colonial office correspondence relating to brunei 'destroyed under

IJAPS Vol. 1 2005 (Inaugural Issue)AVM HortonSUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONIn this paper attention has been drawn to documents 'destroyedunder statute'. The key message is that the registers can yieldvaluable snippets of information and that their use should not beneglected. It was pointed out, first, that much of the material whichhas been lost would have been of great interest to historians. It is auseful lesson in humility. Students of the past rarely get the fullstory: the process of sifting has already begun long before they seethe evidence and is a handicap to obtaining a completeunderstanding of the past. All this raises common-place concernsabout the preservation of historical materials: who should decidewhat is worth keeping and what is not? At least the registersfurnish us with some idea of what is missing.On a more positive note, secondly, indications are foundabout where to look for further information: for example, to Lincoln'sInn Library for copies of Brunei's legislation. Guidance is givenabout whereabouts in Hansard parliamentary proceedings relatingto the sultanate might be found. The registers also furnish thenames of people who might not otherwise have been suspected ofhaving a Brunei connection (such as Sir Harry Brittain). It is alsopossible to follow, for example, the struggle of the Island TradingCompany to get shipping space for its cutch exports, which was oneof the sultanate's leading products in the early years of this century.So, thirdly, the indexes yield certain clues which, combined withexisting knowledge, can help of fill in certain lacunae. No doubt thepositive results of all this are often fairly marginal; but in a case likeBrunei, where historical materials tend to be scanty (particularly so,curiously enough, for the first half of the twentieth century) everyand any scrap of information is welcome.With regard to the way forward, there is no doubt that otherPRO series of files relating to Brunei (e.g. CO 717 Federated MalayStates) also include documents "destroyed under statute". SimilarlyCO 992/1 (Register of British Borneo correspondence, 1942–1946)reveals that several files were either destroyed or suppressed beyondthe usual thirty-year time-span. One would particularly like to haveseen CO 531/31/14, sub-file 7, 'Special instructions re Sultan ofBrunei', relating to the end of the war. It would be valuable,therefore, to continue the search beyond the period 1906–1934 forBrunei itself and perhaps to extend the approach to the history ofother countries of South-East Asia as well.38