The ‘East Coast’ in Malayan Politics: Episodes of Resistance and Integration in Kelantan and Trengganu
Territorial integration and resistance to it by the Malay States of Kelantan and Trengganu are not mutually exclusive categories of response to political modernization. Unlike the peoples of East Malaysia (‘Malaysian Borneo’) the population of eastern Malaya is overwhelmingly Malay in language and culture. Thus resistance to centralizing pressures has rarely had separatist overtones but has tended to express rejection of particular developments in the west coast polity from a standpoint of moral superiority. Resistance is often an expression of intense empathy with the condition of the Malays in other parts of the Peninsula, and should not be interpreted as a failure of national integration. By a curious dialectic, resistance takes on qualities of an integrative process.