Kota Kinabalu
(2000 est. pop. 354,000). Kota Kinabalu ("fort of Kinabalu," formerly Jesselton) is a city on the northwest coast of Borneo Island; it lies between rain forest, mountains, and offshore coral reefs that are a national park. The city takes its name from the nearby Mount Kinabalu, at 4,101 meters the highest peak in the Malay Archipelago; Kinabalu means "sacred place of the dead," and the inhabitants of the region regard the heavily forested mountain as a holy site.
An important commercial, educational, and cultural center in eastern Malaysia, Kota Kinabalu is the capital of the state of Sabah, the second-largest state of the Federation of Malaysia. It is situated 1,600 kilometers east of Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, on the coast of the South China Sea.
In the nineteenth century, Kota Kinabalu was a small, sleepy town until it was destroyed by anti-British rebels led by Mat Salleh in 1897. In 1899, the British North Borneo Company established a colonial settlement and a deepwater seaport, naming it Jesselton, after Sir Charles Jessel, then a director of the British North Borneo Company. During World War II, the city was occupied by Japanese troops, but by the end of the war it was in ruins due to extensive Allied bombing.
In 1946, Jesselton replaced Sandakan as the capital of what then was British North Borneo, and in 1968 it was renamed Kota Kinabalu. Between the 1960s and 1990s, Kota Kinabalu grew significantly and became an important commercial center in Sabah state, with well-developed agriculture, furniture manufacturing, wood processing, and lately tourism. Kota Kinabalu has an international airport, which was recently modernized, and is connected with the rest of Borneo Island through a well-maintained network of highways and railroads.
Further Reading
Department of Statistics, Malaysia. (2001) "Official Website." Retrieved 3 April 2002 from: http://www.statistics.gov.my.
Kaur, Amarjit. (1998) Economic Change in East Malaysia: Sabah and Sarawak since 1850. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Leong, Cecilia. (1982) Sabah, the First 100 Years. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Pecetakan Nan Yang Muda.
Lucas Robert E. B., and Donald Verry. (1999) Restructuring the Malaysian Economy: Development and Human Resources. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave.
Office of the Prime Minister of Malaysia. (2000) "Government of Malaysia." Retrieved 3 April 2002 from: http://www.smpke.jpm.my/.
Roff, Margaret Clark. (1974) The Politics of Belonging: Political Change in Sabah and Sarawak. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and New York: Oxford University Press.
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