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The concept of a Malay race was proposed by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was a Germany physician, physiologist and anthropologist, one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history, whose teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to classification of human races, of which he determined five....
 (1752-1840). Since Blumenbach, many anthropologists have rejected his theory of five races, citing the enormous complexity of classifying races. However, the term Malay is still often used in this context, and it is the basis for Malay identity within the country of Malaysia
Malaysia

Malaysia is a federation that consists of States of Malaysia in Southeast Asia with a total landmass of . The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government....
.

The concept of a "Malay race" differs with that of the Malay ethnic group centred around Malaysia and parts of the Indonesian island of Sumatra
Sumatra

Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the list of islands by area in the world ....
.

is 1775 doctoral dissertation titled De generis humani varietate nativa (On the Natural Varieties of Mankind), Blumenbach outlined four main human races by skin color, namely Caucasian
Caucasian race

The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia....
 (white), Ethiopian
Negroid

Negroid is an adjective derived from the term Negro and refers to a Race of people whose recent ancestors are mostly from sub-Saharan Africa. The concept originated with a now defunct typological method of racial classification, but is still used, in a less rigid or essentialism sense, by many anthropology, especially physical anthropolog...
 (black), Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples....
 (red), and Mongolian (yellow).

By 1795, Blumenbach added another race called 'Malay' which he considered to be a subcategory of both the Ethiopian and Mongoloid races.






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The concept of a Malay race was proposed by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was a Germany physician, physiologist and anthropologist, one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history, whose teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to classification of human races, of which he determined five....
 (1752-1840). Since Blumenbach, many anthropologists have rejected his theory of five races, citing the enormous complexity of classifying races. However, the term Malay is still often used in this context, and it is the basis for Malay identity within the country of Malaysia
Malaysia

Malaysia is a federation that consists of States of Malaysia in Southeast Asia with a total landmass of . The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government....
.

The concept of a "Malay race" differs with that of the Malay ethnic group centred around Malaysia and parts of the Indonesian island of Sumatra
Sumatra

Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the list of islands by area in the world ....
.

Origins

In his 1775 doctoral dissertation titled De generis humani varietate nativa (On the Natural Varieties of Mankind), Blumenbach outlined four main human races by skin color, namely Caucasian
Caucasian race

The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia....
 (white), Ethiopian
Negroid

Negroid is an adjective derived from the term Negro and refers to a Race of people whose recent ancestors are mostly from sub-Saharan Africa. The concept originated with a now defunct typological method of racial classification, but is still used, in a less rigid or essentialism sense, by many anthropology, especially physical anthropolog...
 (black), Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas, their descendants, and many ethnic groups who identify with those peoples....
 (red), and Mongolian (yellow).

By 1795, Blumenbach 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
Mariana Islands

The Mariana Islands are an archipelago made up by the summits of 15 volcanic mountains in the north-western Pacific Ocean between the 12th and 21st parallels north and along the 145th meridian east....
, the Philippines
Philippines

The Philippines, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
, the Malukus
Maluku Islands

The Maluku Islands are an archipelago in Indonesia, and part of the larger Malay Archipelago. They are located on the Australian Plate, lying east of Sulawesi , west of New Guinea, and north of Timor....
, Sundas
Sunda Islands

The Sunda Islands are a group of islands in the western part of Maritime Southeast Asia.They are divided into two groups, with the Greater Sunda group being referred to much less than the Lesser Sunda....
, as well as Pacific Islands such as Tahiti
Tahiti

O Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward Islands group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean....
ans. He considered a Tahitian skull he had received to be the missing link; showing the transition between the "primary" race, the Caucasians, and the "degenerate" race, the Negroids.

Blumenbach writes:

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 the 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 Marianne, 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.


Colonial influences

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 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
Minangkabau

The Minangkabau ethnic group is indigenous to the highlands of West Sumatra, in Indonesia. Their culture is matrilineal, with property and land passing down from mother to daughter, while religious and political affairs are the province of men ....
 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 his later writings he moved the Malays from a nation to a race.

Malaysian context

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’. 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.

After a period of generations being classified in these groups, individual identity formed around the concept of bangsa Melayu (Malay race). For younger generations of people, they saw it as providing a unity and solidarity against the 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.

Philippine context

In the Philippines
Philippines

The Philippines, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
, many Filipino
Filipino people

Filipino people refers to an ethnic group in the Philippines, a country in Southeast Asia. The name Filipino was derived from Las Islas Filipinas , the Spanish language name given to the Philippines in the 16th century, by Spanish explorer Ruy L?pez de Villalobos....
s 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
H. Otley Beyer

Henry Otley Beyer was an United States anthropologist, who spent most of his adult life in the Philippines teaching Filipino people and other scholars about Philippine indigenous culture....
 who proposed that the Filipinos were actually Malays who migrated from Malaysia and Indonesia. This idea was in turn propagated by Filipino historians and is still taught in schools. However, the prevalent consensus among contemporary anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists actually proposes the reverse; namely that the Austronesian people
Austronesian people

Austronesian people are a population group present in Oceania and Southeast Asia who speak, or had ancestors who spoke, one of the Austronesian languages....
 of Malaysia and Indonesia originally migrated south from the Philippines during the prehistoric period.

United States context

In the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
, the racial classifcation "Malay race" was introduced in the early twentieth century into the anti-miscegenation laws
Anti-miscegenation laws

Anti-miscegenation laws, also known as miscegenation laws, were laws that banned interracial marriage and sometimes interracial sex between White people and members of other races....
 of a number of western US states. Anti-miscegenation laws were state law
State law

In the United States, state law is the law of each separate U.S. state, as passed by the State legislature . It exists in parallel, and sometimes in conflict with, United States federal law....
s that prohibited marriage between whites and African-Americans and in some states also other non-whites. After an influx of Filipino immigrants, these existing laws were amended in a number of western states to prohibit marriage between whites and Filipinos, who were designated as members of the Malay race, and a number of Southern states committed to racial segregation
Racial segregation

File:Segregated cinema entrance3.jpgRacial segregation is the separation of different Race s in daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a drinking fountain, using a rest room, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home....
 followed suit. Eventually 9 states (Arizona, California, Georgia, Maryland, Nevada, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming) explicitly prohibited marriage between whites and Filipinos.

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 unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia

'Loving v. Virginia', , was a Landmark decision civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v....
 and therefore repealed.

See also

  • Malay Archipelago
    Malay Archipelago

    The Malay Archipelago and Maritime Southeast Asia are names given to the archipelago located between mainland Southeast Asia and Australia....
  • Malay World
    Malay world

    The concept of the Malay World is based on the idea of a Malay race, and refers to a cultural and linguistic sphere of influence, covering the archipelago of modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the southernmost part of Thailand, the Philippines, Brunei, East Timor and occasionally New Guinea, with an outlier of the Cocos Islands....
  • Maphilindo
    Maphilindo

    Maphilindo was a proposed nonpolitical confederation of those countries.The original plan for a united malay nation was attempted by Wenesclao Vinzons during the Commonwealth government in the Philippines....