Malays

The Malays are an Austronesian people native to the Malay Peninsula, eastern Sumatra, the coasts of Borneo and the islands between them, a region often called the Malay world. Today they live mainly in Malaysia, Indonesia, southern Thailand, Singapore and Brunei, and number more than 30 million. Most are Sunni Muslims, and the Malay language, in its many forms, is one of the great languages of Southeast Asia.

The ancestors of the Malays were Austronesian-speaking peoples, mixed with earlier Austroasiatic groups. Several models of their arrival have been proposed. The most widely cited traces Austronesian speakers from southern China through Taiwan and the Philippines into the islands over thousands of years, while a rival theory argues that populations developed largely in place on the drowned Ice Age landmass of Sundaland. Genetic studies broadly confirm a mixture of early Southeast Asian, Austroasiatic and Austronesian ancestry, with later South Asian contributions in some groups. Early villages, or kampung, along rivers and coasts were trading with the wider world by the end of the first millennium BCE.

Trade with India brought Hinduism, Buddhism, Sanskrit and Indian ideas of kingship. Jetty remains and a brick monument in the Bujang Valley of Kedah, dated to the second century CE, show early links with South Indian ports. Coastal states such as Kedah, Langkasuka, Gangga Negara and the Melayu kingdom grew on the trade between India and China. The name Malayu first appears in Chinese sources in 644. From the seventh century many of these ports fell within the orbit of Srivijaya, a network of city-states centred on Sumatra whose wealth came from sea trade and whose court used Old Malay. The Srivijaya era is often seen as the golden age of early Malay culture. Raids by the Chola dynasty of southern India in the eleventh century weakened it, and later Javanese campaigns overran the remaining Sumatran Malay states.

Islam reached the northern Malay Peninsula from the twelfth century; the Terengganu Inscription Stone of 1303 is the oldest narrative writing in Malay yet known and is inscribed in the Arabic-based Jawi script. Around 1400 the prince Parameswara founded the port of Malacca, and the Malacca Sultanate became the centre of a new Malay world. Islam, the Malay language and Malay custom spread from it across the region, together forming what came to be seen as the core of Malayness. Malacca's court set standards in literature, dress and statecraft that later sultanates such as Johor, Perak and Pahang copied. Brunei, which adopted Islam and Malaccan models in the fifteenth century, became the strongest power in Borneo.

The Portuguese took Malacca in 1511, and over the following centuries Malay states fell under Portuguese, Dutch, British, Siamese and, briefly, Japanese control. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 split the Malay world into a British north and a Dutch south. Britain built up the Straits Settlements and British Malaya, while Siam absorbed the Patani region. Malay nationalism grew in the early twentieth century through newspapers and political associations, leading to the founding of UMNO in 1946 and the independence of the Federation of Malaya in 1957, enlarged as Malaysia in 1963.

Malay is an official language, in its standard forms, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Singapore, spoken natively by some 33 million people and as a second language by far more. Classical literature includes the Malay Annals, compiled at Johor in 1612, and verse forms such as the pantun and syair. Most Malays are Sunni Muslims, and the main festivals are Hari Raya Aidilfitri and Hari Raya Aidiladha, though older beliefs have left traces in folk custom. Malay identity remains diverse, with many regional dialects and subgroups from Kedah to Brunei.

Our 800, 900 and 1200 maps draw a territory for the Malays, an approximate outline of Malay-speaking and related island peoples rather than a single state. On the 800 and 900 maps it covers Borneo and the Philippines beside Srivijaya and the Mataram Kingdom of Java.