of Malaysia’s aboriginal peoples continues to be one of the greatest tragedies in our racial relations. On both the Peninsular and Borneo, they provide bulk to the Bumiputera quota needed to keep the other races in check but receive virtually none of the economic growth, infrastructure and opportunities for self-determination hogged by Malays. It begs the question of what our demographics would really look like if the Bumiputera (interpreted here as strictly the aboriginal peoples) were to be separated from the Malays.

The Others I spoke of in Part 1, including the Peranakan, Baba and Eurasian communities who had long been part of Malay cultural society, literally became the ‘Others’ for British census purposes. They did not fit the pat ethnic divisions the British administration envisioned (Malay, Chinese and Indian), but they also had little in common with the newcomers from their ancestral homelands.

The very nature of Malay society itself changed in this era. Along with simplified ethnic divisions, early Malaysian society was also undergoing the stratification of economic roles by race. The British largely maintained a hands-off approach to the Malay ruling class’s sovereignty in matters of religion (Islam) and Malay cultural affairs. Collusion between the Malay elite and notions of the British class system seem hazy, but it’s clear having hard divisions of rulers and commoners was not a totally alien notion in either society. Remember, the kerajaan of ancient Srivijaya which begat our Sultanates held their rulers as demi-gods. Even after the arrival of Islam, derhaka (treason) still carried supernatural elements, albeit with the added duality of defying both an earthly ruler and God. If anything, privilege and entitlement (that is, being born into power) was a cachet the British were more than happy to encourage, so long it kept the local nobility content and away from interfering in their administration.

For the Malay commoner, a pastoral ideal was developed. The seafaring ways of coastal Malays were discouraged in favour of settled farming. Part of this policy stemmed from the need to reduce seasonal piracy, which was a major source of income apart from trading and gathering natural products. Added to this, the sharp influx of Chinese entrepreneurs eventually overtook local Malay traders and marginalised new Malay entrepreneurship. Although Malays did participate in commercial planting and mining, they would ultimately be outnumbered in persons and expertise for these fields.