Brunei

• 1. Introduction

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  Brunei, officially Brunei Darussalam, may owe its name to a shout of recognition. According to local tradition, a ruler named Awang Alak Betatar left Garang, in the Temburong District, and moved to the estuary of the Brunei River around AD 1400. When he landed, he is said to have cried "Baru nah!", which loosely means "that's it!" or "there!"

  The place he claimed sits on the northern coast of the island of Borneo. Today it is the only sovereign state lying wholly on that island. Malaysia's state of Sarawak wraps around it on land, and the Sarawak district of Limbang divides its territory in two. Beyond that, only the South China Sea touches its shores.

  This documentary asks how a settlement at a river mouth became a power in its region, and how it later lost so much ground. It asks where the wealth of a country with fewer than half a million people comes from. And it asks who holds authority there today, and how that authority is exercised.

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• 2. Names and Records

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  By the 14th century the settlement was being called Barunai. That form may have been shaped by varuṇ, a Sanskrit word meaning seafarers, and the word Borneo is said to share the same origin. Local historiography adds that the founder later reigned as Sultan Muhammad Shah, the first Muslim ruler of Brunei. Before the rise of the Muslim Bolkiah dynasty, Buddhist rulers are believed to have held power.

  The full Malay name is Negara Brunei Darussalam. Negara means country, and darussalam means Abode of Peace. The shortened form, Brunei Darussalam, is common in official settings. It appears in the United Nations geographical names database and in ASEAN and Commonwealth listings.

  The earliest Western description comes from Ludovico di Varthema, a traveller from Bologna, in 1550. He judged the islanders to be pagans and men of goodwill. He also wrote that "in this island justice is well administered." Chinese and Javanese writers had recorded the place long before him, and their accounts describe a far busier world.

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• 3. Trade and Empire

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  Archaeological research shows that the lands of present-day Brunei took part in the Maritime Jade Road. That trading network lasted 3,000 years, from 2000 BC to 1000 AD. In the 7th century a settlement called Vijayapura flourished, probably in the northwest of Borneo. It was a vassal of the Buddhist empire of Srivijaya, and its own roots lay in the fallen Funan civilization of present-day Cambodia. Arabic sources knew this place as Sribuza.

  A letter sent to the Chinese emperor in 977 AD by the ruler of Boni is one of the earliest Chinese records of an independent kingdom in Borneo. Some scholars believe Boni refers to Borneo. A war between Java and Sumatra let the Bruneians break away from Srivijaya. In 1225 the Chinese official Zhao Rukuo reported that Boni kept 100 warships to protect its trade and enjoyed great wealth. Marco Polo wrote that the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire tried many times and failed to invade "Great Java", the European name for Borneo under Bruneian control.

  According to Wang Zhenping, a 1300s Chinese text called the Yuan Dade nanhai zhi credited Brunei with conquering or administering Sarawak and Sabah. The same text lists Philippine kingdoms such as Butuan, Sulu, Mindoro and Manila. All of them later regained their independence.

  In 1365 the Javanese manuscript Nagarakretagama, written by Prapanca, named Barune as a state of Hindu Majapahit. It owed an annual tribute of 40 katis of camphor. In 1369 Sulu, once part of Majapahit too, rebelled and attacked Boni. The raiders looted the capital of its treasure and gold, and they took two sacred pearls. A Majapahit fleet drove the Sulus off, but Boni was left weaker. A Chinese report of 1371 called it poor and wholly controlled by Majapahit.

  Early in the 15th century the Chinese admiral Zheng He visited and founded a major trading port. Chinese residents there traded actively with China. During the same century Boni broke from Majapahit and converted to Islam, becoming the independent Sultanate of Brunei. It accepted Sharif Ali, an Arab emir of Mecca, as its third sultan, which made it a Hashemite state. The royal family of Luzon intermarried with Brunei's ruling houses, a common Southeast Asian way to extend influence. In the south, Brunei overpowered the Hindu state of Kutai, which Indians had founded, but never destroyed it.

  Under Sultan Bolkiah, who reigned from 1485 to 1528, the state is claimed to have controlled most of Borneo. That claim covers Sarawak and Sabah, the Sulu archipelago and the islands off the northwestern tip of Borneo. Some claims reach to a place called Seludong. Southeast Asian scholars think that name actually refers to Mount Selurong in Indonesia or the Serudong River in eastern Sabah. By the 16th century Islam was firmly rooted, and Brunei had built one of its biggest mosques. In 1578 a Spanish traveller named Alonso Beltrán described it as five stories tall and built on the water. That same year, Spain went to war with Brunei.

