A Short History of South-East Asia

by Peter Church

  Laos was admitted to WTO in 2013 and, with membership, the country began attracting more direct foreign investors. With its ascension to WTO's membership, the government has begun to engage economically with the United States and Japan as well as its neighbours. However, economic developments have not been matched by tangible political reform.

  In 2014, the government introduced strict new Internet controls, making online criticism of its policies or the ruling party a criminal offence. The new legislation also demands that web users register with their real names when setting up social media accounts.

  Laos took over the chairmanship of ASEAN for the first time in September 2016 and, in doing so, has to strike a balance in protecting its history and facilitating trade and ties with its ASEAN neighbours because, as a small, poor, landlocked country, Laos is drawn inexorably into the economic and social currents sweeping the rest of the region.

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  Malaysia

  More than 60 ethnic or culturally differentiated groups can be enumerated in Malaysia's population of 30 million, but the most crucial population division is that between Bumiputera and non‐Bumiputera people. The Bumiputeras are those with cultural affinities indigenous to peninsular and Bornean Malaysia and the region. Malays constitute the principal Bumiputera group and account for around 64 percent of Malaysia's population. Non‐Bumiputeras are people whose cultural affinities lie outside Malaysia and its region—principally people of Chinese and Indian descent. Chinese constitute about 27 percent of Malaysia's population, Indians about 8 percent.

  The Malays have a long history and, since the 15th century, an Islamic culture in which they take pride. In the colonial era, however, their cultural world—extending across the Malay Peninsula and Indonesian Archipelago—was divided by Western colonial powers. In British Malaya and northern Borneo, Malays were relegated to minor social roles and virtually excluded from the foreign‐financed modernizing economy, which utilised immigrant labour. Malaysia's history since World War II has been primarily the story of the reassertion of Malay primacy without precipitating serious racial discord.

  Malaysia's stability has enabled vast economic growth since the 1970s. The stability has, however, been at the expense of some elements of the democratic system with which Malaysia began as an independent nation. Malay advancement has also had an ironic political consequence—nowadays rifts and rivalries within the Malay community need as much adroit political management as the differences between Malaysia's ethnic groups.

  EARLY HISTORY

  The early history of the territories which now form Malaysia is shadowy, a matter of cryptic archaeological clues and obscure references in Chinese and other written sources. The limited evidence suggests, however, that in the first millennium AD both the Malay Peninsula and the northern Borneo coast were important landfalls for merchant vessels involved in the great maritime trading networks that linked South‐East Asia with Africa, the Middle East, India, and China. Port cities arose on the Peninsula and on Borneo as they did elsewhere in South‐East Asia, offering merchants safe harbourage, transshipment facilities, and collection points for the region's prized commodities: gold, tin, and other minerals, rare woods, resins and other jungle produce, tortoiseshell, cowries and other marine produce, and—supremely—spices.

  Malay history is often seen as beginning in southern Sumatra; scholars believe that between the 7th and 14th centuries the Palembang region of southern Sumatra was the focus of a major maritime empire. They have called the central imperial state Sri Vijaya, though evidence about it is fragmentary and inconclusive. Near Sri Vijaya, and at times possibly its capital, was a place called Melayu, perhaps the cradle of Malay culture. The Sri Vijayan empire at its height probably dominated the trade of most of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, western Java, and western Borneo. It enjoyed Chinese and Indian patronage, and, like most of South‐East Asia in the first millennium AD, it borrowed and adapted Indian culture and religion. Its religion was probably a variant of Mahayana Buddhism.

  MELAKA AND MALAY CULTURE: THE 15TH CENTURY

  In the 14th century, Sri Vijaya was suppressed by the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit, a rival for control of archipelago trade. Refugees from Sri Vijaya moved north to the Riau‐Lingga islands, then on to Singapore island and other locations before eventually founding the city of Melaka (Malacca). The Sejarah Melayu (the “Malay Annals”) has it that their leader, Sultan Iskandar, was out hunting one day when one of his dogs was kicked by a mousedeer, normally the most timid and tremulous of animals. He took the mousedeer's courage as a fine omen for the founding of a new city.

  Founded about 1400, Melaka would enjoy a century of greatness, both as a major trade centre and as a great cultural centre. Melakan Malay culture would be admired and adopted in many parts of the peninsula and archipelago, including northern Borneo. Tales of Melaka's wealth and influence would reach even Europe, making it a prime target for conquest when Westerners sailed into the Eastern seas.

  Melaka's trading prowess was based on a number of factors. Its position was excellent, commanding the busy strait which took its name. Its rulers established efficient and secure conditions for traders on land and on nearby sea lanes. Potential rival ports were brought into a tributary relationship to Melaka. At the height of its power Melaka probably dominated the Peninsula as far north as Perak, the Riau‐Lingga archipelago, and most of Sumatra's east coast.

  At the same time, Melaka took care to become a tributary of powers greater than itself—most importantly China, but also Majapahit and the Thai state of Ayudhya. Sending tribute to such powers meant no loss of independence in practical terms, but did encourage such powers to send their traders to Melaka. A Chinese community quickly settled and became a feature of Melakan society, making Chinese people a part of Malaysian history effectively from its beginning.

