‘Brokering a postcolonial Malaysia: how local elites shaped the Cobbold Commission, 1961–63’

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sabah’s decolonization and subsequent merger with Malaysia was fraught with uncertainty. The 1962 Cobbold Commission of Enquiry in British Borneo aggravated regional tensions in Southeast Asia and sparked allegations of neo-colonialism. While Orthodox scholarship argues that the commission delivered a decisive cross-section of public opinion, fresh analysis of archival material indicates that its outcomes were compromised by logistical and functional limitations. Through recovering key local voices and disentangling commission addenda from the archive, this paper shows how the inquiry became a vehicle for local elite advancement and Anglo-Malayan geopolitical agenda, rather than transparent democratic legitimation. Furthermore, it contends that the pre-emptive (rather than post factum) nature of the inquiry laid bare its political potentiality. The inconclusiveness of its findings led many to dismiss Sabah’s public as incapable of determining its own future, prompting Britain and Malaya to push ahead with Projek Malaysia [the Malaysia plan] largely irrespective of public opinion. The subsequent push to form Malaysia contributed to deteriorating relations with neighbouring states and ushered a period of marked geopolitical instability. This paper argues, however, that a key, understudied outcome of the commission was the crystallization of local elite voices. Many elites—traditional headmen and local power brokers—claimed to speak for thousands of followers and thus utilized the commission to cement political influence in the postcolonial arena. By casting light on colonial political devices amidst the end of empire, this paper offers valuable nuance and a portable methodology for understanding a range of cognate decolonization experiences.