Many of us are not aware of how much of our history from the British colonial days is alive with us today beyond the legacy of colonial buildings. Take Malaysian number plates for instance: Have you ever wondered why Perak number plates are A and those in Selangor are B and so on half? No, it is very unlikely the first car was registered in Ipoh - more likely Singapore, Penang and Kuala Lumpur would have reached the critical mass of cars earlier than Ipoh that would have made motor registration a necessity. And no, it was not in order of which state had the most car because Singapore would have topped the list and it would have implied underdeveloped Kelantan had more cars than Penang. (yes, I bring Singapore into this discussion, because in those days, the British saw Singapore as part of British Malaya)
Well the story goes like this: if you classify all the states of Peninsular Malaysia according to their colonial status, you get three columns:
Straits Settlements where you have Penang, Singapore and Melaka. Straits Settlements are British colonies, ruled directly from Britain.
Federated Malay States which, if you order them according to when they came up under British residency system: Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang. Malay States are nominally sovereign states with their own sultans, 'reliant' on British advisers, called residents, to rule under British protection, with the British being fully responsible for defence and foreign affairs. Four of these nine states shared a central civil service administration in Kuala Lumpur and thus became known as the Federated Malay States and were consequently generally more developed than the other Malay States
Unfederated Malay States which came under British residency system in two tranches: Johor was first followed by all the northern states with the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1910. Since the northern states all came in at the same time, they were arranged in order of size. So, the order of the Unfederated Malay States were: .Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu and Perlis. These are the Malay States which retained its own separate civil service and tend to be less developed, except for Johor where its Anglophile but independent-minded sultan was able to attract more development funds and also benefited from its links to the commercial port of Singapore.
So, when the Malayan motor number plates were centrally reorganised by the British Military Administration, which took over from the Japanese occupation forces in 1945, they followed the above triple classification of the states of Malaya. A single entity governing the entire peninsular did not yet exist until 1946 under the short-lived Malayan Union. Prior to 1945, each state had its own system of number plates creating a confusion when long distance motoring became common place.
The British colonies of the Straits Settlements start off as they got first call on the initials when it comes to assigning number plates. Penang got P, Singapore got S, and Malacca got M. So far, pretty neat and tidy.
Next for priority would be the Federated Malay States. Perak should be getting P but that is already taken by Penang. So, Perak got A. Selangor is next but as S already taken by Singapore so Selangor got B. Negeri Sembilan got its own initial N because no one else has taken it but Pahang wasn't going to get P which is already taken, so Pahang got C.
Finally on to the Unfederated Malay states. Johor and Kedah got J and K all to themselves respectively because no one else had them. Kelantan coming next had to take D because K was already taken. Terengganu got its own initial T while little Perlis made do with R.
So this is the story of how the numberplates in Malaysia get assigned in the Peninsula. Sabah and Sarawak have totally different systems in their respective states because at the time when number plates were assigned, they were separate entities. Indeed Sarawak was a nominally independent country just about to become a British colony, but that is a separate but very interesting story in its own right. Sabahan and Sarawakian number plates start with S and Q respectively followed by letters denoting the districts.
Friday or Sunday weekends
Which weekend applies in each state also had its origin in the British colonial classifications. Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States had Sunday weekends while the Unfederated Malay States had Friday weekends. All the way until today. That's just about it. It's not to do with the proportion of the state's population who is Muslim as that would not explain why Johor (Unfederated Malay State) with its lower proportion of Muslims than Pahang (Federated Malay States) apply a Friday weekend whereas Pahang, with its higher proportion of Muslims have a Sunday weekend.
Incidentally, Johor did move to a Sunday weekend during Muyhiddin's tenure as Menteri Besar to align with Kuala Lumpur and Singapore but eventually moved back to a Friday weekend via a royal decree from its independently minded sultan. Why Johor is so independent-minded is another story.
The next article discussed the origins, impetus and execution of Migration into Malaya.
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