Malaysian legal history Malaysian legal history Malaysian legal history has been determined by events spanning a period of some six hundred years. Of these, three major periods were largely responsible for shaping the current Malaysian system. The first was the founding of the Melaka Sultanate at the beginning of the 15th century; second was the spread of Islam in the indigenous culture; and finally, and perhaps the most significant in modern Malaysia, was British colonial rule which brought with it constitutional government and the common law system. During the realm of the Sultanate, Melaka was an important trading port and the maintenance of
Stick-fighting The French system of "la canne" is still practiced as a competitive sport. A self-defense adaptation of "la canne" developed by Swiss master-at-arms Pierre Vigny in the early 1900s has been revived as part of the curriculum of bartitsu. Nivkh people from Sakhalin used long sticks called "z'ar t'ar" for sacralized ritual fighting. In the US during the early years of the 1900s, fencer and self-defense specialist A. C. Cunningham developed a unique system of stick-fighting using a walking stick or umbrella, which he recorded in his book "The Cane as a Weapon". Singlestick was developed as a method of