History Is My Ultimate Subject

This is one of my best subjects i ever knew...

Malaysia is a country in South East Asia whose strategic sea-lane position brought trade and foreign influences that fundamentally influenced its history.Hindu and Buddhist cultures imported from India dominated early Malaysian history. They reached their peak in the Sumatran-based Srivijaya civilisation, whose influence extended through Sumatra, Java, the Malay Peninsula and much of Borneo from the 7th to the 14th centuries.

Although Muslims had passed through Malaysia as early as the 10th century, it was not until the 14th and 15th centuries that Islam first established itself on the Malay Peninsula. The adoption of Islam by the 15th century saw the rise of number sultanates, the most prominent of which was the Melaka (Malacca). Islamic culture has had a profound influence on the Malay people, but has also been influenced by them. The Portuguese were the first European colonial powers to establish themselves in Malaysia, capturing Malacca in 1511, followed by the Dutch. However, it was the British, who after initially establishing bases at Jesselton, Kuching, Penang, and Singapore, ultimately secured their hegemony across the territory that is now Malaysia. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 defined the boundaries between British Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies (which became Indonesia). A fourth phase of foreign influence was immigration of Chinese and Indian workers to meet the needs of the colonial economy created by the British in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo.^[1]

Japanese invasion during World War II ended British domination in Malaysia. The subsequent occupation of Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak from 1942 to 1945 unleashed nationalism. In the Peninsula, the Malayan Communist Party took up arms against the British. A tough military response was needed to end the insurgency and bring about the establishment of an independent, multi-racial Federation of Malaya in 1957. On 31 August 1963, the British territories inNorth Borneo and Singapore were granted independence and formed Malaysia with the Peninsular states on 16 September 1963. Approximately two years later, the Malaysian parliament passed a bill to separate Singapore from the Federation.^[2] A confrontation with Indonesia occurred in the early-1960s. Race riots in 1969 led to the imposition of emergency rule, and a curtailment of political life and civil liberties which has never been fully reversed. Since 1970 the "National Front coalition" headed by United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) has governed Malaysia. Economic growth dramatically increased living standards by the 1990s. This growing prosperity helped minimise political discontent.^{[citation needed]}Stone hand-axes from early hominoids, probably Homo erectus, have been unearthed in Lenggong. They date back 1.83 million years, the oldest evidence of hominid habitation in Southeast Asia.^[3] The earliest evidence of modern human habitation in Malaysia is the 40,000 year old skull excavated from the Niah Caves in Borneo in 1958.^[4] A study of Asian genetics points to the idea that the original humans in Asia came from in Southeast Asia.^[5] The oldest complete skeleton found in Malaysia is 11,000-year old Perak Man unearthed in 1991.^[6] The indigenous groups on the peninsula can be divided into three ethnicities, the Negritos, the Senois, and the proto-Malays.^[7] The first inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula were most probably Negritos.^[8] These Mesolithichunters were probably the ancestors of the Semang, an ethnic Negrito group who have a long history in the Malay Peninsula.^[9]

The Senoi appear to be a composite group, with approximately half of the maternal DNA lineages tracing back to the ancestors of the Semang and about half to later ancestral migrations fromIndochina. Scholars suggest they are descendants of early Austroasiatic-speaking agriculturalists, who brought both their language and their technology to the southern part of the peninsula approximately 4,000 years ago. They united and coalesced with the indigenous population.^[10]

The Proto Malays have a more diverse origin^[11] and had settled in Malaysia by 1000 BC.^[12] Although they show some connections with other inhabitants in Maritime Southeast Asia, some also have an ancestry in Indochina around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago. Anthropologists support the notion that the Proto-Malays originated from what is todayYunnan, China.^[13] This was followed by an early-Holocene dispersal through the Malay Peninsula into the Malay Archipelago.^[14] Around 300 BC, they were pushed inland by the Deutero-Malays, an Iron Age or Bronze Age people descended partly from the Chams of Cambodia and Vietnam. The first group in the peninsula to use metal tools, the Deutero-Malays were the direct ancestors of today's Malaysian Malays, and brought with them advanced farming techniques.^[9] The Malays remained politically fragmented throughout the Malay archipelago, although a common culture and social structure was shared.^[12]