Power and Prowess: The Origins of Brooke Kingship in Sarawak (Southeast Asia Publications Series)

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ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA Southeast Asia Publications Series

POWER AND PROWESS

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ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA Southeast Asia Publications Series Titles in print The Challenge of Sustainable Forests, F.M. Cooke The Emergence of a National Economy, Howard Dick, Vincent J.H. Houben, J. Thomas Lindblad and Thee Kian Wie Fragments of the Present, Philip Taylor The Riddle of Malaysian Capitalism, Peter Searle The Seen and Unseen Worlds in Java, 1726–1749, M.C. Ricklefs War, Nationalism and Peasants: The Situation in Java, 1942–1945, Shigeru Sato Writing a New Society: Social Change through the Novel in Malay, Virginia Matheson Hooker Editorial Committee Professor Anthony Milner (Editor) Australian National University

Professor Barbara Andaya University of Hawaii

Dr Tony Day

Dr Howard Dick University of Melbourne

Dr Jane Drakard Monash University

Professor Kevin Hewison University of New England

Professor Virginia Hooker Australian National University

Professor Graeme Hugo University of Adelaide

Dr Rey Ileto Australian National University

Professor John Ingleson University of New South Wales

Professor Lenore Manderson University of Queensland

Dr Milton Osborne

Professor Tony Reid University of California

Dr Krishna Sen Murdoch University

Professor Carl Thayer University of Hawaii

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POWER AND PROWESS The origins of Brooke kingship in Sarawak

J.H. Walker

Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with ALLEN & UNWIN and UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI’I PRESS HONOLULU

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For Craig Rendell

First published in 2002 Copyright © J.H. Walker 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Published in Australia by Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Published in North America by University of Hawai’i Press 2840 Kolowalu Street Honolulu, Hawai’i 96822 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Walker, J.H. (John Henry), 1958–. Power and prowess: the origins of Brooke kingship in Sarawak. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 1 86508 711 4. 1. Power (Social sciences)—Sarawak. 2. Political culture—Sarawak. 3. Sarawak—History—19th century. 4. Sarawak—Politics and government—19th century. 5. Sarawak—Kings and rulers. 6. Sarawak—Economic conditions—19th century. I. Asian Studies Association of Australia. II. Title. (Series: Southeast Asia publications series). 959.54 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalog record of this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0 8248 2500 4 Set in 10/11 Times by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria Printed by SRM Production Services, Sdn Bhd, Malaysia 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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I Contents

Illustrations Maps and genealogies Spelling, weights and measures Glossary Abbreviations Acknowledgements Approaching 19th-century Sarawak

vi vii viii x xi xii xiv

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1 24 49 70 99 123 144 172 206

Power and prowess in northwest Borneo Insurgency and the foundations of Brooke power Integration and exclusion in the early Brooke state The Iban challenge Competition, resistance and ritual in patron–client systems Chinese power and the failure of prowess The Rejang basin The succession to Sarawak ‘Doing honour to the Rajah’

Notes Bibliography Index

211 270 288

v

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I Illustrations

View from the Rajah’s bungalow Malay town in northwest Borneo* Iban longhouse Sultan Omar Ali II Pengiran Makhota James Brooke Hassim’s audience hall, Kuching HMS Dido at Kuching The Rajah’s fort at Skrang European visitors feasting at Gassing’s longhouse Lundu Iban as represented by Europeans in the 1840s A group of Lundu Iban Procession welcoming Charles Grant to a Bidayuh village* The Rajah’s fort at Belidah* Ong Ewe Hai The Chinese wealth god, Tua Pek Kong House of Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman at Sarikei Datu Bandar Buassan in old age Brooke Johnson Brooke* Charles Johnson Brooke* Brooke Brooke’s fort, converted into a residence Arthur Crookshank* Robert Hay

[*Bodleian Library, Oxford, U.K. Copyright] vi

4 8 11 27 28 42 55 63 86 90 108 108 121 138 140 142 146 164 181 182 192 193 194

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I Maps and genealogies

Map 1 Map 2 Genealogy 1 Genealogy 2 Genealogy 3

Northwest Borneo, 1835–1868 2 The Iban rivers, 1835–1868 73 Kinship and factional rivalry among Saribas Malays 77 Kinship and factional rivalry among Sarawak Malays 105 Kinship in the formation of Sarawak’s European elite 176

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I Spelling, weights and measures

In using non-European names and in identifying Sarawak places I have generally followed the conventions of spelling used in the primary sources. Where contemporary European sources use more than one spelling, for example Mashor, Mussahore, Masahor and Mushor, I have settled on one, using it consistently, except when quoting directly. I have not used modern standard Malay spelling for places and names. An important exception to this rule is my use of the Malay spelling for semangat even when referring to Iban semengat or to Bidayuh simungi. This I did for simplicity, and not to elide differences in understandings and practice. In deciding against using standard Malay spelling, I had regard for Peter Vandergeest’s concern about the use of modern Thai in writing about the history of Thailand. As Vandergeest argued, the development and use of modern national languages is part of the process of nation building, implying uniformities and consistencies between pre-national pasts and modern, national presents, uniformities and consistencies that did not exist.1 For similiar reasons, I have not used ‘sic’ to highlight James Brooke’s idiosyncratic spelling or grammar, or that of the other Europeans whose observations I quote. Although I am aware that Malay, Bidayuh and Iban words are not rendered plural by adding an ‘s’ to them, it has been convenient to do so when writing in English. I have given modern equivalents of traditional weights and measures and local units of currency where doing so contributes to understanding. In other cases I have not.

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I Glossary

abang adat antu antu padi bala balai bangkong bejalai berkat bilek binua budi dagang sera datu daulat dayang haji halus imam kampong kapitan China kapitan Inglis kongsi

Malay aristocratic title (male) traditional law spirit spirits which animate Iban rice Iban war fleet Malay audience hall Iban war boat Iban trading expeditions to acquire prestige the act of visiting a kramat to increase spiritual status Iban longhouse segment, family unit Bidayan community, village kindness, benevolence Malay forced trade non-royal, Malay title of rank divine quality of Malay kingship (majesty) Malay aristocratic title (female) Moslem title assumed by those who have completed the haj to Mecca refined, delicate, gentle, invisible leader of Moslem congregation Malay village Chinese community leaders appointed by the Rajah English official appointed by the Rajah to coordinate government relations with Bau kongsi self-governing Chinese community ix

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x kramat lela manang naik pangkat nakhoda nama ngayau orang kaya Orang Kaya di Gadong padi pun pangah panglima pengiran perabang perabangan pindah prahu raja raja berani semangat semengat sherif simungi sumangé towkay tua kampong tuai rumah Tuan Besar Tuan Muda

POWER AND PROWESS

saint, shrine; sacred place or person small bore Malay cannons doctor and spirit intermediary effort to achieve higher ritual rank or status Malay boat captain, merchant name, title, reputation Iban headhunting Malay title denoting leadership, used by 19th-century Iban and Bidayan leaders Brunei official responsible for provincial administration and trading relations strains of sacred rice grown by Iban Bidayan headhouse and ritual centre war leader Malay royal and aristocratic title in Borneo ridgecapping on an Iban longhouse Malay upper class in Sarawak, people of abang and dayang rank Iban urge to migrate Malay ocean-going vessel Malay ruler, patrilineal descendants of ruler Iban leader of several longhouse communities cosmic energy, potency, soul see semangat descendent of the prophet, Mohammed see semangat see semangat Chinese community leader, merchant municipal leaders in Kuching Iban leader of a longhouse community Malay honorific, used by James Brooke c 1839–48 and by Brooke Brooke, 1848–61: great lord Malay honorific used by Charles Johnson Brooke, 1852–68: young or junior lord

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I Abbreviations

Add CLR CO FO HMSO HO JMBRAS JSBRAS Ms, Mss, MS, MSS SMJ USPG

Additional manuscript Copy of Letters Received Colonial Office (United Kingdom) Foreign Office (United Kingdom) Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (United Kingdom) Home Office (United Kingdom) Journal, Malaysian Branch, Royal Asiatic Society Journal, Straits Branch, Royal Asiatic Society Manuscript/s Sarawak Museum Journal United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

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Preface Acknowledgements

Material in this book has been previously published in Modern Asian Studies and the Encyclopaedia of Iban Studies. I am grateful to the editors for permission to reprint it. Most of my fieldwork and archival research was conducted in Sarawak in October, November and December 1991; in London and Oxford in November, December and January 1992/93; and in London, Oxford and Sarawak in January, February and March 1994. Further research was conducted during shorter trips to Sarawak and England between 1995 and 2001. I received financial assistance for these trips from the University of New South Wales. In the course of my research I have accumulated many intellectual and personal debts. I am grateful to the staff of the Reading and Manuscripts Rooms at the British Library, London; the Guildhall Library, London; the Public Record Office, Kew; the Univeristy of Durham Library, Durham; and Rhodes House Library, Oxford, particularly Allan Lodge. Records of the Borneo Company have been used by permission of Inchcape plc, the International Services and Marketing Group. In Sarawak I received help from Datuk Abang Hj Abd Karim, Dr Peter Mulok Kedit, Sanib Said, Baharin Abdul Rahman, Ipoi Datan, Mrs Khoo, Puan Hadiah, the late Tuton Kaboy, Mdm Lim Hong Hong, Abang Ariffin bin Abang Kiprawi, Vernon Art Kedit and Pulin Kantul. Wan Hamza Wan Paie, Puan Noor’Ain Aini and Wan Jamaludin kindly introduced me to relatives. With great generosity Syed Mustapha bin Syed Alwi and Tuanku Jaffar bin Tuanku Mohd Ali and their families shared their knowledge of the Al Ba Hassan family in Sarawak. In Australia I must thank the staff of the University College Library, University of New South Wales, without whose cooperation the study could not have been undertaken. Edith Hackworthy’s ability to track down obscure and rare publications, and to persuade other libraries to lend them, xii

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is miraculous. I must also thank staff of the microform room of the National Library of Australia, particularly Bill Tully. I undertook this project with the encouragement of Carl Thayer and the cooperation and assistance of Richard Brabin-Smith. Maps were drawn by Paul Ballard. Beverley Lincoln kindly formatted the genealogies. Cpl Hugh Donald reproduced many of the illustrations. Allan Behm, Martin Graham, Paul Keal, Ian McFarling, Humphrey McQueen, Janet Reed, Craig Rendell, Ulf Sundhaussen, Carl Thayer, Ann Travers and Anne-Gabrielle Thompson have read all or part of the book and offered advice. I owe thanks also to a number of Borneo specialists who, in conversation or correspondence, have explicated material or challenged my interpretations: Rita Armstrong, Donald Brown, Richard Fidler, the late Anthony Richards, Michael Ross, Clifford Sather, Otto Steinmayer and Reed Wadley. Marian Wilkinson and Avner Nahmani helped to make Indonesian language classes more fun than they otherwise would have been. My greatest debt is expressed in the dedication. The usual disclaimers apply.

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Approaching 19th-century Sarawak

The focus of this study is a network of power and ritual relationships that developed on the northwest coast of Borneo during the 19th century, and from which a coalition led by James Brooke established the state of Sarawak. Since James Brooke acceded to the government of Sarawak in 1841, with the title Rajah, his exploits have attracted the attention of biographers and historians. Early histories of the Brooke regime either were sponsored by Rajahs themselves, or were associated with members of the Brooke family or their friends. Gertrude Jacob was inspired to write her valuable biography by her uncle’s admiration for the first Rajah.1 Spenser St John was an acolyte of James Brooke.2 Bampfylde, who collaborated with Baring-Gould to produce the first general history of Sarawak under Brooke rule, was a former senior officer in the second Rajah’s service.3 Steven Runciman’s The White Rajahs was undertaken at the suggestion of the British Colonial Office, with the cooperation of Rajah Vyner, his family and supporters.4 Robert Payne, meanwhile, was working on The White Rajahs of Sarawak with the active involvement of Rajah Vyner’s brother and nephew, and other opponents of Sarawak’s cession to Britain.5 Although Emily Hahn was not directly linked to the Brookes, she had previously published an admiring biography of Raffles, and she reflected much of the uncritical admiration of the first Rajah which earlier works assumed.6 From the 1960s, the scope of writings about Sarawak history expanded. Nicholas Tarling’s oeuvre explores the importance of Brooke rule in the expansion of Britain’s presence in southeast Asia.7 Craig Lockard’s detailed history of Kuching pioneered the writing of a broader, social history of the place,8 providing a context for more recent analyses by Saunders and Ooi.9 xiv

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The most important advance in Sarawak historiography, however, remains Robert Pringle’s unsurpassed Rajahs and Rebels. Pringle’s achievement was to shift scholarly focus from the Brookes and their administration onto the relationship between the Brookes and one of the groups of people they sought to rule. Pringle analysed the interaction between the administrative systems of the Brookes, and the social and economic systems of Iban.10 Written with the cooperation of the Iban ethnographer Benedict Sandin, Pringle’s work, more than any other, explicated the systemic change which Brooke rule and other pressures for modernisation engendered. In contrast to other studies, Pringle analysed the dynamics of Iban–Brooke relations. His success was underpinned by his openness to new methodologies in historical analysis, particularly the concepts and concerns of social anthropology. Pringle’s innovation was part of a wider methodological advance linking historiography more closely to the social sciences. But at the same time that some historians realised the usefulness of social anthropology, some social scientists had begun to move beyond the analysis of social structures to explore culturally specific understandings of power. Since Pringle completed his research, more recent studies, across a range of geographic areas, have significantly developed culturist methodologies. Clifford Geertz, O.W. Wolters and Benedict Anderson have transformed our capacity to understand power and hierarchy in Southeast Asia.11 Their insights, in turn, have been developed in works by later scholars, such as Anthony Milner, Shelly Errington and Margaret Weiner.12 Milner, Errington and Weiner have demonstrated the inadequacy of narrative realism in history, which too often involves Western (or Western-trained) historians imposing Western perceptions of ‘common sense’ onto other people’s pasts.13 Largely, Sarawak historiography has not reflected these more recent developments. Yet it ought to be axiomatic of Sarawak’s history, no less than of its anthropology, ‘that people perceive the world in widely differing ways, that they behave on the basis of those perceptions . . .’ Whether, as Vinson Sutlive also observed, such perceptions present ‘insuperable barriers to understanding’14 depends on the extent to which scholars focus on how rather than why, on mechanics rather than meaning. The mechanics (e.g. of some shamanic practices) might remain inscrutable, yet the meaning is susceptible to study. Although the large corpus of Sarawak history has delineated patterns of conflict, it has not explained adequately either the sources of support for James Brooke in Sarawak or the processes through which opponents became supporters. Thus, although it is accurate, it is not sufficient to note, as Sandin did, that hostilities among various groups caused some Iban to support Brooke against other Iban.15 Such analysis needs to be augmented by an analysis of the meaning for Iban of both conflict and alliance. Critics of cultural analysis point to the tendency of culturist scholars to overlook dissent, pluralism and the material bases of existence in favour of

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symbolic coherence and integration.16 Notwithstanding the cultural particularities of historical experience, there are certain universalities. However economic activities, for example, are perceived, they produce material sustenance. Social structures, however they are conceptualised, regulate human relationships. It is important, therefore, to explore the cultural dimensions of power in the context of the economic and social structures from which power can derive and to which culture gives meaning. The material, social and cultural dimensions of power need to be studied each in the context of the others in order to avoid distorting historical experience. The materialisation of metaphysics is inexact, confronting people, as they seek to reify their cosmologies, with contradictions and inconsistencies. In the consequent attempts of people to realign beliefs and practices with their environment, or to manipulate their environment to accord more closely with their beliefs, lie important sources of change. This supports Bentley’s call for ‘diachronic’ analysis: ‘If we begin to understand how systems of religious symbols orient people so that they may act effectively in the world, then we may ask how divergences between prevailing symbols and experience give rise to transformations in identity and belief.’17 Historians seem to have been deflected from exploring the local meanings of James Brooke’s power by an unquestioned assumption that Brooke established Sarawak as a peculiar form of British colonialism or a ‘private kingdom’, somehow different from any other kingdom. Even Pringle described the country as one of the ‘spectrum of colonial regimes’, assessing James Brooke as ‘a superb example of the private individual as empire builder’.18 For Ulla Wagner, Sarawak was both ‘a specific type of colonialism’ and ‘a private raj’ with a ‘colonial administration’.19 Otto Doering also saw it as ‘the private domain of a dynasty of Englishmen’.20 Although Lockard noted that James Brooke ‘constituted in fact a vigorous and independent power source within the traditional state system of northwest Borneo’,21 he commented elsewhere that the first Rajah ‘governed Sarawak as a private fiefdom’.22 Wright considered that Brooke and Sarawak were simply ‘an anomaly’.23 Brooke’s power in 19th-century Sarawak, it seems, was colonial, special, private and anomalous. Such assessments overlook Brooke’s predecessors and contemporaries, who sought also to establish authority in Borneo. Alexander Hare had set himself up as ‘Raja of Moloeko’ in the south of the island during the early 19th century.24 In the 1840s Erskine Murray tried to establish a settlement in Kutai, while Edward Belcher was entrenched at Berau.25 Still later, Joseph Torrey would claim to be ‘Raja of Ambong . . . and Supreme Ruler of the whole of the northern part of Borneo’, Baron von Overbeck would style himself ‘Maharaja of Sabah and Raja of Gaya and Sandikan’, and the Sultan of Brunei would offer to make John Dill Ross ‘Raja of Palawan’.26 Graham Saunders explored some of these attempts at rulership in Southeast Asia in the context of European imperialism, noting that, in

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the hiatus between the ending of the Napoleonic Wars and the new imperialism of the 1870s and 1880s, government interest in colonies was not very great. The way was open for individuals, for their own gain or for that of their country, to make their mark.27

Notwithstanding Saunders’ observations, European adventurers in Borneo need also to be placed in the context of still earlier intruders. The contested and transient nature of power in Borneo had long provided opportunities for outsiders to acquire positions, and even to found enduring states. It is not clear why James Brooke’s realm should be regarded as any more colonial, private, special or anomalous than those of Syed Abdul Rahman, who founded a sultanate at Pontianak, southwest of Sarawak, in the late 18th century,28 or the Al-Aidarusi Tuan of Kubu.29 Similarly, the Bugis princes, Raja Muda Ali of Riau and Opu Daeng Menambun, established themselves at Sukadana and Mempawah, respectively.30 The Hikayat Banjar records that Banjarmassin was founded by a successful trader from India, Ampu Jatmaka.31 Brunei court chronicles emphasise the importance of Arab and Chinese outsiders in the development of that realm.32 It seems that historians of Sarawak have brought to their analyses unquestioned assumptions about the relationships between ethnicity and power, and ethnicity and colonialism, failing to recognise that rulers and overlords in the 19th century were often of a nationality and background different from those of the people they ruled, even in Europe.33 Ethnic boundaries and identities were far more fluid in the early 19th century than they had become by the century’s close. It is not clear, therefore, why James Brooke’s ethnicity should be regarded as a key signifier of the Brooke state. Nor have modern scholars been alert to the terms in which some of Brooke’s contemporaries saw his achievement. The Bishop of Sarawak, Frank McDougall, congratulated Brooke in 1864 for ‘bringing together the scattered hostile and oppressed population of the country, and forming them into a compact native state’.34 James Augustus St John considered that Sarawak provided ‘an example of the way in which new states are founded’.35 Although Lockard argued that Sarawak history ‘has been seriously distorted by the tendency of historians to focus primarily on the Brookes and the peculiar nature of their rule’,36 it has been distorted also by the failure of scholars to explore adequately the nature of the relationships between the first Rajah and his subjects, or the roles played by the Rajah in conflicts among his subjects. If historians have been impeded in understanding Sarawak’s past by their assumptions about ethnicity, they have been constrained also by their sources, which are composed largely of the letters and other records of the Brooke family and their European followers, European missionaries and merchants, and the records of the British Government. This poses a problem because such accounts are not necessarily reliable. David Bassett

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even cited James Brooke’s published diaries and Charles Brooke’s memoirs to demonstrate how unreliable European sources for Southeast Asian history could be.37 In addition to the issues that Bassett outlined, Sarawak scholars face the further problem that James Brooke’s published correspondence and diaries have been extensively edited. Templer’s heavy hand is particularly evident.38 Although Bassett’s study was the first to detail problems with Brooke sources, the general issue had long been recognised. Tom Harrisson, almost 20 years before Bassett, proposed that to develop a true picture of Sarawak’s past scholars needed to ‘read between the lines’ and ‘listen to the voices of the people’.39 James Ongkili also thought that quite ‘often it is more profitable to read, not the lines, but between the lines’.40 Neither Harrisson nor Ongkili offered any practical suggestions about how this might be achieved, however. Anthony Milner explored the issue of European sources in Malaysian history more conceptually than Harrisson and Ongkili. Like Bassett, Milner argued that Malaysian historiography has been distorted by the almost exclusive use of British records. As an antidote, Milner urged the use of whatever indigenous writings exist.41 Benedict Sandin’s publications provide valuable Iban perspectives on Sarawak’s past,42 while a number of transcriptions of traditional histories and genealogies published by the Sarawak Museum Journal have also made available other indigenous perceptions of events.43 But these works have not displaced the Brooke archives. Where colonial or European language materials remain, they should be used. The challenge, as Ian Black noted with regard to Sabah, is to establish whether European archives can yield a more complete picture of indigenous life than was perceived by the individuals who contributed to them.44 In order to do so, European records need to be examined more critically than many historians have attempted to do. Bassett suggested that, by bringing a rigorous scepticism to bear on the detail of European accounts, indigenous viewpoints might emerge.45 Milner has proposed further that where indigenous sources are lacking historians should read European accounts ‘against the grain’, that they should ‘interrogate’ their sources.46 In attempting this, Milner recommended the adoption of a ‘conceptual construct from the social sciences’.47 At the heart of Milner’s recommendation is the assumption that ‘facts’ do not necessarily have natural or universal meanings but are culturally encoded and contextualised. As Sullivan observed: The perception, selection and ordering of data requires, on the one hand an epistemology, an assumption of how the object can be known, and on the other hand implies a theory of the relationship of objects of knowledge. Natural facts, whether historical or otherwise, do not surrender up their meaning in the moment of perception.48

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Facts do not necessarily have a natural relationship one to the other, any more than they have a natural meaning. The sheer volume of surviving records relating to Sarawak requires scholars to exclude from their accounts most of the ‘facts’ they uncover. Methodologies are useful not only for comprehending the meaning of facts, but also for structuring facts into sequences encompassing causes and effects. Many of the narratives of Sarawak history are derived from the ‘natural’ meanings and relationships identified by earlier generations of ‘court’ historians. With their Eurocentric assumptions and Brooke loyalties, such scholars did not seek to bring the historical experience of the non-European peoples of Sarawak into the foreground. The narratives such writers established need to be tested and reviewed to incorporate the other historical voices that are recorded in the archives and in more recently published indigenous narratives. The use of a conceptual construct from the social sciences, as Milner advised, helps both to select facts and to explore their meanings, exposing the process of selection and rejection to greater scrutiny. This study follows Milner’s precepts in both ways. First, it seeks to interrogate archival sources in order to review and expand the historical narrative, by using anthropological concepts to explore indigenous expectations of and responses to the development of Sarawak. Secondly, it employs paradigms derived from political science and anthropology to analyse the nature of the early Brooke state. Within a broadly narrative framework, this study explores the origins and nature of the first Brooke Rajah’s power and authority, examining Brooke’s relations with Malays, Bidayuh, Iban and Chinese, and detailing the processes by which Brooke attracted supporters and converted opponents into supporters. To explain how Brooke became an independent ruler required a careful re-examination of the archival and other primary sources. Hoping that the extant records would contain evidence of how local people perceived, understood and participated in Brooke’s activities, I had little reason to revisit the accepted historical narrative. The ‘facts’ of Sarawak history had been well established by previous writers. Brooke had been rewarded with the governership of the country for helping the Brunei ruler suppress a revolt. He was concerned to protect the otherwise hapless Bidayuh from Malay oppression. He governed indirectly, through existing Malay hierarchies. He persuaded the Royal Navy to attack Iban and Malay pirates, whose activities confronted British imperial interests, and this naval support established his power over wide areas. In 1857 his capital was burned by Chinese miners, who resented his attempts to tax and police them, and his regime survived two plots to topple it by a group of Malay nobles. His nephew and heir seemed to have become mentally or emotionally unstable, and was replaced by a younger brother who succeeded as Rajah on James Brooke’s death, in 1868. Reviewing the primary sources, however, revealed most of these ‘facts’ to be, at best, misrepresentations. James Brooke was not given power, he seized it with the support of the people whose revolt he had helped to quell.

