1 - Introduction

Summary

The chapter introduces the book by presenting the puzzle it seeks to explain. During the decolonization process, colonial and regional powers frequently pursued the policy of amalgamation to avoid creating micro-states, which resulted in numerous cases of merger. However, some rejected merger projects and became independent separately. What, then, accounts for their separate existence? More generally, why did some colonial areas achieve independence separately from neighboring regions when facing pressure for amalgamation or annexation, while others became part of a larger state? This chapter then elaborates the main line of argument and the theoretical framework that underpins it. It argues that oil and a specific type of colonial administration carved out producing areas to create a state that would otherwise not exist. The introduction ends by briefly discussing methods and explaining the structure of the book.

The world we live in today is covered with sovereign states. With few exceptions, every piece of land on earth is under the jurisdiction of a state that has clearly demarcated borders, and we even draw invisible lines on the sea and in the sky to delineate territorial waters and territorial airspace. The sovereign state is the foundation of the contemporary international order.

Although it may seem predetermined in hindsight, it was only in the latter half of the twentieth century that sovereign states became the dominant form of political rule in the world. Before World War II, most of the world outside of Europe was under colonial rule. Only through European expansion in the latter half of the millennium and the collapse of empires in the aftermath of the two World Wars did the majority of nearly 200 states that exist today emerge. Therefore, the colonial period is critical if one wants to understand the origins of most sovereign states.

Colonial projects were often motivated by greed for natural resources. Their presence or expectations thereof encouraged European powers to transform by force the local and regional political order outside of Europe. The Spanish completely destroyed local communities in Peru and Bolivia by establishing a forced mining labor system named the mita to maximize their gain and minimize the cost, which continues to exert negative impacts on socioeconomic development even today.¹ The British Navy’s decision to convert from coal to oil on the eve of World War I prompted attempts to take control of oil fields in the Middle East, which shaped British colonial strategies in the region for the next several decades.² Britain, Australia, and New Zealand altered Nauru’s economy, society, and landscape by mining phosphate on the island, using it more for their own benefit than Nauruan’s despite their awareness that the phosphate reserves would be depleted by the end of the twentieth century.³ One can even argue that the intimate relationship between colonialism and resource exploration was already there at the very beginning of European expansion. When Christopher Columbus went on his voyage that led to the “discovery” of the New World in 1492, one of his major motives, along with a Christian mission, was gold. He mentioned the precious metal in his diary at least sixty-five times in approximately three months between his first discovery of an island and the beginning of his return voyage.⁴

If colonial rule is crucial in our understanding of sovereign international order, and natural resources were one of the main drivers of colonial expansion, then it would not be a wild guess to infer that natural resources played a role in the making of formerly colonized states. What kind of impact did they have? Would the world map of sovereign states look different if it were not for natural resources during the colonial period, and if that is the case, how? These are the questions this book seeks to answer.

In answering these research questions, this book focuses first on oil because it is the “largest internationally traded commodity and an essential component of modern economies,”⁵ making it the most important natural resource of the modern world. By closely investigating its impact on the making of states, this book reveals that in the critical moment of decolonization, oil helped colonial entities counter the imperial and regional pressure to merge with neighboring areas, which resulted in the creation of states that would otherwise not exist. In other words, oil was a driver of separate statehood. When the discussion is extended to other natural resources, I also find that natural resources can lead to amalgamation or separatism after decolonization, depending on their commercial value and timing of discovery.

Throughout most of its chapters, this book is motivated by a puzzle I found in the process of decolonization. Contrary to assumptions prevalent in international relations and political science, the end of colonial rule, decolonization, was not a simple transition from colony to sovereign state. It often meant the reorganization of territories, or more specifically, amalgamation. In the process of decolonization, European imperial powers frequently employed the framework of federation as an alternative to both empires and nation-states.⁶ Although they found decolonization inevitable, they still tried to maintain influence over former colonies and evade rising nationalism by creating federations under their own initiative. They also feared that small states were vulnerable and could fall into the hands of communists. “Unite and leave” was thus the strategy of colonial powers, most notably the British. In addition, regional powers often attempted to annex neighboring regions to expand their territorial scope.

