1 For the history of the Sarawak administrative service see: Walker, John H., Power and prowess: The origins of Brooke kingship in Sarawak (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002)Google Scholar and Talib, Naimah S., Administrators and their service: The Sarawak Administrative Service under the Brooke rajahs and British colonial rule (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

2 Morris, H.S., ‘Memoir’, Borneo Research Bulletin 24 (1992): 145–51.Google Scholar

3 Leach, Edmund R., Social science research in Sarawak: A report on the possibilities of a social economic survey of Sarawak presented to the Colonial Social Science Research Council [henceforth Report] (London: His Majesty's Stationary Office [HMSO], 1950)Google Scholar, p. 3.

4 Firth, Raymond, Malay fishermen: Their peasant economy (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1946).Google Scholar

5 Firth, Raymond, Report on social science research in Malaya (Singapore: Government Printer, 1948).Google Scholar

6 Leach, Report, p. 3.

7 Morris, ‘Memoir’, pp. 145–51.

8 The feuding between Harrisson and Leach continued into the next generation of anthropologists who carried out the projects Leach had proposed in his Report. Harrisson's hostile attitude towards Derek Freeman and his student de Martinoir apparently caused Freeman's psychological breakdown in 1961 that led him to abandon his Borneo research altogether and fundamentally changed his theoretical orientation. He returned to his earlier work on Samoa and embraced a biologistic approach to the study of human behaviour that culminated in his controversial attack on Boasian cultural anthropology in Margaret Mead and Samoa: The making and unmaking of an anthropological myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

9 Heimann, Judith M., The most offending soul alive: Tom Harrisson and his remarkable life (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999)Google Scholar. David Attenborough directed a television documentary, ‘Harrisson: The barefoot anthropologist’ (BBC 4, 2007). And the 1989 Hollywood movie ‘Farewell to the king’ is also said to be loosely inspired by Harrisson's life among the Kelabit.

10 Notwithstanding his role in the Mass Observation project that used anthropological methods to document life in Britain and was an early precursor of modern market research.

11 Harrisson, Tom, Scientific results of the Oxford University expedition to Sarawak (Borneo) in 1932 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952)Google Scholar, p. v.

12 Wallace, Alfred Russel, The Malay Archipelago (London: Harper, 1869)Google Scholar.

13 Harrisson, Tom, World within: A Borneo story (London: Cresset Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

14 Sandin, Benedict, ‘Obituary: Tom Harrison’, Sarawak Museum Journal 44 (1975): 311–12Google Scholar.

15 Harrisson, Tom, The Malays of south-west Sarawak before Malaysia (London: Macmillan, 1970)Google Scholar.

16 Leach, Edmund R., Rethinking anthropology (London: Athlone Press, 1966)Google Scholar, p. 2.

17 Haddon, Alfred C., Headhunters, black, white and brown (London: Methuen, 1901)Google Scholar; Hose, Charles and McDougall, W., The pagan tribes of Borneo (London: Macmillan, 1912)Google Scholar; Kennedy, Raymond, ‘A survey of Indonesian civilization’, in Studies in the science of society, ed. Murdock, George P. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937), pp. 266–97Google Scholar; Tom Harrisson, ‘Nomenclature of indigenous groups in Sarawak and Brunei’ (Kuching: Secretariat Circular, 22 Jul. 1947).

18 A good discussion of ethnic classification in Borneo from a more current perspective can be found in King, Victor T., ‘Ethnicity in Borneo: An anthropological approach’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 10 (1982): 124–45Google Scholar.

19 Leach, Report, p. 7.

20 At a conference on ‘Anthropology in Borneo’ held at Universiti Brunei Darussalam in 2005, the Iban anthropologist Dimbab Ngidang described Leach's Report as the ‘Bible of anthropology in Sarawak’.

21 Leach, Social science in Sarawak, p. 45.

22 Freeman, Derek, Iban agriculture: A report on the shifting cultivation of hill rice by the Iban of Sarawak (London: HMSO, Colonial Office Research Study No. 19, 1955)Google Scholar; republished as Report on the Iban (London: Athlone Press, LSE Monographs in Social Anthropology No. 41, 1970); Geddes, W.R., The Land Dayaks of Sarawak (London: The Colonial Office, 1954)Google Scholar and Nine Dayak nights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Morris, H.S., Report on a sago producing community in Sarawak (London: HMSO, 1953)Google Scholar; Ju-k'ang, T'ien, The Chinese of Sarawak: A study of social structure (London: Athlone Press, LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology, 1953)Google Scholar.