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The Bidayuh, far from being hapless, determinedly resisted Brooke’s attempts to collect taxes and enforce his labour demands. Brooke ruled directly, reserving power in his own hands, and becoming at the same time the ritual and symbolic focus for association in the area. That the Royal Navy repeatedly attacked many Iban communities did not, in itself, explain how Brooke established his authority among these enemies. Far from plotting against Brooke, the Malay nobles who had been condemned or lauded by historians emerged from the archival record as the victims of a power struggle within the Malay community that had been overlooked by successive scholars. Finally, far from going a bit mad, the Rajah’s heir acted against him with the support of Malay and European elite figures to preserve Sarawak from European colonisation. The earliest Brooke historians, Jacob, St John and Baring-Gould and Bamfylde, it seemed, had not just relegated native people to the background, but in doing so had presented a particular view of James Brooke’s career that was often at variance with information recorded elsewhere (including, in the case of St John, elsewhere in his own works). They all admired the first Rajah, while St John and Bamfylde had served in Sarawak. Their treatments of conflicts were intended to reflect well on the men they served. They promulgated James and Charles Brooke’s own published accounts and explanations. Notwithstanding Bassett’s salutory warnings, subsequent scholars have rarely had occasion to revisit these received versions of James Brooke’s career. Hoping initially to provide a reinterpretation of Sarawak’s formation, I found an historical narrative that varied significantly from those previously published. Drawing on conceptual frameworks that emphasise the importance of culturally specific understandings of power, I have sought to reconstruct how people in Sarawak understood James Brooke. Instead of perceiving people in Sarawak either as passive recipients (or victims) of Brooke power or as defeated opponents, I have sought to understand how Brooke’s role and position in Sarawak were, in key ways, constructed by local people to reflect their own objectives and priorities. Some of the reinterpretations that I offer and the narratives that I have reconstructed are contentious. Consequently, I have documented my arguments more closely, perhaps, than is usual.

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1 Power and prowess in northwest Borneo

Prior to 1841, the term ‘Sarawak’ referred to the Sarawak River area and the territory accessible from it. Since then, it has become associated with the polity that was created by James Brooke and his allies and that, throughout the latter half of the 19th century, expanded along the northwest coast of Borneo. Today that entity is one state of Malaysia. Sarawak is divided into three geographic zones: a low-lying, poorly drained coastal plain comprises about one-fifth the State’s area; behind the plain are steep, forested hills rising to about 1000 feet, which comprise about three-fifths of the State; the remaining one-fifth comprises rugged, forested mountain ranges in which begin the many rivers that have shaped the State’s history and demography. Although parts of the Sarawak and Sadong River basins have fertile soils suitable for the intensive agriculture associated with alluvial areas elsewhere in Southeast Asia, much of the lowland areas, particularly in the basins of the Skrang, Saribas and Rejang Rivers, is composed of acidic peat unsuitable for intensive cropping.1 The amount of rain that falls on Borneo defines the other main features of the island’s geography, producing rivers on the largest scale, such as the Rejang, Barito, Mahakam and Kapuas. Three hundred and fifty miles long, the Rejang is navigable for steamers for 150 miles up to Kapit. Oceangoing ships berth at Sibu, and even at Kanowit it is half a mile wide. The rains also sustain some of the world’s greatest rainforest ecosystems. The botanist Odoardo Beccari had nowhere seen ‘primeval forests so rich, so varied, and peculiar in their flora as in the vicinity of Kuching’.2 The forests create illusions of agricultural potential. Although lush and vigorous, they grow on shallow topsoils that need constant regeneration from the forest’s own humus to support them. Destroy the forests, therefore, and the source of agricultural wealth itself is destroyed. The solution to this agricultural barrier in Borneo was the development of systems of 1

Map 1

Northwest Borneo, 1835–1868

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slash-and-burn farming. The ashes of burned forest provided enough additional nutrients to sustain dry-rice and other cultivation for a few years, after which the area was allowed to regenerate. Fallow areas were colonised by secondary growth which, in its turn, provided ashes to the soil to nourish crops. Far from being a ‘prodigal farming system’,3 slashand-burn was a sustainable form of agriculture suited to the limitations of Bornean ecology. The Bornean jungle also provided a wide range of products for jungle dwellers to consume or to trade with outsiders. ‘The rattans of Borneo’, Hugh Low recorded, ‘are esteemed finer than those produced in any other part of the world’.4 To this he added camphor, gutta percha, and timbers like belian and ebony in a list of forest exports.5 Borneo people also exported sago, which they cultivated so extensively in the 19th century that Mukah, Oya, Bintulu, Matu and Bruit among them produced more than half the world’s supply.6 Control of downriver areas was central to the processes of domination and state formation in Borneo. Upriver groups needed salt and dried fish products as well as iron.7 Control of river mouths gave downriver groups some potential to monopolise the trade in these and other products. Thus river systems supported trade-based polities which, through relationships of varying inequality, sought to expropriate the jungle produce of tribal peoples living upriver. Downriver groups traded this produce into the international trading networks centred on China or one of the major archipelagic entrepôts serving the China trade. Relations between downriver MalayoMoslem elites and upriver tribes were uneasy and shifting, however. It has been a commonplace view in the literature about Borneo that forests created barriers to communications by land, encouraging the use of rivers. According to one Bornean cliché, ‘the water unites and the land divides’.8 In this view it was because they facilitated movement that rivers became the primary locus of human settlement, the major arteries of trade and a major focus of power and identity. But there are a number of problems with such materialist interpretations. Healey proposed in 1985 that: Contrary to the apparent assumptions of most commentators on central Borneo, this orientation to rivers as lines of communication was surely not an ecological imperative. In other parts of the tribal world (e.g. in New Guinea) communications are often concentrated in high ground rather than along rivers, even if they are navigatable. Indeed, many stretches of waterway in inland Borneo are broken by rapids dangerous to canoes or rafts. The orientation of Borneo tribalists to river-borne transport seems as much induced by ideological factors as by topography and ecology. Rivers occupy a significant place in tribal cosmology, often serving as lines of contact with deities of the upper air and the upstream and with deities, dragons and serpents of the underworld and downstream. Burial customs often include themes of river voyages.9

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In Borneo, downriver groups sought to monopolise upriver trade as a basis for domination and power. The Rajah’s fort at Belidah is clearly visisble in this view from his holiday bungalow

A range of examples from across northwest Borneo support Healey’s suggestion. The ease of land-based communications between Sambas and Pontiank was sufficient to undermine the Sambas economy as early as 1812. The watershed between the Sarawak River and the Kapuas was also permeable, allowing ready land access between the interiors of Sarawak and Sambas and Pontianak.10 The Iban of the Saribas and Skrang rivers maintained an inland system of communication through paths which ‘intersect the forests between the villages of all the Sakarran and Sarebas tribes, so that a constant communication is easily kept up . . .’11 Rather than trading in the Rejang delta, the Punan Bah of the upper Rejang travelled up the Belaga branch of the Rejang, trekked overland to the Tubau river and down the Kemena,12 a route followed also by the Kenyah Badeng settled on the Plieran and Danum tributaries of the Rejang.13 Similarly, in the 1840s, Robert Burns found that Kayan wishing to trade could travel down to the Rejang delta, or travel further up the Rejang, trek for five or six days across the watershed, and descend the rivers flowing south and east.14 Although both downriver and upriver groups might have conceived movement and identity in terms of rivers and river basins, upriver groups throughout northwest Borneo were alert to the potential of land-based communications to subvert the control sought by downriver groups.

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HISTORY Indianised remains discovered at Kutai suggest that Borneo has sustained high levels of civilisation since the 5th century.15 The first of a succession of advanced states based on the northwestern coast was Po-ni, which probably encompassed what is now Sarawak’s First Division. Po-ni’s economy was partly industrial. Santubong, at the mouth of the Sarawak River, was a significant iron-smelting centre by the 11th century.16 It is not clear whether Po-ni can be identified as an early name for Brunei, or whether it was a predecessor state. Nor is its relationship to a 7th-century state on the northwest coast known as Vijayapura at all clear.17 The relationship between Melaka and Brunei in the Melakan period is also obscure. Although the dating of the conversion of the Brunei court to Islam remains controversial, it probably occurred through intercourse with Melaka in the 16th century.18 Notwithstanding increasing European contacts with the north and west coasts of Borneo from this period, Brunei resisted Spanish encroachment from the north, in reprisal for which the Spanish burned the Brunei capital in 1645.19 A Spanish report from 1530 describes Cerava (Sarawak) as one of the four chief ports of Borneo, inhabited by ‘many and rich merchants’ whose trade consisted of diamonds, camphor, aloes-wood, provisions and wine.20 Bob Reece suggested that the Sultan of Brunei gave Sarawak to a Portuguese captain, ‘penguilan Maraxa de Raxa’, in 1578, in reward for ‘de Raxa’s’ support against the Spanish: ‘Helping to restore Sultan Saif ul Rijal to the throne, it seems likely that de Raxa was rewarded with a wife and the opportunity to carve out his own little kingdom on the northwest coast.’ Although Reece acknowledged that little more is known of this first white Rajah of Sarawak, he suggested that the cannon captured at Sadok after Rentap’s flight, ‘may also have come from de Raxa’s ship’.21 One problem with this reconstruction is the absence of evidence to support it. The documents Reece cited do not suggest either that Maraxa de Raxa was Portuguese or that he was given Sarawak by the sultan. As Nicholl explained, ‘penguilan Maraxa de Raxa’ was a Spanish rendering of a Malay title, Pengiran Maharaja de Raja. There is no mention in the sources of his being married to anyone, and it is not certain that he even went to Sarawak. He was said to have been instructed by the Sultan to visit all the rivers ‘as far as Saragua’.22 ‘Penguilan Maraxa de Raxa’ was noteworthy to his Spanish contemporaries because he was a leading official of the Brunei court, not because he was Portuguese. Nor did the Spanish treat him as though he were Portuguese. When they wrote to him, they translated their letters into Malay before dispatching them.23 Moreover, far from being hostile to the Spanish, as Reece suggested, the Pengiran was one of the Brunei officials friendly to Spain. The Spanish Captain-General in Manila, De Sande, claimed to have appointed him a ‘commander’, giving him a ‘letter of assurance and friendship’ and instructing his captain to ‘observe

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all friendship’ towards him.24 Finally, the cannon taken at Sadok was ‘Bujang Timpang Brang’, a gun that had been captured by the Iban leader, Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana, in Sambas in 1825.25 Although Sarawak figures prominently in the 16th-century sources collected by Nicholl, its importance must have declined during the following century. It is not marked on 17th-century European maps of the area. Nor did Berthelot, who sailed in the region in 1626–1627, mark it, although he did note one of the Rejang’s tributaries.26 Brunei had risen to regional dominance by monopolising trade from the northwest coast of Borneo. From the late 17th century, however, a series of conflicts within the ruling family diminished Brunei’s control over its northern territories.27 As the volume of trade controlled by the Brunei elite decreased, Brunei people sought to maintain their standard of living by increasing the profits they made from the surviving traffic. By 1821 Brunei’s once considerable trade with China had ceased and the Chinese population itself ‘from oppression are now reduced to about 500’.28 Lee cited figures indicating that the population of Brunei fell from 40 000 in 1700–1720 (30 000 of whom were Chinese pepper planters) to 15 000 in 1805. By 1849, the Chinese population of Brunei was entirely dispersed.29 Sarawak unequivocally re-enters European records as a source of marauding: about 1810 Raffles complained to Lord Minto about the pirates of ‘Serawa’ who had operated in conjunction with those of Sambas to disable the British ship Commerce. After the capture in 1813 of Sambas by the British, the British commander sent a letter to a ‘Raja of Sarawak’ admonishing him for his piracy.30 ETHNOGRAPHY Sarawak’s ethnography is complex. A 1940 census in Sarawak divided the then population into 51 ‘races’, three of which it divided into 81 tribes.31 It is also contentious. ‘Anthropologists,’ Emily Hahn remarked, ‘are an argumentative race, and where the people of Borneo are concerned, their belligerent tendencies find full scope.’32 This study, however, is concerned with the sources and development of power. Because of the nature of power in Borneo, and the processes of trade control that underpinned it, my interest is necessarily focused on coastal, lowland and hill-dwelling groups, the Iban or Sea Dyaks, the Land Dyaks or Bidayuh and the Malays, rather than upland peoples like the Punan, Penan, Kayan or Kenyah. Malays Although genealogies trace the descent of Sarawak’s aristocratic Malay families to Sumatran and Javanese royalty, Sarawak’s Malay population derives primarily from tribal pagans converted to Islam and to Malay

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culture and identity. This process, masuk Melayu (or to become Malay), is well documented in northwest Borneo.33 Despite their Dyak origins, Sarawak Malays have a ‘coherent ethnic and cultural identity’, and becoming Malay entailed progressive entry into a hierarchical, patriarchal and literate society.34 Malay society operated according to stratified patterns in which individuals could be ranked according to factors such as ancestry, wealth and number of followers. The heritability of rank and Malay use of patrilineages resulted in distinctions between major and minor or illustrious and less successful lineages, which thus promoted a highly differentiated social structure. Donald Brown identified seven broad ‘classes’ among the Bruneis, and 27 ranks in the Brunei court hierarchy.35 To be sustained, rank needed to correlate with power, and power required resources. Sarawak Malays acquired the resources necessary to maintain their power and substantiate their rank through controlling the distribution of forest products collected by tribal peoples on the world market. Although upriver groups exercised a degree of choice about the coastal Malays with whom they traded, the access they needed to exotic goods required them to trade with one Malay community or another. Malay dependence on trade was so complete that Malays do not seem to have practised agriculture. James Brooke saw little sign of rice or other cultivation among Sadong Malays in 1839, and it is clear from Low, an unusually reliable European observer, that Malays obtained their rice from Dyaks.36 With the wealth and other resources accumulated, aristocrats were able to develop complex vertical linkages of mutual dependence with lower-ranking Malays and other non-Malay groups. In return for the advantages of association with an elite figure, dependent populations provided household services and labour in trading, military and other ventures. Additionally, the leader’s entourage was a public expression of the leader’s power and authority, thus contributing to it. Servants, as Kautsky observed, ‘perform a useful function by their mere existence, not just by their work’.37 Malay power, therefore, had two essential structural features: first, it was conducted within a framework of entourages bound to the leader by complexes of patron–client relationships; secondly, the resources necessary to maintain these complexes often derived from trading activity. Nakhodas (traders) were able to develop entourages based on their control of a vessel. Most trading ventures comprised a nakhoda, who owned the vessel(s) on which he carried goods to trade, and a number of other, smaller traders who provided their own trading capital and who worked to sail the ship(s) as payment for their transport, thus placing themselves under the nakhoda’s authority.38 Not only, however, did the structure of Malay trade generate entourages, the purpose of Malay trade remained the creation of wealth that could be used to attract larger entourages and more followers. The function of Malay trading ventures was not to generate capital but to attract supporters for elite figures whose status reflected the number of people they could mobilise. In the 1880s in Brunei, Peter Leys observed the importance of

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Malay town in northwest Borneo

maintaining entourages, noting that ‘all the rulers in Brunei are always impecunious, and many heavily in debt and urgently requiring funds, more through their own utterly improvident habits, the large households they keep up, and the numerous retainers they support’.39 Because its purpose was the development of entourages, Malay trade in Borneo provided opportunities for developing power. The association of trade with power has been an enduring feature of Malay society throughout the archipelago. The Maritime Code promulgated by the Melaka Sultanate specifically equated the authority of a nakhoda on his vessel with that of a raja (ruler), according among the various people aboard the vessel authority analogous to that of Melaka’s court hierarchy.40 The Tufhat al-Nafis also alludes to this essential link, describing how, after Raja Muda Ali lost influence at Riau, he travelled to Mempawah in Borneo, where he married his cousin: After their marriage, Raja Ali moved to Sukadana where he built a settlement, complete with palace, audience hall and fortifications and promoted trade. The country prospered with kapal, wangkang and many other kinds of perahu coming to do business. The Yang Dipertuan Muda received a great deal in tolls, replacing all the property he had lost in Riau.41

Although Raja Ali regrouped his forces and eventually returned to Riau, successful trading ventures could be transformed into more enduring polities. The Hikayat Banjar records that Banjarmassin was founded by a successful trader from India, Ampu Jatmaka.42 The sultanate of Pontianak, southwest of Sarawak, was founded in the late 18th century by Syed Abdul Rahman, in part on his success as a trader.43 Providing the means by which most of the resources necessary for maintaining state elites were extracted, trade was a perquisite of sovereignty. In early 19th-century Brunei, commerce was almost exclusively in the hands

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of the three most powerful ministers, Pengirans Usop and Mumin and Raja Muda Hassim.44 ‘In former days,’ as Charles Grant observed, ‘Malay Rajahs were all, more or less, traders. Government was only nominal; its functions were mercantile.’45 Moreover, once tribal populations were within the domination of Malays they could be forced to trade, and dagang sera (forced trade) was a common feature of Malay political economy. The existence of relatively large populations of tribal non-Moslem people provided elite Malays in Borneo with more direct opportunities to develop entourages than trading ventures, however. By raiding tribal neighbours, Malays would capture young boys to raise in their households, directly swelling their retinues. They would capture also women and girls to give as wives to men in their retinues, or use them as inducements to men to join their following. The importance of control over women to entourage-forming derived from residency patterns and from the high cost of marriage. Rather than endowing their daughters, Malay men paid bride-prices for wives.46 The high bride-prices demanded of Malay men constrained their capacity to marry. Sarawak Malays are matrilocal: couples usually live near the wife’s family rather than near the husband’s.47 Therefore, the capacity of an elite figure, or even a father, to provide wives could engender a following. Similar processes have been observed in the Sulu sultanate based on islands off northeast Borneo and the adjoining coast. In the Sulu slave markets, the highest prices were paid for young women, ‘who could be offered as wives and concubines to recruit young men to a datu’s retinue, and youths, who were considered tractable and therefore more readily incorporated into Tausug society than men’.48 Elite Malays developed raiding as a means of acquiring control over women and, as elite figures sought to expand their power in the face of opposition from rivals, raiding longhouse communities to acquire women became epidemic. The contemporary literature abounds with such reports. For example, Sherif Sahib of Sadong, soon after he moved to Skrang to mobilise for war with Sarawak, sent parties through Sadong and Samarahan to capture women and children.49 The process could also be combined with dagang sera. St John claimed that after Bidayuh supplies of rice and other valuables were exhausted through forced trade, the Malays ‘seized on the best-looking girls and the most likely lads, and carried them off as slaves . . .’50 Iban or Sea Dyaks The pagan, tribal peoples of Borneo contrasted with the Malayo-Moslems of the coastal and downriver areas on several obvious and significant counts. They occupied longhouses rather than single dwellings, they practised shifting agriculture and promulgated rice-centred cultures. Of these groups the most powerful were the Sea Dyaks, or Iban.

