Malaysia means land of the Malays—split by a federal sea
Malaysia is a federal constitutional monarchy of thirteen states and three federal territories, cut by the South China Sea into Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo’s Sabah and Sarawak. The name fuses Malays with a Latin-Greek -ia—“land of the Malays.”
A river, the Sungai Melayu, lent its name to the early Melayu kingdom, which became linked with Srivijaya and Sumatra, especially Palembang, the likely homeland of Malacca’s founding sultan. Before colonial rule the peninsula was called Tanah Melayu, Malay Land. In 1850 the ethnologist George Samuel Windsor Earl proposed Melayunesia for the islands of Southeast Asia, and Malaysia came into use as a label for the archipelago.
Independence from Britain in 1957 produced the Federation of Malaya, a name chosen over Malaysia and Langkasuka, the latter after an early kingdom on the upper peninsula. In 1963 Malaya joined with Singapore, North Borneo, and Sarawak under the name Malaysia; one theory holds that the si stood for those three new members.
Modern humans have lived here for 40,000 years, with Negritos thought to be the peninsula’s first people. The region took part in the Maritime Jade Road between 2000 BC and 1000 AD, and Indian and Chinese traders arrived early. Portugal captured Malacca in 1511 and the Dutch took it in 1641. Britain gained Penang when the Sultan of Kedah leased it to the East India Company in 1786, then Singapore in 1819.
The Klang War of 1867–1874 started when Raja Mahadi refused to accept Raja Abdullah as chief of Klang and drew in rival Chinese secret societies. Japanese occupation in the Second World War preceded federation. Today about half the population is Malay, the economy has shifted from commodities to services and manufacturing, and the country ranks among the world’s seventeen megadiverse nations.
Source: Malaysia