23 Leach, Edmund R., Political systems of highland Burma (London: Athlone Press, LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology, 1954)Google Scholar.

24 Leach, Report, p. 53.

25 Ibid., p. 6.

26 The first anthropologist to conduct research in this area of Sarawak was Roger Peranio who worked among the Bisaya of Limbang in 1958–59 for his dissertation, ‘The structure of Bisaya society: A ranked cognatic social system’ (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 1977). Some ten years later (around the same time Brown was in Brunei) James Deegan worked among the Lun Bawang (Murut) of Lawas for his dissertation, ‘Change among the Lun Bawang, a Borneo people’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, Seattle, 1973). Both acknowledge the influence of Leach's Report. Peranio, in particular, was concerned with the typically Firthian issue of flexibility and choice in a bilateral kinship system.

27 Leach, Report, p. 80.

28 Brown, Donald E., ‘How it came to be: Or how I wrote “Brunei: The structure and history of a Bornean Malay sultanate”’, Borneo Research Bulletin 42 (2011): 308–13Google Scholar.

29 Kuper's research was on the kingdom of Swaziland and Smith's on the Zaria Emirate in northern Nigeria. In 1961 both joined the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. Victor Turner, who had worked on the Ndembu chiefdom in Zambia, joined Cornell in 1964.

30 Brown, Donald E., Brunei: The structure and history of a Bornean Malay sultanate (Bandar Seri Begawan: Brunei Museum, 1970)Google Scholar, p. 165.

31 Brown, ‘How it came to be’, pp. 308–13.

32 Gullick, John M., Indigenous political systems of Western Malaya (London: Athlone Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

33 Brown, Brunei, p. ix.

34 Ibid., pp. 164–7.

35 Ibid., p. 164.

36 Ibid., p. 165.

37 In contrast to the Federated Malay States, where both matters of religion and custom (adat) were left to the authority of the Sultans, in Brunei only matters of religion remained under the Sultan's authority.

38 See Hussainmiya, B.A., The Brunei Constitution of 1959: An inside history (Bandar Seri Begawan: Brunei Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

39 An annotated version of this report has recently been published in Brunei with a historical introduction: Hussainmiya, B.A. and Tarling, Nicholas, Brunei: Traditions of monarchic culture and history — R.H. Hickling's Memorandum upon the Brunei Constitutional history and practice (Bandar Seri Begawan: Brunei Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

40 At the time often referred to as P.M. Yusof. His present day title is Pengiran Setia Negara Pengiran Haji Mohd. Yusuf bin Pengiran Haji Abdul Rahim. He is currently a member of the Legislative Council.

41 P.M. Yusof, ‘Adat istiadat diraja Negeri Brunei’ (n.p., Bandar Brunei: Jabatan Adat Istiadat Negara, 1958).

42 Halim, Yura and Umar, Jamil, Sejarah Berunei (Kuala Belait: Brunei Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

43 For an excellent analysis of language and national identity in Brunei that in some ways parallels the discussion of national culture in this article, see: Gunn, Geoffrey, Language, power and ideology in Brunei Darussalam (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

44 The Museum's mission statement is ‘To protect and preserve our national and cultural heritage’.

45 During this period Harrisson also conducted important archaeological excavations at Kota Batu, the old capital of Brunei, and thereby laid the foundations for subsequent archaeological research by Bruneian scholars, such as P.M. Shariffuddin and Matussin Omar.

46 Brown, ‘How it came to be’, pp. 308–13. Hussainmiya, B.A., ‘A brief review of anthropological research in Brunei’, Minpaku Anthropology Newsletter, 4 (1997): 6–7Google Scholar.

47 In contrast to Brown, whose fieldwork took him right into the social and political centre of the sultanate, the other two anthropologists conducted fieldwork in the outlying district of Temburong (which is separated from the main part of Brunei by the Limbang corridor that belongs to Sarawak) in communities that had migrated there from the core areas of Brunei. Allen Maxwell worked among the Kedayan of Piasau-Piasau from 1968–71 and Linda Kimball among Brunei Malays in Batu Apoi from 1971–4. Moreover, unlike Brown whose work was shaped by British social anthropology, their work was deeply rooted in American cultural anthropology. Maxwell's dissertation on the ethnosemantics of Kedayan agriculture was influenced by his supervisor Harold Conklin at Yale, a pioneer of ethnoecological and ethnoscientific research. Allen R. Maxwell, ‘Urang Darat, an ethnographic study of the Kadayan of Labu Valley’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1978). Kimball's dissertation on the socialisation of Brunei Malay children loosely followed in the footsteps of Mead's culture and personality approach introduced into Borneo by her supervisor Thomas Rhys Williams of Ohio State University. Linda Kimball, ‘The enculturation of aggression in a Brunei Malay village’ (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, Colombus, 1975). Both in terms of the communities studied and research topics, Maxwell's and Kimball's work is therefore far less political in nature than Brown's. Whether this is accidental or not, is anybody's guess.

