Group of islands in southeast Asia, between the Indian and Pacific oceans
The Malay Archipelago (Indonesian and Malay: Kepulauan Melayu/Nusantara, Tagalog: Kapuluang Malay, Visayan: Kapupud-ang Malay) is the archipelago between mainland Southeast Asia and Australia. It has also been called the Malay World, Indo-Australian Archipelago, East Indies, Nusantara, Spices Archipelago and other names over time. The name was taken from the 19th-century European concept of a Malay race, later based on the distribution of Austronesian languages.
- Brunei - Territory in the island of Borneo in southeast Asia, ruled since 1984 by the Negara Brunei Darussalam
- Indonesia - Territory in southeast Asia, ruled since 1959 by the Republik Indonesia
- Malaysia - Territory in southeast Asia, ruled since 1963 by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong and the Prime Minister of Malaysia
- Philippines - Archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean, ruled since 1946 by the Republika ng Pilipinas
- Singapore - Islands in southeast Asia, ruled since 1965 by the Xīnjiāpō Gònghéguó/Republic of Singapore
The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Malay Archipelago" as of 9 Nov 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.