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The Iban are believed to have entered Sarawak from the Kapuas valley. By about 1700, Iban had migrated into the headwaters of all the rivers of what is now the Second Division of Sarawak except for the Kalaka. They continued to expand their presence within the rivers’ valleys towards the coast, coming into sustained contact with downriver Malayo-Moslem groups by the period 1740–1790.51 In common with most of Borneo’s other agricultural longhouse-dwelling pagans, Iban developed a ‘rice culture’. Rice was considered by them the distinctive element of their culture — that which made them human. Rice was a gift to the Iban from their gods, and its cultivation underpinned and gave substance to ‘a total way of life that is supported by and in turn reinforces Iban theology, cosmology, and eschatology’.52 Rice represented a transubstantiation of Iban ancestors, a direct physical embodiment of the continuing presence of an individual’s forebears in the world.53 Rice cultivation was a ritual undertaking — a form of prayer designed to harmonise individuals with their cosmologies. By the time European observers arrived in Sarawak in the 1840s, Iban were split into several major divisions and two antagonistic constellations. The Saribas and Skrang Iban lived on their respective rivers and had colonised the Lipat, a branch of the Krian, the Kanowit, Katibas and other tributaries of the Rejang. St John put the total population of these groups at 120 000, estimating that they could field at least 20 000 warriors.54 Though disunited, Saribas and Skrang Iban enjoyed a ‘good understanding’ and, as I have already noted, maintained among themselves ‘a constant communication’.55 Opposed to the Skrang and Saribas Iban were the various communities described by early Europeans as Sibuyaus, after the small river between the Skrang and the Sadong to which they were expelled from the upper Batang Lupar by the Skrangs. About 1830, under further pressure from the Skrangs, the community splintered, with groups settling on the Lundu, Samarahan, Sarawak and Sadong Rivers.56 All these communities remained in broad alliance against the more powerful Skrangs and Saribas. Those at Lundu told James Brooke in 1839 that if they needed heads they went and took them from the Saribas.57 They also maintained an alliance with the Iban living on the Lingga River, a tributary of the Batang Lupar, who were similarly opposed to the Skrangs upriver and the Saribas.58 Although these different Iban groups shared culture and spoke mutually intelligible dialects of the same language, they had little or no sense of common ethnicity. Iban identified themselves geographically, for example as kami Skrang, we of the Skrang River, or kami menoa, we of this area.59 Central to the organisation of Iban life was the longhouse, a ‘series of discrete sections, joined roof to roof, to form one architectural unit . . . in fact, a village under one roof’.60 The longhouse was neither a form of communal living nor a framework for cooperative economic activity. Iban lived in bileks, a word which refers to both the basic family unit of parents

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Iban longhouse: exterior and interior views

and children (and, sometimes, grandparents) and to the apartment in the longhouse occupied by the family. Iban communities had up to four specialised leadership positions. The heads of individual longhouses were called tuai rumah. The tuai rumah coordinated his community’s activities, and adjudicated and resolved disputes. He enjoyed no great deference, no powers of command and no guaranteed hereditary succession.61 A particularly successful or charismatic tuai rumah might unite the longhouses of a river valley or a segment of it under his broad leadership. The greatest of such leaders were called raja berani (literally, courageous wealthy).62 Reflecting the instability of the period, Low identified the position of panglima, a specialised warleader within the community.63 The fourth role identified in Iban society was that of manang. Often transsexual, manangs were particularly powerful, functioning as the ‘doctor and priest of the village’ and managing their

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communities’ relations with the supernatural, especially by diagnosing and expelling the supernatural causes of illness.64 Whereas Malays, through their use of patrilineages, developed a highly stratified society, Iban traced their descent through either parent. Iban society did not therefore provide patrilineages (or matrilineages) that readily allowed for complex, ascriptive hierarchies. According to Kedit, under Iban adat all men are equals. During a life-time a man may acquire high prestige and become an honoured leader, but rank is not inheritable, and there is no institution of chieftainship. Iban society is classless and egalitarian.65

The degree to which Iban actually were classless and egalitarian is contentious, however. In the Saribas there is evidence that chiefly positions such as raja berani were monopolised by a number of families — that in fact regional chieftaincies partly based on descent were established. Pringle, for example, conceded that the Saribas were more ‘hierarchically stable’ than other Iban. Noting that Benedict Sandin talked of hereditary chiefs among the Saribas, Pringle also conceded that there is ‘a much greater sense of class in the Saribas, a tendency to think of “first families” whose members are, or should be, the natural heirs to political power’.66 This apparent dichotomy has been addressed by Clifford Sather, who explored how ‘equality of potential is, for the Iban, a precondition for the attainment of achieved inequality’. Sather noted also that, although inequality among Iban was a function of merit, it was also historicised: the descendents of powerful ancestors shared the rewards of their ancestors’ achievement.67 Within Iban society, individual men could acquire status through proficiency at pindah (the urge to migrate to new areas), bejalai (expeditions to acquire high-prestige or valuable items) and ngayau (headhunting expeditions).68 Ngayau is a common ritual element of many Bornean societies and there were a number of complex sources of pressure on individuals to take heads. Wadley distinguished between two forms of Iban raiding: large-scale attacks by thousands of warriors on entire settlements or populations, and smale-scale ambushes and attacks (kayau anak) with more limited objectives.69 Both forms of raiding were directed against other interior groups, and were long established in Iban tradition. During the late 18th century, however, Saribas and Skrang Iban, in conjunction with Malays, developed large-scale raiding along the coast from north of the Bintulu River southwest to Pontianak. Although James Brooke’s activities and writings focused European attention on Iban coastal raiding, reports of widespread and large-scale Iban raiding for heads on the northwest and west coasts of Borneo predate his arrival.70 Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur testified that Iban raiding along the coast were interested only in heads, leaving other booty for the Malays.71 Earl had similarly reported a raid on Sambas in about 1830–1831 in which the

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Skrangs ignored ‘rich merchandise’ and took only heads and iron.72 The Saribas Malays claimed, however, that they shared plunder with Iban,73 and most observers agreed that plunder was a significant element of Iban raiding. St John argued that, although Iban originally took only the heads, leaving their Malay allies most of the plunder, by the 19th century ‘the Dyaks came to feel their own strength too well . . . and a more equal distribution followed’.74 Boyle, on the evidence of Walter Watson, who lived among the Saribas, reported that the Iban ‘claimed and received the larger share of captives and valuables’.75 Unlike the Illanun and other Moslem raiders, however, Iban did not navigate beyond the sight of land, nor were their bangkongs able to sail in open seas.76 Iban communities in downriver or midriver areas enjoyed close relations with Malayo-Moslem groups in the same areas. The Malays sustained themselves by providing exotic goods to Iban in return for jungle produce and surplus rice, which they then traded elsewhere. In keeping with Malay perceptions of trade as an expression of power, they regarded themselves as the rulers of their regions. Malay claims were expressed through their bestowal of titles of distinction on Iban leaders, and by the Iban’s acceptance of them. Thus the Malay ruler of the Kalaka created the leader of the Iban arriving to settle in his area Tumanggong.77 Iban chiefs on the Saribas and on the Lundu Rivers bore the title Orang Kaya Pamancha.78 The bestowal and acceptance of titles helped to create linkages and establish relative hierarchies among the Malay and Iban elites. Iban–Malay integration was also expressed spatially. Although the interiors of Iban rivers were exclusively Iban, the populations of the middle reaches were more mixed, with Iban and Malays living adjacently. Additionally, there was some intermarriage among leading Malay and Iban families.79 Through a system of alliances, friendships and more institutionalised relationships between Malay and Iban leaders, Malays exercised an indirect influence over longhouse communities. The degree to which Iban and Malay communities could be integrated is indicated by a document from the Lingga area, which records the agreement in 1789 of Lingga Iban to succession arrangements negotiated within the local Malay ruling family.80 Constrained by Moslem prohibitions on alcohol, pigs and dogs, all central features of longhouse life, Malay elites were unable to form largescale direct relations with the Iban ‘rank and file’, however — remaining dependent on Iban leaders to project their power into Iban communities and mobilise support for them. Raja Muda Hassim told James Brooke that his power over the Iban of Lundu derived from his influence with their chief, Jugah, and his family.81 However indirect, such influence was an important source of power for Malays. Even on the Saribas, where Iban were more independent of Malays than elsewhere, only Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana appears to have maintained more or less equal relations with them. Elsewhere on the Saribas, Malays claimed to rule large Iban populations of up to 100 longhouses.82

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One of the principal guarantees of Malay hegemony was a Malay monopoly over firearms. The central importance of bejalai and ngayau to Iban society, and the capacity to achieve this on a large scale that access to firearms bestowed, made the cooperation of Malay elites essential to the functioning of Iban society in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Malay elites were able to facilitate the performance by Iban of status-giving activities. Moreover, it is clear from contemporary observers that Malays did not transfer firearms to Iban, or teach them to use them. Low noted specifically that the Malays used their possession of firearms to maintain an ascendancy over Iban.83 Although St John claimed that, at Beting Marau in July 1849, the Saribas and Skrang Iban ‘had many guns and muskets of their own’, elsewhere he agreed with Low that Malays used their possession of firearms to maintain their influence over Iban and to secure their roles in Iban raiding.84 His claims about the Iban at Beting Marau were made in response to what he regarded as attacks by Gladstone on James Brooke’s reputation and can be dismissed as polemics on the testimony of Brooke himself, according to whom neither the Skrangs nor the Saribas ‘were possessed of musketry’.85 Bidayuh or Land Dyaks Bidayuh lived on the Lundu, Sarawak, Sadong and Samarahan Rivers and exhibited wide cultural diversity among their various populations, dividing into a number of mutually unintelligible dialect groups.86 Bidayuh and Iban (or Land Dyaks and Sea Dyaks) are ‘strikingly alike in much of their culture and social organisation’. The two groups are physically similar, cultivate rice (and have a rice culture), and are (broadly) egalitarian.87 Like the Iban, Bidayuh collect prestige property such as antique jars, brass cannon and gongs. Indeed, 19th-century observers often found the two groups so similar they were unable to specify what distinguished them, beyond finding Bidayuh the more mild.88 Most modern scholars have continued the tradition established by Brooke of demilitarising Bidayan history, presenting Bidayuh as ‘an unassertive people no longer active in headhunting who posed no military or political threat to other Dyaks or to the Malays’.89 In questioning this orthodoxy, Ulla Wagner rightly pointed both to the prominence of Bidayuh in the rebellion against Brunei rule in the 1830s and to difficulties Brooke experienced in establishing his control over some Bidayuh. Wagner suggested that the Brookes and later chroniclers have overemphasised Bidayuh ‘helplessness and timidity’. Although Wagner goes too far in concluding that, ‘on the whole, . . . [Bidayuh] managed to hold their own’,90 there is evidence to suggest that not all Bidayuh suffered from the depredations of Iban and Malays. There were wide variations in the ability of Bidayuh to resist injustice and exploitation, and some were markedly less mild than others. In 1839 James Brooke had found that he was unable to

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penetrate further than 100 miles up the Samarahan. Beyond that point, his Malay escorts warned, he would find ‘the [Land] Dyaks hostile; the Rajah’s enemies in ambush’.91 Moreover, Bidayuh could perpetrate, as well as endure, injustice and exploitation. The Singe Land Dyaks, far from being victims of aggression, extorted payments from the Sanpro Land Dyaks in return for peace, and possessed more than 100 heads.92 Nor were all other Bidayuh helpless or illprepared for their own defence. Their longhouses were well fortified by local standards, with ‘a strong palisading of bamboo stakes, or sometimes of hardwood, which are strengthened and fastened together by split bamboos being woven among the perpendicular posts, the ends of which, sharpened to points, project outwards in all directions . . .’ Nonetheless, Bidayuh were not as aggressive as Iban, nor did they develop interriver raiding as a feature of their social organisation. Bidayan villages were built, for greater defence, on the summits of steep hills, and often could not be constructed as one long terrace. Thus Low found that Bidayan villages consisted of several terraces of six or 10 apartments ‘scattered in all directions’.93 The Singes had gone even further and abandoned longhouses entirely, living in 200 separate dwellings.94 Bidayuh call their villages binua, a term which applies to the people in the village, to the community and to the area of the village.95 Whether the community lived in a single terrace or not, Bidayan villages included a pangah, a detached octagonal building in which Bidayan boys and unmarried men slept after reaching puberty. The pangah was also the ritual and ceremonial centre of the village. All the community’s heads were kept there and all important deliberations were conducted there. Additionally, it was set aside for the use of visitors to the village.96 Geddes found that, in the 1950s, the qualities required of the headman of a community were that he be wise, so that his people might profit from his advice; gentle, so that his advice not be thrust on them; rich, so that his leadership might contribute to the prestige of the village and that his wealth-generating abilities might spread through the community; a priest, so that he might exert influence over the non-material world affecting people’s welfare; and finally that he have influence with the government.97 In some of the larger communities, Low recorded there were senior and junior orang kayas.98 There is no clear explanation for why Land and Sea Dyaks, with their apparently similar social systems, developed such different patterns of behaviour. Geddes suggested that the aggressive and expansive nature of Iban ‘may help to explain the growth of a contrary nature in the Land Dyaks’.99 Elsewhere, however, he discounted this explanation, arguing that Bidayuh did not become timid because they were oppressed — rather that they were oppressed ‘because of what they were like’. Although Geddes also suggested that Bidayuh were rendered more vulnerable because of their ‘individualism and equality, which is good neither for

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discipline nor for an ideal of tribal glory in which the interests of separate persons will be sunk’,100 this explanation ignores the competitiveness and individualism of Iban society. Bidayan vulnerability to Iban marauding seems to have had four sources. First, Bidayuh were, in important ways, less individualistic than Iban. When Iban took heads, they became the property of the individuals who took them or at most those individuals’ bileks. Heads were displayed by Iban to demonstrate the valour and power of individuals and of their separate bileks. This contrasts with Bidayuh, among whom heads taken were displayed communally in the pangah. Thus, whereas Iban head-taking contributed to personal reputation and therefore was an area for competition, among Bidayuh head-taking acted ‘as a symbol of the joint interests of the local community’.101 Bidayan successes in headhunting did not generate a further need for other individuals to headhunt in order to assert or re-establish their equality, as was the case among Iban. Rather, a successful head-taking among Bidayuh was a demonstration of the abilities or strength of the whole community, satisfying any ritual or other pressures to secure a head in the community. Whereas among Iban a success at headhunting generated further pressures to headhunt, among Bidayuh such a success appeased them. Secondly, for reasons that are not clear, Bidayuh remained deeply fearful of the forest, particularly of strange forests.102 Although Bidayuh gathered jungle produce, they perceived forests as sources of supernatural threats. Whereas for Iban expeditions into the forests were a source of prestige and standing, for Bidayuh they were a source of danger. For Iban, bejalai could be combined with ngayau to bring status and wealth and generate pressure on other Iban to do similarly. This process was inhibited among Bidayuh. Thirdly, although the sources are not clear as to why, Iban rice ripened earlier than Bidayan rice.103 Consequently, Iban were able to harvest their rice and then raid at a time when Bidayuh were at their most vulnerable to military pressure. Ripening rice crops are easily burned and the effects, as Iban would discover, could be devastating. Finally, as Bidayuh settled the summits of hills for greater defence, they tended to abandon single longhouse terraces in favour of a number of longhouse sections which were themselves potential separate longhouses. Three factors shaped whether longhouse segments developed into separate communities — terrain, distance and poverty.104 These processes were likely to be mutually reinforcing in such a way as to fragment and weaken Bidayuh communities, rendering them less able to integrate their component parts and less able to withstand Iban threats. Although higher or less accessible hills were likely to give Bidayuh the greatest protection, as the terrain became rougher the longhouse segments would need to be smaller and located further apart from each other. Such sites were also likely to have less fertile land adjacent, diminishing the community’s capacity to produce surpluses large enough to conduct village-wide rituals.

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Thus Bidayuh were subject to pressures that constrained them from expansionary activity and contained their settlement to familiar areas. These processes undermined Bidayan ability to compete with other groups, causing Bidayuh to retreat and their social groupings to contract. Like Iban, Bidayuh were conjoined in wider power systems, which were dominated by Malay aristocrats and chiefs and which provided the material basis for Malay elite status. Malay–Bidayuh relations were unequal, underpinned by threats and coercion. Malay chiefs confirmed Bidayan headmen in their positions and Malay support remained a significant source of authority for headmen. Bidayan headmen both regulated Malay demands to levels which their communities would tolerate and mobilised the resources of their communities to meet such demands. It was a delicate balance and the costs of failure were high. Elite Malays who wished to overcome opposition or extract higher levels of goods and services would encourage Saribas and Skrang Iban to attack the Bidayuh. Although, therefore, Malays were probably the primary threats to Bidayan prosperity, the techniques of coercion they used developed among many Bidayuh a deep terror of Iban. Even in the 1950s, Geddes found among Bidayuh on the Sadong ‘a horrifying awareness of the dispossessions of the past by Sea Dayaks’.105 He found them literally haunted by their fears of Saribas Iban headhunters, who had even transcended their human existence to enter the Bidayan spirit world.106 The magnitude of this threat from Iban encouraged Bidayuh to see the Malays as protectors rather than as predatory consumers of Bidayan economic surpluses. This perception was so internalised that, until recently, some Bidayuh referred to elite Malays as ‘our Datus’.107 COSMOLOGICAL POLITICAL CULTURES: THE IDEOLOGICAL BASES OF POWER Beyond the structural differences and similarities that characterised them, Malays, Iban and Bidayuh shared a range of ideas about the nature of people and the world which facilitated their integration, however painful, into a complex system of contested power and domination. Malays, Iban and Bidayuh shared a cosmological concept of being which perceived in the natural world the operations of the supernatural, that the natural was a microcosm of a supernatural macrocosm. Natural and supernatural affairs were seen to intrude on each other, affect each other and in fact comprise a single continuum of activity, in which human events were essentially linked to sacred forces permeating the universe. In such belief systems, humans organised to facilitate the intrusion of divine or cosmic forces into the world of human affairs dependent on them. Among the people of northwest Borneo, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, power was neither an abstract attribute nor merely the structural manifestation of inequality. Power was, to use Shelly Errington’s term, ‘cosmic energy’.108

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Among the cosmic attributes that underpinned, and were realised in, leadership and social relations of dependency, semangat and cognate beliefs were particularly important. Semangat is central to many Southeast Asian political cultures. Indeed, the extent to which beliefs about semangat constituted shared and fundamental cultural traits helped Anthony Reid to define Southeast Asia itself as a meaningful unit for analysis.109 Derek Freeman characterised semangat as ‘soul-stuff’.110 Kirk Endicott recognised that it was the ‘vital principal’ in things.111 According to Carol Laderman: Semangat (Spirit of Life) is not limited to animals. It permeates the universe, dwelling in man, beast, plant, and rock. The universe teems with life: the life of a fire is swift and soon burns out, a rock’s life is slow, long and dreamlike. Semangat strengthens its dwelling place, whether the human body or a stalk of rice, and maintains its health and integrity. However, it is extremely sensitive and can be depleted; it can even flee, startled or frightened, from its receptacle.112

Leadership and power derived from the fact that semangat, as potency, could be infused to differing degrees, with individuals ranking themselves according to the amount of potency they possessed. As Oliver Wolters observed, a ‘person’s spiritual identity and capacity for leadership were established when his fellows could recognise his superior endowment and knew that being close to him was to their advantage’.113 Semangat is charisma, localised.114 In its vulnerability, semangat not only needed to be cherished and protected, it needed to be enhanced. Among Malays, the effort to achieve higher spiritual rank by enhancing semangat was termed naik pangkat. Semangat could be acquired from other potent individuals. It could, literally, rub off. Thus potent individuals were the subjects of allegiance by others, who sought to associate themselves with the source of greater potency. Similarly, these potent foci of loyalty and association themselves sought more powerful individuals to function as a source of potency. Networks of relationships which had as their purpose the transfer of semangat thus developed, underpinning, legitimating and replacing material bases of association. A large following or any other manifest power was a very visible attribute of intense or expansive semangat, with which less potent individuals would seek association. Conversely, the impoverishment of followers or the fragmentation of a following would indicate that the semangat of the central leader was diminished and would compromise the legitimacy of his leadership. The more apparent an individual’s semangat was, the greater the number of individuals who sought to associate themselves with the potent person. Southeast Asian societies revolved around potent centres, from which semangat in various forms was diffused. The most potent ‘man of prowess’ comprised the ultimate centre; conversely, establishing oneself as the centre demonstrated that an individual was the most potent.115

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As Laderman observed, however, semangat was not just an attribute which invested humans. Semangat also invested places and objects with special powers that could contribute to or diminish human potency and therefore prosperity. Malays use the word kramat to describe objects and places, as well as people, of particular potency.116 The act of visiting a kramat to enhance spiritual status was termed by Malays berkat. Four sites in the vicinity of Kuching are recognised as kramat.117 Smaller objects could also be kramat. The Sultan of Matan in Borneo possessed what was supposed to be a huge diamond which Malays believed was so potent that water in which it had been immersed had the power of healing diseases.118 People also could become so intensely potent that they became kramat. The Sultan of Scaddan on the Kapuas River, for example, visited a kramat called Batu Tapa and became, in consequence, invulnerable to injury.119 Datu Tumanggong Mersal was kramat,120 as was Sherif Masahor, who ruled Igan and Sarikei in the delta of the Rejang.121 Malays institutionalised their recognition of supernatural sources of power in their state systems. Malay sultans, for example, possessed daulat, a concept which subsumed ‘pre-Hindu, Hindu and Islamic concepts concerning the immutable power of the ruler, the sacredness of his person, the unseen forces which guarded him’ and through which they exerted both spiritual and temporal power.122 Brunei Malays believed that their rulers ‘consciously exercise powers of magic’.123 Moreover, association with rulers, in particular the nama (name, rank or reputation) acquired through the service of a ruler, affected a Malay’s status in the next world as well as in this.124 Iban and Bidayuh also shared worlds with spirits, demons and gods that invested objects, places and people with special powers to affect human affairs, and over whom humans could seek influence through the acquisition of spiritual strength. Just as gods, spirits and demons impinged on the human world, individual Iban were integrated into the other world through their genealogies, one of which, for example, ‘begins in the holy land in the Middle East’ and extends to padi mortars that suddenly fly upwards . . . to the slaying of stars in human form . . . and to numerous other transempirical acts, such as ancestors cutting down invisible spirits . . . and turning their adversaries into boulders . . . in a continuous narrative that ends with the descendants of these miracle-working ancestors becoming clerks in the Sarawak Government and the Borneo Company Limited.125

This intrusion of the supernatural into the natural remains a deeply held belief for many Iban. One of Vinson Sutlive’s students told him about her family’s jar, which had began recently to moan through want of attention. It only stopped moaning after its owners changed its cloth covering and ‘fed’ it rice.126

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The challenge for individuals was always how to strengthen their semangat (and keep it embodied), minimise exposure to malignant forces and avoid generating disorder and disaster.127 This could involve two separate processes designed to increase potency and reduce spiritual vulnerability: association with individuals of known prowess and potency, and observation of ritual activities. These cosmological processes underpinned and motivated both Iban and Bidayan social relations. The longhouse was more than a form of village organisation. It comprised a corporate ritual unit, all members of which shared responsibility for balancing the spirit and longhouse worlds, and in which nearly all activities related to the community’s religious wellbeing.128 Tuai Rumahs were instrumental in maintaining harmony between this and the other world, and the proper observance of adat was one means of doing so. Iban sought leaders of proven spiritual prowess. Among Iban, aspiring leaders needed ‘a necessary range of personal religious experience’ that would demonstrate their ritual status.129 Success would indicate (and accrue to) communities that acquired potency and maintained a cosmic balance. The second process through which Iban could achieve these outcomes was the performance of ritual and other activities. This is the context in which we should see headhunting: A Borneo settlement, let us say, has been suffering from epidemics, crop failures, and infertility of women. Casting about for a reason to explain their ill-fortune, they arrive at the characteristically Indonesian notion that their group lacks magical power. Their spiritual ‘juice’ is running low. What they need is a fresh influx of supernatural vigor, not only to strengthen themselves, their crops, and their women, but also to fight off evil spirits with greater effectiveness.130

Longhouses unable to increase their spiritual strength through their leader, or through the collection of new heads, could engage in bejalai or pindah. Many of the goods acquired through bejalai were themselves the sources of potency. Antique jars, for example, were credited with supernatural powers and healing virtues131 and would thereby contribute to the potency of the community into which they were taken. Moreover, the successful accumulation of prestige goods and other wealth would indicate, in itself, an increase in spiritual prowess, status and strength. Like the Iban, Bidayuh inhabited a world where antus or spirits were everywhere.132 Antus could cause sickness and misfortune and Bidayuh, like Iban, were concerned to maintain the delicate balance between humans and the other worlds on which human wellbeing depended.133 Beneficent spirits could be invoked to protect humans against all kinds of malevolent spirits, and Bidayuh maintained elaborate rituals to enhance their semangat and establish their prosperity.134 Religious and spiritual affairs were thus an essential element of Bidayan existence.