  At some time early in the 15th century, Melaka's rulers adopted Islam, and this, too, contributed to the city's success, making it a favoured destination for Arab and Indian Muslim traders. Although some smaller ports in northern Sumatra preceded Melaka in turning to Islam, Melaka's conversion triggered the Islamisation of the peninsula and archipelago. Over the next century, port city after port city would adopt the religion of the most powerful, prestigious, and culturally dynamic of their number. Along with its religion, the port cities also tended to adopt the Melakan form of government—a blend of Middle Eastern Islamic forms with Indian forms brought from Sri Vijaya—and the language of Melaka, Malay. Malay thus became the most widely understood language in the region. In the 20th century, not only would Malay become the language of Malaysia and Brunei but, as the language of trade in the archipelago for centuries, it would form the basis of the Indonesian national language.

  The golden age of Melaka ended abruptly in August 1511 when, after a month's siege, the city fell to the superior guns of the Portuguese. The Portuguese hoped to take command of Melaka's trading networks, particularly its control over spices from the Moluccas. However, while the European newcomers had the power to take control of the city and the strait it overlooked, they lacked the resources to control the entire region and compel trade to continue at Melaka. Their posture as enemies of Islam scarcely helped. The Portuguese coup probably only stimulated the Malay trading world, as other port cities vied to take the fallen city's place, championing with new urgency Melaka's former religion and culture.

  One state exemplifying this effect was Brunei, a port city dominating Borneo's north coast (today incorporating not only modern Brunei but also the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah). Chinese records suggest that a port state, “P'o‐ni,” existed in the region from the fifth century. Now, around 1514, Brunei's rulers accepted Islam, emphasised their connections with Melaka's former ruling dynasty, and began to develop a “Brunei–Malay” culture.

  A THREATENING WORLD: THE 16TH TO 18TH CENTURIES

  Following the loss of Melaka, its ruling elite and their followers eventually established the sultanate of Johor, comm
anding the southern Peninsula and Riau islands. Elsewhere on the Peninsula, other states flourished, usually claiming legitimacy through connection with the former Melaka and paying tribute to Johor.

  In spite of Portuguese attempts to subdue Johor, it prospered in the later 16th and early 17th centuries, especially when the Dutch arrived on the scene. Basing themselves in Java, the Dutch saw Johor as a useful counterweight to the Portuguese at Melaka and developed trading arrangements with the sultanate. In 1641, Johor helped the Dutch oust the Portuguese from Melaka, which then became a minor outlying base in a growing Dutch empire.

  The Dutch had considerably greater resources than the Portuguese had been able to deploy—and also, by the 17th century, greater resources than another Western power, the Spanish, who had established themselves in the Philippine archipelago in the previous century. But Dutch resources were not sufficient to fulfil their intended goal of trade dominance over the region. The Malay‐Muslim trading world of the peninsula and archipelago thus persisted with considerable vigour after the advent of the Dutch.

  The Dutch did attempt, however, to monopolise the region's most lucrative products, particularly the spices. They also took care to concentrate their naval and military resources against any state which emerged as a major threat to their monopolising strategies. No Malay state could ever hope now, therefore, to recreate the commercial power of 15th‐century Melaka. Johor and other Malay states were now narrowly restricted in their trading and political potential.

  One consequence of this was heightened, and in the end mutually destructive, competition between states. Johor, for example, long regarded Aceh and other Sumatran trading states as more serious opponents than any Western power. In northern Borneo, Brunei, which had suffered Spanish attacks in 1578, saw as its most serious opponent the slave‐trading sultanate of Sulu (located in what is today the southern Philippines). In the 17th century, Sulu acquired from Brunei sovereignty over most of the area which today constitutes the Malaysian state of Sabah.

  The scramble for diminishing trade share may account for the internal instability for which many Malay states would become notorious. A Malay sultan was, in theory, an awesome figure. Both South‐East Asia's pre‐Muslim Hindu‐Buddhist traditions and Muslim thought invested him with divinely ordained power, making him temporal and spiritual supremo in his realm. Most Malay commoners existed in debt‐bondage relationships with their royal and noble superiors, and trembled before their authority, but the Malay ruling classes competed vigorously amongst themselves for power and control of the material and human resources of their states. This could mean merely that sultans were often weak, ineffectual rulers. More damagingly, it could mean lengthy periods of civil strife. In one such episode, Sultan Mahmud of Johor was murdered in 1699; he was the last direct descendant of the Melakan royal house. His death foreshadowed more than a century of unstable authority in the sultanate and in other Peninsular states.

  The politics of the Malay states were further complicated in the 18th century by a number of regional migrations. Bugis groups, originating in Sulawesi, established themselves in many states of the peninsula and archipelago. Skilled sailor‐navigators, fighters, and traders, the Bugis often became the dominant force in states where they settled. On the peninsula, Selangor became effectively a Bugis state. Meanwhile, Minangkabau groups from the west Sumatra highlands were also colonising Sumatra's east coast and crossing the Melaka Strait to the peninsula, where they established communities which ultimately would form the basis of the state of Negeri Sembilan.