This policy of amalgamated decolonization, in fact, did result in numerous cases of merger. At the apex of colonialism, there were as many as 700 colonial entities in the world, including colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other kinds of dependencies; decolonization reduced them to fewer than 150 sovereign states. Hundreds of colonial entities, including Indian princely states, Malay sultanates, and South Arabian sheikhdoms, were merged into larger states. However, despite mounting pressure from imperial masters and regional powers, some colonial areas managed to reject a merger and achieve separate statehood. Why was it possible? Considering that they were included in a merger project precisely because they were not considered viable on their own and were far less powerful than the metropole or regional powers, their success at establishing independence as a separate sovereign state is highly implausible and indeed puzzling. In other words, they were “unlikely” states. In this book, I show that it was in this process that oil affected the making of modern states.

More concretely, the central argument of this book is that the colonial politics of oil explains an important subset of cases of separate independence. When faced with a project for amalgamation, (1) oil production during the colonial period and (2) the protectorate system – indirect colonial administration through local rulers with internal sovereignty and protection from internal and external threats provided by the colonizer – led to the creation of states that would otherwise not exist. I establish the theory through in-depth within-case studies and cross-case comparisons of colonial areas in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, focusing on Brunei, Qatar, and Bahrain as successful cases of separate independence and comparing them with their less successful neighbors. Additional case studies on Kuwait and colonial areas in West Indies and South Arabia provide tests of and support for the theory.

My explanation builds on but departs from existing studies of sovereignty and state formation. There is a considerable amount of research in international relations on issues regarding sovereignty and state formation, including the rise of sovereign states in Europe,⁷ the expansion of the international system,⁸ and sovereignty in international law.⁹ These studies have provided a good understanding of the process of state formation in Europe and the making of the international system as a whole. However, far fewer studies have investigated state formation outside of Europe. Despite the centrality of colonial politics and decolonization, many of the dominant theories of state formation in the field of international relations fail to consider colonial factors. Even when they do, they often have an assumption that colonial borders dictated the borders between postcolonial states.¹⁰ It is true that many colonies inherited colonial borders, but they did not always smoothly turn into state borders. Interactions among the metropole, regional powers, and local actors often reorganized colonies into sovereign states. The literature in the discipline of history on decolonization is well aware of this point, but most of the studies in this field focus on individual cases and do not seek to make a theoretical argument.¹¹ This book aims to theoretically explain the reorganization of colonial entities during the process of decolonization under certain conditions, which cannot be explained by existing studies.

One cannot forget that there is also extensive research on the territorial impacts of natural resources. Scholars have tackled issues regarding this relationship mainly through the investigation of secessionism.¹² They successfully demonstrate that natural resources can lead to separatist movements. However, because of the limitations and assumptions of datasets they use in their empirical analysis, most of them focus predominantly on secessionist movements from existing sovereign states, assuming that the secessionist region is already part of a sovereign state rather than a colony or other kinds of dependency. As a result, they overlook decolonization. Because of scarce examples of successful secession in the period after World War II,¹³ studies on secessionism tend to conclude that natural resources can trigger secessionist “movements” but do not lead to an actual secession. However, this book shows that, if we focus on decolonization cases, we can actually find cases of successful oil-led “secession.”

Separate Independence as a Puzzle

The majority of the nearly 200 sovereign states that exist today were born through decolonization. Considering its importance in the making of the sovereign international order, scholars regard decolonization as “the most important historical process of the twentieth century.”¹⁴ The reorganization of colonies into sovereign states established much of the world we see today.

In political science and international relations, the assumption that decolonization was an automatic transition from colony to sovereign state is still prevalent. It is true that political leaders in former colonies often accepted colonial boundaries as state borders for their own political benefit; they sought to remain in power in the new state and prevent the state from factionalizing into countless ethnic groups.¹⁵ Research shows that areas with a previous history as administrative units are more likely to succeed in becoming sovereign states.¹⁶ However, colonial borders did not always smoothly become state borders. Jansen and Osterhammel caution against such an assumption:

Competing options were considered, negotiated, overtaken by events, and sometimes swiftly forgotten. This presents historians today with a great challenge: how, in hindsight, to avoid trivializing this openness to the future as experienced by contemporaries into a superficial impression that everything had to happen the way it did.¹⁷

It is essential that we do not take the territoriality of sovereign states we know today for granted. Many of them were born out of historical contingency rather than predetermination.

