About NBHRC

About the Borneo History Research Centre

The Borneo History Research Centre (NBHRC) is based in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. It was established to compile, collect, source, secure, and maintain documents and books of antiquity related to North Borneo — with particular emphasis on digitization to preserve and narrate Sabah’s history.

Director: Dr. Shari Jeffri — founder and lead researcher, affiliated with the Sabah Society. His research focus is 200 years of North Borneo treaties and colonial-era governance. He leads the Borneo Perantis Project, a related research initiative.

Institutional partners: Institute for Development Studies Sabah (IDS), Sabah State Library.

This archive

This site is a public resource cataloguing Colonial Office (CO) records held at the UK National Archives (Kew) that relate to North Borneo, Sarawak, Brunei, and the surrounding region. These records span the chartered company era through Malaysian federation — approximately 1840s to 1960s.

NBHRC’s mission is to make these materials — long held in London — accessible to researchers, students, journalists, and the public worldwide, and particularly to return them to Sabah.

Get in touch

If you are a researcher, institution, or archivist who would like to collaborate, contribute materials, or discuss the archive, please reach out through the Sabah Society or the Institute for Development Studies Sabah (IDS).