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• 4. The Castilian War

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  The Portuguese capture of Malacca sent wealthy Muslim refugees toward nearby sultanates such as Brunei, which briefly rose to prominence as a result. The Bruneian Sultan then stepped into a quarrel between Hindu Tondo and Muslim Manila in the Philippines. He named Rajah Ache of Manila, a man of Bruneian descent, admiral of his navy. Ache met the Magellan expedition, whose surviving crew visited Brunei in 1521. Antonio Pigafetta noted that Ache, on orders from his grandfather the Sultan, had earlier sacked the Buddhist city of Loue in southwest Borneo. Its people had stayed loyal to the old religion and rebelled against the Sultanate.

  European influence gradually ended this regional power, and strife over royal succession deepened the decline. The Ottoman Caliphate tried to help the besieged sultanates by making Aceh a protectorate and sending expeditions. In a report of 1585, the Manila official Melchor Davalos complained that Turks arrived each year in Sumatra, Borneo and Ternate. Some were defeated veterans of the Battle of Lepanto.

  Spain declared war in 1578 and planned to seize Kota Batu, then Brunei's capital. Two Bruneian noblemen, Pengiran Seri Lela and Pengiran Seri Ratna, helped. Seri Lela travelled to Manila and offered to make Brunei a tributary of Spain. In return he wanted help recovering a throne that his brother Saiful Rijal had usurped. The Spanish agreed that Seri Lela would become sultan and Seri Ratna would become Bendahara if the conquest succeeded.

  In March 1578 a fresh Spanish fleet arrived from Mexico under De Sande, who served as Capitán-General. He organised an expedition from Manila of 400 Spaniards and Mexicans, 1,500 Filipino natives and 300 Borneans. The Christian side was diverse, with mestizos, mulattoes and Amerindians sent from Mexico under Spanish officers. The Muslim side was just as mixed. The Ottomans had repeatedly sent expeditions to nearby Aceh, made up of Turks, Egyptians, Swahilis, Somalis, Sindhis, Gujaratis and Malabars. These forces taught new fighting tactics and cannon-making to sultanates such as Brunei.

  The Spanish captured the capital on the 16th of April 1578. Sultan Saiful Rijal and Paduka Seri Begawan Sultan Abdul Kahar fled to Meragang and then to Jerudong, where they planned to drive the invaders out. They never needed to. Cholera or dysentery killed many Spaniards, and the survivors returned to Manila on the 26th of June 1578, after 72 days. Pengiran Seri Lela died in August or September of that year, probably of the same illness. Some suspected the ruling sultan had poisoned him.

  Seri Lela's daughter, a Bruneian princess called "Putri", sailed away with the Spanish and gave up her claim to the crown. She married a Christian Tagalog named Agustín de Legazpi de Tondo. He and his family and associates were later implicated in the Conspiracy of the Maharlikas. That plot sought to link up with the Brunei Sultanate and the Japanese Shogunate to expel the Spaniards from the Philippines. After Spain crushed it, the Bruneian-descended aristocracy of precolonial Manila was exiled to Guerrero, Mexico. Guerrero later became a centre of the Mexican war of independence.

  Bruneian accounts of the Castilian War differ sharply from this version. They tell of a heroic victory in which Bendahara Sakam, said to be a brother of the ruling sultan, and a thousand native warriors drove out the Spaniards. Most historians treat this as a folk-hero tale that probably took shape decades or centuries later. What followed was real enough. Brunei sank into anarchy and fought a civil war from 1660 to 1673.

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• 5. A Shrinking Sultanate

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  In July 1846 Britain attacked Brunei during a dispute over who was the rightful Sultan. In the 19th century the Sultanate ceded Kuching to James Brooke, who had helped it put down a rebellion, and installed him as the White Rajah. The sultan also granted him the land that is now Sarawak, where he founded the Raj of Sarawak. Brooke and his nephews, who succeeded him, leased or annexed still more territory. The Sultanate also ceded Sabah to the British North Borneo Chartered Company.

  Sultan Hashim Jalilul Alam Aqamaddin appealed to the British to halt the Brookes. Sir Hugh Low negotiated a Protectorate Agreement, which took effect on the 17th of September 1888. The treaty said the sultan could not cede or lease territory to foreign powers without British consent. Britain gained effective control of Brunei's external affairs, and the arrangement lasted until 1984.

  In 1890 the Raj of Sarawak annexed Brunei's Pandaruan District, and Britain did nothing. Under the treaty, the British did not regard either Brunei or the Raj of Sarawak as foreign. That annexation left Brunei with the small territory it holds today.