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Bidayuh’s desire to engage Malay semangat provided a non-material basis of association and even of dependence. Noel Denison has left a detailed account of a formalised and regular expression of Bidayan ritual dependence on Malays: It was an old custom with the Dyaks of the western branch of the Sarawak River dating from time immemorial, for the Government to give them nothing for two years, these were called taun manang, doctoring years. On the third year the Government gave a little gold dust, and 2 fathoms of white cotton cloth to each of the Orang Kayas and Pengaras; this was called the ‘adat parsalin’; on the 4th years Government gave one or two jars ‘tampayang pambasa or pabisa’ worth about 30 cents each, to the Orang Kayas and Pengaras, and when the revenue was collected some white cotton cloth was distributed among the head people of the tribes. On the southern branch the custom was different; the 1st year government gave nothing, being taun manang — the 2nd year parsalin, a baju and a head handkerchief to the Orang Kayas and Pengaras; 3rd Pambisa a few gongs or chanangs were given, but no gold dust.135

Misfortune was, for both Bidayuh and Iban, the consequence of diminished or displaced semangat, or of a disturbance in the other world which either humans or omen animals could engender, or which antus might themselves cause. Bidayuh maintained what Geddes described as an ‘ethical defence’ against the malevolence of spirits. A well-ordered community, where individuals maintained adat and conducted necessary rituals, was more able to withstand the influence of antus.136 These processes were a source of potency and a means of either appeasing or co-opting other spirit forces. Failure to observe adat, however, caused an imbalance in human and spirit affairs and engendered misfortune. A group of Bidayuh told a missionary at Lundu that their numbers had declined because ‘we no longer have the power (kwasa) to raise crops’.137 Low reported that following the marriage between a Bidayuh orang kaya and his granddaughter, his villagers complained that ‘no bright day had blessed their territory; but that rain and darkness alone prevailed, and that unless the plague-spot were removed, the tribe would soon be ruined’.138 CHARISMA AND STATE FORMATION Pringle argued that Malay overlordship ‘was a concept which Iban culture could not sustain’.139 The compatibility of Malay, Iban and Bidayan concepts of power provided the basis through which a degree of unity under Malay overlordship could be legitimated and comprehended, however. Malays, through their control of access to firearms and their navigation skills, were demonstrably potent individuals. As Pringle himself noted, Malay aristocrats ‘basked in the reflected mystique of a literate culture’ and ‘radiated an aura of superior sophistication’.140 Their prowess

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must have been obvious, and the most powerful among them were desirable objects of loyalty and association for potency-seeking Iban and Bidayuh. Similarly, powerful Iban leaders would have been attractive associates for ambitious Malay aristocrats. The materialisation of cosmological ideals in Borneo was an uncertain business, however. The inevitable tensions that arose from attempts by people to integrate material realities with imagined or invisible hierarchies undermined institutional stability. Such difficulties were compounded by the fluidity of Iban and Bidayuh social organisation and economic relations, which were not easily managed by Malay pretenders to overlordship. The geography of Borneo, its economies and fissiparous social identities, did not support the institutionalisation of charisma that Benedict Anderson noted in Java.141 In the absence of resilient bureaucracies, Iban and Bidayuh support for charismatic leaders, including Malay leaders, needed continual management and reinforcement if it were to be maintained. The needs of Malay elites for support, and the nature of the Iban and Bidayuh support they could mobilise, fostered instability and change which challenged enduring polities. I have already referred to the importance of trade in facilitating the establishment of power in Borneo by outsiders like Syed Abdul Rahman, Raja Muda Ali, and even the founder of Banjarmassin, Ampu Jatmaka. The permeability of Bornean power structures that such careers indicate also facilitated sudden and dramatic shifts in power away from established state centres. Notwithstanding the survival across many centuries of the Brunei, Sukadana and Banjarmassin sultanates, Borneo history seems to have been punctuated by the emergence and decline of states. The 18th century saw the proliferation of small sultanates on the Kapuas River, and of Bugis and Arab dominated polities on both the west and east coasts. The success of founding figures such as Syed Abdul Rahman of Pontianak and Opu Daeng Menambun at Mempawah was achieved at the expense of other centres. When John Crawford travelled down the east coast of Borneo, which was also a sphere of Bugis colonisation, in 1815, he was unable even to locate the site of the sultanate of Aparkarang, recorded only 35 years earlier. ‘This place is at present so insignificant that I have never been able to meet any trader whether Native or European that had ever heard of it’, he wrote.142 The contested and transient nature of power in Borneo seems to have been a significant and recognised problem for state elites throughout the island. Wealthy and capable outsiders could, all too easily, establish themselves as rulers at the expense of older states. Surely this explains the emphasis placed by the Hikayat Banjar on the importance of not usurping royal status. The Hikayat Banjar records that Ampu Jatmaka, shortly after he established himself at Banjarmassin, proclaimed: I wish two statues made of yellow sandal-wood. We shall place them in the shrine. We shall recognise these statues as king and queen, and to them we

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shall pay obeisance; for I am not myself of royal descent and fear I may be stricken by a curse and perish. Then you would all likewise perish, because you have recognised as king a person who is not of royal descent, for none of my ancestors have been anything more than high ranking commoners from generation to generation. According to stories from long past anyone not of royal descent who, on account of his riches, makes himself king courts inexorable disaster . . .143

Although the Hikayat Banjar presents Ampu Jatmaka as voicing a universally accepted principle, far from being assumed the principle was being propounded. The Hikayat Banjar sought to contain charisma within a confined and definable group of (royal) people because of its otherwise destabilising and unpredictable operations and because trade surpluses, and the power they underpinned, could be so easily diverted.

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2 Insurgency and the foundations of Brooke power

In the early 19th century, Brunei governed Sarawak through two Brunei pengirans, who controlled the export of jungle produce on behalf of the Brunei elite.1 The Brunei authorities in Sarawak ruled with the support of local Malay aristocrats, the perabangan, who were rewarded with titles and rank. The Sarawak Malay community is believed to have been led by the Datu Patinggi, who was supposed to have ruled the right-hand branch of the Sarawak River; the Datu Bandar, who governed the left-hand branch; and the Datu Tumanggong, who governed the coastal areas.2 Successive scholars have ascribed seniority to Datu Patinggi Ali. Baring-Gould and Bampfylde considered Ali the ‘head chief’, while Craig Lockard described him as the ‘paramount Malay chief’.3 Primary sources indicate, however, that the Sarawak Malay leadership was more fragmented than this outline suggests, and that the Patinggi title was contested. James Brooke reported meetings he held with the Patinggis (plural) and the Tumanggong in 1840.4 The second contender for the title was Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur. Mrs McDougall later presented Abdul Gapur to her readers as the leader of the Sarawak Malays,5 and his descendants maintain that he, and not Ali, was the senior Sarawak Malay prior to Brooke’s arrival.6 Rivalry between Abdul Gapur and Ali and his sons would remain an important feature of Sarawak society. The Sarawak Malays appear to have lived principally at Leda Tanah, Datu Patinggi Ali’s seat, and at a place called Katupong,7 which might have been Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur’s residence. Both sites were upriver from present-day Kuching. POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FRAGMENTATION Dutch and British commercial activities in the 18th and early 19th centuries provided both challenges and opportunities for monopolistic 24

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sultanates in the archipelago, including in Borneo. Although initial Dutch support for the recently established state of Pontianak helped its rulers to compete with Sambas and Sukadana, English activities centred on Penang subsequently caused Pontianak’s trade to decline. Crawford observed that, whereas Pontianak had received between eight and 13 Chinese vessels a year, by 1815 that number had declined to five. Crawford claimed that country traders from Penang had replaced Pontianak in supplying Bornean communities with opium, piece goods and iron.8 Diminution of the trade of native states dramatically escalated following the foundation of a British factory at Singapore in 1819. Singapore was more centrally located than Penang and its effect throughout the archipelago was electric. The trade of Penang in 1818 had totalled $2 030 757. By 1824, Singapore’s trade was $6 604 601.9 The rulers of Brunei were quick to recognise Singapore’s importance. On receiving a letter from William Farquhar advising of its foundation and requesting trade with Brunei, the Bendahara, Pengiran Muda Mohammad Alam, promptly dispatched a prahu with trade goods, and for Farquhar a gift of wax. Subsequent correspondence between Farquhar and the Sultan and Bendahara has survived, giving evidence of the small scale of the Brunei court’s trade, which seems to have diminished as previously subordinate, provincial nobles also realised Singapore’s potential.10 John Dalton observed that Singapore’s foundation created such a ‘sensation among the natives’ that it was known of even by Dyaks ‘in the centre of Borneo’.11 The new possibilities for trade that Singapore provided were attractive to provincial elites, which had been subsumed in centralised sultanates and which hastened to exploit their new opportunities. As Dalton reported of the east coast of Borneo, ‘new prows are building in almost every creek’.12 Although the Brunei capital continued to send boats, it is clear also that, by the early 1820s, trade was brought direct to Singapore from Brunei’s ‘various ports’.13 An 1829 report is unequivocal that Bornean provincial nakhodas (traders) brought cargoes ‘in prows belonging to the different ports from whence they come’.14 Thus the foundation of Singapore stimulated the development of the nakhoda class and led to an increase in local control over local economic resources. This development undermined the fundamental structure of the major Bornean sultanates and led to an increased assertion of provincial autonomy. By the 1830s, decentralisation of power over economic resources was such that Earl, for example, was unaware that Sarawak had been a dependency of Brunei prior to the discovery of antimony.15 The Brunei court seems for a time to have been unable even to sustain trade with Singapore.16 A similar process was observed during this period in the Bornean sultanates of Sambas, Pontianak and Mempawa, the governments of which were also reported to have lost control over trade to provincial elites.17 The discovery in Sarawak of commercial deposits of antimony in 1823 provided an unexpected new source of revenue for impoverished courts.

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Antimony is a metal used as an alloy, for example, with lead to make ammunition, and was also a valued emetic. In 1826, the Sultan of Brunei dispatched a party under the Pengiran Indera Mahkota to re-establish Brunei control over Sarawak and to exploit the deposits.18 The reimposition of direct Bruneian control threatened the incomes of the Sarawak Malays, reducing their ability to exploit a new and valuable resource in ways they are likely to have resented. Mahkota’s decision to settle at Kuching, rather than at existing Sarawak Malay towns upriver at Leda Tanah and Katupong, which were closer to the antimony deposits, suggests Sarawak Malay opposition. His establishment of Kuching secured for Mahkota a capital without his having to compete with the Sarawak Malay datus and, being downriver from their settlements, accorded him increased geostrategic control over the Sarawak Malays’ economic and other activities.19 As a border province of Brunei, Sarawak was subject to competing ties with Sambas, to the southwest. Lockard speculated that Sambas’s influence in Sarawak might even have been almost as strong as Brunei’s.20 Sambas’s interests in Sarawak predated the establishment of Singapore — the Sultan of Sambas was reported as being on the Sambas/Sarawak border in 1813.21 The discovery of antimony provided Sambas, as well as Brunei, with opportunities to offset the deleterious effects of the rise of Singapore. The Sambas elite quickly established a role in the new trade, with Sambas nobles bringing two or three brigs loaded with antimony to Singapore.22 Sambas was a Dutch protectorate. In 1831 the Dutch Resident proposed to the East Indies government that the Sultan of Sambas should acquire from Brunei the areas of Lundu, Sematan, Sarawak and Sadoud (Sadong?). The Sultan of Sambas sent an emissary to Brunei to negotiate the transfer.23 Although we have no details about the mission and its reception at the Brunei court, at least part of the Brunei government appears to have favoured the proposal. One of Sultan Omar Ali’s uncles, Pengiran Usop, went to Sarawak about 1835 and agreed ‘for a sum of money’ to transfer the province to the Sultan of Sambas’s brother. Following refusal of Sultan Omar Ali’s most senior uncle and heir-presumptive, Raja Muda Hassim, to agree to the proposal, Usop provoked the Sarawak Malays to revolt in 1836.24 The Sarawak Malays and the Brunei government both expected that Sambas and the Dutch would support the Sarawak insurgency. Sultan Omar Ali responded by sending Raja Muda Hassim with his brothers to live at Kuching. In Brunei, where he had been Bendahara, Hassim had demonstrated ‘great mental endowments’, managing ‘the executive department with talent and resolution’.25 In Sarawak, however, Hassim exhibited none of the qualities expected by Europeans in trying to secure control of a rebellious province. Brooke considered that his ‘character is wanting in energy and promptness, though not deficient in sense’,26 and that he ‘is so weak, that he has lost all authority except in name and observance’.27 Even when approached by Mahkota for advice on practical administration, Hassim would not be drawn, enjoining him ‘to act as he thought proper’.28

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Sultan Omar Ali II

Hassim’s role in Kuching needs to be elaborated. However inadequate Brooke found him to be, Hassim’s reluctance to be drawn into administrative detail would have been well understood by his Malay contemporaries. In 1837, Pengiran Usop described the appropriate roles of the Sultan and his Bendahara at the Brunei court: ‘ “Sultan bilang, Hassim kirja”; the Sultan speaks, Hassim acts.’29 In Sarawak, Hassim sought to enact the role of the ruler he represented, leaving the Bendahara role for Makhota to fill. Although Sabihah suggested that Hassim’s appointment to ‘a small town like Kuching’ reflected his lack of status and small abilities, she seems to have underestimated both the importance of Sarawak’s antimony and the extent to which Hassim’s behaviour was exemplary.30 Hassim’s removal to Kuching provided a clear indication to the Sarawak Malays and the Sambas government of Brunei’s determination to maintain control of Sarawak, and a local focus for loyalty of sufficiently high royal status to counter the rival attractions of the Sambas sultan. Hassim’s

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This image, originally published as a portrait of Rajah Muda Hassim, in fact represents Pengiran Makhota

presence probably had an additional, more esoteric purpose, moreover. Unity, both at the centre of and throughout Malay polities, was considered the key to ensuring ‘prosperity, wealth, fertility and peace’.31 The source of a polity’s unity was its most intensely potent centre, the ruler, and his immediate entourage, on whose virtues depended their followers’ prosperity.32 As in Java, the ability of a ruler ‘to absorb his adversaries’ was an important attribute of power.33 By sending such a high-ranking, close relative from the capital, Sultan Omar Ali was attempting to reintegrate Sarawak into his realm — to bring ritual order to Brunei’s unintegrated, chaotic periphery. Raja Muda Hassim, through the religio-magical potency of his high rank and not through administrative ability, was expected to end

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discord. Ranking Malay royalty, like the high nobles studied by Shelly Errington, were ‘living, breathing, walking talismans, whose presence protects those within their realm’.34 Hassim’s puissance would have been expected to be as irresistible to the insurgents as had been that of the Sultan of Sambas. Through re-entry into Hassim’s entourage, the Sarawak Malays would be reunited with their ruler. The Sarawak insurgents received arms and ammunition from the Sambas court.35 In May 1839, in a bid for increased support, they contacted the Assistant Resident of Sambas, offering to cede the district. At the same time they sent a delegation to Batavia to lobby the East Indies government itself.36 The Dutch, through the Sultan of Sambas, probably provided the insurgents with the three six-pounders they were later reported to have.37 Notwithstanding Sambas and Dutch intervention, by 1839 the conflict appears to have reached a stalemate. The insurgents controlled upriver areas. Brunei controlled downriver from Kuching, the Lundu River and the lower Samarahan River.38 The Sambas government, however, was determined to gain control of the antimony whatever the outcome of the revolt, and therefore maintained relations with Mahkota at Kuching, as well as with the insurgents. The Sambas Sultan tried to establish economic rights over the antimony. He wrote to Mahkota offering to assist with developing the deposits and seeking permission to trade in Sarawak. Mahkota was unsure of the extent to which Sambas ambitions had Dutch backing and had not responded to this overture by the time Brooke arrived at Kuching in 1839. Mahkota’s unease over Sambas’s intentions is demonstrated by his exploration with Brooke of the possibility of Brunei’s securing British support against the Dutch.39 James Brooke and his supporters would later portray Mahkota as a cruel and avaricious ruler whose repression drove a reluctant people to rebellion. With vigorous demand from Singapore merchants for ore and, probably, from the Brunei government for revenue, Mahkota’s regime appears to have been harsh.40 Mahkota became a significant obstacle to James Brooke’s acquisition of power in Sarawak, however, and this circumstance alone provides grounds to be sceptical of the more extravagant claims made by Brooke and his supporters. Moreover, Mahkota’s exploitation of many of the Bidayuh through forced labour and other coercive measures was not why the Sarawak Malays revolted against Brunei rule, nor the reason for Usop’s inciting them. Nor should the revolt be seen, in Craig Lockard’s terms, simply ‘in the Borneo tradition of upriver trading port rebellions against a downriver Suzereign’.41 Rather, the Sarawak insurgency was one manifestation of a struggle between Malay elites from Sambas, Brunei and Sarawak for control over antimony, a struggle intensified on the parts of the Brunei and Sambas courts by the economic decentralisation and growth of regional autonomy that were impoverishing them. Antimony, Brooke told Jack Templer, was ‘the sole cause of all the bloodshed in this poor country’

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as ‘several struggled for ascendancy — the country was oppressed and divided, and civil war was the consequence’.42 THE EARLY LIFE OF JAMES BROOKE James Brooke was born in the Indian holy city of Benares (Varanasi) on 29 April 1803 to Thomas Brooke and his wife, Anna Maria Stuart.43 The Brooke family had been involved with India for several generations. Thomas’s father, Robert, and his grandfather, another Robert, had both commanded the East India Company’s ship, Speke.44 Thomas’s mother, Ruth, was a member of one of the longest-established families prominent in the East India Company’s service, the Pattles.45 Anna Maria Stuart’s family was also well established. Her father, Colonel James Stuart, had been born in Bengal and her brother, another James, was in the Bengal Civil Service. Thomas contributed to family tradition by entering the Company’s service in 1778. He retired as Senior Judge of the Court of Appeal, after an unspectacular career, in 1817.46 Thomas and Anna Maria had four daughters and two sons. Thomas also had an older son, Charles William, from another relationship. Unusually for the period, James Brooke remained in India with his parents until he was 12. Emily Hahn recognised that these early years might have shaped the course of his career: ‘A long childhood sojourn in India, soaking up the ideas of colonials rather than stay-at-home Britons, might account for his attitude as an adult dealing with the East.’47 Nicholas Tarling agreed that Brooke’s childhood was important to his later attitudes, noting tersely that, in Thomas’s Anglo-Indian household, the ‘living was good, the atmosphere subservient’.48 But Brooke’s early years might have contributed to his later successes more directly than either Hahn or Tarling have recognised. Although Victorian prejudice would later erect barriers between Indians and colonialists, by the beginning of the 19th century many English families like the Brookes, Stuarts and Pattles had lived in India for several generations and had developed a liberal society in which social divisions were determined as much by class as ethnicity. One of the judges of the Benares Court, for example, was Indian.49 Moreover, many in India’s British elite dressed, ate and lived partly in the Indian style, associated extensively with Indians and sometimes married Indians. The conqueror of Nepal, Sir David Ochterlony, was ‘habituated to an Indian Life’. He lived with an Indian noblewoman, whom Anglo-Indian society treated ‘with all the reverence due to a wife’.50 Ochterlony even persuaded the British government to extend the remainder of his baronetcy to his half-Indian son.51 James Skinner, the founder of the military irregulars, Skinner’s Horse, was the son of a Rajput princess and an English officer, while Skinner’s colleague, William Gardner, who founded Gardner’s Horse, married a Moslem princess. Both Skinner and Gardner deliberately presented themselves to their troopers in traditional

