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Administrative Policy and Practice in Sarawak: Continuity and Change Under the Brookes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Jon M. Reinhardt
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Abstract

One hundred years of Brooke rule in Sarawak seem to present a stark contrast to the political and social foment in Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam. Cognizant of the ill effects of European domination in the archipelago, the Brookes established a paternalistic rule whose policies were designed to curtail European economic investment in the area and to protect the indigenous inhabitants from internal and external exploitation. However, despite the fact that Brooke rule was structured for maintaining traditional order, not development, the European interlude in north Bornean history may have been more of a deviation than is apparent. The suppression of “piracy” in the area and the political domination of the Brookes over most of the northeastern part of the island had several important results. First, the area trade patterns—if piracy can be seen as a form of luxury trade—were altered to the ultimate economic advantage of the Chinese who came to dominate retail trade. Second, the natural northeastern expansion of the Iban people was halted to the chief benefit of the indigenous Malays who gained significant political advantage under die Brookes. Finally, an inevitable depersonalization of rule occurred as the administration of the state became increasingly complex. If, in a “modern” world, a rule of law, not economic development per se, is the essential ingredient for political stability, Brooke rule made a significant contribution to the political viability of northern Borneo by fostering a White, civilized way of settling disputes.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , August 1970 , pp. 851 - 862
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1970

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References

1 Sarawak, Gazette, 09 2, 1872, p. 1.Google Scholar

2 John, Spenser St., Rajah Brooke (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1897).Google Scholar

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7 See for example Hepburn, B. A. St. J., The Handbook, of Sarawak (Singapore: Malaya Publishing House, 1949) pp. 65–68.Google Scholar

8 The state also refused to countenance the alienation of land for debts. See order No. IX, 1910, Sarawak. Gazette, Vol. III, No. XLVI, 07 15, 1910, p. 131.Google Scholar

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13 The life of an outstation officer in the Second Division has been described first by Charles Brooke himself in Ten Years in Sarawak (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1866)Google Scholar, and after the turn of the century, by Ward, A. B. in Rajah's Servant (Ithaca: Cornell University Data Paper, No. 61, 1966).Google Scholar

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16 I am indebted for this insight to Tom Harrisson, former Curator of the Sarawak Museum, and now Professor of Sociology at Cornell University.

17 Many were former enemies of the first Rajah or their descendants, demonstrating the Brooke's policy of leniency and amnesty toward the inhabitants. The senior native officer at Simanggang, Tuanku Putra, was the son of Sharif Sahap, former satrap of Sadang before he was defeated by James Brooke in 1844.

18 Most of the non-Europeans were Malays (chiefly Sarawak Malays), but a few important stations—Sibu in the 1880's and Kalaka after 1900—were manned by Chinese. Prior to World War I, almost all the minor stations in the Second division and those in the Kanowit and Balleh regions of the Third Division were started by Malays. See Doering, p. 102.

19 Ward's Rajah's Servant stresses this point. See account of how the senior Malay at Simanggang aided in the judicial process, p. 34.

50 In later years, the tax commission was replaced by a regular salary to lessen the likelihood of extortion.

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30 By 1925, oil royalties amounted to over 14% of the state's total revenue; correspondingly, income from head or door taxes had decreased from 8% in 1900 to only 1% in 1925. Government monopolies consistently provided a large percentage of the state's income: 31% in 1900, 27 in 1910, 21 in 1920 and 26 in 1925—opium alone accounted for 18% of the total in 1925. Custom duties, both from imports and exports, was the other larger source of revenue: 32% in 1900, 38 in 1910, 40 in 1920 and 27 in 1925. During the period from 1900 to 1925, state revenue increased over 5½ times. All data is gathered from the yearly financial reports in the Sarawak Government Gazette.

31 See Ward, , p. 133Google Scholar, who speaks rather disparagingly of the necessity for “annotating innumerable minute papers.”

