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North Borneo dispute
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North Borneo dispute
The North Borneo dispute, also known as the Sabah dispute, is the territorial dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines over much of the eastern part of the state of Sabah. Sabah was previously known as North Borneo prior to the formation of the Malaysian federation.
The Philippines, presenting itself as the successor state of the Sultanate of Sulu, retains a "dormant claim" on Eastern Sabah on the basis that the territory was only leased to the British North Borneo Company in 1878, and the sovereignty of the sultanate (and subsequently the republic) over the territory was never relinquished. However, Malaysia considers this dispute a "non-issue", as it interprets the 1878 agreement as that of cession, and it deems that the residents of Sabah (including Eastern Sabah) exercised their right to self-determination when they joined to form the Malaysian federation in 1963.
The 1878 agreement was written in Malay using the Jawi script, in which the contentious wordings are as follows:
sudah kuredhai pajakkan dengan keredhaan dan kesukaan kita sendiri kepada tuan Gustavus Baron von Overbeck yang tinggal dalam negeri Hong Kong dan kepada Alfred Dent Esquire yang tinggal dalam negeri London... sampai selama-lamanya sekalian perintah dan kuasa yang kita punya yang takluk kepada kita di tanah besar Pulau Borneo dari Sungai Pandasan di sebelah barat sampai sepanjang semua tanah di pantai sebelah timur sejauh Sungai Sibuku di sebelah selatan.
and
tiadalah boleh sekali-sekali kuasa dan perintah yang dikeredhai dalam pajakan ini diberi atau ditukarkan kepada lain bangsa atau kompeni daripada bangsa asing kalau tiada dengan keredhaan perintah bawah duli Queen terlebih dahulu.
The keyword in the agreement is the ambiguous term pajakkan, a Malay term which was translated by Spanish linguists in 1878 and by American anthropologists H. Otley Beyer and Harold Conklin in 1946 as "arrendamiento" or "to lease". However, the British used the interpretation of historian Najeeb Mitry Saleeby in 1908 and William George Maxwell and William Summer Gibson in 1924, which translated pajakkan as "to grant and cede".
It can be said however, that pajakan means "to mortgage" or "pawn" or even "wholesale", as per the contemporary meaning of pajakan in Tausug and Malay, which essentially means that the land is pawned in perpetuity for the annual cession money, and the sultanate would need to repay the entire value of the loan to redeem it back. Furthermore, the term selama-lama, which means "forever" or "in perpetuity", indicates a binding effect beyond the lifetime of the then-sultan.
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North Borneo dispute
The North Borneo dispute, also known as the Sabah dispute, is the territorial dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines over much of the eastern part of the state of Sabah. Sabah was previously known as North Borneo prior to the formation of the Malaysian federation.
The Philippines, presenting itself as the successor state of the Sultanate of Sulu, retains a "dormant claim" on Eastern Sabah on the basis that the territory was only leased to the British North Borneo Company in 1878, and the sovereignty of the sultanate (and subsequently the republic) over the territory was never relinquished. However, Malaysia considers this dispute a "non-issue", as it interprets the 1878 agreement as that of cession, and it deems that the residents of Sabah (including Eastern Sabah) exercised their right to self-determination when they joined to form the Malaysian federation in 1963.
The 1878 agreement was written in Malay using the Jawi script, in which the contentious wordings are as follows:
sudah kuredhai pajakkan dengan keredhaan dan kesukaan kita sendiri kepada tuan Gustavus Baron von Overbeck yang tinggal dalam negeri Hong Kong dan kepada Alfred Dent Esquire yang tinggal dalam negeri London... sampai selama-lamanya sekalian perintah dan kuasa yang kita punya yang takluk kepada kita di tanah besar Pulau Borneo dari Sungai Pandasan di sebelah barat sampai sepanjang semua tanah di pantai sebelah timur sejauh Sungai Sibuku di sebelah selatan.
and
tiadalah boleh sekali-sekali kuasa dan perintah yang dikeredhai dalam pajakan ini diberi atau ditukarkan kepada lain bangsa atau kompeni daripada bangsa asing kalau tiada dengan keredhaan perintah bawah duli Queen terlebih dahulu.
The keyword in the agreement is the ambiguous term pajakkan, a Malay term which was translated by Spanish linguists in 1878 and by American anthropologists H. Otley Beyer and Harold Conklin in 1946 as "arrendamiento" or "to lease". However, the British used the interpretation of historian Najeeb Mitry Saleeby in 1908 and William George Maxwell and William Summer Gibson in 1924, which translated pajakkan as "to grant and cede".
It can be said however, that pajakan means "to mortgage" or "pawn" or even "wholesale", as per the contemporary meaning of pajakan in Tausug and Malay, which essentially means that the land is pawned in perpetuity for the annual cession money, and the sultanate would need to repay the entire value of the loan to redeem it back. Furthermore, the term selama-lama, which means "forever" or "in perpetuity", indicates a binding effect beyond the lifetime of the then-sultan.
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