Malaysia: An Oriental Tourist's Haven and an Anthropologer's Delight!

Wikipedia, the encyclopedia says: “the history of Malaysia is a relatively recent offshoot of the history of the wider Malay-Indonesian world”. It is so because anthropologists and historians could see very little aspects culturally and linguistically, to distinguish today’s Malaysian territories from the lands of the Malay Archipelago. According to their research, today’s division of the Malay world into six different states - Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Brunei and East Timor – is largely the result of external influences, like the Hindu India, the Islamic Middle East and Christian Europe (west), China and Japan (north-east). Besides, the most direct shipping route passing through the Strait of Malacca, Malaysia has naturally been a melting pot of trade routes and cultures. Thus, it has been found out that the geographical position of Malaysia has literally made it difficult for the Malay people to resist foreign influence and domination.

If one analyses the history of Malaysia, he can see these successive phases before the final assertion of Malay independence.

• The domination of Hindu culture imported from India reached its peak in the great Srivijaya civilisation in Sumatra (from the 7th to the 14th centuries).

• The arrival of “Islam” in the 10th century, leading to the conversion of the Malay-Indonesian world, having a profound influence on the Malay people. The Srivijayan empire broke up into smaller sultanates, the most prominent one being Melaka (Malacca).

• The intrusion of the European colonial powers and European domination: (i) Portuguese, (ii) Dutch and (iii) British, who established bases at Penang and Singapore. This triggered off the most revolutionary event in Malay history – the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824, which drew a frontier between British Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). Thus, the division of the Malay world was established permanently.