Brunei on the Morrow of Independence
Background In the 16th century, Brunei's hegemony extended from Manila on the north to some indeterminate area of south Borneo. Spain and a resurgent kingdom of Sulu reduced Brunei dominion in the north; unknown events limited Brunei control to the southern boundary of present-day Sarawak by the 19th century, when European and American adventurers carved Sarawak and Sabah, now parts of Malaysia, from Brunei's remainder. In 1888 Britain established a loose umbrella of protection and control over Brunei, Sarawak, and Sabah, but in 1890 Charles Brooke, Raja of Sarawak, seized the last remaining large district of Brunei, the Limbang. Britain ultimately approved the seizure-though it divided Brunei into two geographically separate parts. In 1906 a Britsh Resident was established in Brunei. Britain hoped to reunite Brunei's former parts, but nothing came of those plans. In 1929 oil was discovered and the state became viable.
Continuity and Tradition
Brunei Darussalam celebrated its fifth independence day on 23 February 1988. The Sultanate, however, has a polidcal history which can be traced over a thousand years into the past. At the height of its glory, Brunei was a large Malayo-Islamic empire, controlling much of Borneo and parts of the Philippines. In the Philippines, besides extending its control over the coastal belt from Palawan to the Manila Bay area in central Luzon, the Sultanate also made its influence felt in the Visayas and northern Mindanao, so much so that Professor Tarling was moved to observe that Brunei rather than Sulu was "the great 'Philippine' power of the pre-Philippine period".1 Unlike the preceding Malay empires of Sri Vijaya, Majapahit and Malacca, and the numerous sultanates of the Malay world, and notwithstanding its experience of various internal challenges and external pressures at one time or another, the Brunei Sultanate has been able to maintain the continuity of its polity up to the present. However, a consequence of its encounters with Western imperialism has been the fact that its territory had dwindled into two tiny enclaves on the northwestern coast of Borneo, sandwiched between the two Malaysian Bornean states of Sarawak and Sabah. The survival of the Sultanate in its present form is very much a tribute to the skilful diplomacy of its sultans. Brunei owes its existence, in the view of one observer, "to the ingenuity of its rulers, who for centuries have had to contend with numerous invaders and adventurers and have had to withstand the external pressures" from surrounding powers.2 Indeed, had it not been for Sultan Hashim who turned his kingdom into a British protectorate as a last resort to ensure Brunei's survival, the Sultanate would have become a mere part of either Sarawak or Sabah today. Similarly, through consecutive
Frontal cognitive dysfunction in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy
Purpose: The aim of the present study was to investigate the possible frontal cognitive dysfunction in patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) and to compare the results with those of patients with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) and temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), as well as with controls.