Malay race  

From Johor Bahru Directory

The concept of a Malay race (Malay: Bangsa Melayu) was first proposed by the German scientist, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840).^[1] Athough Blumenbach's theory of five races and with it, the concept of a Malay race, has been rejected by many anthropologists, the term Malay is still often used in this context, and is the basis for Malay identity within the Malaysian nation.

2.   In his 1775 doctoral dissertation entitled De generis humani varietate nativa (On the Natural Varieties of Mankind), Blumenbach outlined four main human races based on skin color, namely Caucasian (white), Ethiopian (black), Native American (red), and Mongolian (yellow). In 1795, he added another race called 'Malay' which he considered to be a subcategory of both the Ethiopian and Mongoloid races. The Malay race were those of a "brown color, from olive and a clear mahogany to the darkest clove or chestnut brown." Blumenbach expanded the term "Malay" to include the inhabitants of the Marianas, the Philippines, the Malukus, Sundas, as well as the Pacific Islands such as the Tahitians.

3.   The view of Malays held by Thomas Stamford Raffles had a significant influence on English-speakers, lasting to the present day. He is probably the most important voice who promoted the idea of a ‘Malay’ race or nation, not limited to the Malay ethnic group, but embracing the peoples of a large but unspecified part of the Southeast Asian archipelago. Raffles formed a vision of Malays as a language-based 'nation', in line with the views of the English Romantic movement at the time. After he mounted an expedition to the former Minangkabau seat of royalty in Pagaruyung, he declared that it was the ‘the source of that power, the origin of that nation, so extensively scattered over the Eastern Archipelago’. In later writings, Raffles moved the Malays from a nation to a race.^[2]

4.   In Malaysia, the early colonial censuses listed separate ethnic groups, such as "Malays, Boyanese, Achinese, Javanese, Bugis, Manilamen and Siamese". The 1891 census merged these ethnic groups into the three racial categories used in modern Malaysia – Chinese, ‘Tamils and other natives of India’, and ‘Malays and other Natives of the Archipelago’. After generations of being classified into these groups, individual identity formed around the concept of bangsa Melayu (Malay race) which became the central and defining position within the Malaysian nation.^[2] For younger generations of people, they saw it as providing a unity and solidarity against the colonial powers, and non-Malay immigrants.

5.   In the Philippines, many Filipinos consider the term "Malay" to refer to the indigenous population of the country as well as the population of neighboring countries like Indonesia and Malaysia. This misconception is due in part to American anthropologists H. Otley Beyer who proposed that the Filipinos were actually Malays who migrated from Malaysia and Indonesia. However, the prevalent consensus among contemporary anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists actually proposes the reverse; namely that the Austronesian people of Malaysia and Indonesia originally migrated south from the Philippines during the prehistoric period.