Sabah - Introduction

Sabah is one of the states that make up East Malaysia, the other being Sarawak. It is divided into various residencies, an administrative concept passed down from the British North Borneo era. They are Interior Residency which is around the south western areas that include towns like Tenom and Keningau, the West Coast Residency which is where capital town Kota Kinabalu is located, the Sandakan Residency at the east where Sandakan is located. The Kudat Residency is the northern corridor of the state where Kudat is the main city there and Tawau Residency is located in around south east. Major towns here are Semporna, Tawau and Lahad Datu.

Sabah is popular and is known to be one of the most culturally rich states in the country. It consists more than 2.5 million people of which is divided among various races like Malay, Chinese, Indian while the native groups here are predominantly Kadazandusun while others like Bajau, Murud and Bisaya make up portions of the population here. Among the chinese however, most of them are from the Hakka dialect.

Most of the Chinese who migrated to the state during the British era, belong to the Hakka dialect group although there are also large numbers of Cantonese especially in Sandakan. There are also many Filipinos and Indonesians, many of whom entered Sabah illegally and later became naturalised under a controversial state policy.

It was previously known as North Borneo prior to joining Malaysia in 1963. Ruled by the Brunei monarchy way back in the 16th century, it became part of the Sulu administration before the Europeans came by and started making claims. After that, the Japanese occupied North Borneo during the Second World War which observed the Death Marches by British event. Sandakan, which was the capital then was replaced with Jesselton which later was changed to be called Kota Kinabalu.

In 1963, Sarawak, Malaya (the former name for Malaysia), and Singapore formed the Federation of Malaysia and it was then that the name of the state was changed to Sabah.