Malay race

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The New Physiognomy map (1889) printed by the Fowler & Wells Company depicting Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's five human races. The region inhabited by the "Malay race" is shown enclosed in dotted lines and corresponds roughly to the territories of the Austronesian peoples.

The concept of a Malay race was originally proposed by the German physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), and classified as a brown race.[1][2] Malay is a loose term used in the late 19th century and early 20th century to describe the Austronesian peoples.[3][4]

Since Blumenbach, many anthropologists have rejected his theory of

ethnic Malays centered on Malaya and parts of the Malay Archipelago's islands of Sumatra and Borneo
.

History

The linguistic connections between Madagascar, Polynesia and Southeast Asia were recognized early in the colonial era by European authors, particularly the remarkable similarities between Malagasy, Malay, and Polynesian numerals.[5] The first formal publications on these relationships was in 1708 by the Dutch Orientalist Adriaan Reland, who recognized a "common language" from Madagascar to western Polynesia; although the Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman also realized the linguistic links between Madagascar and the Malay Archipelago prior to Reland in 1603.[6]

Tahitian
skull labelled "O-taheitae" represented what he called the "Malay race"

The Spanish

In his 1775 doctoral

degenerative hypothesis", and believed that the Malay race were a transitory form between Caucasians and Ethiopians.[3][8]

Malay variety. Tawny-coloured; hair black, soft, curly, thick and plentiful; head moderately narrowed; forehead slightly swelling; nose full, rather wide, as it were diffuse, end thick; mouth large, upper jaw somewhat prominent with parts of the face when seen in profile, sufficiently prominent and distinct from each other. This last variety includes the islanders of the Pacific Ocean, together with the inhabitants of the Mariannas, the Philippine, the Molucca and the Sunda Islands, and of the Malayan peninsula. I wish to call it the Malay, because the majority of the men of this variety, especially those who inhabit the Indian islands close to the Malacca peninsula, as well as the Sandwich, the Society, and the Friendly Islanders, and also the Malambi of Madagascar down to the inhabitants of Easter Island, use the Malay idiom.

— Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, The anthropological treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, translated by Thomas Bendyshe, 1865.[10]

By the 19th century, however, scientific racism was favoring a classification of Austronesians as being a subset of the "Mongolian" race, as well as polygenism. The Australo-Melanesian populations of Southeast Asia and Melanesia (whom Blumenbach initially classified as a "subrace" of the "Malay" race) were also now being treated as a separate "Ethiopian" race by authors like Georges Cuvier, Conrad Malte-Brun, Julien-Joseph Virey, and René Lesson.[3]

The British naturalist

Native Australians), and the "Pelagian or Oceanic Negroes" (the Melanesians and western Polynesians). Despite this, he acknowledges that "Malayo-Polynesians" and "Pelagian Negroes" had "remarkable characters in common", particularly in terms of language and craniometry.[3][5][7]

In 1899, the Austrian linguist and ethnologist

Colonial influences

The view of Malays held by 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 people of a large yet unspecified part of the South East 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, and in 1809 sent a literary essay on the topic to the Asiatic Society. After he mounted an expedition to the former Minangkabau seat of royalty in the Pagaruyung, he declared it was ‘the source of that power, the origin of that nation, so extensively scattered over the Eastern Archipelago’.[14] In his later writings he moved the Malays from a nation to a race.[15]

Usage

Brunei

In

Brunei Malay, Kedayan, Tutong, Dusun, Belait, Bisaya and Murut
.

Indonesia

Ethnic Malay among other ethnic groups in Indonesia. Ethnic Malay is one of the most widely distributed ethnicities in Indonesia. The Malay realm is described in green and other related sub-ethnicities are rendered in darker or lighter green. Malay ethnic groups are depicted as inhabiting the eastern coast of Sumatra and coastal Kalimantan.

In

Papuans. Hence Indonesian nationalism and identity that manifested afterward was a civic nationalism rather than ethnic nationalism based on Malay race.[16][17] This was expressed by Youth Pledge during 2nd Youth Congress in 1928 with the proclamation of a united motherland of Indonesia, united Indonesia nation or bangsa Indonesia rather than ethnic identities, and advocated the use of local Malay language dialect as Indonesian language
.