Decolonization often meant the reconfiguration of territories. There was often room for political, economic, and social factors to influence the configuration of the newly created state, reshuffling its “geo-body.”¹⁸ How to decolonize their dependencies was often more important to imperial powers than whether to decolonize, as Smith notes:

In retrospect, we can see that the truly important political decisions to be made by Paris and London after 1945 concerned not whether the colonies would be free, but rather which local nationalist factions they would favor with their support and over what piece of territory these new political elites would be permitted to rule. What would be federated, what partitioned, who should govern and according to what procedures, constituted decisive issues where the Europeans continued to exercise a significant degree of control.¹⁹

What kind of reconfiguration was there? It is important to remember that the number of states that emerged from decolonization was far smaller than the number of colonial entities. Depending on how one counts colonial entities, there were approximately 700 of them at the apex of colonialism. However, there are only fewer than 150 states born through decolonization (Figure 1.1).²⁰ Many colonies, especially small ones, were integrated into a larger entity to achieve statehood. As Baldacchino shows, there is a negative correlation between the size of colonies and their year of independence; the larger the territory, the earlier and more easily they achieved independence.²¹ Smaller territories were usually included in a larger entity by the metropole or a stronger regional power during the process of decolonization. Especially in the first several decades of decolonization, colonial powers feared that “a group of weak ‘quasi-states’ would emerge which would be economic and political liabilities to the international system.”²² They expected a sovereign state to be “economically viable and capable of defending its own interests” and sought to ensure that they transferred sovereignty to a friendly and stable successor state.²³ This brought about a “federal moment” in the history of decolonization, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, when imperial powers sought to establish federations that were viable as sovereign states by merging small colonial areas that were thought to be unable to survive independently.²⁴

Figure 1.1 Number of states and colonial entities, 1816–1993

Source: For colonial entities, Correlates of War Project, Colonial Contiguity Data, 1816–2016 (Version 3.1). For states, Ryan D. Griffiths and Charles R. Butcher, “Introducing the International System(s) Dataset (ISD), 1816–2011,” International Interactions 39, no. 5 (2013): 748–68, https://doi.org/10.1080/03050629.2013.834259.

The British Empire, the largest colonial power in the world, was especially committed to creating federations.²⁵ Smith points out that this practice had been standard since the second half of the nineteenth century with the establishment of Canada, Australia, and South Africa.²⁶ In the postwar period, this policy resulted in the establishment of, for example, the West Indies Federation (1958), the Central African Federation (1953), the Federation of South Arabia (1962), the Federation of Malaya (1948, Malaysia from 1963), and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (1971), although many of these federations collapsed soon after their establishment. Areas under the rule of other empires followed a similar path. Examples include the Mali Federation, created by the merger of French Sudan and Senegal, and Equatorial Guinea, created by the merger of Rio Muni and Fernand Po. There are also cases of interimperial mergers; Libya, Morocco, Cameroon, Togo, and Somalia consisted of colonies under different empires that formed a state together.²⁷

Although colonial officials were concerned about the future of their dependencies after independence, these concerns were closely intertwined with their pursuit of the continuation of their global influence. Imperial powers promoted federations to “update” their empires, adapting to the emerging international order while maintaining their key interests. Although after World War II, there was increasing pressure for decolonization and the rise of nationalism all over the globe, this did not immediately mark the end of empires. As Gallagher puts it, “[w]hatever caused the end of empire, it was not the Second World War.”²⁸ Retaining the traditional imperial structure may have become untenable in the postwar period, but this did not mean there was no place for empires anymore. Imperial powers were still trying to maintain their influence over their colonial possessions, albeit in a new form. They sought to establish a new form of polity that could both please those who pressured them to decolonize and serve their interests at the same time. Federations were their answer.

According to Collins, federations were “[a]lternatives to imperial rule that resisted the logic of sovereign states on national lines” that offered another way of thinking about sovereignty and the political order after decolonization.²⁹ He summarizes the motive of the British behind their promotion of federations in the postwar period:

The problem of colonial nationalism would inevitably grow beyond the Dominions and India and would thus threaten British control and influence in colonial territories. At the same time, the strength of the association between Britain and its empire clearly remained fundamental to the maintenance of a British world role. Commonwealth would be central to this, and this would shape the British approach to nationalism. Federation would no longer be conceived as an imperial endeavour formally constituting the relations between metropole and colony, but rather as a way of maintaining British influence in particular parts of the empire, a way of reconfiguring the politics of collaboration so as to defy the logic of nationalism with its fetishisation of sovereign territoriality and hence to maintain key British spheres of influence.³⁰

Imperial powers did not just leave colonies after the war; they had a significant stake in the form of decolonization, and they preferred federations over which they could continue exerting influence as alternatives to nation-states. As a result, they scrambled to amalgamate.

