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The incident in the sights of this article is a hitherto unrecorded part of the modern history and international relations of microstate and Malay Sultanate, Brunei Darussalam, on the northern coast of the island of Borneo: seemingly the last feeble flourish of the populist nationalism which, in the 1962 revolt by Parti Rakyat Brunei, had come close to undermining monarchical power and achieving emancipation from Britain (though it had also helped to ward off absorption by the emergent Federation of Malaysia - to the monarchy's eventual advantage). These aims all gained feasibility in concert with anticolonial but also territorially ambitious forces of the region, notably Indonesia, motivated and equipped for infiltration overland. The revolt was put down with a degree of efficiency by British forces flown in from Singapore, but the trauma had left as its legacy not only a deep sense of insecurity on the part of the monarchy as an hereditary institution, but also in the minds of those with responsibility for defending Brunei as a territorial entity: so much so, that Britain had to cajole the Sultanate, in either sense, into acceding to independence in 1984.
But was Brunei really so vulnerable, especially and precisely after it had ceased to be a colonial outpost? Did the abortive challenge from the nationalist remnants in 1990 prove anything more than their own weakness? Did it help, ironically, to consolidate the monarchy and state borders, in a regional environment by now highly conducive in any case to both the continuity of state structures and the sanctity of borders, under the non-interference principle of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)?
Is smallness a liability?
By way of a brief theoretical excursus: following on from the last statement, the question might first be asked whether there is even any place for 'small state' theory in addressing the kind of challenge to be considered here, beyond offering us a tentative, heuristic reference point? It is not as if disappearance from the world stage is a frequent occurrence for microstates in general. On the contrary. Indeed this perhaps surprising fact is exactly what has formed a prominent focus of small state theory recently, almost rendering itself redundant, some may think! Collectively, such states have a very good...