Colonisation of Malaya

1. Colonisation of Malaya Enter the British

2. Malaya • Britain became interested in the area in the 18th C. • The British were looking for goods to trade with China. • 1786 the English East India Company acquired Penang Island from the Sultan of Kedah.

3. Malaya • Sir Stamford Raffles occupied Singapore Island off the southern tip of the peninsula in 1819; and trading rights in 1824. • Singapore’s location and good harbour made it the economic centre of Britain’s political thrust into SEA. • The English attracted Chinese immigrants to the island and Singapore soon became the centre of Chinese economic activity.

4. Malaya • Britain was by know the major industrial power in Europe. • Britain obtained Malacca from the Dutch by treaty in 1824. • Britain now governed major ports of the Strait of Malacca, collectively known as the Strait Settlements. • The British Colonial Office took direct control in 1867.

5. Malaya • When the Suez Canal opened in 1869 European technological superiority swept over SEA. • The Sultanates were ill prepared and powerless to stem the tide of British influence and Chinese migration. • The Chinese established closely knit communities and established important trading cities such as Kuala Lumpor and Ipoh.

6. Malaya • The Chinese & Malays became leading elements in an inadequately integrated sociopolitical structure, a frame work that produced chronic communal friction.

7. Malaya • British attraction grew with the discovery of Malaya’s mineral wealth. • There was concern about the political unrest. • During the 1870s, in a bid to solve political unrest the British employed “British Residents” (advisers). • The first attempts at political intervention were crude and incompetent (the first British resident to Perak was murdered).

8. Malaya • Gradually the British refined their techniques and appointed more able Residents. • Most notable was Sir Frank Swettenham. • Swettenham was appointed the first Resident-General of the new Malay Federation in 1896

9. Malaya • By 1909 the British had pressured Siam into transferring sovereignty over northern Malay states of Kedah, Terengganu, Kelantan and Perlis. Johor accepted a British Resident in 1914. • Britain had now achieved formal or informal colonial control over nine sultanates. • The various states kept their identities but were increasingly integrated to form British Malaya.

10. Sarawak • Sarawak’s first contact with Europeans was under the white Raja Sir James Brooke in 1841. • Brooke was appointed the Raja of Sarawak by the Sultan of Brunei after Brooke aided him in the quashing of a revolt.

11. Sarawak • Brooke inaugurated a century of rule by a remarkable English family. • The Brookes viewed themselves as the protectors of Sarawak’s peoples. • Sarawak eventually acquired the status of an independent state under British protection.

12. Sarawak • Relations with Britain were often strained, because the Brookes incorporated territory at the expense of the declining Brunei Sultanate. • The present day boundaries of Sarawak were achieved by 1906, by then Brunei had also become a British protectorate.

13. Sabah • Sabah (North Borneo) was the last region to be brought under British control. • There was short lived American activity in the 1860s. • By 1846 the British had control of the offshore Labuan Island

14. Sabah • In 1872 William Cowie founded an east coast settlement at Sandakan. • By 1881 the British had obtained rights to much of Sabah and launched the North Borneo Company, which ruled the British protectorate from 1881 to 1941. • The companies 60 year rule established the economic, administrative and political framework of modern Sabah.