A Resilient Monarchy: The Sultanate of Brunei and Regime Legitimacy in an Era of Democratic Nation-States

New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 4, 2 (December, 2002): 134-147.

A RESILIENT MONARCHY: THE SULTANATE OF BRUNEI AND REGIME LEGITIMACY IN AN ERA OF DEMOCRATIC NATION-STATES
NAIMAH S TALIB1 University of Canterbury

As the only ruling monarchy in Southeast Asia, the Sultanate of Brunei is often seen as a political anachronism in a region in which democratic institutions of government prevail. Independence, gained from Britain in 1984, did not result in the institution of representative government, but in effect led to the consolidation of the monarchical system of government (Singh 1988: 67). Its present head of state, Sultan Sir Hassanal Bolkiah, is the 29th ruler of a dynasty which has reigned in Brunei since the fourteenth century. The early Brunei Empire reached its zenith from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, when it exercised suzerainty over much of Borneo and the southern tip of the Philippine archipelago. Under the fifth Sultan, Bolkiah (1473-1521), Brunei was especially powerful and even managed to briefly capture Manila.2 Its territorial domain and influence was gradually whittled down through the centuries, and it has been suggested that if not for British colonial intervention, the Sultanate would be lost to oblivion (Horton 1984). In 1839, the English adventurer, James Brooke, arrived in Borneo and gained control over territory in northwest Borneo as a reward for putting down a rebellion in Sarawak. Brooke, who styled himself “Rajah” of Sarawak, soon expanded his territorial control. Soon after, in 1878, on the northeast coast of Borneo, the British North Borneo Company established a foothold and was similarly encroaching on territory tenuously held by the Brunei Sultanate. The arrival of western powers in the region affected the traditional trading patterns and decimated the economic base of the Sultanate. Brunei became a British Protectorate state in 1888, and had the British not established a residency in 1906, it is very likely that

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