3 ‘So near yet so far’ Shaikh A. M. Azahari and 1962* B. A. Hussainmiya The Brunei revolt of 8 December 1962 was a trivial, almost Gilbertian, little upris- ing, yet it provided the sparks which were in due course to be flamed into the conflict between Indonesia and Malaysia. J. A. C. Mackie (1974: 111) Introduction Donald Brown’s grasp of history is as remarkable as his knowledge of anthro- pology. Even before he finally decided to move to Brunei in December 1966 for his field research to collect material for his doctoral thesis, he had already spent a considerable time in the British Public Record Office to scour Brunei- related historical documents to obtain a prior understanding of Brunei history. His monograph (Brown 1970) was an anthropological treatise, a first of its kind for Brunei, and, more importantly, a valuable pioneering work on a history of Brunei written with much insight and perspective. Since then Brown has pursued his interest in the history of modern Brunei as well by publishing several research papers, including editing some critical UK Public Records Office (PRO) docu- ments pertaining to Brunei’s period of the British Residency. In that sense he was the first scholar to work on Brunei colonial papers, followed later by people such as A. V. M. Horton, Nicholas Tarling and others who have since utilised the PRO documents more intensively. The subject I am dealing with in this chapter was not strange to Brown. In fact, he arrived in Brunei when the embers of the failed 1962 rebellion still smoul- dered. Chapter 9 of his 1970 monograph titled History of Brunei (130–163) traces the history back to early periods and the founding of the Brunei kingdom and ends with a brief reference to the 1962 rebellion and its aftermath. At the time Brown carried out his research, I am sure that with the exception of some gossip and orally transmitted information in addition to journalistic writings on the rebellion, there was little in the way of documents for him to probe more deeply into this episode. At any rate, the subject of the rebellion remained too sensitive for public probing for long after due to the nature of the closed society of Brunei and the restraints imposed by the country’s special branch. Continuity and Change in Brunei Darussalam, edited by Victor T. King, and Stephen C. Druce, Taylor & Francis Group, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fiu/detail.action?docID=6362197. Created from fiu on 2022-07-01 16:08:37. Copyright © 2020. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.