Brunei Revolt - Background

Background

The northern part of the island of Borneo was composed of three British territories: the colonies of Sarawak and North Borneo (to be renamed Sabah) and the protectorate of the Sultanate of Brunei. Brunei became a British protectorate in 1888, had an area of about 2,226 square miles (5,800 km2) and some 85,000 people, just over half Malays, a quarter Chinese and the rest Dayaks, the indigenous people of Borneo. Oil was discovered in 1929 near Seria and the Shell Petroleum Company concession provided the Sultanate with a huge income. The capital, called Brunei Town in those days, was on a river some 10 miles (20 km) from the coast.

In 1959, the Sultan, Sir Omar Ali Saifuddin III, established a legislature with half its members nominated and half elected. Elections were held in September 1962 and all of the contested seats were won by the Brunei People’s Party.

Between 1959 and 1962, the United Kingdom, Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak were involved in negotiations to form a new Malaysian Federation. However, the Philippines and particularly Indonesia opposed any move towards unification of North Borneo and Sarawak with the new federation. This support was given strength by evidence of widespread anti-Federation sentiment in Sarawak and Brunei itself. The Brunei People’s Party was in favour of joining Malaysia on condition it was as the unified three territories of northern Borneo (total about 1.5 million people, half Dayak) with their own sultan, and hence be strong enough to resist domination by Malaya or Singapore, Malay administrators or Chinese merchants. Local opposition and sentiments against the Malaysian Federation plan have often been under-represented in historical writings on the Brunei Rebellion and the subsequent Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation. In fact, political forces in Sarawak had long anticipated their own national independence as promised (but later aborted) by the last White Rajah of Sarawak, Charles Vyner Brooke, in 1941.

The North Kalimantan (or Kalimantan Utara) proposal was seen as a post-decolonization alternative by local opposition against the Malaysian Federation plan. Local opposition throughout the Borneo territories was primarily based on economic, political, historical and cultural differences between the Borneo states and the Malayan peninsula, and an unwillingness to be subjected to peninsular political domination.

However, before the Brunei People’s Party electoral success, a military wing had emerged, the North Kalimantan National Army (Malay abbreviation TNKU), which saw itself as an anti-colonialist liberation party. Its sympathies lay with Indonesia which was seen as having better ‘liberationist’ credentials than Malaya and Singapore. Its 34 year old leader A.M. Azahari had lived in Indonesia and was in touch with Indonesian intelligence agents. He had recruited several officers who had been trained in clandestine warfare in Indonesia. By late 1962, they could muster about 4000 men, a few modern weapons and about 1000 shotguns.