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Indian terms. Skinner held durbars, which ‘helped to maintain the illusions that the old military culture was still alive’, and dressed his followers in yellow, the battle colour of his Rajput ancestors. Gardner dressed his men in green, the colour associated with Islam, and later married his son to a Mughal princess.52 There is evidence that the Brookes lived in this sort of milieu, where peoples mixed and other cultures were respected and absorbed, and that these circumstances coloured the environment of James Brooke’s childhood. Thomas Brooke’s mother, Ruth, is reported to have been the granddaughter of Nathaniel Middleton and his Indian wife or mistress.53 Although Thomas’s Indian descent was several generations removed, kinship with the Middletons remained socially real for the Brookes. James would later employ a Middleton cousin in Sarawak. In addition, Thomas and his circle established their own Indian connections. Charles Kegan, whose son-in-law became James’s guardian in England, lived with an Indian woman until her death, which he commemorated by building a mosque to her memory.54 Thomas Brooke made financial provision for an Indian woman who might have been his mistress,55 and James’s elder half-brother, Charles William, is claimed to have married the daughter of the Begum of Oudh and Sir Dyson Marshall.56 Although Reece further asserted that Charles William’s mother was herself Indian, I am not aware of any basis for doing so. As Tarling pointed out, Charles William’s correspondence with his mother does not suggest this.57 Successive scholars have overemphasised the difficulties between James and his father during the 1830s, when Thomas was old and exasperated with his improvident and idle son and Mrs Brooke was peace-keeper. There is no evidence of any earlier lack of sympathy, and the elder Brooke’s views and experience underpinned those of the younger. For most of his career, Thomas Brooke worked as a political agent, and his surviving correspondence reveals an humane and thoughtful man, attuned to the Indian cultural and political realities around him,58 and concerned that the Company’s control be structured to meet Indian expectations and needs. He disdained reliance on the military to establish and maintain British rule, urging the Company instead ‘to pursue such measures as may induce . . . a voluntary subjection to our power’.59 James Brooke seems to have echoed Thomas’s views when he advised his nephew to let Sarawak resemble India in no single respect — more particularly in becoming a military government. Do not introduce a European element of strength to control, but to protect the people, & draw the natives more and more round you.60

One modern analyst has noted that a political agent, such as Thomas, needed a ‘careful understanding’ of Indian society and culture.61 Thomas Brooke would have agreed, as he argued that the British ‘must study the genius

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character & disposition of the Inhabitants and endeavour to reconcile them to us by the introduction of a system likely to meet their concurrence or at any rate that will not meet with their determined opposition’. Thomas’s consistent theme was the need for the British to develop a form of government appropriate to India, which met the needs of Indians and would ‘suit with their characters’.62 James Brooke grew up, therefore, in a household where the forms and meanings of power were important issues, where Indian political culture was a matter for serious study, where policies were developed to win over suspicious populations and avoid violent dissent, and where consideration was given to presenting authority in forms familiar to the population governed. These ideas, and the capacity to implement them, would be central to his later career.63 From the time of James’s earliest memories his father was bitterly alienated from his employer. Notwithstanding Thomas’s loyal service, the Governor-General, Lord Wellesley, used the excuse of his poor health to ignore his claims to an appointment he sought.64 Shortly afterwards, because of the Governor-General’s displeasure with him, Thomas was passed over when his reappointment as Acting Political Agent fell due.65 By the middle of 1805 Thomas was ready to quit. He wrote prior to a friend’s departure for England, ‘I would to God I was going whither you are bound — but alas, I must provide for a large family; however sick of the Country I must stay, though death should stare me in the face.’66 The following year, perhaps in compensation for his disappointments, Thomas Brooke was appointed First Circuit Judge. Any comfort he derived from this preferment was short-lived, however, for the same year he was accused of conspiring with the Second Circuit Judge against a Mr Barton. Although Thomas was exonerated, the processes of enquiry and examination to which he was subjected must have further embittered him.67 It is likely that James Brooke reflected Thomas’s own views when he later labelled the Company ‘that creature in Leadenhall Street’, and denigrated ‘John Company and all his evil ways’.68 When he was 12, James travelled with Charles William’s young son, William (the Begum’s grandson), to England to the care of his grandmother Brooke and a friend of his father. In England James boarded at the Grammar School at Norwich.69 He appears to have been intensely unhappy there, much later asking a friend whose son had just been sent to boarding school: ‘To be a man, must we be battered and shattered whilst boys?’70 Although James’s school fellows would claim later they recognised his genius and followed his innate leadership, he was so isolated at the school that, when he found that his friend George Western had gone to sea, he ran away. Nor would James stay at another school to which he was sent on his parents’ return from India in 1817, and for the next two years he lived with his parents at Bath, tormenting successive tutors.71 As a result, he started life with ‘little knowledge and no idea of self-control’.72 Both Charles William and James’s full-brother, Henry, had joined the Indian Army and James, too, obtained an ensign’s commission in the

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Bengal Army on 11 May 1819. In November 1821, James was promoted to lieutenant and, in May 1822, to sub-assistant commissary general.73 At this point, St John claimed, James began to feel his lack of education and began a lifelong habit of reading widely and well.74 With the outbreak of the Anglo-Burmese War in 1824, he was posted to the invading army and, in an action recalling the careers of Skinner and Gardner, volunteered to raise a troop of Indian cavalry to act as scouts. James Brooke was mentioned in dispatches for his actions on 27 January 1825, when his troop engaged the enemy. Two days later he was wounded in the lung while leading an assault on a stockade.75 Owen Rutter has presented claims by John Dill Ross that Brooke was, in fact, wounded in his genitals. Rutter noted that this belief was a tradition in the Brooke family,76 and Emily Hahn claimed that it was also a tradition in the Burdett Coutts family.77 If accepted, this account might help to explain James Brooke’s extraordinary career. Perhaps Brooke sought through public achievement to compensate for physical emasculation. There is no basis for the story, however. John Dill Ross never knew Brooke, and those parts of his tale that can be checked contain factual errors which raise doubts about his reliability. Traditions in families can be wrong78 and, though his sister, Emma, and her children had powerful reasons for arguing that James was unable to father a child, his other sisters did not agree. The existence of his son, Reuben, disproves the story.79 When he was able to be moved, in August, James left for England to recuperate. His wound broke open again shortly after his arrival home and, although the slug was finally extracted, only his father’s constant nursing saved his life. James’s leave was extended, and it was not until 1829 that he embarked for India, to be shipwrecked off the Isle of Wight. He embarked again in March 1830 on the Castle Huntley. The Company’s rules required James to resume his post within five years of taking leave. He arrived in Madras on 18 July 1830, with only 12 days to reach Bengal. For reasons that remain obscure, he decided he would not be able to return to duty in time, resigned his commission and proceeded on the Castle Huntley through the Indonesian islands, to Canton.80 James Brooke’s resignation from the East India Company’s service remains a mystery. Jacob reported that Thomas Brooke had already arranged for the rules to be waived if James’s return was delayed. She explained that James resigned ‘ignorant of this indulgence’.81 St John claimed that James had become friendly with the Castle Huntley’s officers, who so excited his desire to see the countries of the Far East, that he used the time constraints as an excuse.82 Some deeper story, however, has been concealed. According to Frank Marryat, who knew Brooke in Sarawak, ‘if the private history which induced him to quit the service, and afterwards expatriate himself, could with propriety, and also regard to Mr Brooke’s feelings, be made known, it would redound still more to his honour and his high principle; but these I have no right to make public’.83 Whether Marryat

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referred to affairs of the heart or of honour or both, it might explain why Brooke was never again comfortable in society and be the cause of the ‘over-sensitiveness [that] made him shun it’.84 Although we cannot be certain of Marryat’s meaning, it appears that Brooke became romantically involved, successively, with three members of the Castle Huntley’s crew.85 On his return to Bath, Brooke found life dull and social constraints irksome. The third of his romantic interests from the voyage, a boy called Stonhouse, failed to answer his letters or, apparently, to return his affection.86 Brooke wanted ‘some adventure that will bestow activity and employment’. He thought he had a chance of winning a parliamentary seat but could not find the necessary financial backing, which suggests that Thomas Brooke did not take his son’s politics seriously. Perhaps as part of a campaign to win Thomas over, James published a pamphlet calling not just for parliamentary reform but for a ‘bold, fearless enquiry’ into the causes of popular discontent. Later in 1832 he declared himself ‘more moderate . . . and a great enemy to the Radicals, though a friend to the Whigs’. Small reverses seemed to cause him despair, however, and he made wild proposals for adventure to escape the ‘growing damned restraint’. He schemed to get a schooner and sail with his friends from Castle Huntley, even studying navigation; he thought to farm in Australia or ‘carry a letter of marque against the Dutch vagabonds in the Eastern Seas’.87 It must have been unsettling for Thomas and the others. Then James fathered a child,88 was reported to have become engaged to a friend of his sister, and to have agreed to her breaking it off. By 1834, even Thomas was prepared to back James’s purchase of a schooner for the country trade in the Far East.89 James bought the Findley and a miscellaneous cargo to trade in Asian markets, engaged his friend, Kennedy, from Castle Huntley days, as captain, and sailed from England in May 1834. The trip was a disaster. Brooke’s presence as a supercargo and backer undermined Kennedy’s authority with the crew, on whose behalf James intervened in disciplinary matters. Brooke and Kennedy quarrelled violently, sold the cargo at a loss and came home.90 Back in Bath with his parents, Brooke divided his time between sailing and fox hunting.91 His friend Cruikshank, with whom he had enjoyed an intense and intimate relationship during the Castle Huntley voyage, and in whom he had confided his disappointment about Stonhouse, married.92 At 32, Brooke had occasion to reflect on his idleness. His father’s death in December 1835 provided him and each of his sisters with £30 000 sterling after their mother had been provided for.93 In March 1836 Brooke bought the yacht Royalist and, with his nephew, John Brooke Johnson, spent the latter part of 1836 and the first half of the 1837 cruising the Mediterranean. With independent means, James began to cultivate serious geographical interests, even publishing in the Royal Geographical Society’s journal.94 On his return to England, he read and was intrigued by Earl’s account of Borneo.

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Untrammelled by his father’s prudence but equipped with a share of his fortune, Brooke began researching and planning in earnest for a voyage of geographical enquiry. Earl had reported that Marudu Bay, in the very north of Borneo, had recently been settled by ‘Cochin Chinese’, and urged that commercial contact be made with them.95 Brooke planned to explore Marudu Bay, make contact with any Indochinese colony that might have been established, explore the rivers flowing into the bay, and establish whether there remained in northern Borneo any remnants of a Hindu civilisation.96 He sailed for Singapore on 16 December 1838.97 THE CONTEST FOR POWER On his arrival in Singapore, Brooke amended his plans. The Singapore Chamber of Commerce asked him to take a letter of thanks and gifts to the Raja Muda Hassim, who had recently helped some shipwrecked sailors at Sarawak.98 It is possible also that Governor Bonham of Singapore urged Brooke to go to Sarawak to explore the economic potential of the antimony trade. Certainly, Brooke referred to Sarawak shortly before his departure as ‘the place whence small vessels bring the ore of antimony’.99 In preparation for Borneo, Brooke recruited eight Orang Laut, an interpreter, Mr Williamson, and a surgeon, Mr Westermann. ‘With these arrangements,’ he wrote, ‘I look without apprehension to the power of the Malays.’100 He sailed on 27 July, and on 1 August 1839 ‘distinctly made out the main land of Borneo’.101 In keeping with Malay courtly traditions, Brooke’s arrival at Sarawak was formal and ceremonial. One of the Raja Muda’s brothers received him at the mouth of the Sarawak River and proceeded in his company to Kuching, where Brooke saluted the Raja Muda with 21 guns. Hassim returned a salute of 18 guns. Hassim’s most senior brother, Pengiran Mohammed, then saluted the vessel with seven guns, which Brooke returned.102 The salutes displayed discrepancies in military power between the two parties. Where the Malay rulers were likely to have fired lelas, small-calibre brass cannon, Brooke returned with six-pounders. If Brooke was not received with ‘awe and reverence’, as Mundy suggested,103 he was treated on shore with a ‘marked distinction’,104 which was likely to have derived from his firepower. Raja Muda Hassim received Brooke formally on the day of his arrival. They exchanged professions of friendship and made kind enquiries of each other. Although Brooke felt ‘trammelled’ by the formality, he appreciated that his reception was intended to be ‘highly flattering’. Mahkota or one of the Raja Muda’s other attendants implied that Brooke was shown such consideration because ‘the Rajah wishes me to stay here as a demonstration to intimidate the rebels’.105 The Raja Muda received Brooke again, privately, that evening. Hassim led Brooke away from the company so that their conversation would not be overheard and, perhaps concerned about Dutch support for the Sambas

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attempts to annex Sarawak, asked Brooke about Anglo-Dutch relations.106 Hassim hoped to establish friendly relations with the English, and wanted to develop his trade with Singapore.107 Although Brooke had already decided to consider helping to suppress the insurgency, he did not record whether he and Hassim discussed his doing so. Brooke was a visitor of obvious power with, therefore, intense semangat. His immediate entourage, a primary indicator of potency for Malays, comprised the 17 crewmen of the Royalist,108 and the extra 10 he recruited in Singapore. Most of these men are likely to have accompanied Brooke on visits ashore. For Malays, guns also were manifestations of potency and indicators of the potency and good fortune of their possessor.109 The Royalist was armed with a half-dozen six-pounder cannon, in addition to swivel guns and ‘small arms of all sorts’.110 In the context of Malay entourages, the number of Brooke’s followers and the scale and number of his munitions were impressive. They overwhelmed the cosmological as well as the military significance of the insurgents’ three six-pounders. For Raja Muda Hassim, Brooke’s presence posed both a challenge and an opportunity. The Raja Muda needed to assert and demonstrate his ascendancy over the powerful outsider, to attract Brooke into his own entourage, and to absorb this new source of potency. It required that Hassim exude sufficient charisma to awe his potential rival. Hassim and Brooke had arranged at their evening meeting for Hassim to inspect the Royalist the following day, and Hassim determined that the visit would reflect his status and expand his power. Leaving nothing to chance, the following morning he sent two attendants to Brooke to ensure that an appropriate gun salute would be fired in his honour, and to insist that Brooke himself come ashore to conduct him on board. Etiquette, as Shelly Errington observed, ‘is a contest for place’, which is ‘made visible only in its demonstration’.111 Brooke was conscious that Hassim was asserting his status against Brooke’s power, but ‘cared not to bandy paltry etiquettes with a semi-savage’ and ‘could not refuse an acknowledgment of the supremacy of a native prince’.112 Hassim’s removal to the ship was a ceremonial triumph. To display his ritual status, and in keeping with Malay court practices, Hassim took with him his most potent talismans and regalia. Hassim’s visit had complex ritual as well as personal dimensions: Much barbaric state was maintained as he quitted his own residence. His sword of state with a gold scabbard, his war-shield, jewel-hilted kris, and flowing horse-tails, were separately carried by the grand officers of state. Bursts of wild music announced his exit. His fourteen brothers and principal Pangerans surrounded him . . .113

If Horsburgh is to be believed, James also made elaborate preparations for the visit:

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On deck, the crew were drawn up under arms, acting ostensibly as a guard of honour to receive the prince, but prepared for hostilities in case of necessity; while at the same time, the ship’s guns were loaded with grape, and trained so as to sweep the deck at the first discharge. In the cabin, where Mr Brooke was to receive his visitors, he was seated on a sofa with a broad table placed before him, in order to prevent any sudden stab with a kris, and under the pillow, which lay carelessly beside him, a pair of loaded pistols were concealed. Above the sofa, a large mirror was placed, and behind the mirror were stationed four men, each with four loaded muskets, who on a given signal were to throw down the mirror and shew themselves armed.

Hassim’s party made no hostile move, however, and James ‘sat at his ease, and received his distinguished guests with gentlemanly courtesy’.114 During their discussion, Brooke raised with Hassim the subject of the insurgency. Hassim and his followers declared it ‘almost suppressed, and of no consequence’.115 If Hassim’s attendants did not know of the earlier approach to Brooke, it must have appeared to them that the Raja Muda’s potency had created a vortex which even Brooke could not resist, a suggestion furthered by Brooke’s dispatch of gifts to Hassim later the same day.116 In much of Southeast Asia, gift-giving from leader to follower and from follower to leader was a significant means of acquiring and devolving potency and of establishing and manifesting relations of dependency and obligation.117 Whether individual examples of gift-giving were perceived by the participants as submitting to, or asserting, leadership depended on the relative status of those involved and the context in which they occurred. Since Brooke accepted Hassim’s claims to higher status, Sarawak people would have seen Brooke’s gifts to Hassim as indication that he sought Hassim’s favour, that he was seeking to enter Hassim’s entourage. Hassim’s semangat would have been enhanced and invigorated by the acquisition of such a powerful follower. Gifts can also be given in an assertion of superiority, however, and sought by lesser figures as symbols of both their participation in the greater individual’s semangat and their consequent dependence on his leadership. This latter process, which involved the recruitment by Brooke of a local entourage, began early during Brooke’s visit to Kuching, and the eagerness of lesser nobles to receive gifts from Brooke was out of all proportion to their value. Brooke reported that ‘without being great beggars, they seem greatly to value these trifles, even in the smallest quantity’.118 Unlike his gifts to Hassim, Brooke’s gifts to lesser nobles would not have been seen as a form of supplication but as an indication of the expansiveness of his potency and his preparedness to associate lesser individuals with it. Brooke would meet the Raja Muda’s demands that his status be observed publicly because he hoped that Hassim would facilitate his explorations. Conversely, the importance Hassim placed on detaining Brooke in Sarawak can be gauged by the lengths to which he went to honour his guest. At a dinner on 1 October, Hassim threw ‘away all reserve, bustled about with the

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proud and pleasing consciousness of having given us an English dinner in proper style; now drawing the wine; now changing our plates; pressing us to eat; saying, You are at home’.119 In addition to the arcane opportunities that Brooke’s presence in Kuching provided to Hassim, Brooke’s visit presented Mahkota, who was responsible for the actual government of Sarawak, with valuable, more mundane possibilities. Mahkota devoted considerable time to discussions with Brooke, quizzing him about British trading policies.120 Mahkota’s interest, which reflected his strategic need for support against Dutch interest in Sarawak and its antimony, caused Brooke to begin to calculate Sarawak’s commercial potential. As well as antimony, Sarawak could produce gold, tin, rattans, beeswax, birds’ nests and clay for pipes. In ‘the opinion of the Malays, it is richer than any other locality along the whole line of coast’.121 Brooke was impressed also with Sarawak’s dependencies, Lundu and Samarahan, both of which he visited towards the end of August. Samarahan, especially, was rich in jungle produce, and produced ‘excellent quality’ rice. ‘When we consider the antimony of Sarawak, besides the other things previously mentioned (to say nothing of gold and diamonds)’, Brooke wrote, ‘we cannot doubt the richness of the country: but allowance must be made for the exaggeration of native statements’.122 Mahkota hinted to Brooke of the riches that could be procured after the revolt had been suppressed and, at Mahkota’s urging, Brooke raised again with Hassim the advantages of promoting trade with Singapore.123 It is clear that during this visit both Hassim and Mahkota saw Brooke as the means to put down the uprising and to confront growing Dutch interest in Sarawak. They attempted to attract Brooke with the commercial potential that could be realised after the insurgents had been dispersed. Brooke realised that Hassim wished him to stay in Sarawak to bolster his entourage and power. Although Jacob claimed that Hassim had even considered offering Brooke territory in return for his assistance, the cooperation between Brooke and Mahkota, who was clearly a party to Hassim’s plans at this stage, makes this unlikely as Mahkota would have been diminished by such an arrangement.124 Since the military uncertainty upriver from Kuching precluded further exploration, Brooke left Sarawak on 3 October 1839, planning to return the following year when, he hoped, travel would be secure.125 The Orang Kaya di Gadong was the Brunei official responsible for Brunei’s trading relations and for the administration of its dependencies.126 In the factional conflicts that bedevilled the Brunei court, the Orang Kaya di Gadong was aligned to the Sultan, who was married to his sister, against Raja Muda Hassim.127 Following Brooke’s departure the Sultan dispatched the Orang Kaya di Gadong to Kuching. This served at once as an implicit threat to Hassim and an overt affront to his high rank and status. Brooke spent the first eight months of 1840 cruising the archipelago. In August he returned to Sarawak, where ‘the chiefs and people appeared

