IGCSE History

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The struggle for control over Malaya

While the State of Emergency was in force, the British began to prepare Malaya for independence. The first elections were held in 1955 and resulted in a victory for the alliance of the United Malays National Organisation and the Malay Chinese Association. Temngku Abdul Rahman became the first Chief Minister of Malaya. Negotiations for independence began in 1955 and resulted in a constitution being drawn up in 1957. The Merdeka Constitution set up a parliament with two chambers and gave special privileges to Malays.

In May 1961, Tunku Abdul Rahman proposed the merger of Malaya, Singapore, Brunei, Sabah and Sarawak to form Malaysia. One of his reasons for doing this was to counter growing communist influence in Singapore. He also wanted to increase the proportion of Malays in the new country and to bring independence to the territories at the earliest opportunity. He also believed that Malaysia would then become one of the dominant economic powers in South East Asia.

The Singapore government welcomed the Malayan proposal.  In 1961, Singapore had been promised independence by Britain but a date had not as yet been fixed. The Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, realised that if Singapore joined Malaysia it would become independent of Britain and so campaigned to persuade the people of Singapore to vote in favour. In September 1962 a referendum was held and 70% voted in favour of membership.

Brunei at first also appeared to be willing to join Malaysia, but at the last moment the Sultan of Brunei decided to withdraw. He objected to the amount of tax that Brunei would have to pay on its income from oil and he was also unhappy with the position that he was offered in the new government.

Sabah and Sarawak were at first unhappy with the proposal because non-Malays feared that the new state would be dominated by Malays. They would also be only two states out of a total of eleven and would therefore have little influence on the government. The objections were overcome when Britain set up the Cobbold Commission to produce a constitution for Malaysia. When Malaysia came into existence on 16 September 1963, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak were given special powers relating to education and immigration.

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