BRITISH COLONISATION

The Japanese invasion of Malaya and British Borneo in late 1941, which culminated in the humiliating British surrender in Singapore two and a half months later, shattered Western colonial supremacy and unleashed the forces of incipent nationalism. Although the British were able to resume their authority in the region after the collapse of Japan in 1945, they faced an entirely new political situation and those circumstances forced them to adopt new policies.

As a result, the Straits Settlements were dissolved. Pulau Pinang and Melaka were joined with the Malay States of the Peninsula to form a new Malayan Union. Singapore become a separate crown colony and so did both Sarawak and British North Borneo in place of the former Brooke and Chartered Company regimes. Labuan was joined to British North Borneo.

These new arrangements met with considerable Malaysian opposition. In Sarawak, a strong campaign developed opposing the crown colony status and culminated in the assassination of the second British governor (1949). But the most serious opposition was in the Malay Peninsula against the Malayan Union which reduced the status of the Malay States virtually to that of a British colony.

Consequently, the British were obliged to abandon the Malayan Union scheme, and in 1948 in its place established the Federation of Malaya, after protacted negotiations with the Malay Rulers, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and other parties concerned. The new Federation consisted of all the nine Malay states of the Peninsula, along with Melaka and Pulau Pinang, united under a Federal Government in Kuala Lumpur headed by a British High Commissioner.