Malaysia is a federation whose territory the South China Sea cuts through. On one side lies the Malay Peninsula, on the other Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo. The sea between them is not a hole. It is the route by which the state reaches itself.
330,803 square kilometres and 35,977,838 people are spread across these two land masses. Kuala Lumpur is the capital on the peninsula. The ministries work in Putrajaya, a federal territory of its own beside it. Malay is the national language, the ringgit the currency. Land neighbours are Thailand in the north of the peninsula, Indonesia and Brunei on Borneo. Since the Malaysia Agreement of 1963, Sabah and Sarawak belong to the federation, and they belong to it on terms that the sea has not negotiated away.
Malaysia at a glance
Capital
Kuala Lumpur
Area
330,803 km²
Population
36 million
Official language(s)
Malay
Currency
Ringgit
Continent
Asia
Distinctive fact
Federation spanning the South China Sea
Two shores, one federation
The peninsula has the Strait of Malacca to the west and the South China Sea to the east, and it ends at Thailand in the north. That is the older centre, with the sultanates whose rulers supply the head of state in rotation. Borneo is the other coast: Sabah and Sarawak share the north of the island with Brunei and with Indonesian Kalimantan to the south. Travel from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching or Kota Kinabalu does not cross a neighbouring country. It crosses the sea of the same state.
Entry from the peninsula into Sabah and Sarawak is subject to a control that these states run themselves. That is not an international border, and it is not a formality. It is the remainder of the terms of 1963: accession did not turn the two territories into suburbs of Kuala Lumpur. Labuan, a federal territory off the coast of Sabah, shows the other movement. The federation also has, on the Borneo side, a patch of its own that is neither Sabah nor Sarawak. The federation is therefore not just two blocks. It has intermediate tones, and all of them lie on the water.
The capital is not the desk
Kuala Lumpur remains the capital, the city in which the federation is visible and in which parliament has its place. Daily government has moved to Putrajaya, a planned city in the federal territory next door. Tell Malaysia only through the skyline of Kuala Lumpur and you tell the address, not the desk. For a state that already shuttles between two land masses, that is not a side issue. Even on the peninsula, name and place of work are not the same.
On the peninsula, Malay, Chinese and Indian societies live side by side. In Sabah and Sarawak, indigenous peoples are not at home in those sultanates. The head of state is elected from the hereditary Malay rulers. Sabah and Sarawak stand outside that rotation. The federation holds them by other means: language, law, budget and the sea that officials fly across.
The sea between the two parts is not a hole in the map. It belongs to the state.
— TerraTally · Countries desk
Malay holds the federation in language
Article 152 of the Federal Constitution makes Malay the national language. English remains a working language of courts, business and universities, without the same constitutional place. On the peninsula that is already a political decision. Across the sea it is a clamp. Sabah and Sarawak bring languages of their own. The federation answers with an official language that is not the only one spoken and is still meant to be the shared one. The ringgit does on the cash register what Malay does on paper: it holds on both shores.
Article 3 names Islam as the religion of the Federation and allows other religions. That sentence of the peninsula has to travel into states whose history is not that of the sultanates. Malaysia works when it holds on both shores without denying the differences. Draw the federation only on the peninsula and you forget Sarawak. Draw it only as a Borneo margin and you forget the capital. Both are Malaysia, and so is the water between them.
Malaysia is governable because the sea between the peninsula and Borneo belongs to the territory and not to the gap. Kuala Lumpur names the place. Putrajaya works. Sabah and Sarawak are the reminder that the federation has two shores.