This article attempts to bring together recent literature about the typology of nationalism, with the ways in which ‘Malay’ or ‘Melayu’ have been used as the core of an ethnie or a nationalist project. Different meanings of ‘Melayu’ were salient at different times in Sumatra, in the Peninsula and in the eastern Archipelago, and the Dutch and British used their respective translations of it very differently. Modern ethno-nationalist projects in Malaysia and Brunei made ‘Melayu’ a contested and often divisive concept, whereas its translation into the hitherto empty term ‘Indonesia’ might have provided an easier basis for territorial, or even ultimately civic, nationalism in that country.

Based on linguistic, archaeological, and historical evidence, this essay describes the environment that produced the culture associated with the ‘Melayu’, or the Malays. It also argues that Melayu ethnicity was never predetermined but was contested on both sides of the Straits of Melaka.

In the eighteenth century the descendants of a variety of groups, including Minangkabaus, formed a new Malay state known as Siak. Through an examination of a traditional text, Hikayat Siak, a better understanding of how Malay identity expanded beyond the polity of Johor–Melaka, and was understood, is provided. A key factor in this transformation is how a prince, Raja Ismail, developed a Malay identity through raiding and violence.

The descendants of Bugis mercenary forces that liberated Riau from east Sumatran invaders became an integral part of the local Malay community by the mid-nineteenth century. At that time Raja Ali Haji and Haji Ibrahim, two Malay authors of Bugis descent, wrote various tracts to legitimise their presence in Riau and to facilitate Bugis integration into the Malay community, but may have led to continuing divisions along ethnic lines in later years.

This article is a critique of ethnicity theories based on essentialism – the idea that ethnic traits are innate (essences) both in the individual and the ‘ethnie’ as a social group – which have been adopted, wittingly or unwittingly, by historians in mainstream Malaysian historiography in their effort to explain the formation of ‘Malay-Malayness’ as a social identity. It proposes instead that Malay ethnicity is not innate but rather learned or constructed, and Malay-Malayness has been created as a result of intersecting historical, cultural and social factors at a particular moment in a culture's life and history. Indeed, Malay-Malayness has been constructed by a colonial historiography and subsequently adopted uncritically by most historians in postcolonial Malaysia, both Malays and non-Malays.

This article consists of two parts. First, some of the presuppositions that have moulded the dominant view of and approach to Indonesian literature are examined and contrasted with certain facts in the literary life of modern Indonesia. This results in the proposing of a ‘project’ in which this view and approach will have changed fundamentally. The biological species of the mycelium is used as a metaphor to reflect this change. The second part of the article is a case study that suggests how in a concrete way the Indonesian mycelium of literatures in Malay might be approached.

Through a discussion of language use in Kalimantan Barat (Western Borneo) a better understanding of cultural and sociolinguistic phenomena that are relevant to any discussion of Malay identity can be achieved. In this complex setting, the colonial nomenclature of Malay and Dayak, though widely adopted by the people of Kalimantan, does not adequately represent the intricacy and the fluidity of social relationships and identities. Colonial knowledge matches neither the results of linguistic research nor what the Malays and Dayaks know about themselves, their languages and their identities.

Extensive trade networks and Islam shaped Malay identity. The Dutch conquest of Makassar (1666-69) compelled the Malays there to redefine themselves, mastering new trade routes, political arenas and social alliances. During the eighteenth century they both evaded and exploited ethnic classification, as their enforced focus on regional commerce and integration into port society encouraged localisation.

This article situates historical struggles for supremacy in early modern Makassar within a framework of intrafamily rivalry in which cooperation and competition coexisted. Through a reading of two texts, it examines the connections between resistance and emulation in a society that viewed social and political relationships within the structuring context of kinship. These contradictory impulses produced tensions fostering cycles of alliance and rivalry characteristic of centre–periphery dynamics in South Sulawesi.

New Indonesian decentralisation policies have generated strong localisation movements which recall regional history. During the Soeharto years history was invoked as part of an homogenising nationalism. With recent changes in the city of Makassar that process is being reversed to strengthen local participation in redefined national structures.