British Malaya, Burma and the Plural Society

Britain expanded in Southeast Asia from bases along the Strait of Malacca. Singapore, founded as a British trading post in 1819, joined Penang and Malacca in the Straits Settlements in 1826. Malay states inland were rich in tin, and conflicts among Malay chiefs and Chinese mining groups gave Britain a reason to intervene. Under the Pangkor Treaty of 1874, the sultan of Perak accepted a British Resident whose advice had to be followed on everything except Malay religion and custom, a model later applied to other states.

In 1895 four states formed the Federated Malay States, and tin mining and, after 1900, rubber plantations boomed, worked largely by migrants from southern China and southern India. The result was what scholars call a plural society, in which different communities lived side by side but in separate economic roles. Meanwhile, Britain completed its conquest of Burma in 1885–86 and governed it as a province of British India.