  The British Foreign Office then sent Consul Malcolm Stewart Hannibal McArthur to assess the country. His Report On Brunei of 1904 recommended the Malayan British Residency system and continued protection. British residents arrived in 1906 under the Supplementary Protectorate Agreement, charged with advising the sultan on all matters of administration. Over time the resident took more executive control than the sultan himself. The residential system lasted until 1959.

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• 6. Oil, Then Occupation

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  Seria Well Number One was drilled on the 12th of July 1928, and it struck oil at 297 metres on the 5th of April 1929. Several attempts had failed before it. In late 1926 two men, F. F. Marriot and T. G. Cochrane, had smelled oil near the Seria river. They told a geophysicist, who surveyed the area, and gas seepages were reported there in 1927. Seria Well Number 2 was drilled on the 19th of August 1929 and still produces oil. By 1940 output topped six million barrels. The first offshore well followed in 1957. The British Malayan Petroleum Company, now Brunei Shell Petroleum Company, had been formed on the 22nd of July 1922.

  The Japanese invaded on the 16th of December 1941, eight days after their attack on Pearl Harbor. Some 10,000 troops of the Kawaguchi Detachment landed at Kuala Belait from Cam Ranh Bay. After six days of fighting they held the whole country. The only Allied troops nearby were the 2nd Battalion of the 15th Punjab Regiment at Kuching. In September 1941 those troops had filled the Seria oil wells with concrete to deny them to the enemy. The remaining equipment and installations were destroyed when the Japanese invaded Malaya.

  Sultan Ahmad Tajuddin reached an agreement with the occupiers. He kept his throne, received a pension and honours, and lived at Tantuya, Limbang, with little to do with the Japanese. They appointed Inche Ibrahim, a former Secretary to the British Resident Ernest Edgar Pengilly, as chief administrative officer. Pengilly declined to stay on, and he and other British nationals were interned at Batu Lintang camp in Sarawak. As they went, Ibrahim personally shook each man's hand and wished him well. He also hid many significant government documents from the Japanese. Pengiran Yusuf was sent to Japan for training and was in the area on the day Hiroshima was bombed. He survived.

  Japanese became a school subject, and government officers had to learn it. A new currency, nicknamed duit pisang or banana money, replaced the old one. From 1943 hyper-inflation wiped out its value, and by the war's end it was worthless. Allied attacks on shipping stopped trade, and the people suffered famine and disease. The Japanese built an airport runway that survived the war and became a public airport. In 1944 Allied bombing destroyed much of the town and Kuala Belait but missed Kampong Ayer.

  On the 10th of June 1945 the Australian 9th Division landed at Muara under Operation Oboe Six, backed by American air and naval units. Brunei town fell after three days of heavy fighting, and many buildings, including the Mosque, were destroyed. Lieutenant-General Masao Baba formally surrendered the Japanese forces in Brunei, Borneo and Sarawak at Labuan on the 10th of September 1945. By then 16 wells at Miri and Seria had been restarted, at about half the pre-war output. The British Military Administration governed until July 1946, and one of its first jobs was putting out fires the Japanese had set on the Seria wells.

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• 7. Toward Independence

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  On the 12th of April 1946 Brunei saw its first political party, the Barisan Pemuda, or "Youth Front", known as BARIP. It aimed to preserve the sovereignty of the Sultan and the country and to defend the rights of the Malays. BARIP also contributed to the composition of the national anthem. It was dissolved in 1948 because of inactivity.

  In July 1953 Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III formed a seven-member committee, the Tujuh Serangkai, to gauge public opinion on a written constitution. In May 1954 the Sultan, the Resident and the High Commissioner agreed to authorise a draft. In March 1959 the Sultan led a delegation to London, where Sir Alan Lennox-Boyd, Secretary of State for the Colonies, led the British side. The Constitution Agreement was signed in Brunei Town on the 29th of September 1959 with Sir Robert Scott, the Commissioner-General for Southeast Asia. It made the Sultan Supreme Head of State and gave Brunei responsibility for internal administration. Britain kept foreign affairs and defence, and a British High Commissioner replaced the Resident. It also created five councils: Executive, Legislative, Privy, Succession and State Religious.

