Here and There: Brunei
Borneo was one of those exotic places that had figured large in my childhood imagination. As far as I knew, it comprised a vast tropical jungle in which once could find the elusive Orangutan and the even more elusive Pygmy Elephant. If there were Orangutans, there had to be other monkeys, and in my schoolbooks I had read about the Pangolin (a kind of scaly anteater, as I recalled), together with snakes and crocodiles. I think there was a variety of leopard there, too. However, more than anything else, this was the country of a bird-watcher’s dreams, with all sorts of exotic species including parrots and drongos (I had to throw that one in, but I might have been confusing this with another similar bird name or with – well, with a drongo, you know, the Australian slang term for a rather stupid person). Anyway, back to birds: best of all, this was the land of the Hornbill, the real one with the huge yellow beak, the one you saw on advertisements for Guinness.
By the time I was working in Australia, and spending time in East and Southeast Asia, I discovered most of the island of Borneo was divided between two countries. The southern two thirds were part of Indonesia, comprising the five provinces of Kalimantan (North, South, East, West and Central Kalimantan). Running across the northern part of this huge island were Sarawak and Sabah, which had once been British colonies, but now part of Malaysia (Eastern Malaysia, as distinct from the mainland, which adjoins Thailand). No longer just the jungle of my imagination, there were towns and villages, four cities with over 500,000 people in the Indonesian part of the island, and Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, the largest in the Malaysian part, home to just over 600,000.
Finally, up on the coast and entirely surrounded by Sarawak (although close to Sabah) is a small country, Brunei. It is tiny, occupying a land area a little less than half that of Melbourne, split into two separate parts, with a sliver of Sarawak between them, both facing the South China Sea. Tiny but rich. Since achieving its independence from the United Kingdom on 1 January 1984, extensive petroleum and natural gas fields have generated vast wealth over the past 35 years. Brunei is ranked fifth in the world by gross domestic product per capita (these are purchasing power parity adjusted figures). Equally remarkable, Brunei was and probably still is one of two countries with a public debt at 0% of the national GDP (based on UN figures from 2011). The other was Libya.
With a colleague, I went to Brunei to explore consulting and executive training opportunities. I wasn’t to know it would be my only visit, and when we arrived I was excited by the thought of all the orangutans, hornbills, parrots and pigmy elephants I would see. In fact, the first birds I saw were seagulls and starlings, and I don’t recall seeing much evidence of the famous Borneo jungle! I suppose that wasn’t particularly likely since we were in the city, but it was to be a visit of several surprises. As has been the case on several other travels, I hadn’t read enough beforehand, and arrived in this small Islamic state rather ill-informed.
I did know it was a Muslim state and had been so for some six hundred years. I was to discover it also had a Buddhist past, and around 7% of the population were Buddhists (and another 7% were Christians). However, I didn’t know about James Brooke. Years before I had wandered by streams in the mainland Malaysian Cameron Highlands to capture a Rajah Brooke’s Birdwing butterfly (saved for years although now, sadly, lost), but that’s another story. I hadn’t bothered to ask about the reason for that beautiful butterfly’s name.
Back in the 16th Century, the Brunei Empire encompassed the whole of the island of Borneo. Slowly, as European nations started to seek luxury items, spices and gold in the region, so the Empire shrunk. The Dutch took control of the southern half of Borneo, and the British the northwestern part. Initially, these incursions were all about trade. However, the British jumped into the affairs of Brunei on several occasions in the 1800s. By the 1840s, the country’s decline led to the Sultan granting land (what is now Sarawak) to James Brooke.
James Brooke was an adventurer. He was born in India, his parents British, his father an English Judge in the Indian Court of Appeal. Like many other expatriate children, he was sent back to England for his (brief) education, returning to India in 1819 at the age of 16, where he joined the Bengal Army, one part of the vast British East India Company, serving with them until he was wounded in 1825. After his recovery back in England, he abandoned an army life, and changed profession, deciding to become a trader. In 1835 he inherited £30,000, which he used to purchase a 142-ton schooner, the Royalist. Setting sail for Borneo in 1838, he arrived in Kuching, where the settlement was facing an uprising against the Sultan of Brunei. He met the sultan’s uncle, and helped him crush the rebellion, and in 1841 he was offered the governorship of Sarawak in return for his help. It is hard to believe the world was once like that!