The concept of the Malay race as in Malaysia and to some degree, the Philippines, also influenced and might be shared by some Indonesians in the spirit of inclusivity and solidarity, commonly coined as puak Melayu or rumpun Melayu. However, the idea and the degree of 'Malayness' also varies in Indonesia, from covering the vast area of Austronesian people to confining it only within the Jambi area where the name 'Malayu' was first recorded.[18] Today, the common identity that binds Malay people together is their language (with variants of Indonesian language dialects that exist among them), their culture norms, and for some Islam.[19]

Malaysia

In Malaysia, the early colonial censuses listed separate

ethnic groups, such as "Malays, Boyanese, Achinese, Javanese, Bugis, Manilamen (Filipino) 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’. This was based upon the European view at the time that race was a biologically based scientific category. For the 1901 census, the government advised the word "race" should replace "nationality" wherever it occurs.[15][9]

After a period of generations of being classified in these groups, individual identities formed around the concept of bangsa Melayu (Malay race). For younger generations of people, they saw it as providing unity and solidarity against colonial powers, and non-Malay immigrants. The Malaysian nation was later formed with the bangsa Melayu having the central and defining position within the country.[15]

Philippines

In the

Austronesian peoples of the Sunda Islands, Madagascar, and Oceania had originally migrated south from the Philippines during the prehistoric period from an origin in Taiwan.[20][21]

Although Beyer's theory is now completely rejected by modern anthropologists, the misconception remains and most Filipinos still conflate

ethnic Malays of other Southeast Asian countries. The academic term "Austronesian" remains unfamiliar to most Filipinos.[22][23][24][25]

Singapore

United States

In the

Mongolians" also prohibited marriage between whites and Filipinos. A 1933 Supreme Court of California case Roldan v. Los Angeles County concluded that such marriages were legal as Filipinos were members of the "Malay race" and were not enumerated in the list of races for whom marriage with whites was illegal. The California legislature soon after amended the laws to extend the prohibition against interracial marriage to whites and Filipinos.[27][28]

Many anti-miscegenation laws were gradually repealed after the Second World War, starting with California in 1948. In 1967, all remaining bans against interracial marriage were judged to be

and therefore repealed.

See also

References

  1. ^ University of Pennsylvania
  2. ^ "Johann Frederich Blumenbach". Retrieved 18 February 2018.
  3. ^ .
  4. Austronesians
    .
  5. ^ from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  6. .
  7. ^ .
  8. ^ .
  9. ^ a b "Pseudo-theory on origins of the 'Malay race'". Aliran. 19 January 2014. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  10. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-09-10. Retrieved 2006-09-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  11. . p. 22000.
  12. from the original on 2 April 2020. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
  13. (PDF) from the original on 30 December 2019. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
  14. ^ Lady Sophia Raffles (1830). Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. John Murray. p. 360.
  15. ^
    S2CID 38870744
    .
  16. . Retrieved 15 April 2022.
  17. . Retrieved 15 June 2021.
  18. ^ "Redefinisi Melayu: Upaya Menjembatani Perbedaan Kemelayuan Dua Bangsa Serumpun". Archived from the original on 2017-08-23. Retrieved 2012-01-26.
  19. ^ Melayu Online (2010-08-07). "Melayu Online.com's Theoretical Framework". Melayu Online. Archived from the original on 2012-10-21. Retrieved 2012-02-04.
  20. S2CID 29838345
    .
  21. .
  22. ^ Acabado, Stephen; Martin, Marlon; Lauer, Adam J. (2014). "Rethinking history, conserving heritage: archaeology and community engagement in Ifugao, Philippines" (PDF). The SAA Archaeological Record: 13–17.
  23. ^ Lasco, Gideon (28 December 2017). "Waves of migration". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
  24. ^ Palatino, Mong (27 February 2013). "Are Filipinos Malays?". The Diplomat. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
  25. .
  26. ^ Pascoe, Peggy, "Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of "Race" in Twentieth Century America, The Journal of American History, Vol. 83, June 1996, p. 49

Further reading