[1][2] The Malay Peninsula enjoyed a position of strategic importance, connecting Indochina and the Indonesian archipelago, on the trade routes from China to India.
[3] By the 5th century, networks of these towns had evolved into organised political spheres of influence that contemporary historians describe as mandalas, as each was defined by its centre rather than its borders.
In the 15th century, the centre of power shifted from Sumatra to the Malay Peninsula as the Malacca Sultanate succeeded Srivijaya as the region's dominant influence.
Other significant early migrants are those now classified as Melayu Anak Dagang: non-Malays that migrated to the region and later assimilated into Malay culture (contrasted with Melayu Anak Jati: ethnic Malays that are native to the region):[5] Researcher Anthony Reid draws another conclusion from this history - that Malaysia, like the US and Australia, is best viewed as an immigrant society:[6] In Malaysia of course official ideology requires that 62% of the population be regarded as ‘sons of the soil’, defined in racial terms rather than place of birth.
[citation needed] Adding these new groups to the Arab, Chinese, Indian, and Southeast Asian traders who settled, resulted in the urban complexes of Malacca and Penang becoming extraordinarily plural places, with no dominant community up to the mid-19th Century.
[7] During the first phase, 1900–27, the country witnessed the expansion of the tin and rubber industries, along with construction of supporting infrastructure, and the entry of thousands of migrant workers to labor in these enterprises.
[7] While Chinese, Indian, and Javanese migrants were often fleeing destitution caused by overpopulation, landlessness, or political turmoil, the indigenous people and Malays generally were not subject to these hardships.
[7][8] Under the British colonial administration a divide and rule policy kept the immigrant workers apart from each other, and from the indigenous population, with the local Malays and the Indonesians confined to the rural areas as peasant farmers, the Indians mainly employed as wage labour in the plantations and in the infrastructure construction sectors, while the Chinese worked in the tin mines and in trade and commerce in the urban areas.
[7] Finally, the Malayan Emergency (1948–60) resulted in the introduction of the Internal Security Act (ISA), and a compulsory system of identification cards for all residents aged twelve years and over.