The North Borneo dispute, also known as the Sabah dispute, is the territorial dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines over much of the eastern part of the state of Sabah. Sabah was previously known as North Borneo prior to the formation of the Malaysian federation. The Philippines, presenting itself as the successor state of the Sultanate of Sulu, retains a "dormant claim" on Eastern Sabah on the basis that the territory was only leased to the British North Borneo Company in 1878, with the sovereignty of the sultanate (and subsequently the republic) over the territory never having been relinquished. However, Malaysia considers this dispute as a "non-issue", as it interprets the 1878 agreement as that of cession, and it deems that the residents of Sabah (including Eastern Sabah) had exercised their right to self-determination when they joined to form the Malaysian federation in 1963. 1878 Agreement The keyword in the agreement is the ambiguous term pajakkan, a Malay term which was translated by Spanish linguists in 1878 and by American anthropologists H. Otley Beyer and Harold Conklin in 1946 as "arrendamiento" or "to lease". However, the British used the interpretation of historian Najeeb Mitry Saleeby in 1908 and William George Maxwell and William Summer Gibson in 1924, which translated pajakkan as "to grant and cede". It can be argued however, that pajakkan means "to mortgage" or "pawn" or even "wholesale", as per the contemporary meaning of pajakkan in Tausug and Malay, which essentially means that the land is pawned in perpetuity for the annual cession money, and the sultanate would need to repay the entire infinite value of the territory to redeem it back. Furthermore, the term selama-lama, which means "forever" or "in perpetuity", indicates a binding effect beyond the lifetime of the then sultan. Another contentious translation is in the exclusive authority of the said territory, that is whereby in the original Jawi text (in Malay language) and the British translation, Her Britannic Majesty (in Malay, it is written as Duli Queen) holds exclusive power on the transfer of the said territory and any arbitration will solely be decided by the Britannic Majesty’s Consul-General for Borneo, this translation is replaced as "Their Majesties Government" in the Tausug translation. The ambiguity led to the different interpretation of the original Malay text, specifically the language concerning leasing or ceding of the land. Throughout the British administration of North Borneo, the British