Reflections | How Malaysia’s unusual creation still affects it today, and China’s idea of doing similar
Malaysia was born as a federation in 1963, with some states considered ‘special’. China also once toyed with federal ideals
While the file’s contents have been known and studied for some years, a new book and exhibition are generating interest and raising questions about the popular narrative that Singapore was unilaterally “kicked out” of Malaysia.
The creation of Malaysia 62 years ago, in 1963, was unusual. The new nation was a federation, but unlike Australia, Canada and the United States, it was not a straightforward arrangement of semi-autonomous states or provinces under a federal government.
Malaysia was formed by combining four territories: Malaya (itself a collection of 11 states in the Malay Peninsula), the island of Singapore at its southern tip, British North Borneo (renamed Sabah) and Sarawak. The latter two are located some 640km (400 miles) across the South China Sea on the northern third of the island of Borneo.
While Singapore had been historically, culturally and administratively a part of the Malay states in the peninsula for at least seven centuries, only formally hived off by the British in 1946 as a separate crown colony, Sabah and Sarawak’s ties with the peninsula were more tenuous.
What the four territories had in common, then, was that they had all been British possessions in Southeast Asia in one form or another. Brunei, another British-controlled territory on Borneo, was invited to join Malaysia, but it declined.