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united in their expressions of joy at seeing me again’.128 Brooke’s return coincided with a planned attack on those Bidayuh who supported the Sarawak Malays, which had been organised at the urging of the Orang Kaya di Gadong. Under threat of determined military action, the Bidayuh came over to the government. The Bidayuh’s defection was a severe setback for the revolt, depriving the Malay insurgents of support and confining them to the area around Siniawan. The 400–500 rebels were divided among four or five forts and, far from posing a threat to Hassim’s authority, ‘were said to be in great distress for want of provisions’.129 The success of the Orang Kaya di Gadong’s intervention seems to have convinced Hassim to use Brooke to bolster his own position. Brooke claimed to be eager to resume his voyage, but that ‘pending the war’ found it difficult to leave. Whenever Brooke mentioned his departure, Hassim told him that the conflict was almost won and urged Brooke to provide military assistance, and to help him resist the ‘unjust influence which others were seeking to acquire over him’.130 By 2 October, Brooke had resolved to give Hassim the aid that he asked for: ‘small indeed, but of consequence in such a petty warfare’. Brooke travelled upriver to where Hassim’s forces, under Mahkota, had the Sarawak Malays besieged at Leda Tanah, and spent two days there. His diary makes no reference to undertaking any military activity, and it is unclear why Hassim wanted him to go up, unless it was to demonstrate to the Orang Kaya di Gadong that Brooke would do his bidding. Back in Kuching, Brooke again decided to leave, but again agreed to Hassim’s requests to stay. Hassim was optimistic that, with Brooke’s ‘fortune and his’, the war would be won. Brooke stayed, and by 16 October was confident also that within a few days the revolt would be over. In addition to the Bidayan desertions, Hassim’s forces were swelled with the arrival of 200 Chinese from Sambas and two neighbouring Malay chiefs with their followers. Bidayuh continued to join Hassim’s forces in small but steady increments, and a party of 250 Malays and Iban arrived from Lundu to be deployed.131 Hassim’s army had taken up positions about a mile from the Sarawak Malay fortifications. In addition to the 200 Chinese, armed with swords, spears, a few muskets and about 40 long tubes which they used as primitive firearms, his forces comprised 250 Malays and 200 Bidayuh. Brooke estimated that they faced 350–500 Malays scattered in a number of forts, the strongest of which was at Belidah. The Malays needed also to defend their town at Siniawan. In addition to their swivel guns, the rebels had the three six-pounders they had probably received from the Dutch at Sambas. The Sarawak force was even further boosted by the arrival of 150 Bidayuh on 28 October, and on 31 October Brooke had two six-pounder cannonades from the Royalist, ‘guns of vast calibre here’, installed within range of the enemy. Brooke’s guns quickly established artillery superiority and breeched the walls of the Sarawak Malay fort.132 Brooke, however, was

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unable to persuade his fellow commanders either to storm the Sarawak position or to open negotiations. With his claims to leadership of the force so effectively resisted, Brooke, in a calculated display of his power, removed his cannons, returning to Kuching to explain to Hassim that he was departing the country. Hassim’s deep regret was so visible, that even all the self-command of the native could not disguise it. He begged, he entreated me to stay, and offered me the country of Siniawan and Sarawak, and its government and trade, if I would only stop and not desert him.133

The defection of the Bidayuh insurgents in September and the reinforcements who had arrived in October had advanced Hassim’s military position at Siniawan, so that his eventual victory was virtually assured, even without Brooke’s support. St John speculated that Hassim, knowing that the prestige of ‘a white ally’ had bolstered his strength, was concerned not to lose it.134 Although many of the recent arrivals might have been attracted by Brooke and sought opportunities to engage his semangat, the turning point in the conflict had not been Brooke’s participation but that of the Orang Kaya di Gadong. It was this official, rather than the insurgents, who was the instrumental target of Hassim’s friendship with Brooke: the success of the Orang Kaya di Gadong, after years of failure by Makhota and Hassim, invited a reassessment of the efficacy of Hassim’s ritual status in ways that could profoundly affect his standing at the Brunei court. Brooke’s support was important to Hassim as a demonstration of his ability to attract powerful followers to do his bidding and, therefore, of the legitimacy of his claims to power at court. Although Hassim valued Brooke because he provided guns to match, and exceed, the insurgents’ possession of six-pounders, Brooke’s support had more than strategic significance. His services demonstrated Hassim’s potency and obscured the conclusions that could be otherwise drawn from Hassim’s failure to restore order to the troubled province: like Javanese, Malays perceived a direct relationship between the inner power of an individual and his ability to control his environment.135 Brooke recorded that he found the ‘bait very tempting’ and intended to accept Hassim’s offer. He decided to defer his acceptance, however, until Hassim was too indebted to him to change his mind, so that Hassim would ‘take a personal interest in my nomination and . . . procure the signature of the Sultan’. This strategy required that Brooke establish clear superiority over other contenders for power among Hassim’s followers, and over Hassim himself. Brooke realised that he was uncertain of success, but considered that ‘the game will be worth playing’.136 He stayed at Kuching for about a month, in what must have seemed to Hassim a dangerous show of independence. On Brooke’s return to the front, he and Hassim’s brother, Pengiran Budrudeen, overcame Mahkota’s opposition to Brooke’s plan to assault the

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Siniawan position. They held artillery demonstrations to assure the other commanders of the superiority of Brooke’s guns over those of the insurgents.137 In his diary, Brooke presented a picture of him and Budrudeen eventually triumphing over Mahkota’s cowardice and wiles. Stripped of Brooke’s self-justifying commentary, events seem to have been played out somewhat differently. Malay military operations in Borneo were conducted through sieges, through controlling external access, rather than through the direct application of force. As St John observed, ‘charging is not known in their warfare’.138 Unused to direct attack, the storming party was illprepared, its assault depending for success on the fire-cover promised by Brooke. Although Brooke and Budrudeen themselves operated the guns, they did so with such little effect that the Siniawan defenders were able to direct accurate rifle fire on the storming party and rebuff the attack. Coincidentally, Hassim arrived from Kuching to inspect the siege’s progress that evening. Brooke ‘would not see him’.139 Following the arrival of a large contingent of supporters from Bintulu, Miri and Mukah, Hassim’s commanders, in an apparent reversion to more conventional Bornean strategy, decided to outflank the insurgents by fortifying Sekundis, a position that commanded the Sarawak Malays’ resupply route to Sambas. Brooke reported that, when the party dispatched to build the new fort was attacked, he led a charge and routed the enemy, conveniently revalidating his tactics and his own war skills.140 But the real significance of the occupation of Sekundis was that it reflected Malay strategy rather than Brooke’s, that it completed the strategic isolation of Siniawan begun by the defection of the Bidayuh to Hassim and reasserted Brunei control over the interior of Sarawak, completely confining the insurgents to their isolated defences. Shortly after its occupation Hassim’s forces were further swelled by the arrival of Sherif Jaffar of Lingga and his followers. Totally cut off from support from their own Bidayuh and from the Sultan of Sambas, and facing increasingly strong forces from Brunei, the Sarawak Malays, through Sherif Jaffar, sought terms.141 Following the rebels’ approach, Mahkota returned to Kuching to report to Hassim and consult on the terms he could offer. Brooke was consciously engaged in direct competition with Mahkota for influence over the Sarawak host and for credit for the Sarawak victory. Brooke boasted in his diary that he had gradually gained over a party of the natives to my views; and, indeed, amongst the Malays, the bravest of them had joined themselves to us . . . My weight and consequence were increased and I rarely moved now without a long train of followers.142

Brooke took advantage of Mahkota’s absence from the front to effect a settlement before his return. Sherif Jaffar met the Sarawak Malays’ representative on 19 December to discuss further a negotiated settlement. The following day Brooke met the Sarawak Malay leaders, Datu Patinggi Ali,

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Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur and Datu Tumanggong Mersal, who told him they were prepared to surrender and sought guarantees for their lives. Brooke, of course, could not agree to this, and reserved their fate for the Raja Muda, who was already considering it in Kuching with Mahkota, but he guaranteed their safety until Hassim’s wishes were known. If Brooke were to upstage Mahkota, he could allow no delay in closing the negotiations. The insurgents, he insisted, must ‘settle it, or put an end to all further treating’. His high-handed approach worked, and by the evening of 20 December he was in command of Belidah Fort. The following day, Brooke repelled an attempt by Mahkota’s supporters to seize the insurgents and occupy Belidah. Although Brooke represented this attempt to seize the prisoners as a breach of the terms of their surrender, it should be seen in the context of the increasingly overt competition between Brooke and Mahkota. Mahkota’s followers sought to regain something of the ground Mahkota had lost through his absence from the front at the very time his strategy of denial achieved an unconditional surrender. Hassim agreed to spare the insurgents’ lives and took the wives and children of the insurgency’s leaders as hostages.143 Of the leaders themselves, Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur and Datu Tumanggong Mersal withdrew to the protection of Sambas, while Datu Patinggi Ali found refuge among the Malays at Sarikei.144 Notwithstanding his offer to Brooke, Hassim’s rank and status would have been diminished by his ceding the province he had been dispatched to retain. Hassim therefore began to equivocate with Brooke about his promise of the government, which Brooke, after all, had not actually accepted. Although Hassim, in response to Brooke’s representations, claimed he was prepared to renew discussions about ceding the government, he was evidently more concerned not to alienate further Sultan Omar Ali than to appease Brooke. Eventually, Hassim issued Brooke with a document entitling him to live at Sarawak and ‘seek for profit’, which, Brooke believed, would be the first step in a staged transfer of authority.145 With his right to live and trade at Sarawak secured, Brooke sailed to Singapore where he bought a schooner, the Swift, and a mixed cargo for trade. From Singapore he wrote optimistically about Hassim’s desire to associate him in the government and their plans to reform the administration.146 On his return to Sarawak, he was ‘received with the usual honours and salutes, and renewed kindness on the part of the people generally’. When the Swift sprang a leak, Brooke offloaded its cargo and sold it to Hassim in return for a load of antimony which Hassim agreed to procure. Once Hassim had possession of the cargo, however, ‘a complete change came over the chiefs. I was forgotten, laid aside, and nothing done towards supplying the antimony.’147 Having reasserted control over Sarawak and restocked his treasury with the Swift’s cargo, Hassim thought he had exhausted Brooke’s usefulness. He made it more apparent that he had no intention of transferring the government to Brooke, or even of associating him in its administration. Brooke first ‘observed a slackness, then a slight

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shade of coolness, and then an evident wish to evade all discussion about the settlement of the country’. Brooke realised that his agreements with Hassim were cancelled, ‘all previous calculation is defeated’.148 Relations soured and Hassim withdrew to his house, refusing for three weeks even to see Brooke.149 As a manifestly powerful outsider, Brooke’s presence formed an irresistible attraction for the many Sarawak people who sought to associate with him, his diaries recording their visits.150 Brooke had not relied for influence just on his ritual attractiveness, however. He had, since his return in 1840, sought to substantiate his prestige and enhance his power by developing linkages to bind followers to him. When a group of Bidayuh had defected to the Brunei forces, Brooke recorded that he ‘did all in my power to fix their new faith by presents of provisions’.151 Although the Bidayuh had joined Hassim’s forces, Brooke provided the presents, and he, rather than Hassim or Mahkota, is likely to have become the object of their ‘new faith’. Similarly, though with more mixed success, he had tried to recruit the support of the Singe Bidayuh by providing supplies and gifts to them when they joined Hassim’s forces in October.152 Following his return from Singapore in 1841, and in the face of Hassim’s obdurance, he determined ‘to enlist the feeling of the mass of the population on my side, and, thus backed, be ready to seize upon the first favourable opening to enforce my claims upon the government of the province’.153 Brooke’s estrangement from Hassim provided the Sarawak Malay datus with opportunities to re-establish their positions. They sent a delegation to Brooke led by Datu Tumanggong Mersal and Datu Patinggi Ali’s son, ‘to request him to become their Rajah, offering to support him by force of arms’.154 Although Baring-Gould and Bampfylde claimed that Brooke declined the offer,155 their interpretation can be rejected on Brooke’s own testimony. As Brooke later admitted, the Sarawak Malays ‘offered . . . to support me, in obtaining the Government of the Country . . . accepting the Government I offered, and resisting the Government of the native princes’.156 As Brooke’s recruitment of supporters directly threatened Mahkota, rivalry between the two intensified. Either to punish the Sarawak population for their past revolt or to prevent their mobilising in support of Brooke’s claims to the government, Hassim and Mahkota admitted a fleet of Skrang Iban to the Sarawak River. Brooke was outraged. His influence with Hassim exhausted, he resorted to threats to bombard Kuching to force Hassim to have the Iban withdrawn.157 His threats worked: the Iban were recalled and Hassim, ‘shamming sick, sulked in his harem’.158 Although the admission of the Iban had represented a significant attempt by the Brunei authorities to disperse Brooke’s power base, Brooke emerged even more powerful: ‘The very act which Mahkota expected would lower the Englishman’s prestige, naturally greatly enhanced it, as it was known, even into the far interior, that the white stranger had but to say the word and this fearful scourge had been stayed.’159

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More than prestige, however, Brooke’s actions enabled him to claim the direct loyalty of the upriver communities, on whom he had been able to rely only as the clients of Sarawak Malay chiefs, if at all. Sarawak people upriver ‘began to put their trust in him, and the belief soon grew general that he could and would befriend them’.160 Brooke himself noted, ‘I gained some credit amongst them for my interference on their behalf.’ He ensured, moreover, that the upriver communities knew of his actions. Following the withdrawal of the Iban bala from the river, he visited the Chinese who had settled upriver and the Singe Bidayuh, with both of whom he had tried to develop links during the insurgency. He found the Singes suspicious, and their orang kaya declined to receive him because of ritual taboos he claimed to be in place.161 Although Brooke did not record the purpose of the visit, it is impossible not to believe that he denounced Mahkota’s actions and emphasised his role in overturning them. Sarawak people must also have noticed the changes to the power relationship between Brooke and Hassim that the episode demonstrated. Whereas Hassim had been able to get Brooke to do his bidding, Brooke now commanded Hassim. Such changes are likely to have been interpreted by many people as indicating changes in the relative ritual status of the two men. By September 1841, Kuching was polarised into two more or less armed camps focused on Brooke and Mahkota. Brooke is clear that he consulted freely with his followers about bringing the conflict to a head. He told Templer that ‘all my people are urging me on, but I won’t be driven, though I have a happy knack of letting everybody talk’.162 Brooke was convinced that Mahkota was trying to isolate him from his supporters by intimidating them into deserting him. He believed that Mahkota had his chief lieutenants under surveillance, that he ‘endeavoured to tamper with my servants’, and that he tried to poison Brooke’s interpreter.163 Earlier in the year, Brooke had heard rumours that the ship Sultana had been wrecked and her crew held in Brunei. In July he had sent the Royalist to Brunei but had been unable to secure the crew’s release.164 In August, the East India Company’s steamer Diana called at Kuching on its way to and from Brunei to investigate Brooke’s reports of the Sultana. The steamer’s visits caused consternation in Kuching and ‘excessively frightened’ the population. The Diana, Brooke recorded, strengthened my position, as it gave evidence that the Singapore authorities were on the alert, and otherwise did good to my cause by creating an impression amongst the natives of my power and influence with the governor of the Straits’ settlements. Now, then, was my time for pushing measures to extremity . . .165

By so clearly misrepresenting the Diana’s visit as evidence of British support, Brooke constrained his opponents’ actions to levels that would not

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be expected to provoke a British response. Brooke and his Sarawak Malay supporters decided, therefore, to use the alleged attempt to poison his interpreter as a pretext for confronting Mahkota and Hassim while the effect of the Diana’s visit was still fresh.166 On 23 September, Brooke loaded the Royalist’s guns with grape and brought the ship broadside to the town. Under cover of his guns, he landed a group of armed followers. He was joined by 200 Sarawak Malays. The party marched in force to Hassim’s residence, where Hassim had no choice but to grant Brooke an audience. Brooke declared his loyalty to Hassim and remonstrated against Mahkota. Brooke recorded that, in the face of his armed strength, Hassim ‘was frightened’. He agreed to install Brooke in the government of the province.167 On 24 September 1841, James Brooke was publicly declared Raja of Sarawak by Raja Muda Hassim. Brooke reported the event to his friend, Templer: The day following the settlement, came the installation: — all the principal people were assembled, and the chop being read to them, the rajah informed them that henceforth I was to hold the government. I expounded my principles to them, and really believe they are well pleased. We had great firing and rejoicing.

Heady with his success, he considered that ‘nothing can be more flourishing than the present state of my affairs’.168 Brooke had another struggle to win, however, to secure the country. Although details are scarce, the Sultan of Sambas had continued to seek control of Sarawak, or at least of its antimony, during the year following the end of the insurgency. In early 1841, for example, he sent a brig under the command of a ‘man of rank’ to trade at Kuching, which Brooke thought part of a plot. In July, after Hassim’s and Brooke’s estrangement, Brooke recorded that intrigues ‘are at work which I cannot at present unravel’. He believed that a group of Malay chiefs was trying to involve him in ‘a dispute with the Dutch authorities at Sambas’. He confronted the chiefs and ‘sent them from my presence, perplexed, ashamed, and trembling’. At this distance in time it is impossible to reconstruct what actually happened. Brooke claimed, though, that the Sultan of Sambas ‘resigned all claims to the antimony ore, and is anxious about the opium’, and had sent him polite messages.169 Although Brooke also claimed that Mahkota had allied with the Sultan of Sambas against him,170 this seems unlikely. The chiefs Brooke confronted were probably Sarawak Malays, and the plots he suspected probably related to differences within the Sarawak Malay leadership about whether to support Brooke’s claims or those of the Sambas ruler. The Sultan of Sambas renewed his efforts following Brooke’s seizure of government. He dispatched two of his sons to Sarawak, claiming that unpaid debts gave him financial rights over any antimony mined by the

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Chinese miners. Brooke considered that the arrival of the Sambas rajas presaged ‘the greatest and I hope the final struggle of the opposing faction’. Significantly, he was not sure whether the Sarawak Malays would support him against the Sambas claims.171 Although no details of this episode have survived, Brooke and the Sambas rajas must have engaged in an intense round of lobbying and negotiations as each party struggled to mobilise support. Brooke, no doubt with support from Hassim, whose own interests demanded that he resist Sambas encroachments on Brunei, must have used all his skill and guile to maintain his position. Brooke and his supporters carried the day. The Sambas party left Kuching on 30 December, ‘after exhausting every effort of intrigue, and every artifice which Malays can invent, to compass their ends’.172 THE FOUNDATIONS OF POWER The establishment of Singapore and the expansion of free trade into the Malay world increased state fragmentation in Borneo, intensified conflicts over resources necessary for the maintenance of state elites, and created additional opportunities for external intervention, opportunities on which Brooke was equipped by his upbringing to capitalise. Although the guns and crews of the Royalist and Swift provided Brooke with unmatched military capabilities in Sarawak, his accession to government did not rest on military power. Through his armaments and entourage, Brooke was an intensely potent figure whom Hassim could integrate into his own entourage and use to demonstrate and bolster his own ritual status. The same qualities which, in Malay political culture, made Brooke attractive to Hassim as a client, made him attractive as a patron to lesser figures in Kuching, for some of whom he became a focus of loyalty. Malay concepts of power ensured that Brooke’s military capabilities were perceived in cosmological terms, according him a legitimate role in Sarawak. Brooke recognised and exploited this process. As a consequence of his childhood environment Brooke was sensitive to the nuances and forms of non-European political cultures. Thus in Sarawak he recognised the ‘great effect’ which an ‘overawing and stately demeanour’ had among Malays,173 and appreciated the importance of demonstrating ‘self-command’.174 He recognised that his own demeanour could have consequences for his power, and that Hassim valued him partly for ‘the gentleness of my manners’.175 Brooke expanded on this view in more detail in 1844, expounding on the need to cultivate ‘a kind and gentle manner; for their habitual politeness is such that they are hurt by the ordinary brusquerie of the European’.176 Brooke’s concern with manners was apposite. According to one modern historian, part of the reason why one claiment consistently failed to secure the throne of Perak in the latter 19th century was because he ‘conspicuously lacked the qualities of courtesy, gentleness of manner or refinement which Malay traditional values required of a Ruler’.177 It is clear that, even at this

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early stage, Brooke appreciated key values associated with Malay rulers, like being halus. Being halus was, as Anderson noted, ‘in itself a sign of Power, since halus-ness is achieved only by the concentration of energy’.178 Brooke cultivated such refinements assiduously, using them to further his importance in Kuching. Spenser St John observed that Brooke’s ‘power of attracting friends and followers was unrivalled, and this extended to nearly every native with whom he came in contact’.179 Bishop McDougall would later claim that to know Brooke and experience his ‘manner’ was to ‘know quite well what a Malay man of rank is; either there is a great sympathy between his character and theirs, or he has caught their bearing from living among them’.180 Anthony Milner has pointed to the importance of wealth to Malay concepts of authority.181 Malay state systems in Borneo were no exception to this. The Hikayat Banjar explicates the connection between wealth and state formation.182 Brooke was not only careful to act in ways appropriate to Malay culture — he had sufficient economic resources to underpin and substantiate his role. Because his wealth derived from outside Sarawak it was not vulnerable to local reversals or pressure from his rivals in Kuching. Although his resources were not limitless, they were extensive, and Brooke did not need to control antimony production or expropriate forest products in order to maintain his supporters. Both in Kuching and upriver during the military campaign, Brooke recorded his own liberality in dispersing gifts. Although Brooke’s arrival changed the balance of power in Kuching as some people left Mahkota’s camp to follow him, it did not change its structure. Brooke entered Hassim’s entourage and, within that context, became Mahkota’s rival for rank and status. Although eventually Brooke replaced Mahkota in the government of Sarawak, he did not seek to replace or supersede Hassim. At the very time that Brooke seized power, he assured Hassim of his loyalty. Brooke sought subsidiary power within the existing framework of the Brunei sultanate. Brooke must have attracted the loyalty of the defeated Sarawak Malays for a mix of cosmological, military and economic reasons. Through association with Brooke, the Sarawak Malays could re-establish their own ritual status, which had been diminished by their defeat. Moreover, the Sarawak Malays seem also to have recognised that Brooke’s estrangement from Hassim offered opportunities for a coalition through which they could re-establish their formal positions in Sarawak and secure their ranks and titles. Although Brooke had other followers, from mid-1841 Sarawak Malay support formed the nucleus of his power. Sarawak Malays had the most to gain from his accession to power, and the most to lose from his departure from Sarawak. They, rather than the Bidayuh, Chinese or other Malays in Kuching, backed him in defiance of Raja Muda Hassim. On their support, Brooke ascended to government.

