. One etymological story claims the word might have been derived from the
colloquial expression "mad sailor". The first encounter many
Malays had with
white foreigners were dignified and
upper-class colonial officials, leading the Malays to both
admire these foreigners and assume all white people behaved as such. When
warships began to put into
Malayan ports to collect supplies,
sailors were given leave to disembark their ships and spend time in port. These were typically
working-class men who enjoyed getting
drunk and
brawling amongst themselves. These behaviours shocked the Malays, who swiftly inquired to the colonial officials concerning the puzzling behaviour of the sailors. The colonial officials, not wishing the Malay image of them to dissipate, dismissed them as mere "mad sailors". It could also be from the words 'mat salih', which meant 'weird person'. on the 1st February 1900. During the engagement, Mat Salleh, who for six years had led a rebellion against the Chartered Company administration, met his death.'' In the Malaysian state of
Sabah, the term
Mat Salleh was an utterance of defiance by Sabahans to remind the
Orang Puteh (White People) of the
Mat Salleh Rebellion against the military forces of the
British North Borneo Chartered Company from 1895 to circa 1905. The enigmatic led the 1897 attack on the Company's fort on Gaya island burning it to the ground. After 6 years of insurrection, his fort at Tambunan was shelled by artillery and destroyed in 1900 and he died by machine-gun fire. About 1,000 rebels died in that battle. According to Hoogervorst (2015), it is more likely that the term is a reference to a
Perak aristocrat of the same name who lived in the late 19th century. The Mat Salleh in question was one of the first Malay rulers to embrace and work for the British regime at the time. ==References==