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Brunei revolt

Failed 1962 revolt in the British protectorate

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The TNKU began co-ordinated attacks on the oil town of Seria (targeting the Royal Dutch Shell oil installations), on police stations, and on government facilities around the protectorate. The revolt began to break down within hours, having failed to achieve key objectives such as the capture of Brunei Town and Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III. The revolt influenced the Sultan's decision the following year not to join Malaysia. It is seen as one of the first stages of the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation.

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 of the people were Malays, a quarter were Chinese, and the rest were Dayaks, the indigenous people of Borneo. Oil was discovered in 1929 near Seria and the Brunei Shell Petroleum Company concession provided the Sultanate with a huge income. The capital, then called Brunei Town, 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, North Borneo and Sarawak were involved in negotiations to form a new Malaysian Federation. However, the Philippines and particularly Indonesia opposed any move toward unification of North Borneo and Sarawak with the new federation. This external opposition toward unification strengthened by widespread anti-Federation sentiment within Sarawak and Brunei itself. The Brunei People's Party was in favour of joining Malaysia on condition of the unification of the three crown colonies of northern Borneo (total about 1.5 million people, half Dayak) with their own sultan. It was thought that the resultant sultanate would 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-decolonisation 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 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. In his capacity as the spokesperson for Bruneian politics, he made clear that the uprising was really against British colonialism and the Malaysia plan, with the goal of creating a Unitary State of North Borneo led by himself as prime minister and the Sultan as a constitutional monarch. While in Manila, he declared the formation of his government's war cabinet for Kalimantan Utara, or North Kalimantan. 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.

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