As Governor, Brooke was highly successful in suppressing the widespread piracy in the region. However, some Malay nobles in Brunei arranged for the murder of the sultan’s uncle and his followers. Brooke, with assistance from Britain took over Brunei and restored its sultan to the throne. In 1842 the Sultan of Brunei granted sovereignty of Sarawak to Brooke, and he was given the title of Rajah of Sarawak. During his reign, Brooke established a firm control of Sarawak: this included reforming the administration, codifying laws and fighting piracy. He returned temporarily to England in 1847, where he was given Freedom of the City of London, created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, and appointed the British Consul General for Borneo. Not a bad haul! Brooke ruled Sarawak until he died in 1868. His was an amazing career. It was to provide the basis for several novels, including The White Rajah by Nicholas Montserrat, Flashman’s Lady, the 6th novel in George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman Papers, and he was also a model for the hero of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim.
20 years after Brooke’s death, in 1888 a ‘Treaty of Protection’ was signed between the Sultan of Brunei and the British, which stated the sultan “could not cede or lease any territory to foreign powers without British consent” giving Britain effective control over Brunei’s external affairs and making it a ‘British Protected State’ (its situation until 1984). Just two years after the Treaty had been signed the Rajah of Sarawak annexed most of the former Brunei lands, leaving Brunei with the tiny area it covers today.
However, while it was small, in 1929 oil was discovered , with production steadily increasing from then on. The first offshore well was drilled in 1957, and the abundant oil and natural gas has provided the basis of Brunei’s development and wealth, especially since the late 20th century. Following years of discussion, Brunei was proclaimed an independent country on 1 January 1984 and was admitted to the United Nations on 22 September that year, as the organisation’s 159th member. The British influence has slowly disappeared, controversially so in October 2013, when Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah announced he would make Brunei the first and only country in Southeast Asia to (re)introduce Sharia law into its penal code.
None of this was on my mind when a colleague and I flew into Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei’s capital, (with about half the population of Sarawak’s Kuching). All I knew was that the Brunei public service was interested in discussing some executive development programs. Superficially, I assumed this was a group like many others, civil servants keen to learn of new ideas, to enhance their skills, their chances of promotion, and to do a better job. This was a situation similar to that in other former British colonies. We had run programs in Malaysia and understood some of the complications of the public sector in an Islamic and traditionally hierarchical society. As I saw it, this was another place where leadership, innovation and strategy were important, another southeast Asian country where the language of business and government was English as well as Bahasa. Easy.
I wasn’t well-informed. I should have read about the government. If I had I would have known the Sultan of Brunei was both the head of state and the Prime Minister, with absolute power. The country’s Privy Council advised the Sultan in the matters concerning the exercise of authority of mercy, amending or revoking provisions in the Constitution, on conferring ranks, titles and honours. There’s a Religious Council to advise the Sultan on all matters to do with Islam. Finally, there’s a Council of Ministers, (like a cabinet), comprising the Sultan with eight other members which performs the day-to-day administrative functions of government. There is a legislative council, but the 36 members are there for consultation only. The 1959 constitution provides for elections, but only one has been held, back in 1962. In 1970 the Council was changed to an appointed body by decree of the Sultan. Currently, the Council has 33 members, including 13 cabinet ministers.
Finally, Brunei has a dual legal system. The first is a common law system, inherited from the British, similar to the ones found in India, Malaysia and Singapore. The other system of justice in Brunei supports the shariah courts. It deals mainly in Muslim divorce and matters ancillary to a Muslim divorce in its civil jurisdiction and in particular the offences ofkhalwat (close proximity) and zina (illicit sex) amongst Muslims. All magistrates and judges in both the common law courts and the shariah courts are appointed by the Government. All local magistrates and judges have been appointed from the civil service, with none thus far coming from private practice.
