Federation of Malaya

A patchwork of protected sultanates and settlements that Britain spent a century rationalising and then lost twice in three years. British involvement began with the Straits Settlements - Penang, Malacca and Singapore - and extended inland from 1874 through residents attached to sultans who were required to accept their advice on everything except religion and custom. Four states were federated in 1895 and five more loosely associated later, leaving three overlapping systems at once. Tin and then rubber made the peninsula the most profitable British possession in Asia, and both ran on imported labour: Chinese in the mines and later in commerce, Tamils on the estates, producing a plural society in which Malays were a bare majority in their own country. Japan took the peninsula in ten weeks in 1941 and 1942, and Singapore's surrender with over eighty thousand troops was the largest capitulation in British military history. The postwar Malayan Union, which offered equal citizenship, was abandoned after Malay opposition and replaced by a federation preserving Malay primacy. The Emergency against the largely Chinese communist insurgency ran from 1948 to 1960 and involved resettling half a million people into guarded new villages. Independence came in August 1957. Singapore joined in 1963 and was expelled in 1965. Kuala Lumpur became the federal capital. The Straits Settlements were governed separately from the sultanates until 1946. Rubber was introduced from Brazil via Kew Gardens in the 1870s. The peninsula supplied a large share of the world's tin and rubber by 1940. Malay, Chinese and Tamil schooling ran in parallel systems.

• Type: Polity
• Government: Colonial administration