Additionally, regional powers also pursued amalgamation by annexing neighboring colonial entities. For example, more than 500 princely states in India were not allowed to achieve independence separately; they were integrated into either India or Pakistan. In the Dutch East Indies, there were numerous sultanates in which the Dutch initially ruled through a relatively autonomous political arrangement. However, these sultanates lost their autonomous status and were eventually integrated into the new sovereign state of Indonesia. The case of East Timor is a notable example of the forceful annexation of a small colonial area by a stronger neighbor.

All these trends led to numerous cases of merger and a decline in the number of polities. However, despite this challenging environment for small colonies, some of them managed to become independent on their own, rejecting amalgamation. These are highly exceptional cases because, for small polities, it is generally difficult to reject a policy promoted by a stronger power; only under certain limited conditions can they achieve their own policy goals.³¹ As mentioned earlier, Figure 1.1 attests to this; out of 600 colonial entities that experienced decolonization, only some 150 states emerged, meaning that at least 450 colonies lost their separate status and became part of a larger state. Therefore, rejecting a merger, which was preferred by the metropole and regional powers, was a highly unlikely outcome.

This book closely examines three such cases in comparison with their neighbors: Brunei, Qatar, and Bahrain. The three states were originally expected to become part of larger entities, as the metropole assumed that they were too small to become independent on their own.³² Brunei was one of three British protectorates on the island of Borneo. While the other two, Sarawak and North Borneo, merged with Malaya to form Malaysia in 1963, Brunei refused to join the federation and remained a protectorate, eventually becoming independent in 1984. Qatar and Bahrain were among nine British protectorates in the lower Gulf,³³ seven of which formed the UAE in 1971. The two did not join the new federation and chose to achieve separate independence in the same year.

These states differ from those that became independent because of the collapse of a federation and those that colonial powers left at a very late stage of decolonization without any project for amalgamation. They resisted pressures for integration and achieved separate independence, which cannot be explained simply by chance or abandonment. Although colonial powers became more willing to grant independence to small colonial entities in the 1970s than in previous decades as decolonization began in the Caribbean and the Pacific, the federation projects that included Brunei, Qatar, and Bahrain started earlier in the 1960s. They faced strong pressure to become part of a larger entity because the danger of microstates was in fact an important concern for the metropole. The colonizers, the British, strongly opposed their separate independence, and so did regional powers. This makes them among the most “unlikely” states in the world. What, then, accounts for their separate existence? More generally, why did some colonial areas achieve independence separately from neighboring regions when facing pressure for amalgamation or annexation, while others became part of a larger state? This book answers these questions by focusing on the colonial politics of oil.

Argument

The central argument of this book is that the colonial politics of oil carved out producing areas to create “unlikely” states that would otherwise not exist. When included in a merger project, colonial entities can reject it and achieve separate statehood if they meet two conditions: (1) oil production during the colonial period and (2) the protectorate system.

Oil-led separate independence occurred in imperial peripheries that colonizers controlled merely to prevent the entry of other European powers and for which they had no intention to develop economically. To minimize administrative costs, colonizers preferred to make these areas protectorates and rule through local rulers, who benefitted from the relationship because it enhanced their authority and security, for the metropole secured their position and offered them protection. These protectorates also obtained a separate status from neighboring regions because they signed a treaty with the colonizers individually.

When oil was (unexpectedly) discovered in these protectorates, they suddenly became economically important to the metropole. A large amount of revenue flowed into the hands of the rulers, and they could reinforce their power base by utilizing oil revenues. The colonizers also became more committed to protecting these areas. The importance of their oil for the metropole strengthened the bargaining power of the local rulers vis-à-vis the colonizers.

In the face of decolonization, the colonizers tried to establish a federation to amalgamate neighboring regions, assuming that it would be impossible for them to achieve independence individually. However, colonial entities with oil and the protectorate system managed to reject such pressure and achieved independence separately. This was because the two factors provided them with material and political incentives for separate independence, viability as a sovereign state, including financial self-sufficiency and security, and bargaining power vis-à-vis the colonizers. Oil-rich protectorates avoided forming a larger entity because a merger would mean sharing their wealth with others, and the local ruler had a strong political incentive to remain independent for fear of losing his power in a larger state. Oil revenue helped them achieve financial self-sufficiency, and the protectorate system obliged the colonizers to offer protection to the colonial area, which was further reinforced by the presence of oil. The importance of oil to the metropole placed the colonial area in a stronger position in negotiations, and the metropole was compelled to listen to the ruler of those protectorates on how to decolonize these areas because of his internal sovereignty. Chapter 2 explains these causal mechanisms in more detail.