I think that’s enough detail to make the point. Brunei is run by the Sultan, and what had been introduced by the British has disappeared into an autocracy. In many ways the country needs little government. It is very rich. There is ample money to build roads, schools, ports and airports. Public servants administer, but the tasks of administration are often routine, and mostly clearly defined. What was being sought from people like me was two things. First, some familiarity with the issues, approaches and technical skills used by other public service systems. People needed to know the language, and how to interact with public servants from other jurisdictions. Second, they wanted to hear the views of overseas specialists, academics and senior government people: not so much to implement them, but to feel good. It is very comforting to boast to your colleagues you attended a seminar with Michael Porter the other week. I was clearly inadequate on two counts. First, I wasn’t famous. Second, and possibly even more alarming, I made it clear that I wouldn’t just talk for two days, but the sessions would involve simulations, role plays, and even be competitive. I didn’t run a course in Brunei, but at least I did get to see Bandar Seri Begawan. Looking back at my brief visit, I should have used my time to track down pygmy elephants and hornbills.
As for John Brooke, that’s another story. It is easy to write him off as nothing more than another British colonial administrator whose role was subduing the locals and facilitating trade for the greater good of the empire, while obtaining personal benefits along the way. All of that was true. However, he stopped wars and internal insurrections, and built a strong administration. As his colleagues did in India, he left much of the traditional system in place, including the Sultans who kept old relationships, hierarchies and religion running, ready to reimpose it all once the British left. His was a temporary interruption, which, finally, was to lead to a largely unchanged if considerably diminished Brunei Empire, with John Brooke’s name remembered in a butterfly, a beetle, and a small number of unexciting plant varieties.
What does this this brief account of the history of Brunei, and my visit, tell us? Its history is the all too familiar story of the British, convinced of their superiority, telling the locals what to do. The British brought railways to India, a currently fragile parliamentary form of government to the USA, casually crushed and decimated the people they found in Africa, and some government systems and an oil business to Brunei. Patrician, sustained by their unwavering belief in their god-given right to rule, they built an empire on the backs of the natives, carefully and sometimes viciously kept in place. Sadly, we all know that story
That was there, but here in Australia, events were very different. Australia wasn’t known as a source of spices, unique timbers and plants, silver and gold. Away from the East India trade routes it was seen as largely dry, only marginally explored, uninhabited (the natives were regarded as scarcely human) and clearly inhospitable. Ideal for a prison. So different from Brunei, England’s interest solely the result of having too many convicts and needing a place to dump as many as possible far, far away from England. If choices and actions in Borneo were driven by trade and the self-interest of the East India Company, the choices and actions made in relation to Australia began with its attractiveness as a site for establishing a penal colony. Trade did follow, of course, and perhaps that was always on the agenda.
In many ways, Australia’s past has been an embarrassment for the British, and its treatment of the indigenous people remains an unresolved and uncomfortable issue. Like many living in Australia, I would like to see the issue of reconciliation satisfactorily addressed. However, apart from symbols and words, it is hard to see how this might be done. It turned out that going to Brunei provided me with a perspective on how restoring a country to its ‘owners’ can be problematic. Brunei is an independent nation again, but it has slowly reverted to an autocratic, Islamic state, even if oil and gas profits have meant most enjoy a good standard of living. As climate change and the exhaustion of hydrocarbons continue, the government is likely to become more regressive and life for most people could become more inequitable.
For Australia, more than 230 years later after the first British settled, we remain appallingly ignorant about the values, beliefs and perspectives of its Aboriginal people. How kinship was organised, how people lived together before the British arrived, we will never know in detail. That world is lost, buried under the consequences of an effective apartheid. We can’t hand the country back, nor could we contemplate the creation of an independent nation based on pre-invasion practice. It’s too late, and perhaps that would be unacceptable in terms of what are generally seen as human rights in the modern world, even if it were possible.
In the long run, we know empires collapse. In the long run, Brunei may change considerably. In the long run, Australia may also change, and achieve a rapprochement between its original inhabitants and their late arriving conquerors. However, as John Maynard Keynes observed, “in the long run we are all dead”. If Brunei is testimony to traditional practices surviving through periods of oppression, would we want Australia to return to the values and practices that existed before the British arrived? I’d say no, but that might be invader’s arrogance. Brunei is unusual. Usually, empires die, and new systems emerge. I hope Australia won’t go backwards and it will find a better way to live for everyone, I mean everyone, in the future.
