ABSTRACT
For more than twenty years British influence on the Malays and on their countries was centred in the Residents, who “gradually built up the system of administration which seemed best suited to the peculiar circumstances, without much more than routine references to the Governor”. To British skill and initiative, too, are due modem developments in mining and the entire Para rubber industry, the Hevea seeds having been introduced into Malaya from Brazil via Kew. The Malays are on the whole more courteous, the British undoubtedly more energetic; but differences of climate and environment are partly accountable for these. In most of them British protection and control was asked for by the Malays themselves; where there was any fighting it was with a turbulent faction only who rebelled against their own lawful raja. The sultans remained supreme in religious matters, and these fill an important place in Malay life.