The outcome of my theory, separate independence, refers to a situation in which a colonial area achieves independence as a distinct sovereign state without experiencing a merger with its neighbors. The negative outcome, therefore, is a merger.³⁴ I use terms such as colonial entity or colonial area rather than colony simply because colonial administrative units were not necessarily colonies; I intend the former to include colonies, protectorates, mandated territories, or any other kinds of dependencies under colonial rule.

What do I mean by independence? Independence is defined here as the acquisition of sovereignty, which has multiple meanings. Krasner proposes four models of sovereignty: domestic sovereignty, which refers to “the organization of public authority within a state and to the level of effective control exercised by those holding authority”; interdependence sovereignty, which denotes “the ability of public authorities to control transborder movements”; international legal sovereignty, which means “the mutual recognition of states”; and Westphalian sovereignty, which refers to “the exclusion of external actors from domestic authority configurations.”³⁵ Among the four types, the third one, international legal sovereignty, is the one employed as the definition of sovereignty in this book. This means that states do not have to be able to effectively control the domestic society or transborder movements or exclude external actors to qualify as sovereign states. Therefore, even the so-called “quasi-states”³⁶ are considered sovereign in this book. In the postwar international society, such sovereignty can practically be equated with membership in the UN.³⁷ I basically consider that a colonial entity achieves independence when it becomes a member of the UN.³⁸

The first causal factor, oil production during the colonial period, is oil production that substantially preceded the decolonization of the colonial area in quantities that contemporary political actors both in the metropole and the colonial area considered significant. This definition does not specify the exact amount of oil or the precise number of years between the first oil production and independence. This is because the influence of oil production depends on context-specific factors such as the period, the presence or absence of larger oil producers in the region, and the perception of local and colonial actors. Oil in 1900 did not have the same value for the colonizers and locals as it did in 1950. Oil production in a colonial area where its neighbors are far larger producers does not affect the decolonization outcome in the same way as oil production in the only producer in the region. Therefore, rather than setting a numerical threshold, I take a more interpretive approach to assess whether relevant actors considered oil production in each colonial area significant and whether there was enough time before decolonization for oil revenues to affect the economy, politics, and society.

Oil production requires several steps before the revenue flows to producing colonies: concession, exploration, discovery, production, and exportation. When they see a prospect for the discovery of oil, companies first sign a contract to obtain permission to drill for it. They then start exploring for oil and may discover it. If there is a commercial amount, they start the production. After building pipelines and other necessary infrastructure to transport oil to countries that need it, the oil begins to sell, and revenue flows into the producing area. At what stage does oil begin affecting the territoriality of colonial areas? Although the effects are initially small, the impact of oil begins even before it is discovered; even the prospect of oil affects the perception of the colonizers and local actors on the future of the colonial area. If no oil is discovered, however, the impact disappears. It grows larger as the oil industry proceeds to later stages of production, and it is ultimately necessary for oil to be discovered, produced, and exported in substantial amounts to affect the decolonization outcome.

The second explanatory factor, the protectorate system, needs more clarification. It roughly corresponds to the legal definition of a protectorate. Several scholars of international law have defined this specific type of colonial administration. What their definitions have in common is the distinction between internal and external sovereignty; protectorates entrust the latter to the protector while retaining the former.³⁹ Having internal sovereignty is, in fact, a key component of my definition of the protectorate system.

However, this does not mean that I simply regard whatever colonizing powers called protectorates as colonial entities with the protectorate system in this book. This is because what the status of a protectorate entailed varied across different cases, and it also often changed over time. Protectorate arrangements in Somaliland, Selangor, and Tunisia differed from each other, as well as within Tunisia between 1900 and 1950. In some cases, local rulers retained considerable domestic authority throughout the colonial period, while in other cases, there was not much autonomy from the beginning, or the colonizers gradually tightened their grip. Legal definitions alone cannot always capture the nature of colonial rule. Moreover, it was sometimes not easy to define the colonial relationship in the first place. For example, the colonial status of Gulf sheikhdoms was always ambiguous; according to von Bismarck, they “never fitted into any of the categories of constitutional dependency that constituted Britain’s formal empire.”⁴⁰ In the 1960s, the British called them “independent states in special treaty relations with the United Kingdom,” not protectorates, although we tend to consider them as such today.

