a federation of organizations from the different sultanates or states in British Malaya. The whole position of the monarch began increasingly to be described as at best that of a “symbol” or “cement”, assisting to hold the ‘Malay race’ together. They were a complete contrast to the old kerajaan equation in which subjects were understood to be virtually embodied in ‘the raja’ – defined with reference to him, and living in accordance with the adat (custom) that was conceived as being ‘in his hands’. On the one hand, UMNO leaders tended to give the bangsa a Peninsular focus, and presented themselves as the defenders of its purity. In so doing, they distinguished themselves from their Malay Nationalist Party (MNP) opponents – Dr Burhanuddin al-Helmy and others who, like Ibrahim Yaacob earlier, stressed the cross-Archipelago ‘Melayu Raya’ idea and even expressed a willingness to make the Malay bangsa open to ‘Chinese’ and other immigrants. Having highlighted this distinction between an UMNO and an MNP approach, however, the UMNO leadership also seemed to have admitted and condoned real inclusiveness in their Peninsular-focused bangsa. In 1961 Tunku Abdul Rahman led an attempt to expand the Malayan federation, hoping to incorporate Singapore, Crown Colony of Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei – all the territories formerly under British administration of one form or another. This continued nation building had a distinctly ‘Malay’ aspect. The Malay phrase sometimes used to describe the new ‘Malaysia’ was ‘Melayu Raya’ (‘Greater Malaydom’), which had been used by the radical Malay leader Ibrahim Yaacob and others to refer to the far wider political scheme that would embrace all the territories in both the British and Dutch colonial spheres. In a sense the Tunku was hijacking the phrase for a narrower vision, but one in which the ‘Peninsular Malays’ (or, to be precise, those who had come to identify themselves as ‘Peninsular Malays’) would be Ketuanan Melayu. The establishing of Malaysia in 1963 was a victory for those advocating the ‘narrower’ Peninsular-focused ‘Malay’ bangsa – those who distinguished ‘Malays’ from ‘Javanese’, ‘Bugis’ and others (though at the same time tending to accept these people as recruits to ‘Malay’ identity). To convince both these provinces to agree to join ‘Malaysia’, compromises were made by the Peninsula leaders to placate the ‘non-Malay’ peoples, suspicious of ‘Malay colonialism’. Among other matters, the English language would continue to be the official language; also, the indigenous