Brunei in Old Maps

Related to my obsession with history, is also another hobby of collecting old maps of Brunei. I have only recently started this hobby and currently only have 3 of these 19th century maps but they showed interesting aspects of Brunei and the region at a particular point in time.

This particular map was done sometime towards the third quarter of the 19th century. I can't exactly pinpoint when but obviously it was done when a whole lot of Sarawak has dissappeared from Brunei's control and Sabah is almost complete to becoming the modern Sabah of today.

Look closer and you will see that Brunei has managed to retain some areas of Bintulu, Miri and Baram and of course Limbang and on the Sabah side, Trusan was still under Brunei.

What interested me most of this map when I got it was those triangular shapes. In those days areas are calculated from the river banks. I cannot imagine any areas which have such sharp triangular shapes.

And what's even more amazing, this is 19th century map. There was no satellite images then and neither was there any aeroplanes. This map they produced is a masterpiece of accuracy. Imagine that.

Comments

Anonymous said…
where do u get these old maps Mr BR?
Wednesday, February 13, 2008 2:41:00 PM
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