Kuala Lumpur History

Kuala Lumpur came into being in the late 1860s when a group of 87 Chinese miners who were in search of tin landed at the meeting point of the Klang and Gombak rivers and imaginatively named the place Kuala Lumpur - 'Muddy Convergence'. Strategically commanding both river valleys, the community flourished as a tin-collecting center despite its malarial jungle location.

Chaos happen as they forming factions within themselves which wrestled for this precious material. In 1868, the headmen of the local clans elected a man named Yap ah Loy as "Kapitan China," or leader of the Chinese community. And he became known as the founder of KL.

By the 1880s Kuala Lumpur became increasingly upmarket and residential and the general feelings of prosperity and self-satisfaction were rewarded by the transferal of the central government to Kuala Lumpur from Klang.

When the Malaysian peninsula came under British rule in 1913, its economy prospered and its Indian and Chinese immigrant populations increased significantly. However this boom was drastically reversed by the onset of WWII and the Japanese invasion of British Malaya. When the Japanese were finally defeated, the British temporarily returned to Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia finally declared its independence in 1957 in KL's Dataran Merdeka (Freedom Square). Kuala Lumpur became the capital of the independent Federation of Malaya in 1957 and of Malaysia in 1963. The city officially became the independent Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur when it was ceded by the sultan of Selangor state in 1974.

The last 10 years have seen Kuala Lumpur undergo phenomenal growth, with a population explosion of almost 50 percent, not to mention development on a monumental scale. The world's tallest buildings, the Petronas Twin Towers, now rise above the city of 2 million.

Malaysia was gripped by the Asian economic crisis which in 1997. This crash was the first significant glitch in the otherwise bullish Malaysian economy since WWII. The staging of the Commonwealth Games in 1998 was seen as a feather in Malaysia's cap, and helped restore some national confidence.

Today KL is not only Malaysia's political and commercial capital, but also its most populous and prosperous city.

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