Insular Southeast Asia - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 449

Chapter 16

Insular Southeast Asia

“There is not one state truly alive if it is
not as if a cauldron burns and boils
in its representative body,and if there
is no clash of convictions in it. ”

S UKARNO (1970)

Welcome to the peninsular and island realm of

rived from the Sungei Melayu (Melayu River) in
Sumatra. Then there is the possibility that it came
from a Tamil word malai , meaning hill.
The geographer Ptolemy called the Malay
Peninsula Aurea Chersonesus , or “The Golden
Chersonese.” This was the fabled land of gold.
During the Portuguese and Dutch colonial pe-
riods, and prior to the British colonial period, the
whole peninsula was labeled Malacca. There was
very little mapping of the peninsula until the early
nineteenth century . As you will read shortly , many
name changes would occur before reaching the
name “Malaysia.”

Southeast Asia (see Figure 15-1). With six nations
including Malaysia, the Sultanate of Brunei, Singapore,
Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and the Philippines, this is one
of Asia' s most complex regions. Like the rest of Southeast
Asia, the region' is history is bound up with ocean interac-
tions, foreign intervention, and struggles for identity in
the modern world. In this chapter, starting with
Malaysia, you will read some of the most intriguing stories
of geographic interrelationships in the world today .

Malaysia 2020

The course of Malaysia' s history has been influenced by
its strategic position, which made it a natural meeting
place for traders from both east and west. The lush trop-
ical forests and abundance of water sustained numerous
small, self-supporting communities. However, unlike
mainland Southeast Asia, the presence of mountains and
the absence of broad plains precluded the development
of elaborate systems of water control so fundamental to
mainland societies. Sea trade bred contacts from the out-
side, and this was the foundation of Malaysia' s history .

EARLY SETTLEMENT
The earliest of the current inhabitants of Malaysia are the
Orang Asli , meaning “Original People,” who inhabited
the Malay peninsula (Figure 16-1). Other groups include
the Dayak and Penan of Sarawak and the Rungus of
Sabah, people whose nomadic way of life has been al-
most completely destroyed in the wake of development.
The next arrivals were the Malays, the Proto-Malays
establishing themselves around 1000 BC. These were fol-
lowed by other immigrants, including the Deutero-
Malays, streaming down the peninsula from mainland
regions, including China. Many migrated even further to
the island realms of Indonesia and elsewhere. The penin-
sular Malays had their closest links with the Malays of

Whence “Malay”?

Many Malay areas were colonized by Sumatrans
long ago. It is conceivable that the word Melayu de-

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