Colonialism In Malaysia Essay

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Southeast Asia is well known as a perfect area for plantation agriculture. At one point of time, all of the agriculture products become more important in world trade market that caused European powers to fight each other to claim the lands in this area of the world. During the 1500s to 1600s, colonial powers such as Europeans successfully colonized and take control of the international trade in Southeast Asia. The major Europeans colonizers in Southeast Asia are British, French, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese. Colonization brought mixed results to Southeast Asia countries, including Malaysia. Some of the policies and practices created by the colonial government were negative and also positive in nature. Colonialism and its policies and practices greatly affected Malaysia in many sectors, which involve …show more content…

Under the British colonial rule, there was a large wave of the Chinese and Indian immigrants came to Malaysia that helped change the demographic of this country—Malaysia become a multiracial countries consists of many ethnic groups and practiced variety kinds of religions. These differences of races and ethnicities need a long period of ethnic adjustment and it is also one of the reasons that lead Malaysians to speak many different languages and develop unique Malaysian culture that reflect the ‘mixture’ of all these different ethnicities. However, there are also negative consequences of this. The British in Malaysia practiced a policy that known as ‘the divide and rule’ policy that contribute to the widening gap between those races. Under this policy, the Chinese immigrants were focused to work in the tin mines, Indians in rubber estates, while the Malays worked and stayed in their local villages (Cheong, 2006). In short, they were separated geographically, economically and also

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