British Malaya

British Malaya is the loose name for the states of the southern Malay Peninsula, together with Singapore island, that came under British control or protection between the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. It was never one colony but a patchwork of Crown territories and protected Malay sultanates. Producing more tin, and later more rubber, than anywhere else in the world, it became one of the most profitable parts of the British Empire, and its lands now form West Malaysia and Singapore.

British traders were active on the peninsula by the mid-eighteenth century. In 1786 Francis Light founded a free port at George Town on Penang, an island that had belonged to Kedah. In 1819 the British set up a trading post at Singapore, and the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 transferred Malacca, long a Dutch possession, to Britain while dividing the Malay world into British and Dutch spheres, the basis of today's border with Indonesia. In 1826 Penang, Malacca and Singapore were grouped as the Straits Settlements under the East India Company, with the capital moved to Singapore in 1832. They became a Crown colony ruled from London in 1867.

For most of the nineteenth century Britain avoided involvement in the Malay states themselves. That changed as tin mining boomed in Perak, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan, worked largely by Chinese migrant labour and disrupted by succession disputes and fighting between rival Chinese societies. In 1873 London replaced the Straits governor with Sir Andrew Clarke, who intervened directly. Through the Pangkor Treaty of 20 January 1874 he recognised Raja Abdullah as Sultan of Perak in return for accepting a British Resident, and British officials were soon placed in Selangor and Sungai Ujong as well. Pahang also came under British influence.

In the mid-1890s Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang were joined as the Federated Malay States, with Kuala Lumpur as capital and a British Resident-General, the first being Frank Swettenham. Their sultans kept authority over Islam and Malay custom, while British officials ran most of government. Under the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909, Siam gave up its claims over Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu, and these, with Johor, became the Unfederated Malay States, which accepted British Advisers but kept more autonomy. Johor was the last, accepting an Adviser in 1914. By then the peninsula was divided among the Straits Settlements, the federation and five separate protectorates. Debates over decentralisation in the 1920s and 1930s tried to draw the states closer together without success.

Tin and rubber, the federation's main products, fed British industry, and the ports of George Town and above all Singapore became great entrepôts. Large numbers of Chinese migrants came to work the mines, and the population grew mixed, with English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil all in common use. Because Malaya was so tied into world supply chains, the depression of the 1930s affected it too.

Japan's invasion of Malaya in 1941 formed part of the offensive that opened with Pearl Harbor, and Malaya and Singapore were occupied from 1942 to 1945, with the four northern states handed to Siam (Thailand) and the rest governed as one unit from Singapore. After the Second World War, Britain created the Malayan Union on 1 April 1946, leaving Singapore a separate colony. Strong Malay opposition to its citizenship rules and the reduced role of the rulers led to its replacement by the Federation of Malaya on 31 January 1948. A communist insurgency, the Malayan Emergency, lasted from 1948 to 1960. The federation became independent on 31 August 1957, and on 16 September 1963 it joined Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo to form Malaysia; Singapore left in 1965.

Our maps label the peninsula "Malaya" and draw British Malaya on the 1878, 1880, 1900, 1914, 1920, 1938 and 1945 maps. Before British rule the peninsula was divided among the sultanates of the Malays.