Malay nationalism (Malay: Semangat Kebangsaan Melayu, Jawi: سماڠت كبڠساءن ملايو‎) refers to the nationalism that focused overwhelmingly on the Malay anticolonial struggle, motivated by the nationalist ideal of creating a Bangsa Melayu ("Malay nation"). Its central objectives were the advancement and protection of Malayness: religion (Islam), language (Malay), and royalty (Malay rulers). Such pre-occupation is a direct response to the European colonial presence and the influx of a foreign migrant population in Malaya since the mid-nineteenth century.

Malay nationalism has its roots in the end of the 19th century, but did not exist as a united and organised political movement. The concept of ketuanan Melayu (Malay hegemony) was largely irrelevant at the time, as the Chinese and Indians, who formed almost half of the population, did not see themselves as citizens of Malaya. A report by the British Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in the early 1930s found that "the number of non-Malays who have adopted Malaya as their home is only a very small proportion of the whole population".

The rise of Malay nationalism was largely caused by three nationalist factions: the radicals distinguishable into the Malay left and the Islamic group which were both opposed to the conservative elites. The Malay leftists were represented by Kesatuan Melayu Muda, formed in 1938 by a group of Malay intelligentsia primarily educated in Sultan Idris Training College, with an ideal of Greater Indonesia. In 1945, they reorganised themselves into a political party known as Partai Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM). The Islamists were originally represented by Kaum Muda consisted of Middle Eastern–educated scholars (especially from Egypt) influenced by social reformist and Pan-Islamic thought. The first Islamic political party was Parti Orang Muslimin Malaya (Hizbul Muslimin) formed in March 1948, later succeeded by Pan-Malayan Islamic Party in 1951. The third group was the conservatives which consisted of the westernised elites who were bureaucrats and members of royal families that shared a common English education mostly at the exclusive Malay College Kuala Kangsar. They formed voluntary organisations known as Malay Associations in various parts of the country and their primary goals were to advance the interests of Malays as well as requesting British protection on Malay positions. In March 1946, 41 of these Malay associations formed the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), to assert Malay dominance over Malaya.

The first major show of force by Malay nationalism came in 1946 when Britain proposed a Malayan Union that would greatly reduce the powers of Malay rulers and give citizenship to foreign immigrants. Under intense pressure from the United Malays National Organisation, the British withdrew the proposal, resulting in the formation of the Federation of Malaya in 1948.

Although Malaya was effectively governed by the British, the Malays held de jure sovereignty over Malaya. A former British High Commissioner, Hugh Clifford, urged "everyone in this country [to] be mindful of the fact that this is a Malay country, and we British came here at the invitation of Their Highnesses the Malay Rulers, and it is our duty to help the Malays to rule their own country." The British government adopted an open "Pro-Malay" policy so that, in the words of High Commissioner Sir Laurence Guillemard, the Malays could be equipped "to take their proper place in the administrative and commercial life of these States."

The local-born non-Malay communities soon began agitating against the government's policies, and began demanding political representation. In 1936, the Malayan-born Indian community asked the British High Commissioner, Sir Shenton Thomas, to grant them a share of administrative appointments. Thomas rejected the request, stating, "... I do not know of any country in which what I might call a foreigner ... has ever been appointed to an administrative post." Later, some commentators attributed this to Britain's ignorance of the increasing size of the local-born, non-Malay population. Between 1911 and 1921, 1.5 million Chinese migrated to Malaya to work as manual labourers; a million Chinese workers in Malaya emigrated back to China; and the proportion of Malayan-born Chinese in Malaya grew from 8% to 17%. The British nevertheless appeared to view the entire Chinese community as a "transient labour force", with one government official insisting it would be dangerous to consider the Chinese as having "a tendency to permanent settlement". The locally born Indian community, comprising 20% of the Indian population, was likewise largely ignored.

However, the British at the same time took the stance that the Malays were to be left alone to their traditional peasant lifestyle as far as possible, involving only the Malay ruling class in government and administrative issues. Despite the policy of excluding non-Malays from positions of authority, much of the rank and file of the civil service was non-Malays, many of them Indians who the government had specifically brought in for this purpose. A number of historians have described the pro-Malay policies of the British as designed merely to preserve the position of the British, rather than to strengthen that of the Malays; historians have noted that successive British colonial administrations intentionally separated Malaysian society into a place where "the towns were Chinese, with their shopkeepers and traders; the villages were Malay, with their farmers and fishermen; the plantations were Indian, with their rubber tappers and labourers," keeping "the races at just the right distance from each other to have the disparate elements of Malaya work in remote harmony."

In the 1920s, the local-born Chinese community began pushing for a greater role in Malayan government. The Chinese community by now made up 39% of the Malayan population. The dialect-speaking Chinese wanted to be given government positions and recognised as Malayans. One Straits Chinese leader asked, "Who said this is a Malay country? ... When Captain [Francis] Light arrived, did he find Malays, or Malay villages? Our forefathers came here and worked hard as coolies – weren't ashamed to become coolies – and they didn't send their money back to China. They married and spent their money here, and in this way the Government was able to open up the country from jungle to civilisation. We've become inseparable from this country. It's ours, our country ...". Some Malay intellectuals objected to this reasoning, and proposed an analogy with the Chinese as masons and Malaya as a house. They argued that a paid mason, was not entitled to a share in the ownership rights to a home he built. As such, they opposed any attempt to grant the Chinese citizenship or other political rights.