It is, therefore, important to specify further what I mean by the protectorate system, rather than merely relying on the labels employed by the colonizers. Based on the legal definition of protectorates, my definition of the protectorate system has two core elements: (1) the presence of a local ruler with internal sovereignty and (2) protection by the colonizing power. First, a colonial entity under the protectorate system is not a colony; it has a local ruler with internal sovereignty who stands at the top of the political structure and is not ruled directly by colonial officials or locals functioning only as intermediaries. Although ruling a colonial area, by definition, exposes him to the influence of the colonizers, the ruler has more autonomy than leaders in colonies under direct rule. This relationship accords the ruler varying degrees of authority, but for this study, an area without a ruler does not meet the necessary conditions of the protectorate system.

The protectorate system can be understood as a patron–client relationship under a hierarchical social contract.⁴¹ Although there is a great power imbalance between the colonizing power and the local ruler, the former still needs to “demonstrate that [it] cannot or will not abuse the authority that subordinates have entrusted to [it]” because otherwise, the latter could opt for alternative arrangements with competing colonial powers.⁴² This situation is especially true for protectorates because, unlike colonies, they usually entered a colonial relationship through a contract, not a conquest, although the military force was surely in the background. Because of the nature of the protectorate system, the colonizers, who are also constrained by a democratic government and budgetary concerns, find it extremely difficult to switch to forceful annexation simply because they discover oil, for example. The colonizers, who were vastly outnumbered by the locals, could control colonial entities only because they had collaborators.⁴³ In the protectorate system, adopted especially in the imperial peripheries, the client in the patron–client relationship was more powerful than those in normal colonies.

Second, a colonial area under the protectorate system is a dependency; it receives protection from the colonizing power against internal and external threats rather than being responsible for its own defense. In exchange for control over external relations of the colonial area, the colonizing power is obliged to offer protection. This relationship stands in contrast to independent states that have to ensure their own security. By entering a colonial relationship with a stronger power, the colonial area frees itself from the threat of its neighbors, regional powers, or other colonial empires. In return, the colonizing power minimizes administrative costs and can exercise “control over a territory without the accompanying burden of assuming official sovereignty over that territory.”⁴⁴ These characteristics, rather than the nominal status of a protectorate, contribute to the separate independence of oil-rich colonial areas. As long as these two components are present, a colonial area meets the condition of the protectorate system regardless of whether it is formally called a protectorate, protected state, mandate, or anything else.

This definition of the protectorate system overlaps with the concept of “indirect rule.” However, indirect rule applies to both a system in which local leaders have internal sovereignty and one in which they are mere intermediary agents of the colonizers, whereas the protectorate system only includes the former.⁴⁵ The term can also misdirect our focus exclusively to the internal governing structure, whereas external relations are equally important for my theory.⁴⁶ The protectorate system as defined here is also similar to the concepts of “proto-states” or “segment-states” that Griffiths and Roeder employed in their respective studies.⁴⁷ However, it differs from these concepts in that while they focus on the national, geographical, or administrative distinctions from neighboring areas, this study focuses on the internal administrative structure and the relationship with the colonizing power.

Methods

This book employs comparative historical analysis, which is defined “by a concern with causal analysis, an emphasis on processes over time, and the use of systematic and contextualized comparison.”⁴⁸ It compares multiple cases and makes a causal argument by investigating the historical process in each case. In this book, I conduct comparative case studies of colonial areas on the island of Borneo and in the lower Gulf that exhibit a high level of similarity but experienced different decolonization outcomes to investigate the historical process that led to the success or failure of separate independence.⁴⁹

During the colonial period, there were four colonial units on the island of Borneo: Sarawak, North Borneo, Brunei, and Dutch Borneo. The White Rajahs (the Brooke family) had ruled Sarawak since 1842, and the British North Borneo Company had governed North Borneo since 1881. Brunei was one of the oldest sultanates in the Malay world and included Sarawak and North Borneo until the nineteenth century, when successive forced cessions reduced its territory. The southern half of the island was under Dutch rule. Although these units were all located on the same island, and three of them had previously constituted one sultanate, they followed different paths in decolonization. North Borneo and Sarawak joined Malaysia, and Dutch Borneo became part of Indonesia, while Brunei achieved separate independence.

In the lower Gulf, there were nine sheikhdoms (Abu Dhabi, Umm al-Quwain, Ajman, Dubai, Sharjah, Ras al-Khaimah, Fujairah, Qatar, and Bahrain) with the same colonial status as a British protected state, a similar historical background, and a similar internal political structure. However, faced with decolonization, only Qatar and Bahrain opted out of the UAE, choosing instead to become independent separately, leaving the other sheikhdoms to establish the UAE. I argue that these outcomes can be explained by the theory described earlier.

