Brunei's history: a sultanate that survived by shrinking

What Chinese records say about early Brunei

No local written source survives from Brunei's early centuries, and Wikipedia's article on the sultanate notes that its history before the 1500s has been built largely from Chinese texts. The texts name a polity called Boni or Po-ni, and scholars disagree over whether every mention refers to the Brunei River or to western Borneo more broadly.

The earliest of them is a letter carried to the Song court in 977. GlobalSecurity's history of Brunei, which follows the dynastic records, describes envoys led by a merchant named Abu Ali bringing camphor, tortoise shells, sandalwood and six elephant tusks from a king called Hiang-ta, who asked the emperor to protect his ships if storms drove them to Champa. The same records describe a town of more than ten thousand people inside a wooden palisade. In 1225 the Chinese official Zhao Rukuo reported that Boni kept 100 warships to protect its trade.

In the fourteenth century the kingdom paid tribute to Java. The Nagarakretagama, written by Prapanca in 1365, lists Barune among the states of Majapahit, owing 40 katis of camphor a year. In 1369 raiders from Sulu sacked the capital and carried off its treasure, and a Chinese report of 1371 described Boni as poor and controlled by Majapahit. Ming protection followed: a Bruneian ruler travelled to China in 1408 with 150 members of his family, fell ill there and was buried at Nanjing, and the emperor named his four-year-old son king.

Brunei's own account begins differently. The national epic, the Syair Awang Semaun, tells of fourteen brothers and cousins who settled on the Brunei River and chose one of their number, Awang Alak Betatar, to rule. In the official version he embraced Islam and took the name Sultan Muhammad Shah. Local tradition derives the country's name from his words on landing, "Baru nah", roughly "that's it".

How the sultanate reached Sulu and Manila

By the fifteenth century the ruling house had converted to Islam and broken with Majapahit. The capital sat over the water: Kampong Ayer, the stilt settlement on the Brunei River, was the seat of the sultans from the 1500s, and Antonio Pigafetta, who arrived with the survivors of Magellan's expedition in July 1521, described a court with silver candlesticks, gold spoons, guns, horses and trained elephants.

The reach of the sultanate is usually tied to its fifth ruler, Bolkiah, though the sources give him different dates: GlobalSecurity has 1473 to 1521 and Wikipedia's country article 1485 to 1528. Under him Brunei controlled the coasts of northwest Borneo, the present Sarawak and Sabah, and reached the Sulu archipelago. Marriage carried the influence further. The Muslim rulers of Manila were related to the Bruneian house, and when the Spanish took Manila in 1571 they took it from an aristocracy that Brunei had established there. GlobalSecurity credits the ninth sultan, Hassan, who reigned from 1605 to 1619, with the elaborate court structure that survives in part today.

Historians still argue over what this reach meant. Wikipedia's article on the sultanate says it remains a subject of study whether the coastal sultanates of Borneo and Sulu were vassals of Brunei, allies or partners in a ceremonial relationship, and the claims of control rest partly on Brunei's own national history.

Why Spain held the capital for ten weeks

Spain and Brunei fought at sea from 1565. In 1578 Spain declared war, helped by two Bruneian noblemen, Pengiran Seri Lela and Pengiran Seri Ratna; Seri Lela wanted Spanish help to recover a throne he said his brother had usurped. An expedition from Manila took the capital on 16 April 1578; the sultan withdrew to Meragang and then to Jerudong. Disease spread through the occupying force, and the Spanish left for Manila on 26 June 1578, after 72 days.

The two traditions disagree over why they left. In the Bruneian account the Spaniards were driven out by Bendahara Sakam and a thousand warriors, and the episode is remembered as a victory. Wikipedia's country article reports that most historians regard this as a folk-hero account that developed decades or centuries later, and attributes the withdrawal to cholera or dysentery. Brunei never regained a foothold on Luzon.

The decline that followed was internal as much as external. After Hassan, disputes over the succession weakened the court, and Brunei fought a civil war from 1660 to 1673. Sulu rose as a rival, Brunei lapsed into a collection of river territories run by semi-autonomous chiefs, and by the end of the seventeenth century the sultanate was in decline.

How Sarawak and Labuan were lost

The British adventurer James Brooke arrived in Borneo in 1839 and helped the sultan put down a rebellion in Sarawak. His reward, in 1841 by the BBC's timeline, was the governorship of that province, and he went on to rule it as rajah. In 1846 British forces attacked and captured Brunei Town during a dispute over the succession, and the sultan ceded the island of Labuan; a treaty of friendship and commerce in 1847 confirmed it.

The United States signed its own "Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Commerce and Navigation" with Brunei on 23 June 1850, and the Office of the Historian records that it is still in force. An American consulate opened in 1865 and closed in 1868.

Over the following decades the sultans ceded or leased one district after another. Stretches east of the capital went to the British North Borneo Chartered Company from 1877, and the Brookes in Sarawak took more. The sultan refused to give up Limbang, the river valley behind the capital that supplied the water villages. Sarawak took it anyway in March 1890. Wikipedia's country article names the district annexed that year as Pandaruan, and records that the annexation left Brunei with its present area in two separate pieces.

