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Singapore stays in Malaysia

Omi said:
I was doing some reading and wondered if it was possible for Singapore to stay in the Malaysian federation and what the effects would be
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It would likely remain as "Malaya" and not become Malaysia. Singapore was kicked out because of a Malay desire to secure a Malay majority. Malaya would be only plurality Malay if Singapore was part of Malaya. Malaya proceeded to try to absorb North Borneo out of a desire to further secure a muslim majority - but if Singapore is part of Malaya still, they might not get to do that because the non-Malays wouldn't be super interested in that.
 
Very difficult without early PODs that make Singapore less populous/Chinese-dominant, or that Malay nationalism isn't as much of a driving force (no Japanese occupation?). Maybe something like "Communists take over Singapore and Malaya invades it" but that's kinda cheating.

It is also worth noting that OTL the 1948-1963 Federation of Malaya did not include Singapore, and Tunku Abdul Rahman only agreed to absorb Singapore along with Sarawak and Sabah, with what we now know as Eastern Malaysia obviously intended as a counterweight to maintain a Malay majority. If Sarawak/Sabah had refused for some reason or another, they wouldn't have taken in Singapore in the first place.
 
Jackson Lennock said:
Singapore was kicked out because of a Malay desire to secure a Malay majority.
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IIRC the Kingdom of Sarawak didn't become majority Malay until well after WWII, I was going to suggest it remaining independent as a way of tilting the demographics but the thread linked to suggests that could make things worse.
 
I would imagine that eventually TTL Malaysia would pretty much become a mega-Singapore, with ethnic-Malay nationalism slowly fading away.

Sarawak and Sabah probably get absorbed into Indonesia.
 
Simon said:
IIRC the Kingdom of Sarawak didn't become majority Malay until well after WWII, I was going to suggest it remaining independent as a way of tilting the demographics but the thread linked to suggests that could make things worse.
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If Sarawak wasn't majority Malay, was it majority anything? If so, what? Was it plurality anything? If so, what?
 
Indonesia would be pissed at this and launch a full-scale war against Malaya, butterflying away the G30S coup attempt, although its economy would be in shambles and Soekarno increasingly unpopular, especially depending on how the war goes for them.
 
NotDavidSoslan said:
Indonesia would be pissed at this and launch a full-scale war against Malaya, butterflying away the G30S coup attempt, although its economy would be in shambles and Soekarno increasingly unpopular, especially depending on how the war goes for them.
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Why would a change in in Malaysia's Singapore policy make Soekarno any more butthurt than we was, or make him escalate the Konfontasi to any higher, conventional level, that distracts the Army from the Gestapu coup? He already was playing the low-intensity conflict angle to a bust with insurgency in north Borneo, and occasional SOF raids on the Malay peninsula.
 
raharris1973 said:
Why would a change in in Malaysia's Singapore policy make Soekarno any more butthurt than we was, or make him escalate the Konfontasi to any higher, conventional level, that distracts the Army from the Gestapu coup? He already was playing the low-intensity conflict angle to a bust with insurgency in north Borneo, and occasional SOF raids on the Malay peninsula.
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because his goal with the KF was to prevent the formation of an unified Malaysia, and its annexation of Singapore would piss him off even further. Public opinion would also be distracted from his scandals and economic mismanagement.
 
NotDavidSoslan said:
because his goal with the KF was to prevent the formation of an unified Malaysia, and its annexation of Singapore would piss him off even further. Public opinion would also be distracted from his scandals and economic mismanagement.
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His aim wasn't so much to *disunite* Malaysia as to unite the Indonesian/Malay ethnic world under himself in a combined Maphilindo state project, in its most expansive incarnation including all Malaysia (and Singapore and Brunei as historic territories as well) and the Philippines). In the Konfrontasi his first step seemed to aim at getting groups in power who would unify the "lowest hanging fruit", the formerly British protected territories on Borneo of Sarawak and Sabah (which were in the Malaysian federation), who would merge with the Indonesian part of the island, although he had people do raids on mainland Malaya too.
 
The approximate demographic numbers I had for the Kingdom of Sarawak are pre-WWII Malays making up 19% of the population, Iban Dayaks 35%, Chinese 25%; when it joined Malaysia in 1963 the Malay population had dropped to 17%, the Iban Dayaks and Chinese made up 31%, Bidayuh Dayaks and other natives making up 14%. Unfortunately I don't seem to have recorded the source.
 
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