In contrast to a statistical approach, where the main goal is to estimate the average causal effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable, this research explains outcomes in a particular set of countries, although it aims to build a theoretical framework that can also be applied to other cases.⁵⁰

The comparative aspect of this study has two components. First, it compares cases with a high degree of similarity but different outcomes to examine what caused the difference. It compares Brunei with three other colonial units on the island of Borneo and compares Qatar and Bahrain with one of the other sheikhdoms, Ras al-Khaimah. Second, it compares Brunei with Qatar and Bahrain to understand why countries in different regions and with different historical backgrounds share the same outcome. A theoretical reason drives the selection of these cases. As explained in Chapter 2, maritime Southeast Asia and the Gulf are regions where the arrival of the oil industry substantially preceded decolonization, which means that it is highly likely that oil would be involved in the process of state creation.

Table 1.1 classifies the cases according to the value of the two independent variables. Cases in the shaded cell met the two conditions and thus achieved separate independence, while the others lacked either or both of them and did not become separately independent. Dutch Borneo had oil but lacked the protectorate system. Ras al-Khaimah had the same colonial status as Qatar and Bahrain but lacked oil. Other lower Gulf sheikhdoms except for Abu Dhabi⁵¹ also fall into the same category, but the case of Ras al-Khaimah is appropriate for closer analysis because it was the only other sheikhdom that actively pursued separate independence, making it the most illustrative in comparison to Qatar and Bahrain.

Table 1.1 Classification of cases according to the two independent variables

		Protectorate system
		Yes	No
Oil	Yes	Brunei Qatar Bahrain	Dutch Borneo
	No	Ras al-Khaimah Sarawak	North Borneo

North Borneo and Sarawak are more nuanced cases in terms of their colonial administration system. They were technically British protectorates between 1888 and 1946 (except for Japanese occupation during World War II), before becoming Crown colonies governed directly by Britain until 1963. However, because North Borneo was governed by a British company and British colonial officials sent from the metropole undertook the administrative work, I consider that it was essentially a colony and, therefore, a case without the protectorate system. Although the Rajahs of Sarawak were originally British subjects, Sarawak had a “local” ruler and was more autonomous than North Borneo, making it a case with the protectorate system. Despite their obscure colonial status, they had two things in common with each other and with Ras al-Khaimah: They lacked substantial oil and did not achieve separate independence.

To consider the broader applicability of my argument, I also conduct additional case studies of Kuwait, the West Indies, and South Arabia. Kuwait is a positive case that can be explained by the same framework, while the two other regions include negative cases that meet only one condition of the two. I show that the theoretical framework established by this book has relevance beyond Borneo and the lower Gulf. Although these case studies are not as detailed or deep as the principal case studies, they help clarify the scope of the theory.

As a study using comparative historical analysis, this study also includes an aspect of within-case analysis through process tracing to identify the causal mechanism that leads to the outcome, thereby substantiating the internal validity of the theory.⁵² Primary historical materials obtained mostly from the British National Archives in London provide the historical evidence to assess each case.⁵³ In so doing, I also conduct a counterfactual analysis for each case. Analyzing a counterfactual, which is defined as a “subjective conditional in which the antecedent is known or supposed for purposes of argument to be false,” in each case is useful for within-case analysis.⁵⁴ For each of the three cases that achieved separate independence, I consider how they would have been decolonized had it not been for oil and the protectorate system, and for negative cases, I discuss what would have been their decolonization outcome with the presence of oil or the protectorate system.

Broader Significance

After learning about the cases and the argument, readers may find themselves questioning the significance of this topic – it may look like a study on an ultimately peripheral phenomenon that occurred in “insignificant” states. It is true that this book mostly looks at some of the smallest states in the world that have traditionally received much less attention than major powers in the West or rising powers such as China and India. However, I argue that this book has broader significance to those interested in international relations and comparative politics generally for the following reasons.

First of all, it complicates and revises our understanding of the historical path leading to the world covered with 200-odd sovereign states. The conventional account of this process is largely one of a clear-cut rupture – empires became untenable in the mid-twentieth century in the face of rising nationalism and delegitimization by the international community and were replaced by nation-states, which quickly became the default unit of political authority. It is not wrong, but it disregards the winding road between empires to sovereign states and portrays it as a straight path. This book demonstrates that the reality was much more complex and that the outcome could have been different. For one, it shows that the sovereign state was just one possible form of political rule; even after realizing that the age of empire was coming to an end, the metropole still pursued a “soft-landing” option rather than a straightforward transition to nation-states. They tried to establish federations so that they could continue exerting influence over them while reducing the cost of administration because, for them, nation-states could be dangerous.

