Malaysia's Postcolonial Problem Is Not Ancient History

There is a version of Malaysian history that gets taught in schools, repeated in official ceremonies, and printed in textbooks. In that version, independence happened on 31 August 1957, Malaysia is one nation that formed naturally, and the country has been moving forward ever since.

That version leaves out quite a lot.

What postcolonialism actually means here

Postcolonialism is not just about the end of direct colonial rule. It is about what comes after — the new forms of domination that replace the old ones, often dressed up in the language of national unity or development.

Neocolonialism is the term for this: control exercised through economic, political, or cultural power rather than soldiers and governors. You do not need to formally colonise a place if you control its resources, dominate its institutions, and shape what its people are taught about their own history.

In Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak are the clearest case of this dynamic.

The date that keeps getting erased

Malaysia as it exists today was formed on 16 September 1963 — a federation of four equal partners: Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore. That is what the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) established. Not a takeover. A union of equals.

Singapore left in 1965. The remaining three were supposed to continue as partners under the original terms.

What happened instead was gradual. The official curriculum shifted to presenting 31 August 1957 — Malayan independence — as the founding date of Malaysia itself. 16 September only started being marked as Hari Malaysia in 2010, and even then mainly in Sabah and Sarawak, where people remember what the date actually means.

This is not a minor historical detail. When you erase the 1963 agreement from the national story, you erase the basis on which Sabah and Sarawak joined. You replace equal partnership with the narrative that they were always just states under Peninsular authority.

The oil numbers

The economic picture is straightforward and worth stating plainly.

Sabah and Sarawak together supply 68% of Malaysia's oil and 74% of its gas. Sarawak alone hosts the MLNG Bintulu complex, one of the largest LNG facilities in the world, contributing over 30% of PETRONAS's 2023 earnings — roughly RM103 billion.

PETRONAS's total 2023 revenue was RM343.6 billion. The estimated combined contribution from Sabah and Sarawak: approximately RM246 billion, or about 71.6% of the total.

What do the two states receive back?

Under the Petroleum Development Act 1974, petroleum royalties to producing states are capped at 5%. That works out to roughly RM5 billion each — a fraction of what their resources generate.

The gap between contribution and return is not an accounting anomaly. It is a policy choice, locked in by legislation passed by a parliament where over two-thirds of seats are held by Peninsular representatives.

How the constitutional ground shifted

The 1976 Constitution amendment reclassified Sabah and Sarawak from "equal partners" to "states" under federal authority. That one change had significant consequences — it reduced their constitutional autonomy and gave the federal government a stronger legal basis for centralised control over resources and governance.

Combined with Singapore's exit in 1965 — which removed a bloc that had previously balanced Borneo representation — the result was a steady consolidation of Peninsular, Malay-centric dominance over federal policy.

This process is sometimes called Malayisation: aligning national identity, institutions, and resource distribution with the interests of the Peninsular majority, at the expense of the distinct peoples and agreements that made Malaysia possible in the first place.

Why this matters now

None of this is settled history. MA63 is still a live legal and political question. The royalty dispute is ongoing. The curriculum debate continues. Indigenous land rights in Sabah and Sarawak — connected to the same structures of federal control — remain deeply contested.

The argument here is not that Malaysia was wrong to form. It is that the terms of formation matter, and those terms have been systematically obscured and undermined since 1963.

Understanding this is not about grievance for its own sake. It is about being clear-eyed about how power actually works — and what a more honest, more equitable federal relationship would have to look like.

Notes compiled from coursework materials on postcolonial theory and Malaysian political history.