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3 Integration and exclusion in the early Brooke state

To substantiate his new title, James Brooke needed to express and apply his power, to exclude Mahkota and his supporters from government and to acquire economic resources to underpin his position. He needed to continue to generate support among the population and therefore to act in ways that resonated with the experience and expectations of Sarawak people. Brooke planned on the continued support of the Sarawak Malays and was optimistic that he could ‘reduce’ the Bruneis to obedience. The Bidayuh would ‘flock’ to him, and economic resources could be developed by encouraging ‘industrious’ Chinese.1 THE STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF POWER Brooke had established his position with the active support of Sarawak Malays, and his first priority was to secure the release of their families held as hostages by Raja Muda Hassim. Brooke considered that such action would consolidate the Malays’ support. It was ‘the first proof of good government’, and would ‘balance against misfortune’.2 Largely, his efforts were successful. Many of the Sarawak Malays had gone into exile after their surrender to Hassim’s forces, and Brooke recognised how he would be further strengthened if he could reassemble them at Kuching. He sent guarantees to them of their safety if they returned, and promised them the right to leave Sarawak at any time. These promises, and his release of the hostages, appear to have persuaded the exiles, who returned to join him.3 Not all Sarawak Malays had supported the insurgency. At Kuching, Mahkota had governed with the assistance of three perabangan: Abang Mir, whom Mahkota had created Datu Patinggi, as well as a Datu Bandar and a Datu Tumanggong.4 These men were Mahkota’s supporters, and Brooke obtained Hassim’s agreement to restore his own followers to 49

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office.5 The realities of power complicated Brooke’s re-establishment of the insurgent Sarawak datus in the traditional tripartite structure, however, of Patinggi, Bandar and Tumanggong. Brooke was deeply indebted to both the former insurgents who claimed to be the Patinggi. Neither could be discarded. Brooke appears to have brokered a compromise which allowed both Ali and Abdul Gapur to continue to use the title. Importantly, his journals and account books refer clearly to two Patinggis after his assumption of government.6 Although Brooke’s relationship with Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, Datu Patinggi Ali and Datu Tumanggong Mersal, who had led the insurgency and supported his bid for power, is clear, the career of Datu Bandar Rancha, who also held office under him in 1842, is more obscure.7 Rancha died soon after Brooke assumed power, and his death might have been expected. Perhaps Brooke used the imminent availability of the Bandar title in his negotiations with the two Patinggis. Abdul Gapur seems to have been established as senior to Ali. St John, for example, clearly meant Abdul Gapur when he referred to the Datu Patinggi. For St John, Ali was only ‘the second patinggi’.8 Ali, however, was compensated for his loss of rank to Abdul Gapur by his son, Molana, being created Datu Bandar on Rancha’s death a few months later.9 Brooke also rewarded Datu Tumanggong Mersal for his support. In addition to Mersal’s reappointment as Datu Tumanggong, Brooke might have guaranteed that Mersal’s son, Mohammed Hassan, would succeed him in the Tumanggong title, as he eventually did.10 Brooke relieved Mersal’s other son, Abang Patah, of gambling debts.11 During the insurgency Mahkota and Hassim had taken over control of the Tumanggong family’s interests at Lundu, appointing also a supporter to manage the nearby Talang Talang Islands.12 The islands were the site of a valuable turtle hatchery and fishery. Brooke was aware of the islands’ economic potential, on acceding to government asserting his own right to dispose of them to Abang Patah in return for one-third of their revenues.13 It is likely that the Tumanggong family had exploited the islands before the insurgency. Datu Tumanggong Mersal had controlled Lundu on the adjacent mainland, he had a reputation for piracy, and the Talang Talang group had been a centre for marauding.14 In all probability, therefore, the transfer of control resurrected the Tumanggong family’s previous rights. As with the release of the hostages, Brooke had probably agreed to restore the former insurgents’ rank and positions in return for their support long before the change of government. As with the hostages, Brooke’s fulfilment of his commitments ‘much added’ to his influence.15 The datus settled at Kuching, upriver from Brooke’s establishment and, by mid-1842, had reassembled most of the old Sarawak Malay community there.16 As other Malayo-Moslem people arrived in Kuching, they were integrated into power structures based on the datus and their entourages. Within the constraints of Brooke’s authority the datus competed with each

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other for rank and followers, eventually forming separate kampongs. Brooke endorsed the datus’ control over their followers, allowing them to exercise ‘petty affairs of police’ among them. Malayo-Moslem people whom Brooke thought could not be integrated into the system that he and the datus operated were denied permission to settle in Sarawak.17 Brooke’s distribution of rank and titles to his supporters had involved also the exclusion of those perabangan who held office under Mahkota. Datu Patinggi Mir, the Datu Tumanggong with whom Mir had served and Bandari Daud of Talang Talang all lost titles, rank, followers and economic resources to the former rebels. Although Datu Bandar Sumsu of Lundu came to Kuching to acknowledge Brooke’s government, Brooke would not confirm Sumsu’s position, elevating instead the Iban Orang Kaya Tumanggong of Lundu, Jugah, to rule over all the Lundu communities. Although Sumsu might have offended Brooke with his claim to hold the Lundu Iban in debt-bondage,18 Brooke was probably more motivated by Jugah’s ability to field 200 warriors.19 Jugah’s elevation above Sumsu, and his community’s liberation from the threat of debt-bondage, was as astute as it was humane. Brooke’s reorganisation confronted the power of the Brunei Malays, who, he reported, remained ‘sulky, and never come near me’.20 Although Mahkota was the focus of Brooke’s animus, the continued presence of Raja Muda Hassim and his brothers also undermined Brooke’s attempts to consolidate his administration. Whereas Brooke could respond openly to Mahkota’s efforts to regain the government, Hassim and his brothers constituted a focus of power in Kuching which he could not overcome without destroying the basis of his own legitimacy. For Mahkota and the Brunei Malays, and for those Sarawak people displaced by Brooke’s arrangements, the presence in Kuching of such high-ranking members of the Brunei royal family offered opportunities to continue to contest the government. Although Brooke appears to have developed an intense, romantic attachment to Budrudeen, he considered that Hassim had become an epicentre of intrigue against him.21 It is possible that Brooke’s relations with the Brunei pengirans became even more complicated during this period. Donald Brown cited a report from the Resident of Brunei, F.W. Douglas, in which Douglas claimed that ‘Mr Brooke had married a niece of Pangiran Muda Hassim one Pangiran Fatimah the daughter of Pangiran Abdulkadir’. Although nothing in Brooke’s extensive surviving archive supports this claim, it should not be discounted, drawing credibility from the precision with which Douglas attributed his information. Douglas claimed to have been told of the marriage by the bride’s niece, Pengiran anak Hashima. He supported his claim by reference to a Dr Ogilvie, who had told him that he had met a Bruneian daughter of James in 1866.22 However unlikely such a union appears to modern scholars, as Sharifah Zaleha has suggested, women did ‘feature as exchange items in traditional Malay society’.23 Whatever Brooke’s relationships with Hassim’s brother and niece, they did not overcome Brooke’s desire to remove the whole family from

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Sarawak. While Hassim and his brothers lived at Kuching, Brooke was hard-pressed to find resources for their maintenance. Short of income, the pengirans were accustomed to board trading prahus at Kuching to commandeer ‘gifts’ appropriate to their rank. Such behaviour demonstrated the limitations of Brooke’s power and curtailed the trade that he hoped to develop. Hence, in July 1842 he sailed to Brunei to secure Sultan Omar Ali’s consent to Hassim’s return to the capital with all his followers, and to seek the Sultan’s endorsement of his own position.24 Just as Brooke had misrepresented the significance of the Diana’s visits for his position in 1841, he used the growing British interest in northern Borneo, which his activities were stimulating, to pressure the Sultan into acceding to his demands.25 Brooke believed his visit to Brunei a success. He secured the Sultan’s agreement to Hassim’s return to the capital, the release of the crew of a ship wrecked on the coast, and he obtained letters endorsing his installation as raja and, probably, the reappointment of the datus.26 The Sultan’s letters were important for Brooke’s legitimacy and his struggle with Mahkota. In Kuching they ‘were produced in all the state which could possibly be attained’.27 The letters were received and brought up amid large wax torches, and the person who was reading them was stationed on a raised platform. Standing on the step below him was Muda Hassim, with a sabre in his hand; in front of the Rajah was his brother, Pangeran Jaffir with a tremendous kampilan, or Lanun sword; and all around were the other brothers and Mr Brooke, all standing, the rest of the company being seated.

After the letters of appointment were read, Hassim, in what appears to have been repeated and ritualised formulae, challenged those present to defy the Sultan’s authority. He called on the crowd to be loyal to Brooke, then on the Sarawak Malay datus, on Mahkota and on one or two others who had opposed Brooke’s authority. After this, his brothers began to dance around Mahkota, ‘striking the pillar above his head, and pointing their weapons at his breast’. Mahkota sat through the ceremony, ‘quiet . . . pale and subdued’.28 With his legitimacy endorsed by Sultan Omar Ali, Brooke began to look forward to Hassim’s removal even more keenly. Hassim, however, was in no hurry to return to the intrigues of the capital, and Brooke’s complaints about his presence continued. Eventually Brooke realised the full extent to which Hassim was out of power at the court and, notwithstanding the Sultan’s apparent agreement to Hassim’s return, that he would need to be installed there by force of arms.29 Hassim’s deferral of his own and his brothers’ departure strained his relations with Brooke. The pengirans did not accept that Brooke had authority over them and, when Edward Belcher visited Sarawak in 1843, he found Brooke ‘strongly impressed with the expediency of removing’ them.30 Belcher obliged by ferrying Hassim and

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his followers to Brunei in HMS Samarang, ‘leaving Mr Brooke in undisputed possession of his territory’.31 ‘Henceforth’, St John wrote of Brooke, ‘I may occasionally call him the Rajah, par excellence, as he was in truth the rajah in Sarawak.’32 Although the accumulation and demonstration of rank through the use of titles was a central concern for Malay aristocrats, Brooke also provided the four Sarawak datus with resources and people to sustain their rank. Brooke delegated to them responsibility for Bidayuh, including the power to extract revenues.33 Datu Tumanggong Mersal resumed responsibility for the coasts and islands with which he was traditionally associated. Datu Patinggi Ali’s traditional base was Leda Tanah, the fork of land at the junction of the Sarawak River’s two main tributaries, and the western tributary itself.34 Probably he and his son, Datu Bandar Molana, resumed control of the Bidayuh in this area. After the surrender of the Sarawak Malays, the area from Leda Tanah upriver to Bau had been settled by Chinese goldworkers, control over whom Brooke gave to Abdul Gapur, rather than Ali.35 Brooke also gave Abdul Gapur rights over the more populous eastern branch of the Sarawak River.36 Abdul Gapur’s control of most of Sarawak’s Bidayuh, and his claims on the important goldmining community around Bau, again suggests that he, rather than Ali, was the pre-eminent datu under Brooke. Brooke recognised that he needed to substantiate his claims in the interior of the country, beyond the creation of Malay titles.37 At the end of 1841 he received the submission in Kuching of all of the Bidayuh of the western tributary of the Sarawak River, except for the powerful Singes. Brooke promised to protect those Bidayuh who accepted his authority from Malay exactions, imposing an annual rice tax on each family of 16 gantongs annually (about four quarts). For ‘the rest’, he told them, ‘they would be required to labour’. Brooke was concerned to establish direct relationships with the Bidayuh. He promised them that he would personally come to their assistance if they had ‘any trouble’.38 Brooke was disappointed that the Singes had not accepted his authority at the same time as the other Bidayuh of the western branch. The Singes were able to field up to 800 fighting men, a military power he was keen to monopolise.39 Their orang kaya, Pa Rimbam, however, threw his support behind Mahkota’s attempts to regain power, so that by March 1842 Brooke was resolved to ‘dispossess him of his dignity, and substitute a friendly chief’.40 Pa Rimbam’s rival for influence among the Singes was a younger man named Bibit, whom Brooke honoured with the title Stia Rajah (literally loyal to the Rajah). Brooke’s diary records the destablising course of their rivalry: Steer Rajah and Parembam dared each other to go on excursions to procure heads . . . One of Steer Rajah’s followers went accordingly, and quickly procured the head of a hostile warrior far out of my territory; and on the return of the party, Parembam in turn sent forty men to Simpoke, which is a tribe

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attached to Samarahan, and on our immediate border. Close to the Dyaks of Simpoke live a party of the Sigo Dyaks, who belong to me; and this party of Parembam’s, confounding friends and enemies, killed some of the Sigo Dyaks.

When, in June, the headmen of three Bidayan communities from the eastern branch of the river sent messages submitting to Brooke, he decided to use the hostility between eastern tribes and the Singes as a pretext for moving against Pa Rimbam. Brooke ‘hurried up the hill’ to Singe and had Bibit assemble his supporters. Brooke then installed Bibit as headman of the Singes: ‘I called Bibit, and made him chief.’ Brooke was under no illusions, however, about Bibit’s vulnerability. Pa Rimbam was rich and old, and used to exercising authority, factors that would make him dangerous.41 The struggle for power between Pa Rimbam and Stia Rajah developed as part of Brooke’s campaign against Mahkota. It culminated in September 1842. Pa Rimbam and his brother, Pa Tummo, ‘openly refused obedience, defied our authority, and declined holding an interview even with the Datus’. Brooke was not prepared to permit such defiance and ‘resolved, therefore, as the only alternative, to attack them’. He again commanded Pa Rimbam to attend an interview and, when Pa Rimbam refused, sent the two Patinggis against him.42 Pa Rimbam fled before the datus’ forces, which took the Singe villages and plundered Pa Rimbam’s house. After Pa Rimbam and his brother were captured Brooke brought them to Kuching, where, after some form of public enquiry they were knifed to death behind his house.43 The killings provided clear evidence of the collapse of Mahkota’s power. He was unable to protect even his most important supporters against Brooke. Brooke also saw the executions in terms of power, noting that the release of his prisoners ‘would have entailed the destruction of numbers of my friends and supporters’.44 The establishment of Brooke’s power was furthered by the immigration into Sarawak of other Dyak groups, as Brooke’s reputation as a potent ‘centre’ and powerful patron spread through northwest Borneo. Brooke’s protection of Bidayuh from the exactions of Sarawak and Brunei Malays was genuine, and he was generous in supplying Dyak communities with valued commodities. Although Brooke inflated estimates of population inflow during this period, substantial numbers did move into Sarawak territory from neighbouring areas.45 The Serang Dyaks, for example, sought permission to settle in March 1842, and in June the Suntah Dyaks moved under his protection from Sadong.46 This flow of population into Sarawak from surrounding areas remained a source of strength for Brooke (and of conflict with his neighbours) for the rest of the decade.47 Brooke’s struggle to expand his power and exclude rivals was conducted through direct means, such as the careful allocation of titles and resources. As raja, however, Brooke also pursued his struggle through the development of institutions to manifest and apply his power. Of particular importance was a Law Court, which he established in November 1841.48 It is clear from

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descriptions of its proceedings in the 1840s that the Court was not simply set up to dispense justice. The Court’s significance derived from the capacity it provided Brooke to maintain constant and public pressure on his opponents and their supporters, within a framework which he controlled. He used it to confront and exclude Brunei and other Malay rivals, and to attract new supporters. Until their departure for Brunei, he co-opted some of Raja Muda Hassim’s brothers to sit with him and legitimise his proceedings. The brothers’ participation must have constrained Mahkota’s and his supporters’ resistance to the threats that the Court posed. It met daily in Brooke’s house, with Brooke, surrounded by Hassim’s brothers, presiding ‘as chief’. To his left and right were chairs provided for the Malay datus and ‘any other respectable native who chose to take part in the proceedings’. The individuals to be tried sat on mats before Brooke and his companions, and behind them stood spectators.49 The precision with which the seating arrangements in Brooke’s court mirrored the calibration of place in Hassim’s own audience hall must have served both to emphasise James’s authority as raja and to ensure that his authority was manifested in familiar and resonent forms. Brooke believed that the Brunei and other Malay dissidents in Kuching were plotting with the Sambas authorities and the Chinese goldminers upriver to overthrow his government.50 It is not surprising therefore that most of the cases brought before the Court were against Brunei or Sambas Malays or Chinese goldminers, who almost always denied whatever charges were brought against them ‘stoutly’.51 St John claimed that Hassim’s Brunei followers ‘were bad specimens of a very bad class: they robbed, cheated, even murdered, with comparative impunity’.52 It is likely, however, that, in the months following Brooke’s assumption of the

Hassim’s audience hall, Kuching: the arrangement of seating seems to have provided a model for the way Brooke represented power in his court of law

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government, disputes which Brooke represented as criminal activity actually related to conflicts over titles and positions of power. Mahkota opposed the Court’s activities and tried to undermine its operations. Brooke countered by seeking out disputes and imposing his own solutions: the people dare not, as yet, bring their complaints to me. But I hear these things, call the parties together, and often prevent the commission of a premeditated crime.53

When the Brunei pengirans tried to protect their followers, Brooke imposed an ‘even-handed justice’ on them.54 The failure of the Brunei opposition to protect its rank and file from Brooke and the datus must have undermined Mahkota’s following and provided potent demonstrations of Brooke’s power. After Mahkota and his followers left Sarawak in 1843, Brooke noted, ‘I have not even the trouble of dispensing justice.’55 Not surprisingly, the idea of justice that the datus developed during this period reflected the partisan functioning of the Court itself. ‘What do I care for evidence?’ one of the datus later asked Hugh Low, during the trial of some of his followers, ‘They are my people.’56 Nor did St John find them any more prepared to convict their followers. Brooke’s use of the Court to bolster his position involved complex judgements about power: St John assessed that the administration of the Court was the most difficult of Brooke’s activities as raja during this period.57 As Brooke himself noted, there ‘is great difficulty in acting at once with temper and firmness, so as to appear the benefactor rather than the tyrant’.58 Much later, after his power was entrenched, Brooke would further develop the administration of law, introducing conventions to avoid conflicts of interest between the Court and individuals appearing before it. He established three jurisdictions in the Court: a General Court and a Police Court, which he presided over, or which were presided over by joint committees comprised of datus and senior European officers in Brooke’s service; and a Religious Court, to apply Islamic Law to the Malay community, over which the datus themselves presided.59 As Grant’s description of the trial of an alleged murderer in 1848 demonstrates, however, justice in James Brooke’s courts remained simple and retribution swift: The poor fellow was brought into the Courthouse, handcuffed — he threw himself on the ground and kissed the Rajah’s and Datus’ feet — but they took him away to a seat. On his being asked what made him commit such an outrageous deed, he answered ‘I do not know, the Devil tempted me’ — The head men all agreed that ‘death’ was the punishment for such a crime, and in most cases of the sort, that he would have been killed at once, without waiting for a trial. So the Rajah could not decide otherwise and he was taken to the Fort and creased.60

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Although Craig Lockard suggested that Brooke’s rule was indirect, and that ‘he delegated much of his local power to others’,61 it is surprising how little power he did delegate. Brooke recorded with satisfaction Keppel’s astonishment ‘at the degree of power, which he saw me exercizing daily’.62 As raja, Brooke devoted considerable resources to ensuring that he remained the key figure at the centre of the realm, actively seeking to rule his population directly. Swidden agriculture provided uncertain harvests, with communities often falling short of rice towards the end of the growing season. Moreover, the war in Sarawak must have disrupted Bidayan farming. Brooke noted that Land Dyaks were facing food shortages by the end of 1841 and, from his accession to government until the harvest of the Sarawak rice crop in March 1842, he provided material relief to those Bidayuh who came to him in Kuching to seek help.63 To develop a network of direct links with the population necessary to his power, Brooke established the custom of receiving petitioners and other people after dinner: The house was thrown open to all — rich or poor, Malay, Dyak, or Chinese, any were welcome. Often a very poor man would creep in, take up his position in the most obscure corner, and there remain silent but attentive to all that passed. There he would wait till every other native had left, neither addressing Mr Brooke nor being addressed by him, but when the coast was clear the Governor would call him to his side and gently worm his story from him. Generally it was some tale of oppression, some request for aid. None of these stories were forgotten: in the morning careful but cautious inquiries were made as to their truth, and rarely was it found that the suppliant had attempted to deceive willingly. Redress or aid followed . . .64

Even before Brooke secured the government, he was resolved that he would visit ‘all the Dyak tribes’ to ensure that they understood his laws.65 As raja he spent much time travelling among the Bidayan villages ‘to see that they are not injured or aggrieved’.66 According to Bethune, Brooke was received on these trips with ‘evident satisfaction’.67 Brooke emphasised the importance of this direct contact with his people to his interpreter, Williamson.68 By creating debts of obligation with all levels of Sarawak society, Brooke bound individuals and their friends and relatives to him, and secured intelligence for which he would otherwise have been dependent on the datus. It was possibly during his visits to villages that he gave away the ‘scissors of all sorts, a dozen or two; knives, from pen-knives to pruning knives’ which he importuned from his mother.69 In addition, from 1841 until the end of 1844, Brooke cultivated direct trading relations with the Bidayuh, supplying them with iron and salt at subsidised and unprofitable prices, as means of underpinning his power among them and containing the datus’ power over them.70 One Land Dyak orang kaya explained that, in Sarawak, Land Dyaks could cultivate their farms in peace, ‘and supply their wants from his [Brooke’s] stores’.71

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Brooke’s generosity did not stop at supplying Dyaks with salt and iron. His accounts show that he regularly advanced money to Malay aristocrats. For example, between December 1844 and August 1848, Brooke lent Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur $538 and a koyan (£5333.30) of rice in five separate transactions. In August 1848 he lent Gapur’s wife, Mina, $104. In two separate transactions in 1848, Brooke lent Datu Bandar Molana a total of $96. Nor was Brooke’s generosity confined to the Kuching Malays. The Skrang Malay leader, Abang Kapi, an early supporter of James’s ambitions in the Skrang River basin, received financial assistance in December 1844.72 These transactions with Bidayuh and Malays often enabled Brooke both to project his power directly into Bidayan villages and to exert influence among Malays. Thus, when a Malay noble wanted to reclaim debts from some Bidayuh on the eastern branch of the Sarawak River he approached Brooke’s interpreter, Williamson, rather than Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, who had authority over the people concerned. Conversely, when Bidayan communities needed disputes resolved, they sought Brooke’s intervention rather than that of their datu.73 Such approaches enabled Brooke to expand further his influence among the Bidayuh and demonstrate his power to the datus: The unsought applications are of great importance. By judicious interference in their affairs a great influence is obtained, and a prospect opened of improving their condition; I must consult Datuk Patingi, who holds Sarambo under me.74

Brooke contrived the datus to be bureaucrats rather than regional chieftains. Although they had responsibility for collecting the rice taxes, in these early years they were paid salaries for their services.75 Brooke wanted it clear that they were his agents, acting on his authority. Brooke had, of course, gained government with their help, and they are likely to have seen their relationship with him differently. Where Brooke wanted to establish their dependence on him, the datus are likely to have perceived that Brooke’s position rested on their ability to mobilise their followers and other resources in his support. Some of them were probably among the people Brooke reported as trying to undermine him by telling the Bidayuh that he was only temporarily in Sarawak, and threatening them with reprisals after his departure.76 Although we do not have further details of how the datus resisted Brooke’s attempts to monopolise power over the Bidayuh, they appear to have done so fairly successfully. Low’s report, published in 1847, that ‘their revenues have been duly secured them’ suggests that Brooke accepted their rights over the Bidayuh and acquiesced to their maintaining themselves directly from taxes raised from their areas.77 Although dependent on Brooke for their rank and positions, the datus established themselves as regional chieftains rather than civil bureaucrats.