  Meanwhile, a series of National Development Plans began in 1953 under Omar Ali Saifuddien III, the 28th Sultan. The first approved B$100 million, and E.R. Bevington of the Colonial Office in Fiji was appointed to carry it out. It built a US$14 million gas plant, and by 1956 production reached 114,700 barrels a day. Education spending totalled $4 million by 1958, and Berakas Airport was rebuilt by 1954. The second plan began in 1962. A major oil and gas field was found in 1963, fishing output rose 25%, and a deepwater port was built at Muara. With the World Health Organization, malaria cases fell from 300 in 1953 to 66 in 1959. The death rate fell from 20 per thousand in 1947 to 11.3 per thousand in 1953.

  In 1962 a small armed rebellion against the monarchy, known as the Brunei Revolt, was indirectly related to the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation. It ended with British help and led to a ban on the pro-independence Brunei People's Party. The revolt also shaped the Sultan's decision not to join the Malaysian Federation, then being formed.

  On the 14th of November 1971 Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah went to London to amend the 1959 constitution. A new agreement was signed on the 23rd of November 1971 with Anthony Royle for Britain. It granted full internal self-government, left external affairs and defence with the United Kingdom, and made the two sides share security responsibilities. It also brought Gurkha units to Brunei, where they remain. On the 7th of January 1979 a further treaty, signed with Lord Goronwy-Roberts, let Brunei take over its international responsibilities. In May 1983 Britain announced that independence would come on the 1st of January 1984.

  On the 31st of December 1983 crowds gathered at the main mosques in all four districts. At midnight Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah read the Proclamation of Independence, and he began to use the title "His Majesty" in place of "His Royal Highness". Brunei became the Commonwealth's 49th member that day, and it joined ASEAN on the 7th of January 1984 as its sixth member. It entered the United Nations in September 1984 as the 159th member. By tradition, the official National Day falls on the 23rd of February.

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• 8. Brunei Today

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  Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has led Brunei since 1967. Under the 1959 constitution he is head of state with full executive authority, and he also serves as prime minister, finance minister and defence minister. Emergency powers have been renewed every two years since the 1962 revolt, so the country has technically been under martial law ever since. The Legislative Council is consultative, its members are appointed by the Sultan, and the last election was held in 1962. The national ideology is Melayu Islam Beraja, which joins Malay culture, Islamic religion and monarchy. The legal system rests on English common law, though sharia supersedes it in some cases.

  Crude oil and natural gas account for about 90% of Brunei's economic output. The country produces roughly 167,000 barrels of oil a day, making it the fourth-largest producer in Southeast Asia, and it is the ninth-largest gas exporter in the world. GDP rose 56% between 1999 and 2008. The International Monetary Fund ranks Brunei seventh in the world by GDP per capita at purchasing power parity. The House of Bolkiah keeps order by providing a welfare state, with free or heavily subsidised housing, healthcare and education. Brunei ranks second in Southeast Asia on the Human Development Index, after Singapore. Singapore's close ties with Brunei include a Currency Interchangeability Agreement.

  About 97% of the population lives in the larger western part of the country, while only about 10,000 people live in the mountainous Temburong District. In 2020 forest covered around 72% of the land, or 380,000 hectares, down from 413,000 hectares in 1990. Brunei was the first country in Asia to ban shark finning nationwide. A public campaign calls for protecting pangolins, which are considered a threatened treasure. The country still imports 60% of its food, and the government promoted self-sufficiency in rice with a locally grown variety renamed Laila Rice in April 2009.

  The law has drawn sustained international attention. In October 2013 the Sultan announced a plan to introduce the sharia penal code for the country's Muslims, who make up roughly two-thirds of the population. The revised code began to take effect in phases on the 22nd of April 2014. The United Nations expressed "deep concern", and Rupert Colville, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that applying the death penalty to such a broad range of offences contravenes international law. In 2019 Brunei announced it would not implement the second phase. In May 2019 it extended its moratorium on the death penalty to the sharia criminal code. The first phase remains in place, with fines and imprisonment for offences such as missing Friday prayers or drinking alcohol.

  The 1959 constitution guarantees non-Muslims the right to practise their faith, but celebrations and prayers must stay within places of worship and private homes. On Christmas Day 2015, about 4,000 of an estimated 18,000 local Catholics attended mass. Malay is the official language, written in both Latin and Arabic script. English is the language of instruction from primary school to university. Football is the most popular sport. Brunei debuted at the Olympics in 1996 and has not yet won a medal there.

  One border question remains open. Brunei has disputed the status of Limbang as part of Sarawak since the area was first annexed in 1890. Reports in 2009 said the issue was settled, with Brunei accepting the border in exchange for Malaysia giving up claims to oil fields in Bruneian waters. The Brunei government denies this and says its claim on Limbang was never dropped.

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