  In north‐western Borneo, the sultanate of Brunei had to come to terms with the adventurous and fearsome headhunter warriors who spearheaded the migrations of Dayak (Iban) communities. Rival Brunei chiefs often struck up alliances with rival Dayak groups, sharpening conflict in the sultanate. Both the Bugis and Minangkabau migrants of the 18th century would, over time, adopt Malay‐Muslim custom and to all intents and purposes merge with Malay society. The Dayaks would be tamed under British colonial rule but would always retain their distinctive non‐Muslim cultures.

  Other factors would also increase instability in the 18th‐century Malay world. The growing power of the British in India reoriented the trading patterns of the subcontinent. British traders in South‐East Asia were often welcomed as potential allies against other Western or local powers, but their cargoes, featuring opium and firearms, were deadly. Meanwhile, Chinese doing business in the region tended increasingly to favour linkages with Westerners rather than local governments. They were thus heralding the middleman role which Chinese would hold between the indigenous peoples and the Western colonial regimes of the 19th and 20th centuries.

  On the peninsula, the Thais also became a major intrusive force in the later 18th century. The Thai kingdom of Ayudhya had claimed sovereignty on the peninsula since the 14th century, and often exacted tribute from the more northerly states. In 1767, the city of Ayudhya was destroyed by the Burmese but, from 1782, a new Thai dynasty arose—the Chakri (still Thailand's royal house)—with a new capital, Bangkok. The early Chakri monarchs were determined to assert Thai royal authority more firmly than ever before. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the northern Malay states of Patani, Kelantan, Kedah, Perak, and, to a lesser extent, Trengganu all experienced Thai pressures.

  Patani effectively lost its independence and was absorbed within the Thai administrative sphere, thus creating a permanent Malay‐Muslim minority in Buddhist Thailand. The other states continued as tributaries, running their own affairs, but Bangkok's enforcement of tribute payments and other decrees could be brutal and destructive.

  In 1786, the ruler of Kedah, hoping to win an ally against the Thais, ceded Penang island to the (British) East India Company, which was looking for a safe harbour and trading base in the region. In 1800 a strip of territory on the mainland opposite the island was also ceded. The Kedah rulers merely acquired an annual pension for the ceded territory and, to their chagrin, the Company firmly refused to become involved in their struggles with the Thais. However, the first step had been taken toward British occupation of the peninsula.

  THE BRITISH ADVANCE: THE 19TH CENTURY

  In 1819, the East India Company acquired Singapore island from Johor. In 1824, an Anglo–Dutch treaty delivered Melaka into British hands, too, as part of a delineation by the two European powers of their respective spheres of influence in maritime South‐East Asia. Making the Melaka Strait a frontier, the British took the Peninsula as their preserve, while the Dutch took Sumatra and all islands to the south of Singapore. Northern Borneo was not mentioned, though British interests would claim later, in the face of Dutch protests, that the terms of the 1824 treaty made that area a British sphere of influence, too.

  The 1824 treaty effectively determined the future boundaries of the British and Dutch colonial possessions in the region, and also of the nation‐states which would emerge from the colonial era, Malaysia and Indonesia. In the 1820s, however, the British had no intention of entangling themselves in the Peninsula. They were satisfied with the Straits Settlements, as Singapore, Melaka, and Penang became known from 1826. (The Straits Settlements remained under the East India Company until 1858, when the government of British India took over. In 1867, they were transferred to the control of the British Colonial Office.)

  The Straits Settlements boomed and, inevitably, business interests there, Western and Chinese, became interested in exploiting the Peninsular states. The question arose of whether the states' traditional administrative structures would be able to cope with the pressures arising from the new economic ventures. The rulers of Johor, closest to Singapore, proved fully equal to a major expansion of Chinese commercial agriculture in their state, principally in pepper and gambier. Kedah was also well governed and able to cope with spillover pressures from Penang. The ruling groups of other states proved less adroit.

  Pahang experienced civil war between 1858 and 1863, partly over the spoils arising from expanding ventures in mining and jun
gle produce. More seriously, endemic feuding developed within the ruling classes of the western Peninsular states of Perak, Selangor, and Negeri Sembilan over the control of vast tin deposits, which had been worked in the 1840s. The tin was mined by Chinese labourers controlled by secret societies. Rival Malay chiefs aligned themselves and their followers with the forces of rival secret societies. Rival business houses in the Straits Settlements backed one side or the other with money and guns. By the 1860s these states were in anarchy and demands for official British intervention grew.

  In 1874, one of the leading Malay disputants in Perak and the Governor of the Straits Settlements put their names to the Pangkor Treaty. The treaty recognised the former as sultan, but insisted, crucially, that he should accept a British Resident in his state, whose advice “must be asked and acted upon on all questions other than those touching Malay religion and custom.” The British interpreted broadly which matters were unrelated to “Malay religion and custom,” so taking effective control of most financial and administrative matters.