22
LEIGH WRIGHT
tongue of land that looked down the estuary, and which could rake a fleet advancing towards the town, whilst the batteries on the two banks poured in a flank fire.
When the tide goes out the mud is most offensive to European nostrils, as all the filth and offal is cast into it from the platforms, and left there to decompose. The town was in a condition of squalid wretchedness—the buildings, all of wood and leaf matting, were in a tumbledown state; and the population was mainly composed of slaves and the hangers on of the Sultan, the nobles, and other members of the upper classes.
Brunei was by the 19th century then one of those decaying Malay-Muslim sultanates of Southeast Asia about which the historian Lennox Mills noted,12
The rule of the Malays was as weak as it was cruel and oppressive; individually brave they were unable to prevent their state from crumbling to pieces before their eyes ... The Malay nobles appear to have divided their time between intrigue and dissipation at Brunei Town, and the oppression of their Dayak subjects...
III
The political map of Southeast Asia was determined largely by imperialist interests and considerations of the last century. In most instances boundaries and demarkations were the results of international rivalries involving two or more European powers, with only now and then a consideration of the interests of indigenous states. In Borneo this principle does not apply entirely. The boundaries of the states of Eastern Malaysia, formerly British Borneo (Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak), are the result not so much of international rivalry as of the rivalry between Englishmen. This rivalry was centered in commercial circles in Borneo and England and involved the Foreign and Colonial ministries in Whitehall.
By the 19th century Britain's chief interest in the area was strategic: to protect her commercial routes to China.13 She was concerned firstly, with the location of a suitable naval station along the eastern flank of the South China Sea, and secondly, with the assumption of political control over the northwestern coast of Borneo so as to prevent those areas falling to a European rival. Britain was not worried about the relatively weak Dutch and
22
LEIGH WRIGHT
tongue of land that looked down the estuary, and which could rake a fleet advancing towards the town, whilst the batteries on the two banks poured in a flank fire.
When the tide goes out the mud is most offensive to European nostrils, as all the filth and offal is cast into it from the plat- forms, and left there to decompose. The town was in a condition of squalid wretchedness-the buildings, all of wood and leaf matting, were in a tumbledown state; and the population was mainly composed of slaves and the hangers on of the Sultan, the nobles, and other members of the upper classes.
Brunei was by the 19th century then one of those decaying Malay-Muslim sultanates of Southeast Asia about which the his- torian Lennox Mills noted,12
The rule of the Malays was as weak as it was cruel and oppres- sive; individually brave they were unable to prevent their state from crumbling to pieces before their eyes ... The Malay nobles appear to have divided their time between intrigue and dissipa- tion at Brunei Town, and the oppression of their Dayak sub jects...
III
The political map of Southeast Asia was determined largely by imperialist interests and considerations of the last century. In most instances boundaries and demarkations were the results of inter- national rivalries involving two or more European powers, with only now and then a consideration of the interests of indigenous states. In Borneo this principle does not apply entirely. The boun- daries of the states of Eastern Malaysia, formerly British Borneo (Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak), are the result not so much of inter- national rivalry as of the rivalry between Englishmen. This rivalry was centered in commercial circles in Borneo and England and involved the Foreign and Colonial ministries in Whitehall.
By the 19th century Britain's chief interest in the area was strategic: to protect her commercial routes to China.13 She was concerned firstly, with the location of a suitable naval station along the eastern flank of the South China Sea, and secondly, with the assumption of political control over the northwestern coast of Borneo so as to prevent those areas falling to a European rival. Britain was not worried about the relatively weak Dutch and
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