48 Brown, ‘Memoir’, pp. 308–13. Hussainmiya, ‘Anthropological research in Brunei’, pp. 6–7.

49 Given the thirty-year period during which official documents remain classified, Brown could not consult more recent records.

50 From 1923–28 and then again from 1948–51. When Brown interviewed him, he was the Brunei Agent in London.

51 Brown, ‘How it came to be’, pp. 308–13.

52 Brown, Brunei, p. 166.

53 McArthur, M.S.H., Report on Brunei 1904, introduced and annotated by Horton, A.V.M. (Athens: Ohio University Monograph in International Studies, Southeast Asia Series, No. 74, 1987)Google Scholar, p. 126.

54 Brown, Donald E., ‘The social structure of nineteenth century Brunei’, Brunei Museum Journal 1, 1 (1969): 166–79Google Scholar; ‘Social stratification in Brunei’, South-East Asian Journal of Sociology, 3 (1970): 27–38Google Scholar; ‘Inter-hierarchical commissions in a Bornean plural society’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 1, 1(1973): 97–116Google Scholar; ‘Tribe–Sultanate relationships: Traditional patterns of rule in Brunei’, Expedition 30, 1 (1988): 45–50Google Scholar; ‘Mechanisms for the maintenance of traditional elites in Brunei, to the eve of Independence’, in From Buckfast to Borneo: Essays presented to Father Robert Nicholl on the 85th anniversary of his birth 27 March 1995, ed. King, Victor T. and Horton, A.V.M (Hull: Centre for South-East Asian Studies, University of Hull, 1995)Google Scholar, pp. 408–19.

55 Brown, ‘How it came to be’, p. 313. While teaching sociology at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, the present author often found it was difficult for students to conceive of social stratification in Brunei in terms other than those used by Brown. This is not surprising because the ‘traditional’ system of stratification and hierarchy of political offices is taught as part of the MIB course that is a compulsory subject at school and undergraduate level.

56 See, for example, the chapters ‘Malay Islamic monarchy: A state ideology of Brunei Darussalam’, ‘National philosophy as education in Islamic society: A case of Brunei Darussalam’, ‘Ethnicity and religious issues: Experiences from Brunei Darussalam’, in Haji Ibrahim, Abdul Latif, Issues in Brunei studies (Bandar Seri Begawan: Universiti Brunei Darussalam, 2003)Google Scholar.

57 Both their dissertations examined an aspect of Brunei that, intriguingly, Brown had hardly mentioned at all, namely Islam. Hashim Haji Abd. Hamid's dissertation focused on Islam in Kampong Ayer, the centre of the Brunei state: ‘Islam di Brunei Darussalam: Satu analisis sosio-budaya’ (Ph.D. diss., Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 1995). The dissertation was subsequently published in Brunei, minus some potentially controversial parts (Bandar Seri Begawan: Universiti Brunei Darussalam, 2003). Abdul Latif Ibrahim's dissertation examined conversion to Islam by indigenous groups in the outlying Temburong district: ‘Masuk Islam: Satu transformasi identiti sosial dan agama dalam masyarakat Melayu Brunei’ (Ph.D. diss., University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, 2001). An early version of the thesis earned him a terminal Master's degree from Cambridge. Given the political sensitivity of the topic, it may have been difficult to push the sociological analysis far enough. A recent sociology dissertation on conversions to Islam applies the psychological model of conversion developed by Lewis Rambo and generally avoids discussion of the sensitive political context. Asiyah az-Zahra Ahmad Kumpoh, ‘Conversion to Islam: The case of the Dusun ethnic group in Brunei Darussalam’ (Leicester: University of Leicester, 2011).

