For people out there who does not know the history of true malaya..

The history of the Malaysian area can be seen as four successive phases of outside influence, followed by the final assertion of Malay independence.

The first phase saw the domination of Hindu as well as Buddhist culture imported from India, which reached its peak in the great Srivijaya civilisation based in Sumatra, which ruled most of the Malay world from the 7th to the 14th centuries.
The second phase began with the arrival of Islam, which began in the 10th century, and led to the conversion of most of the Malay-Indonesian world and the breakup of the Srivijayan empire into many smaller sultanates, the most prominent of which was the Melaka (Malacca). Islamic culture has had a profound influence on the Malay peoples, but has also been influenced by them.
The third phase was the intrusion into the area of the European colonial powers: first the Portuguese, who captured Melaka in 1511, then the Dutch and finally the British, who established bases at Penang and Singapore. European domination led to the most fateful event in Malay history – the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824, which drew a frontier between British Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies, which became Indonesia. This arbitrary division of the Malay world has proved permanent.
European domination also led to the fourth phase of foreign influence: the mass immigration of Chinese and Indian workers to meet the needs of the colonial economy created by the British in the Malay Peninsula and North Borneo. The Chinese and Indians posed a profound threat to the Malays, dominating economic life and the professions, and at one time threatening to make the Malays a minority in their own country.

The history, as opposed to the pre-history, of the Malay-speaking world begins with the advent of Indian influence, which dates back to at least the 3rd century BC. Indian traders came to the archipelago both for its extremely abundant forest and maritime products and to trade with merchants from China, who also discovered the Malay world at an early date. Both Hinduism and Buddhism were well established in the Malay Peninsula by the beginning of the 1st century AD, and from there spread across the archipelago. Chinese chronicles of the 5th century AD speak of a great port in the south called Guantoli, which was probably in the Strait of Malacca. In the 7th century, a new port called Shilifoshi is mentioned, and this is believed to be a Chinese rendering of Srivijaya.

The site of Srivijaya has never been found, but it was probably at the mouth of one of the rivers in eastern Sumatra, possibly near Palembang. For 700 years the Maharajahs of Srivijaya ruled a loose-knit maritime empire that controlled the coasts of Sumatra, Peninsular Malaya, and Borneo. Sometimes they also ruled parts of Java,but there were always rival Javanese states which resisted Srivijaya’s hegemony. Srivijaya lived by trade, welcoming annual trading fleets from China and India, and also traders from further afield, including Japanese, Iranians and Arabs. Its greatest enemies were the Siamese, who were always trying to encroach from the north. To secure a powerful ally against these enemies, the maharajahs paid tribute to the Chinese Emperors, but they were never under Chinese control.

From the 10th century the power of Srivijaya began to decline. Never a centralised state, it was apparently weakened by a series of wars with the Javanese, which disrupted trade. In the 11th century a rival power centre arose at Melayu, a port believed to have been located further up the Sumatran coast, possibly in what is now Jambi province. Melayu’s influence is shown by the fact that the name is the origin of the word “Malay.” The power of the Hindu Maharajahs was also undermined by the spread of Islam. Areas which were converted to Islam early, such as Aceh, broke away from Srivijaya’s control. By the late 13th century also, the Siamese kings of Sukhothai had brought most of Malaya under their rule. But the great wealth of the Srivijayan sphere, with its rich resources of aromatic timber, sea products, gold, tin, spices, wax and resins – all highly prized both in China and in the west – kept Srivijaya prosperous until it faded away in the 14th century.