The scramble for Sabah : the extension of foreign influence and the creation of Malaysia, 1900s - 1960s

Abstract

Borneo lies at the centre of an interconnected Southeast Asia, where Sabah (formerly British North Borneo) today remains a focal point in enduring geopolitical struggles. North Borneo has been a region in flux: from being a tenuous outpost of informal empire, to its contested assimilation with Malaysia in 1963. This dissertation offers a reconceptualisation of decolonisation and state formation by countering dominant fall of Rome-style narratives of the end of empire that prioritise ideas of metropolitan enfeeblement and colonial infirmity. In contrast, the colonial state paradoxically heightened its grasp upon the coast of North Borneo and extended systems of resource extraction amidst global imperial decline. Similarly, it shows how the incorporation of North Borneo into Malaysia was not a teleological progression towards independence, but rather an active process of state creation amidst proliferating foreign interest. This interpretation casts light on the roles of local elites, who transitioned from being side-lined as anti-colonial detractors, utilised as nodes of indirect governance, before finally becoming indispensable powerbrokers during a period of marked geopolitical fluidity in the early 1960s. Such malleability serves to denaturalise Malaysia. By considering how age-old scrambles for territory, influence and resources proliferated, and how tensions between the coast and the hinterland intensified, this research scrutinises accepted wisdom concerning decolonisation and constitutional handovers. Central to this argument is the examination of a series of contemporaneous geopolitical scrambles in the 1960s: Indonesia’s support for the Kalimantan Utara movement, the Philippine claim to North Borneo and the Anglo-Malayan plan for Malaysia. It shows how, if not for the mobilisation of local powerbrokers, Western support and an intense Malayan drive for territorial and demographic expansion, Malaysia would not have been created.

In achieving these aims, this dissertation presents a set of interrogatives: how did these experiences of colonialism shape subsequent geopolitical struggles? How did foreign interactions with Borneo, its peoples and its environment evolve throughout this period? And how does this disrupt prevailing narratives concerning the end of empire, decolonisation and state formation? This research draws upon a wealth of original documentation: colonial policy papers, correspondence and minutiae, as well as memoirs, reportage, folk tales and local oral tradition. Collected from a variety of archives, these materials offer a diverse range of perspectives. Read together, they allow for a greater understanding of how granular, local-level developments interacted with and impacted state-level and regional processes. This dissertation therefore traces not only the state and its surrounding region, but also the lives that underpinned it. These human stories run the course of this project: lives that were moulded by—and in turn shaped—these successive scrambles. Part I presents the framework for analysing the extension of foreign influence, charting the interactions between local elites and the state between the 1900s and the 1950s. Part II analyses these coetaneous contests for North Borneo in the early 1960s. These contests and enduring colonial-style relationships continue to shape modern Sabah: a place still dominated by rampant resource extraction, environmental destruction and measures of public control.