58 The way MIB has been woven into the education system since independence is discussed in Wellen, Kathryn Anderson, ‘“Melau Islam beraja”: Brunei's tripartite ideology’, in Reflections in Borneo rivers, ed. Shin, Chong, Harun, Karim, and Alas, Yabit (Pontianak: Stain Pontianak Press, 2006), pp. 227–41Google Scholar.

59 Brown himself acknowledges that ‘published as a monograph of the Brunei Museum it was not quite a book and did not get the sort of critical examination that a publishing firm would have required.’ (Brown, ‘How it came to be’, p. 313)

60 Ibid.

61 Best known is his book Human universals (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991)Google Scholar. Interestingly, Brown writes that it was his study of social stratification in Brunei that first led him to make certain assumptions about human psychological universals. His turn from Borneo ethnography to socio-biology in some ways parallels that of Derek Freeman whose criticism of Margaret Mead's cultural determinism Brown shares.

62 Maxwell, Allen R., ‘The Place of the Kadayan in traditional Brunei society’, South East Asia Research 4, 2 (1996): 157–96Google Scholar.

63 King, Victor T., ‘What is Brunei society? Reflections on a conceptual and ethnographic issue’, South-East Asia Research 2, 2 (1994): 176–98Google Scholar.

64 King, Victor T., ‘What is Brunei society?’ Janang 7 (1998): 65–84Google Scholar.

65 Brown, Donald E., ‘Issues in the nature of Brunei society and polity’, Janang 7 (1998): 85–90Google Scholar.

66 Kershaw and Maxwell discuss the political, legal, and semantic complexities of defining who is a Bruneian and seek to disentangle Bruneian-ness from other ethnic labels. Kershaw, Roger, ‘Marginality then and now: Shifting patterns of minority status in Brunei Darussalam’, Internationales Asienforum 29, 1–2 (1998): 83–106Google Scholar; Kershaw, Roger, ‘Ethnic minorities in late twentieth century Brunei: A survey of errors and imbalances in foreign analysis’, Borneo Research Bulletin 41 (2010): 250–75Google Scholar; Maxwell, Allen R., ‘Malay polysemy and political power: Census categories, ethnicity, and citizenship in Brunei Darussalam’, South East Asia Research 9, 2 (2001): 173–212Google Scholar.

67 In the precolonial period communities were usually known by their locations near significant geographical features, particularly the rivers that constituted the main transportation arteries, including the Brunei, Tutong, and Belait, each of which gave its name to an ethnic group. The term ‘Bruneian’ therefore refers to the nationality of the citizens of the modern nation–state, not to the ethnic identity of the orang Brunei who originated from present-day Kampong Ayer. Pringle has argued that the term ‘Malay’ may not have been part of precolonial identity discourse in Borneo and was possibly introduced by James Brooke from Malaya. Pringle, Robert, Rajahs and rebels: The Iban of Sarawak under Brooke rule, 1841–1941 (London: Macmillan, 1970)Google Scholar, pp. xix.

68 The Brunei Dusun are different from the Dusun of Sabah, but they are similar to the Bisaya both linguistically and culturally. This may be an example of the confusions created by colonial ethnic categorisation that institutionalised previously flexible ethnic boundaries.

69 Murut is another exonym. They are known as Lun Bawang in Sarawak and as Lun Dayeh in Sabah where they were converted to Christianity by American missionaries in the 1920s.

70 There is no room here to go into the extensive literature on Malay identity, e.g. Reid, Anthony, ‘Understanding “Melayu” (Malay) as a source of diverse modern identities’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32, 3 (2001): 295–313CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. This article focuses on the beraja aspect of MIB, another article on Islam and Malay identity (about both of which Brown strangely has very little to say) is currently under preparation by the author.

71 Although there are also Chinese converts to Islam, the conversion of Chinese is not a strategic target because they constitute a non-indigenous minority group, whereas the indigenous non-Muslim minorities are an anomaly sometimes classified as Malays, sometimes not.

72 The former Minister of Tourism and current Minister of Land Development of Sarawak, James Masing, is an Iban anthropologist who earned his Ph.D. from the Australian National University under the supervision of Derek Freeman.

73 While displays in the Ethnography Gallery of the Brunei Museum are built around Malay life-cycle rituals, the smaller Malay Technology Museum displays replicas of the traditional dwellings in Kampong Ayer and also those of some ethnic minority communities.