For another, this book also shows that the states we see today were just one possible form of statehood out of numerous possibilities. What is a unitary state today could have been multiple different states, and rival neighboring states we know today could have been one. Overseas territories remaining today could have achieved independence, and some of the smallest sovereign states could have remained overseas territories. This book does not cover all such cases, but by looking at Brunei, Qatar, and Bahrain, one can realize how complicated and unexpected state formation can be. Understanding this keeps us away from the essentialization of existing sovereign states.

Second, these seemingly “insignificant” states rejected a policy preferred by much more powerful states, which is indeed a highly significant political phenomenon. It is a “David and Goliath” type of story. Amalgamating small colonies into federations was a policy promoted by imperial powers, and most of the colonies had no option but to accept it. It was, therefore, a highly unlikely outcome that a small colony refused to join a federation. The literature on small states has sought to find conditions for them to exercise influence; this book finds one such set of conditions. It thus contributes to our understanding of the agency of small states in world politics.⁵⁵ More fundamentally, in contrast to existing works on small states that discuss their foreign policy while largely taking their sovereignty for granted, this book discusses how small states emerged in the first place. In a way, keeping in mind the question of why there are small and large states, it looks at the “prehistory” of the international relations of small states.

This book’s focus on the international relations of small states is especially significant for the literature on international oil politics. Partly due to the concern of resource dependence and access to oil in the Persian Gulf among policymakers and academics in the United States, this literature has often focused on the perspectives of great powers that depend on imported oil.⁵⁶ Oil-producing states, on the other hand, become the focus of research only if they are regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Iran or anti-Western belligerent regimes such as Iraq and Libya.⁵⁷ Petrostates that are neither powerful nor belligerent have received much less attention except as part of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).⁵⁸ In other words, scholars have conceived oil as a weapon of strong or belligerent states, paying scant attention to the role of smaller and more benign producers.⁵⁹ In contrast to these perspectives, this book shows how oil can be used as a “weapon of the weak.”⁶⁰ Small states can also utilize their oil to achieve policy goals that are contrary to the desired outcomes of stronger powers.

For these reasons, this book has important implications for various subfields of international relations and comparative politics, including the literature on state formation, resource politics, and the international relations of small states. Although the empirical discussion is mainly about three cases that have received little scholarly attention, the book is not just about them.

Plan of the Book

This book has seven chapters in total, including this introductory chapter and conclusion. Chapter 2 theorizes how colonial oil production and the protectorate system lead colonial areas to separate independence. This theory offers a basis for empirical analysis in the following chapters. Chapters 3 and 4 constitute the main body of this book; I conduct detailed comparative and within-case studies of the political history of colonial areas on the island of Borneo and in the lower Gulf, respectively, examining why Brunei, Qatar, and Bahrain managed to achieve statehood while neighboring colonial areas failed to do so. These chapters confirm the explanatory power of the theory presented in Chapter 2.

Moving outside of the two regions of main geographical focus, Chapter 5 provides additional case studies of Kuwait, the West Indies, and South Arabia. By demonstrating the applicability of the theoretical framework not only to Borneo and the lower Gulf but also to other cases in different parts of the world, this chapter substantiates the external validity of the claim.

After uncovering oil’s role in decolonization, one question immediately emerges: what about other natural resources? Although oil is neither the only fossil fuel on which we depend nor the only resource that produces a substantial amount of wealth, it appears to be the only natural resource that can lead to separate independence. Chapter 6 compares oil and other natural resources to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between natural resources and territorial sovereignty. I argue that natural resources can lead colonial areas to divergent outcomes – namely amalgamation, separate independence, and secessionism after decolonization – depending on (1) their commercial value and (2) the timing of their discovery. While resources with low economic value do not affect the territoriality of states, those with high value result in three different outcomes. Resources discovered before or during the process of colonization often result in amalgamation into a larger entity. Those discovered between colonization and decolonization can lead to separate independence. Finally, those discovered after decolonization can trigger secessionism. I substantiate this claim by investigating the impact of coal, precious metals, and natural gas.

The concluding chapter summarizes the findings of this book, discusses their academic, policy, and normative implications, and proposes areas for future research. It briefly explains the political situation after separate independence, pointing out the contrast between the economic and diplomatic success of the three states and their persisting authoritarianism, which is a result of separate independence. It also makes suggestions for topics for future research, including the resource curse and colonial entities that never became independent.