32 The percentage of funds spent in the Medical, Health, Post Office, Land, Education and Treasury departments increased from 16% in 1900 to 27% in 1925; during the same period, Public Works expenses rose from 14% of the total to 25%. After 1925, expenditures continued to rise, and by 1930, in the wake of the general world depression, the state had experienced its first two budget deficits since the turn of the century. Due to a decline in rubber prices and a general drop in revenue in 1930, the Rajah called for an immediate policy of austerity in his address to the meeting of the Council Negri. See the text prefixed to the Administrative Report for 1930 (Kuching: Sarawak Government Printing Office, 1931).Google Scholar

33 See for example the editorial in LII, Feb. 1, 1922, p. 31 and letter, p. 45; and the editorial in LIII, Mar. 1, 1923, pp. 13–14 and letter, pp. 66–67.

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39 The arguments from an “autonomous” history, avoiding the application of European categories to Asian social and political phenomena, are now well documented. See the pioneering work by van Leur, J. C., Indonesian Trade and Society (“Selected Studies on Indonesia by Dutch Scholars,” Vol. I; The Hague and Bandung: W. van Hoeve, 1955)Google Scholar; and two later volumes, one by Soedjatmoko, et al. , An Introduction to Indonesian Historiography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965)Google Scholar, and the other by Hall, D. G. E. (ed.), Historians of Southeast Asia (London: Oxford University Press, 1961)Google Scholar. See also Hall, , “On the Study of Southeast Asian History,” Pacific Affairs, XXXIII (09, 1960) pp. 268–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smail, John R., “On the Possibilities of an Autonomous History of Southeast Asia,” Journal of Southeast Asian History II, No. 1 (1961) pp. 72–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Benda, Harry J., “Decolonization in Indonesia: The Problems of Continuity and Change,” American Historical Review, LXX, No. 4 (07, 1965) pp. 1058–1072.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 In Sarawak, Datu was the highest title except for Rajah; in Brunei it was the position below pangiran.

41 Raffles seems to equate the “decay” of Malay government with the rise of piracy, an activity forced on the Malays by Dutch monopolistic policies and commercial restrictions. He also thought that piracy was “innate,” enhanced by the “intolerant spirit of the religion of Islam.” See Raffles, Sophia, Memoir of the Life and Public Services with Some of the Correspondence of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, etc. (London: John Murray, 1830), particularly pp. 63 and 78Google Scholar. For a discussion of the “decay” and “innate” theories of the origins of piracy, see Anne Lindsey Reber's excellent study, “The Sulu World in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A Historiographical Problem in British Writing on Malay Piracy” (unpublished M. A. thesis, Cornell University, 09, 1966), especially pp. 1–28.Google Scholar

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43 Ibid., p. 131, n. 51, and p. 133.

44 See in particular Sandin, Benedict, The Sea Dayaks of Borneo Before White Rajah Rule (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1968).Google Scholar

45 Of course, the other side of the argument is that the Ibans would have assimilated themselves to the Malays and become “Islamized” as many already have. Tom Harrisson notes in The Peoples of Sarawak (Kuching: Sarawak Museum, 1959), p. 6Google Scholar, that “at least ninety-five percent of Sarawak's Malays are people previously pagan Dayaks who were converted to Mohammedans and Masok Melayu in the process….”

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48 The Brookes never quite seemed to know what to make of the Chinese. They admired their enterpreneurial skills and even imported a number of Chinese settlers into the Rejang area. But the regime never forgot the Chinese uprising in 1857 in which a kiongsi (community) near Bau sacked and burned Kuching. See the Sarawak Gazette, XLI, 582, 06 11, 1911, p. 109Google Scholar for a most illuminating comment.

49 For a brief, but good discussion of recent politics in Sarawak along these lines, see Means, Gordon P., “Eastern Malaysia: The Politics of Federalism,” Asian Survey, VIII, No. 4 (04, 1968), 289–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Again, I am grateful to Professor Harrisson for first calling this conclusion to my attention.