ABSTRACT
The British had entered South-East Asia along with the Dutch, and the Honourable East India Company received its charter from Queen Elizabeth I on 30 December 1600. The East India Company, however, lacked that close government support enjoyed by their Dutch rivals, and withdrew from the contest for control of the spice trade after a defeat in a sea battle off Batavia in 1619 and an attack upon their trading factory at Amboina in 1623. Thereafter, the British concentrated upon developing their trade with India. By the middle of the eighteenth century, they had acquired territory in the hinterlands of their main trading centres at Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta and were poised for the final round of conflict which would eliminate the French as rivals in India. They had opened trade with China through Canton and were again interested in the opportunities offered by the trade of the archipelago. Not ready to challenge directly the Dutch in Java or the Spanish in the Philippines, their merchants, particularly those operating out of Madras, developed contacts with Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. Another region not under any form of European domination was north-west Borneo. Here, the interests of the British coincided with the Brunei desire to seek an ally against the depredations of their main rival in north Borneo, Sulu, which contested with Brunei control of the northern coasts of what is now Sabah, an area disputed between them since the Sulu intervention in the Brunei civil war of the mid-seventeenth century.
