Limbang Rebellion: 7 Days in December 1962

$28.00 SGD

By Eileen Chanin

Winner of the 2014 Royal Marines Historical Society Literary Award. Limbang Rebellion was selected among many strong contenders in a year that marks the 350th anniversary of the formation of the Royal Marines. The judges said, “This year, your riveting book ticked all the right boxes and more.” Eileen Chanin is the first woman to receive the literary prize in its 42-year history.

In early December 1962 there was a surprise rebel uprising in northern Borneo. The leader of the anti-colonialist North Kalimantan National Army, Sheikh Azahari, mounted the insurrection that became known as the Brunei Revolt. It aimed to thwart Britain and Malaya's plan to combine the British territories of Borneo into a new Federation of Malaysia.

The river town of Limbang, an administrative centre in the British colony of Sarawak, became the pivot of the rebellion that was to be the opening act of the military and diplomatic conflict known as 'Konfrontasi.'

Combining eyewitness accounts with thorough research, Limbang Rebellion reveals what it was like to be thrown into this intense and unexpected conflict in which hostages were taken and threatened with execution. It describes the involvement of the Royal Marines under Captain Jeremy Moore, MC, and the daring rescue mission he devised under challenging circumstances, which included being vastly outnumbered by the rebel forces. The result is a gripping account of seven dramatic days when a small town in northern Borneo suddenly seized the world's attention.

"The Limbang Rebellion is, instead, as Chanin says, a story of courage and resilience and of extraordinary deeds performed by some to save and protect others from harm. It is a compelling story, told with all the immediacy of the eyewitness narratives used to tell it." - Clifford Sather

"The Limbang Rebellion is not merely the story of an archetypal commando raid or a fascinating geopolitical history about the end of empire. It is also a magnificent tale of courage, duty, friendship and loyalty. It is the reinsertion of the personal into the political." - Rob Minshull, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

“With a good journalistic flair, the author uses a fine narrative account which is gripping and authentic in so far as the Limbang episode was concerned.”- BA Hussainmiya

Eileen Chanin is a Sydney-based historian and author. Her most recent book, Book Life: The Life and Times of David Scott Mitchell (1836-1907), received the 2011 Alex Buzo Prize and was shortlisted for the 2011 CAL-Waverley Library Award for Literature as well as for the 2012 Magarey Medal for Biography. Her earlier book, Degenerates and Perverts, The 1939 Melbourne Herald Exhibition of English and French Art, was awarded the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Australia History Prize and shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction. She holds a PhD from the University of New South Wales. She writes for the press and Australian and international journals.

Publication Year: 2013
280 pages, 234mm x 153mm
ISBN: 978-9971-69-775-4, Paperback

Ridge Books