The British North Borneo Herald and Gazette was the colony's only newspaper for most of its run. Published fortnightly (1st and 15th of each month), it was simultaneously the organ of government and the territory's newspaper of record. Volume I, Number 1 appeared in 1883; the final issue was printed shortly before the Japanese invasion in 1941. The press moved from Sandakan to Jesselton around 1905 when Jesselton became the capital.

Each issue typically runs 12–32 pages and contains: the Government Gazette (proclamations, land grants, liquor licences, postal notices, ordinances), Shipping Intelligence (arrivals and departures at all ports with cargo manifests and vessel draught), Native Affairs (district officers' quarterly reports), Commerce (export/import tables, commodity prices), Obituaries, Meteorological tables, Court and Police reports, Letters to the Editor, and a substantial Advertisements section covering hotels, shipping agents, merchants, and medical practitioners.

The Herald is the single most comprehensive running record of colonial North Borneo. Its shipping intelligence columns document the trade routes of the South China Sea; its gazette sections record every land alienation and labour licence; its native affairs columns provide the closest thing to a continuous ethnographic record of the territory's peoples during the colonial period.

Series in this collection

The broadest collection in the archive, spanning nearly five centuries. The Chartered Company papers proper cover the British North Borneo Chartered Company (incorporated 1 November 1881; dissolved after the Japanese occupation). But the collector has included within this series a comprehensive library of every significant book, pamphlet, article, and report ever published on North Borneo — making it an extraordinary research library in its own right.

Foundational documents include Alfred Dent's 1878 Statement and Application to the Marquis of Salisbury, the 1878 Charter, both cession deeds from the Sultans of Brunei and Sulu, and the 1877 Commission appointing Baron von Overbeck Maharajah of Sabah. The company's administrative records include Governor Treacher's first six-monthly report (1882), district reports from Kudat (Gueritz, 1883), the Kinabatangan (Pryer, 1881), and numerous subsequent governors' despatches.

The monograph library within this collection includes virtually every book of consequence on North Borneo published before 1965: from the earliest voyage narratives (Belcher's HMS Samarang, 1848; Low's Sarawak, 1852) through Ada Pryer's A Decade in Borneo (1893) and Owen Rutter's British North Borneo (1922), to the founding academic studies of Tregonning and Black.

Selected holdings

British government records from the National Archives, Kew, covering the CO 874 (North Borneo original series), CO 273 (Straits Settlements), CO 1022 (Southeast Asia Department), CO 1030, CO 531, and FCO 141 series. These are the metropolitan view of the colony — London's responses to, and instructions for, the Chartered Company's governance.

The CO 874 excerpts include the Sandakan Diary (1879–1880), despatches from governors covering the Treacher Commission (1894–95), the interior expedition reports, the Tawao Estate correspondence, and out-letters from 1899–1900. CO 1022 covers the Cold War period — political intelligence on communist activity, proposals for federation, and the Borneo territories' constitutional future.

Selected files

The archive's scholarly library — the largest collection by document count. It includes full runs of the two most important journals for Borneo and Malayan history: the Journal of the Straits Branch, Royal Asiatic Society (JSBRAS, 78 issues from the 1870s to 1920s) and the Journal of the Malayan Branch, Royal Asiatic Society (JMBRAS, 46 issues from the 1920s to 1960s). Both are essential references for primary research on Southeast Asia.

Beyond the journals, the collection spans expedition accounts (Belcher's HMS Samarang voyage, 1848), missionary memoirs, ethnographic monographs, official handbooks, and modern academic works. It extends to contemporary legal and political scholarship on the Sabah claim, oil royalties, and the Malaysia Agreement.

Journal holdings

Key monographs

A concentrated collection on the most consequential event in North Borneo's modern history: its incorporation into Malaysia. The files document the "Grand Design" from its earliest conception — Tunku Abdul Rahman's proposal in May 1961 — through the Cobbold Commission (which assessed Bornean opinion), the negotiations, the Malaysia Agreement of 9 July 1963, and the subsequent crises of Konfrontasi and Singapore's separation in 1965.

The collection is particularly strong on the British side — UK Cabinet minutes (CAB 128 and CAB 129 series), Foreign Office correspondence with Jakarta and Manila, and the intelligence assessments of Indonesian and Philippine attitudes. It also contains the original MA63 agreement text, annexes, and the academic and legal literature on its standing and point-by-point interpretation.

Cabinet and Foreign Office files

MA63 and Singapore separation

Records relating to the Sandakan Prisoner of War camp — the largest POW camp in British Borneo — and the death marches of 1945 in which approximately 2,400 Australian and British prisoners and local forced labourers perished. The Sandakan atrocity remains one of the least-documented mass killings of the Pacific War; these records are essential for ongoing research.

The most significant item is the Australian War Crimes Commission's Final Report on North Borneo, which compiled evidence from survivor testimony, Japanese military records, and physical investigation. The archive also holds the extraordinary document: records recovered from the mass grave of 23 Australian prisoners of war.

Key records

Indonesia's undeclared war against Malaysia (1963–66), fought largely in and around the Borneo territories. The collection covers the military (Operation Claret, the covert British cross-border operations), the diplomatic (exchanges between London, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and Washington), and the intelligence assessments of Sukarno's intentions.

Key files

Records and memoirs of the Garrison South Borneo Regiment and related units during the reoccupation and transition to Crown Colony status. Covers the military administration of North Borneo between the Japanese surrender and the re-establishment of civil government, including district-level conditions reports and the slow rebuilding of Sandakan.

Mat Salleh (c. 1860–1900) was a Suluk-Dusun leader who led the most sustained armed resistance to the Chartered Company's expansion. He raided Gaya Island (1897), destroyed the Chartered Company's station at Ambong, and held out in a fortified stronghold at Tambunan until killed in battle in January 1900. His uprising — lasting six years — exposed the limits of Company power and led to significant policy changes in native administration.

The collection includes colonial intelligence and district reports on the uprising, accounts by district officers who engaged him, and later historical analyses that reassess him as a proto-nationalist resistance figure rather than a criminal outlaw as colonial accounts framed him.

Themes in this collection

The legal and diplomatic record of the most persistent territorial dispute in Southeast Asia. The Sulu sultanate's claim over North Borneo rests on the interpretation of the 1878 cession deed — specifically whether the Sulu word padjak means "lease" (as Philippines and Sulu heirs argue) or "cession" (as the British and Malaysian governments maintain). The archive holds the deed itself, both English translations, the Spanish text of the final treaty between Sulu and Spain (1878), and the full paper trail of subsequent legal and diplomatic engagement.

The official published record of the colony — annual reports from the Chartered Company and later the Crown Colony, plus the official handbooks published at roughly decade intervals. These are the standard reference works used by colonial administrators and are essential for establishing administrative, demographic, and economic baselines.

Declassified CIA and other US intelligence assessments of Borneo's strategic position during the formation of Malaysia, the Indonesian confrontation, and the regional Cold War. Includes a detailed handbook on special operations in the Borneo jungle environment.