74 Another former Curator of Ethnography at the Brunei Museum, who is also not a Malay, is Lim Jock Seng, an LSE-trained anthropologist. His Master's thesis on the Brunei Malay fishing village of Batu Marang was similar to the ‘Coastal Fishing Project’ Leach had proposed for Sarawak that was intended as a test case ‘on a comparative basis, under Sarawak conditions, of the economic conclusions of Firth's Kelantan fishing study’ (Leach, Social Science Research in Sarawak, p. 42). As a graduate student at LSE Lim was in contact with Firth, but his thesis contains little theoretical analysis and casts the relationship between the Malay fishermen and the Chinese middlemen and merchant class (towkay), from which Lim himself originates, in unproblematic and mutually beneficial terms. Seng, Lim Jock, The inter-relationship of technology, economy, and social organisation in a fishing village in Brunei (Bandar Seri Begawan: Brunei Museum, 1986)Google Scholar. Soon after returning to Brunei, Lim was transferred from the Museum to the Foreign Ministry in whose establishment he played a key role and in which he currently is the powerful Second Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the only non-Malay in the cabinet.

75 Bantong bin Antaran, ‘The Brunei Dusun: An ethnographic study’ (M.Phil. thesis, University of Hull, 1993) is a conventional ethnography of traditional Dusun society written under the supervision of Victor T. King at Hull University. Pudarno Binchin, ‘Siram Ditaan: The performance of epic tales of Derato in Brunei Dusun Society’ (M.A. thesis, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, 2002) is about a specific genre of traditional Dusun oral literature (siram) that is no longer performed.

76 Pudarno Binchin, ‘“Race against time”: Problems and prospects of anthropological research on Brunei Dusun’ (n.p., no date).

77 Binchin, Pudarno, Janji Gintamini (Bandar Seri Begawan: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1997)Google Scholar. The novel's nomination for a literature prize by the Language and Literature Bureau was met by objections on the grounds that, although it was written in Malay, neither its subject-matter nor its author were Malay.

78 Kershaw, Roger, ‘Brunei-Dusun omen birds and the rice-sowing zodiac: Some ambivalent portents for autochthonous research’, Borneo Research Bulletin 29 (1998): 29–56Google Scholar; Kershaw, Eva Maria and Kershaw, Roger, ‘Messengers or tipsters? Some cautious though concluding thoughts on Brunei-Dusun augury’, Borneo Research Bulletin 38 (2007): 50–96Google Scholar.

79 Roger Kershaw worked for the Ministry of Education's history curriculum development unit for ten years until 1994. Perhaps he felt similar career anxieties himself when he published a highly critical monograph under the pseudonym Braighlinn, G., Ideological innovation under monarchy: Aspects of legitimation activity in contemporary Brunei (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

80 Kershaw, Eva Maria, A study of Brunei Dusun religion: Ethnic priesthood on a frontier of Islam (Phillips, ME: Borneo Research Council, Borneo Research Council Monograph Series No. 4, 2000)Google Scholar.

81 Bernstein, Jay, ‘The deculturation of the Brunei Dusun’, in Indigenous peoples and the state: Politics, land, and ethnicity in the Malayan Peninsula and Borneo, ed. Winzeler, Robert L. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

82 Attempts to introduce Borneo Studies at the national university have consistently run into difficulties, partly because its institutional relation to Brunei Studies remained unresolved. The present author was hired as the first anthropologist outside the Academy of Brunei studies in 1997 despite, or perhaps because of, having at the time no background at the time in Borneo or even Southeast Asian research but specialising in Arab and Muslim societies.

83 A very detailed historical account of the Sultan's manoeuvring between these alternatives is contained in Hussainmiya, B.A., Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin III and Britain: The making of Brunei Darussalam (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

84 According to Pocock's, TomFighting general: The public & private campaigns of General Sir Walter Walker (London: Collins, 1973)Google Scholar, Tom Harrisson, at the time still Curator of the Sarawak Museum, joined in the effort to crush the rebellion by organising the Kelabit to cut off the rebels' retreat across the Indonesian border.

85 Saunders, Graham, A brief history of Brunei (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, p. 146.

86 Abdul Latif, Issues in Brunei Studies, p. 196.

87 For a critical discussion of Brunei national history, see Kurz, Johannes L., ‘Pre-modern Chinese sources in the national history of Brunei: The case of Poli’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 169, 2–3 (2013): 213–43Google Scholar.

88 Gellner, Ernest, ‘The coming of nationalism and its interpretation: The myth of nation and class’, in Mapping the nation, ed. Balakrishnan, G. (London: Verso, 1996), pp. 98–145Google Scholar.