What the British protectorate actually protected

Sultan Hashim Jalilul Alam Aqamaddin signed the Protectorate Agreement with Britain, represented by Hugh Low, on 17 September 1888. The treaty said that the sultan could not cede or lease territory to a foreign power without British consent, and it gave Britain control of Brunei's external affairs. Wikipedia's article on Brunei's history notes that it also stopped the sultan from negotiating directly with Sarawak and North Borneo, the two neighbours that had been taking his land.

It did not stop them. When Sarawak annexed Limbang two years later, Britain did nothing, since it regarded neither Brunei nor Sarawak as foreign under the treaty. The sultan's finances deteriorated. In 1901 he borrowed $10,000 from the Brookes for household expenses, in 1902 he wrote to Edward VII complaining that the protection had brought no help, and in 1903, by the same account, he declared himself willing to place Brunei under the Ottoman Empire.

Britain sent the consul Malcolm McArthur to report. His Report on Brunei of 1904 recommended the residential system used in the Malay states, and the Supplementary Treaty of 1905 and 1906 put it in place. The Resident's advice was binding on the sultan in everything except religion and local custom. GlobalSecurity describes this as a further measure of British control, with executive power transferred to the Resident, and the sultan's standing became largely symbolic. The residential system lasted until 1959.

How oil changed a bankrupt protectorate

The British Malayan Petroleum Company, later Brunei Shell Petroleum, was formed on 22 July 1922. Drilling at Seria began with Seria Well Number One on 12 July 1928, and oil was struck at 297 metres on 5 April 1929. Output grew through the 1930s, and Wikipedia's country article puts production in 1940 at more than six million barrels.

The Japanese landed at Kuala Belait on 16 December 1941 with about 10,000 troops and took the whole country in six days. Troops of the 15th Punjab Regiment had already filled the Seria wells with concrete, in September 1941, to deny them to Japan. The occupation brought a worthless currency, famine and disease, and Allied bombing from 1944 destroyed much of the capital and Kuala Belait. The Australian 9th Division landed at Muara on 10 June 1945, and a British Military Administration governed until July 1946.

Reconstruction was paid for by oil. Seria was producing 114,700 barrels a day in 1956, and the first National Development Plan, launched in 1953, set aside B$100 million for roads, the port at Muara, water supply and schools. Omar Ali Saifuddien III, sultan from 1950, formed a committee of seven, the Tujuh Serangkai, in July 1953 to gather opinion on a written constitution. A delegation negotiated in London from 23 March to 6 April 1959, and the constitution was signed on 29 September 1959. It made Brunei self-governing and left foreign affairs, defence and security with Britain, a division the Office of the Historian records as lasting until 1984.

Why Brunei stayed out of Malaysia

The 1959 constitution created a Legislative Council with half its members elected. Elections were held in September 1962, and the Brunei People's Party, which wanted the three British territories of northern Borneo united under the sultan, won every contested seat. Its armed wing, the North Kalimantan National Army, had meanwhile been preparing a rising with links to Indonesia.

The revolt began at 2 am on 8 December 1962 with attacks on police stations, the sultan's palace and the oilfields at Seria. Gurkha companies flown in from Singapore reached Brunei Town that night, Royal Marines retook Limbang on 13 December, and Wikipedia's article on the revolt reports that by 17 December about 40 rebels were dead and 3,400 captured. The party's leader, A. M. Azahari, was in the Philippines.

Two consequences outlasted it. The sultan proclaimed a state of emergency on 12 December 1962, and Article 83A of the constitution records that the proclamation was renewed every two years or so from that date, and Wikipedia's article on the revolt reports that the emergency has not been lifted since. The revolt also weighed on the sultan's decision in 1963, recorded in the BBC's timeline, not to join the new Federation of Malaysia, and Brunei remained a British protectorate while Sarawak and North Borneo joined.

How independence was negotiated with Britain

Omar Ali Saifuddien III abdicated in 1967 in favour of his eldest son, who became the 29th sultan, and took the title Seri Begawan; Brunei Town was renamed Bandar Seri Begawan in his honour on 4 October 1970. An agreement with Britain on 23 November 1971 gave Brunei full internal self-government and brought Gurkha units to the country, where they have remained. A treaty of friendship and co-operation followed in January 1979, dated 7 January in Wikipedia's account and 4 January in GlobalSecurity's, and committed Britain to a five-year transition.

At midnight on 1 January 1984 the sultan read the Proclamation of Independence in the capital. The United States recognised the new state and opened an embassy the same day. Brunei joined the Commonwealth on independence, ASEAN on 7 January 1984 and the United Nations in September 1984. The independence proclamation named Melayu Islam Beraja, Malay Islamic Monarchy, as the national philosophy, and National Day is kept on 23 February.

The most contested act since independence has been legal. The first phase of the Syariah Penal Code came into force on 22 April 2014, with fines and prison terms, and the BBC reports that the code was fully implemented in 2019 with punishments including death by stoning. After international condemnation the government extended its moratorium on the death penalty to the code. The politics of the sultanate, from the emergency onwards, are covered in Brunei: politics.