| A principal reason behind the re-emergence of the Brunei
State Council was to provide advisory function to the
British Resident's administration introduced in 1906. As
such one needs to understand the tenor of the Residency
system and the principles that guided it. Saving Brunei from
extinction
After the signing of the 1888 Brunei-British Protectorate
Treaty, Brunei's external affairs became the responsibility
of British government although this did not help Brunei from
losing further territories. The sultanate faced near
extinction after the treacherous annexation in 1890 by the
Sarawak Raja, Charles Brooke of the Limbang District which
was considered the rice bowl of Brunei. He planned to absorb
the remnants of the truncated kingdom with the connivance of
some conspiring nobles, a fait accompli that the British
Foreign Office too readily supported. Yet some reasonable
colonial officials including C. P. Lucas, A.L.Keyser, and
Sir Frank Swettenham felt it a travesty of justice to blot
out the ancient kingdom of Brunei from the map of the earth.
Keen on resolving Brunei's fate one way or other, the
British Government sent Stewart Hannibal McArthur, the
acting consul on a fact finding mission to Brunei.
McArthur's report of 1904 underscored the imperative of
preserving the Brunei kingdom at any cost, lest waiting to
be gobble down by its neighbours. How prophetic his
observation was on Brunei (paragraph 146), "with a large and
on the whole peaceably inclined population, a substantial
volume of trade, a fertile soil and natural and mineral
resources hitherto hardly tapped, its future would
ultimately be one of prosperity were present abuses
abolished."
McArthur's arguments that Brunei must be protected
against the machinations of Sarawak Raja won the day in the
Colonial Office. And it was McArthur who reinforced the idea
floating for some time in the British circles to introduce a
residency system already being successfully experimented in
Malaya in Perak after the signing of the Pangkor Engagement
of 1874. Historian Graham Saunders aptly comments "that
Brunei survives today as an independent state owes much to
McArthur."
Residency System
The Brunei court welcomed direct British assistance to
administer their country. Amidst financial bankruptcy,
Bruneians saw the wisdom of the permanent presence of a
British officer in their capital to advise them. Whether
they understood its implications was another matter.
According to H. C. Belfield, a visiting British Consul who
had been to the Brunei Capital after McArthur's mission,
'the Bruneians have no knowledge of, or interest in, the
limitations of Consular Duties, but they want an officer on
the spot who will help them in matters of administration
while leaving executive authority in their own hands'.
In December 1905 ailing Sultan Hashim Jalilul Alam agreed
to accept a British Resident by signing a Supplementary
Agreement, short on words but long in its ramifications. It
included language with crucial importance for the
relationship between the Resident and the Sultan:
"His Highness will receive a British Officer, to be
styled Resident, and will provide a suitable residence for
him. The Resident will be the Agent and Representative of
his Britannic Majesty's Government under the High
Commissioner for the British Protectorate in Borneo, and his
advice must be taken and acted upon on all questions in
Brunei, other than those affecting the Mohammedan religion,
in order that a similar system may be established to that
existing in other Malay States now under protection."
(Emphases added)
In paper the Agreement and the resultant Protectorate
system that the British imposed did not derogate overtly the
sovereign status of the Sultan. Accordingly, throughout the
Residency period, the British endeavoured to treat the
Sultan, in public, with the deference due to the highest
authority in the State--in whose name all laws were enacted.
In reality, however, the Sultan's sovereignty was sharply
circumscribed by the administrative authority of the
Resident, and in that sense Brunei lost its most of its
internal independence. The Resident--to use a modern
parlance-- assumed the roles both Prime Minister and Chief
Justice under the Sultan.
On the contrary, the Brunei monarch's ostensible
authority over his subjects began to consolidate itself
vis-à-vis some conspiring Pengirans. Indeed, the success of
the Residency system depended on the centralisation of
powers exercised through the Sultan's hands. As indirect
Rulers, the Residents found it convenient to treat the
Sultan, theoretically in the least, as some sort of absolute
monarch.
Whatever the case may be the advice clause in the
1905-1906 Brunei-British Supplementary Agreement gave
immense powers to the Resident. Without stating the obvious,
the whole might of the British Empire was behind the
Resident who could enforce ideas and practices deemed
suitable for British interests. Precisely for that reason
the Resident's powers needed to be vetted. He came under the
purview of the High Commissioner above him who had his seat
of Government in Malaya. But the fact that Brunei remained
fairly isolated and inaccessible gave the Resident in Brunei
to act much more independently at times than his counter
parts in Malaya.
The traditional assembly
Just as in the Federates States of Malaya, so was in
Brunei a State Council became the best option for the
British Resident as a listening post to local needs and
grievances.
But the State council was not solely a British invention.
Even in ancient times the Brunei kingdom had had practised a
form of consultative council or royal assembly that
consisted of some core nobility as well as state
dignitaries.
Informal as they were in the pre-Residential era, such
assemblies no doubt served to bring matters of utmost
importance to the Sultan for final approval. For example,
The Salasilah Raja-raja Brunei the Brunei chronicle, refers
to a daily assembly of noble and non-noble officials at the
Sultan's audience hall known as Lapau. Under the traditional
political system the Sultan was neither absolute a Ruler nor
a despot when making serious decisions for the State. He
required the assent of his subordinates. As a nineteenth
century British observer has stated "Neither in theory nor
practice is the Sultan despotic: he must consult on all
occasions with his chief officers, and all-important
documents should bear at least two of their seals."
Nowhere it was recorded who actually might have
participated in the decisions made at the assembly or which
noble officials below the Sultan had been included in the
assembly. A visiting British official to the kingdom at the
end of the nineteenth century has noted that the viziers
"declined to take any part in the Council as they found
their advice disregarded" By reconstituting an old advisory
body, the British thus had formalised the duties and
responsibilities of a Brunei State Council. Thus in his
dispatch to the Colonial Office, the first Resident McArthur
could write "by the recognised Constitution of Brunei all
matters affecting the State as a whole were under the
control of the State Council, presided over by the Sultan."
The first task of the reconstituted Council in Brunei in
1907 was to decide who should be its members, but there
followed a tug of war. |
