The sultanate of Malacca, born in the 15th century, lost its independence in 1511 with the Portuguese occupation, which was replaced in 1641 by the Dutch one. British colonization began in 1786; in 1826 the British crown established the Colony of the Straits (Pinang, Malacca and Singapore). In 1896 the states of Pangkor, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang were united in the Federation of Malay States, under the British protectorate. Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Trengganu they were submitted to the English protectorate in 1906; Johor in 1914. After the Japanese occupation (1942-45), the return of British control met with a widespread anti-colonial ferment and in May 1946 the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) was founded, born from the Malaysian opposition to the introduced Constitution. by the British and on the basis of which, in January 1946, the Malay Union was formed. In 1948 there was a new Constitution and the proclamation of the Malaysian Federation. The Communist Party, ethnically characterized by a strong Chinese component, proclaimed a wave of strikes in the rubber plantations in May 1948. The government responded by proclaiming a state of emergency and banning the Communist Party. From the escalation of the clash, the communist armed struggle that dominated the political life of the country in the following decade began. In 1955 the first political elections were held, won by the anti-communist and nationalist Alliance party; TA Rahman became prime minister. On August 31, 1957, independence within the Commonwealth was proclaimed. In the mid-1950s the government succeeded in defeating the communist guerrillas; the state of emergency remained in effect until 1960.

According to localcollegeexplorer, the integration between the different ethnic groups was the major problem of the new state; the political dominance of the Malay community was in fact matched by the Chinese and Indian economic ones. In 1963, Singapore became part of the federation, which was also extended to include Sabah and Sarawak. Thus was formed the Federation of Malaysia, bitterly opposed by the Philippines and Indonesia, which unleashed a war that lasted two years. In 1965 Singapore was expelled from the federation, while the political dominance of the UMNO was reconfirmed in 1959 and 1964. In 1971 A. Razak replaced Rahman. The Alliance party gave way to a National Front. Razak’s death in 1976 led to the leadership of the government and the Dato Hussein bin Onn party, who had to face the reorganized communist guerrillas and permanent ethnic tensions. The 1970s marked a change in the country’s international relations, first marked by the alliance with Western countries and the closure towards the communist powers.

In 1981, Dato Hussein was replaced by Malaysia Mahathir. In addition to the difficult economic situation, the government had to face the emergence of separatist tendencies from the mid-1980s, especially in Sabah and Sarawak. In the early 1990s, thanks also to the recovery recorded by the economy, the National Front strengthened its position, while within the UMNO the struggle for the succession of Mahathir was accentuated. A worsening of the internal situation was recorded at the end of 1997 as a consequence of the financial crisis that engulfed the whole of Southeast Asia, however in the 1999 legislative elections Mahathir was reconfirmed. In 2001 there were serious ethnic clashes between Malays and Indians, to which the government responded with a series of arrests.

In 2003 Mahathir relinquished power; the new head of the government became Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, also a member of the UMNO. Badawi strengthened his position in the parliamentary elections of March 2004; instead, while retaining the majority in Parliament, he suffered a sharp retreat in those of 2008. In 2009 he retired, leaving his place to Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, who was reconfirmed in office in the legislative elections held in May 2013, where the ruling coalition achieved a narrow victory by obtaining 133 seats out of 222. Accused in 2017 of appropriating public funds,In April 2018, Prime Minister Razak announced the dissolution of the Chambers and the calling of elections to be held within sixty days. The consultations, held in May, recorded, against all odds, the victory of the opposition coalition Alliance party, which defeated the UMNO – in power since 1957 – winning the majority of 222 seats in the lower house of the federal parliament and bringing back to power former Prime Minister Malaysia Mohamad, who took over from Razak, resigning in February 2020, replaced the following month by Interior Minister Malaysia Yassin. In January 2019 Muhammad V of Kelantan, appointed head of state of the country in December 2016, resigned, the first to voluntarily renounce the throne in the history of Malaysia, and in the same month Sultan Tengku Abdullah was crowned. Following disagreements within the ruling coalition, Prime Minister Yassin resigned in August 2021, taking over from the IS Yaakob office of the UNMO.