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ECONOMIC POWER Brooke sought to finance the expansion of his power in Sarawak through his control of Sarawak’s natural resources and population and by trading. Although neither sphere fulfilled his expectations, in these early years he was able to meet financial shortfalls by drawing on his substantial personal fortune. Brooke’s exclusion of Mahkota, Hassim and other competitors from Sarawak was essential to his control over Sarawak’s resources. Brooke was conscious of the economic dimensions of power, and of the need to stop his rivals from exploiting his resources. ‘The beginning of all good government,’ he considered, ‘is to acquaint the people of the amount to be paid to one prince, who, when this amount of taxation is settled, must protect his subjects from the demands and exactions of all intruders.’78 Brooke was conscious also that he would generate greater support by minimising financial impositions. Possibly in accordance with the agreements he came to with the insurgent datus prior to his accession to government, Brooke did not impose taxes on the Sarawak Malays.79 His financial imposts on the Bidayuh were limited to a small rice tax.80 Although the Chinese goldminers were supposed to pay rents, Brooke was unable to ascertain the extent of their activities, far less collect revenue from them.81 After seizing government, Brooke moved quickly to take control of the valuable antimony mines. He considered that ‘the ore is my great staple’, and he determined to maintain a monopoly over its trade.82 Although few details about how Brooke operated the deposits have survived, he employed Chinese labour.83 Brooke also sought to develop new sources of revenue. For example, in 1842 he established a nutmeg plantation and tried to establish alluvial diamond washing. Neither venture succeeded.84 The constraints on Brooke’s ability to extract revenue from the population, and heavy demands from the need to provide tangible benefits to his followers, strained Brooke’s finances. Harassed ‘by pecuniary anxieties’,85 he began to trade with Singapore in what he recognised was the time-honoured fashion of Malay rulers everywhere.86 Brooke’s schooner sailed monthly to Singapore with antimony, returning with goods which Brooke then traded to his subjects. His cash books document an extensive commerce in cloth, crockery and glassware, opium, salt, iron and tobacco.87 Much of Brooke’s trade in Sarawak was on credit. Although this undermined his fiscal achievements, it must have expanded his entourage, reinforcing and supplementing the ties that bound his subjects to him through the creation of networks of debtors. Brooke seems to have recognised this function of his trade, jealously guarding his rights from encroachment by other figures in his government. When his interpreter, Williamson, began trading on his own account Brooke reprimanded him.88 Brooke also sought to constrain trade between the datus and the Bidayuh under their administration. In his concern to prevent both the trade

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and the dependency it fostered, Brooke, as I have already observed, subsidised the sale of salt and iron to Bidayuh, bearing heavy financial losses.89 Sarawak Malays traditionally relied on the Bidayuh for supplies of rice and fruit. The development of Malay-owned plantations near Kuching, which Hugh Low reported, indicates the extent of their exclusion from trade with the Bidayuh.90 Brooke’s trading activity increased his following in another direct way. Traditional Malay trading expeditions had involved the formation of an entourage around a boat owner who, in return for assistance with sailing the vessel, allowed smaller traders passage with their goods. Such relationships constituted a basic structure for power in Malay communities. Brooke’s schooner carried goods for Malay traders in Sarawak as well as on his own account, and his ability to provide transport is also likely to have underpinned the development of direct relations of dependency with the datus’ Malay followers.91 Although Brooke’s trading activities contributed to his power, they failed to provide sufficient funds for government. In these early years Brooke was able to evade the constraints that Sarawak’s economic position would otherwise have imposed, by drawing on his private fortune as he needed funds. According to an audit provided by the trustees of his father’s will, he drew almost £12 000 in the period 1839–1844.92 This was an prodigious sum, and its expenditure must have enhanced his position considerably. THE MEANING OF POWER Sarawak people gave meaning to Brooke’s activities according to their own concepts, rather than the concepts of the people whose records comprise our main sources of information. For example, Malays are likely to have conceived their financial indebtedness to Brooke in terms of budi. Zainal Kling described budi as providing an indigenous, ideological basis for the operations of patronage. A central Malay value, budi refers to kindness or benevolence. It establishes ‘a subtly conceived reciprocal relationship between the donor and the receiver’, in which the receiver, conceived of as makan (eating) budi, assumes an ‘implicit obligation to return the kindness’.93 That Brooke does not describe his provision of credit in terms of budi in no way reduces the likelihood that Malays would have perceived his actions in their own cultural terms. I earlier argued that in Sarawak material success or failure was seen as evidence of the intensity of cosmological forces, particularly semangat, focused in the individual. People would seek to associate with more potent individuals, and would seek transactions that facilitated the transfer of potency to them. In such a system, the material inequalities that underpinned and sustained hierarchies were perceived as differences in spiritual rank or prowess. Individuals achieved wealth and power because they were potent, and degrees of wealth and power indicated the intensity of their

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semangat. Brooke’s family background and childhood sensitised him to non-European concepts. He quickly became aware of Sarawak people’s perceptions and was careful to behave in ways that met their expectations. In her study of Riau, Vivienne Wee identified two ways in Malay culture in which individuals could assert high rank. They could ensure that the standing they claimed was recognised by a higher-ranking individual, or they could exude sufficient charisma and manifest sufficiently intense semangat to awe their peers.94 Brooke established his primacy in Sarawak through both processes. Although his high rank was recognised by Raja Muda Hassim and the Sultan of Brunei, Brooke consolidated his high status by demonstrating the expansiveness and intensity of his semangat. Brooke was a supremely potent figure for Sarawak people because he succeeded in seizing government and overcoming his rivals. Errington observed that there is a tendency in Southeast Asian political cultures to assume that whoever succeeded, say, in winning a kingdom . . . is the one who ought to have succeeded. This stance towards the past is not simply a rationalizing or manipulative re-writing of it by the people who gain power . . . In sacred politics, the a posteriori judgement makes not a cynical statement but an epistemological one: how can anyone know who should have succeeded except by seeing who in fact did?95

Barbara Andaya, similarly, argued that ‘the seizure of kingship is in itself a major exploit. A successful usurpation was the ultimate test of political legitimacy . . .’.96 The ability to achieve success without apparent effort, or to attract powerful followers, were primary indicators of high ritual status: ‘The man of Power should have to exert himself as little as possible in any action. The slightest lifting of his finger should be able to set a chain of actions in motion.’97 Thus Brooke, when he reduced the Singe Dyaks to obedience, avoided leading the military operations himself, sending instead the two Patinggis. Brooke went up to the Singe village only after Pa Rimbam had been defeated.98 It is not just that Brooke’s victory demonstrated his superiority to Mahkota and his other rivals, that Brooke could secure victory through mobilising other people intensified the effect. Brooke could achieve his objectives at second hand, through other people. Conversely, failure of any kind indicated diminished potency. Brooke therefore was careful to ‘risk nothing. I never fight without being sure of victory’.99 In 1843, Brooke presented his followers with more dramatic evidence of his potency when he returned from a trip to Singapore aboard HMS Dido. Even the Dido’s bluff captain, Harry Keppel, recognised that Sarawak people were awed by the Dido’s ‘mastheads towering above the trees of their jungle; to hear the loud report of her 32-pounder guns, and watch the running aloft to furl sails of 150 seamen, in their white dresses, the band playing, all of which helped to make an impression that will not easily be forgotten’.100 Brooke was conscious of the effect the visit had, claiming that

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her appearance was the consummation of my enterprise. The natives saw directly that there was a force to protect and to punish, and most of the chiefs, conscious of their evil ways, trembled.101

When Raja Muda Hassim, who was still in Kuching, visited Dido, he told Captain Keppel that he had ‘seen a grander sight than any of his ancestors’.102 Brooke had initially established his potency in Kuching by the size and number of his six-pounder guns. He disembarked from Dido to a royal salute from her 32-pounders, heavier armaments than Sarawak people had ever heard.103 That Brooke could attract followers like Keppel, with such power, and elicit from them the submission of a royal salute, would surely have been a remarkable demonstration of his status. It was the role of rulers and other individuals with high ritual status to dispense potency among their followers, as well as to embody it: Malays . . . believed that the spiritual power located in the ruler could flow out of its fountainhead and diffuse into the rest of society. Ordinary people could partake of this ‘divine energy’ by drawing close to its source . . . the ruler.104

The site of much of this ritual interaction between ruler and people was the balai. The balai was a ruler’s audience hall. Open on two sides to allow people outside to see what was happening, the balai was the ‘essential point of contact between a ruler and his subjects’.105 The ritualised relationships of inequality at the heart of Malay society were conducted in the balai. The balai was the space at the ritual centre of a ruler’s entourage. Brooke’s followers in Sarawak sought every opportunity to associate with him, and many of them spent their evenings at his house. Sarawak people associated with Brooke in order to engage his semangat, as well as for the more earthly reasons already discussed. Brooke’s dining hall filled the role of a balai. Though walled, it was open to all comers, and at least four distinctions in rank, expressed by the type of seating provided and by its proximity to Brooke, were observed. Depending on their status, individuals would sit on chairs placed around Brooke himself, on chairs placed close to the walls, on benches at the end of the room, or at the end of the room, squatting on their haunches.106 Malays, Bidayuh and Iban attended Brooke to partake of his potency, and their interaction with him was calibrated according to rank and Brooke’s favour. For the low-ranking, it was enough to touch Brooke’s hand and stay in his presence for a period. Higher-ranking individuals, both Malay and Dyak, expected greater marks of favour, and greater opportunities to engage their ruler. Malay rulers met their followers’ ritual needs through the allocation of titles and robes of honour. Just as titles helped to rank individuals and established potent hierarchies, robes of honour were sought as marks of distinction and talismans of potency, rather than for their secular value.107 The presentation of robes of honour did not just manifest the higher

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HMS Dido at Kuching: after Raja Muda Hassim visited the Dido he told Captain Keppel that he had ‘seen a grander sight than any of his ancestors’

spiritual status that an individual gained from association with the ruler: it was widely believed in maritime Southeast Asia that cloth was particularly permeable to semangat. Therefore gifts of clothes transferred ritual status from ruler to follower. When Brooke appointed Bibit to the leadership of the Singes, the ceremony included presenting him with a turban, jacket, ‘cloth for the loins’, and kris.108 As ruler, Brooke needed to bestow raiments and other gifts on followers he wished to honour. Consequently, he wrote to his mother that everything is useful here, old carpets, hangings, bell-ropes, all and everything — the carpets the Dyaks like much, as war-jackets. I wish you would become the lady patroness of a fancy fair, and send all the articles to me; the young ladies can make housewives and female articles of adornment, purses, pieces of velvet of any size embroidered, etc etc, all of which my friends would be delighted to receive, and which would attach them greatly; small beads worked on cloth would throw the Dyaks into ecstasy.109

In August 1842, he asked his mother to send him a quantity of cloths from fifteen to eighteen feet long, and from nine to fourteen inches wide. The material to be course Russian duck, such as seamen wear, each end to be worked about a foot and a half, in differant fashions according to the ladies taste, either in gold or red threads, spangles, beads,

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shells, or the like, and some may be fringed with red, or gold, or blue, in worsted or silk.110

These are the dimensions of a Bornean loincloth (chawat or sirat).111 The embroidery Brooke demanded from his mother was important because multicoloured cloth or thread was believed to be particularly efficacious in transferring spiritual essence between matter.112 The multicoloured ends increased the capacity of garments to transfer semangat from Brooke to his followers. Brooke’s need for robes of honour appears to have been pressing. In October he wrote urging his mother to continue the sewing, teasing that she and her ladies ‘will all be immortalized among the Dyaks’.113 Meanwhile, he had to make do with large quantities of nankeen cloth he imported from Singapore.114 Nankeen is always yellow, and yellowcoloured cloth seems also to have been particularly permeable by semangat.115 Malayo-Moslem concepts of kingship subsumed rather than replaced Hindu-Buddhist practices and beliefs, including the widespread identification of the ruler as Bodhisattva, or enlighted. Notwithstanding Islamisation, the educational role of rajas was often referred to in Malay court literature.116 It is clear that, following Brooke’s accession to power, people in Sarawak expected him to enact this arcane role. Brooke, of course, did not possess traditional Malay texts which he could have read to his followers. Nor was he a Moslem, who could instruct the Sarawak Malays in the tenets of their faith. Brooke had visited Istanbul, however, which was venerated by the Malays as the seat of the Ottoman Caliphate, and the Malays questioned him on its every detail.117 Additionally, at Brooke’s nightly gatherings, the Malay chiefs ‘perpetually were asking questions’ about England. Their inquisitiveness exceeded the level of idle curiosity: ‘The variety of our manufactures, and the application of steam-power to machinery, were subjects on which they exhausted us of information.’118 These reports should be seen in their Malay context. Brooke was their raja. Instruction was his role. From the time Brooke assumed government, he took this instructional role seriously. Almost immediately after taking over, he asked his mother to send him an ‘electrifying machine’, a large magic lantern or phantasmagoria, and a ‘peep show’. Brooke is unequivocal that he wanted the equipment ‘for political purposes!’.119 Emily Hahn was correct to attribute Brooke’s need for a magic lantern to his concern ‘to educate the people’.120 Brooke’s concern derived, however, from the traditional functions of Malay rajas rather than from Victorian evangelism. By 1857 Brooke’s capacity to instruct his people was underpinned by a library ‘more perfect’ than any other St John had seen, a collection of ‘the best historians and essayists, all the poets, voyagers and travels, books of reference, and a whole library of theology — books on every side of the question’.121 Among the Bidayuh, Brooke’s potency was widely regarded as omnipotence. Bidayuh sought to engage Brooke to replenish their own spiritual

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status and ensure their material prosperity. They invoked Brooke’s semangat to ensure the success of their rice crops, the birth of male children and the fecundity of their pigs and fowls. When Brooke visited Bidayan longhouses, his hosts tried to absorb as much of his beneficent power as they could. Details of these attempts were recorded by European observers and by Brooke himself. Hugh Low reported that when Brooke visited Bidayan villages, the people each bring a portion of the Padi-seed they intend to sow next season, and with the necklaces of the women, which are given to him for that purpose, and which, having been dipped into a mixture previously prepared, are by him shaken over the little basins which contain the seed, by which process he is supposed to render them very productive. Other tribes, whom from their distance he cannot visit, send down to him for a small piece of white cloth, and a little gold or silver, which they bury in the earth of their farms, to attain the same result. On his entering a village, the women also wash and bathe his feet, first with water, and then with the milk of a young cocoa-nut, and afterwards with water again: all this water, which had touched his person, is preserved for the purpose of being distributed on their farms, being supposed to render an abundant harvest certain.122

Endicott’s analysis provides a comparative basis for exploring the ritual meaning of Bidayan actions. Gold and silver were what Endicott termed ‘boundary reinforcers’. People believed the presence of the metals could preserve and reinforce the semangat of crops. Water was a ‘boundary weakener’ and an efficacious medium for drawing out the semangat from matter for transfer to another.123 There can be no doubt that Brooke was aware of Bidayan conceptualisations and cosmology. He explained of one ceremony: The opening is a sort of invocation, beginning with the phrase, ‘Samungut, Simungi’. Samungut is a Malay word, Simungi signifying the same in Dyak: the exact meaning it is difficult to comprehend; but it is here understood as some principle, spirit, or fortune, which is in men and things. Thus the Dyaks, in stowing their rice at harvest, do it with great care, from a superstitious feeling that the Simungi of the padi will escape. They now call on this principle to be present — that of men, of pigs (their favourite animal), of padi and of fruits. They particularly named my Simungi, that of my ancestors, and of the Pangeran from Borneo, of the Datus and of their ancestors, and of the ancestors of their own tribe. They call them, that is, their Simungi, to be present.124

Brooke detailed another Bidayan ceremony in 1845: When I seat myself on the mat, one by one they come forward, and tie little bells on my arm; a young cocoa-nut is brought, into which I am requested to spit. The white fowl is presented. I rise and wave it, and say — ‘May good

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luck attend the Dyaks; may their crops be plentiful; may their fruits ripen in due season; may male children be born; may rice be stored in their houses; may wild hogs be killed in the jungle; may they have Sijok Dingin or cold weather’.

After Brooke finished his oration, the people, both men and women, ‘take my hand, [and] stroke their own faces’. After this they wash my hands and my feet, and afterwards with the water sprinkle their houses and gardens. Then the gold dust, with the white cloth which accompanies it, both of which have been presented by me, is placed in the field.125

European officers in Brooke’s service were also regarded, because of their close association with him, as facilitating access to Brooke’s own semangat, and they commonly participated in potency ceremonies. In one Bidayan village, Hugh Low was seated on the platform used for drying rice. The headman held in his left hand a small saucer, filled with rice, which had been made yellow by a mixture with Kunyit, or Tumeric, and other herbs. He then uttered a prayer in Malay, which he had previously requested me to repeat after him. It was addressed to Tuppa [a Dyak divinity] the sun and moon, and the Rajah of Sarawak, to request that the next Padi harvest might be abundant, that their families might be increased with male children, and that their pigs and fowls might be very prolific: it was, in fact, a prayer for general prosperity to the country and tribe. During its continuance, we threw towards heaven small portions of the rice from the saucer at frequent intevals, and at the commencement of every fresh paragraph of the supplicatory address. After this had been finished, the chief repeated the prayer in the Dyak language by himself, throwing the rice towards the sky as before.

As in the ceremony described by Brooke, Low was weighed down with the ‘inconveniently numerous’ bells which the Bidayuh tied around his wrists. The prayers were repeated later during the ceremony, once as the headman waved a live cockerel over the heads of the people and again after the cockerel had been decapitated.126 At yet another ceremony Low, in a second example of Bidayuh seeking to transfer potency from feet, had to walk ‘on gongs and other musical instruments of brass placed for the purpose’.127 Thus Brooke’s ethnicity and religion did not preclude his developing the traditional roles essential to the position of ruler in Southeast Asia. He was identified as a potent centre by Sarawak people, who perceived that they could enhance their spiritual status and material welfare by engaging his semangat. Although Lockard argued that Brooke left ‘symbolic leadership’ in Sarawak with the Malay datus,128 the years immediately following his seizure of government saw Brooke position himself at the symbolic centre

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of Sarawak life. His rituals both represented his power and enhanced it, demonstrating and contributing to his authority over the datus whose support had achieved the government for him. The 19th-century Malay text Hikayat Deli was written in Sumatra to instruct recent converts to Islam and Malay culture in appropriate forms of behaviour. Its descriptions of events and ceremonies prescribed what was correct and proper. The Hikayat Deli describes people greeting their raja on his return after a voyage away: ‘Their chiefs and captains and ministers and subjects gather downstream, receiving the Rajas with lively music; the sound of the music is thunderous, delighting hearts which had been sad.’129 In 1843 Brooke returned from a visit to Singapore. Keppel’s description of his reception resonates with the Hikayat Deli’s prescriptions of proper behaviour: ‘the undisguised delight, mingled with gratitude and respect, with which each headman welcomed their newly-elected ruler back to their adopted country’. Keppel observed that ‘the whole surface of the water was covered with canoes and boats, dressed out with various-coloured silken flags, filled with natives beating their tomtoms, and playing on wild and not unpleasant-sounding wind instruments, varied by the occasional discharge of firearms’.130 There is no reason to believe that Sarawak people had read the Hikayat Deli, but they knew how to treat a raja. MILITARY POWER During Brooke’s first visit to Borneo in 1839 he had concluded that the Saribas Iban were ‘robbers by land and pirates by sea’,131 a judgement he quickly extended to their kin and allies, the Skrang Iban. In February 1842 a Skrang Iban leader, Matahari, visited Brooke in Kuching to propose a non-aggression pact. Brooke insisted that the Skrangs would need to cease their raiding and head-taking. In an ominous forecast of future relations, Brooke threatened that, if the Skrang Iban took the heads of any Sarawak people, he would ‘enter their country and lay it waste’.132 The development of Brooke’s power threatened the position of other elite figures in the Brunei sultanate. Brooke’s attractiveness as a potent centre drew significant numbers of people from the entourages of his neighbours. Brooke’s semangat was enhanced by diminishing those of his neighbours. In an area of scarce population, where strength derived from controlling human resources, Brooke’s gains diminished his neighbours’ power. Raiding against tribal people was essential to Malay entourage-forming activities. In December 1841 Sherif Sahib of Sadong raided the Sampro Dyaks and seized 22 women and children. At about the same time the Skrang Iban, who were ruled by Sahib’s brother, Sherif Mullah, raided the Sow Dyaks.133 By February 1842 Brooke was guarding his rivers against attack. Brooke believed that his ‘name (the terror of my name), and my personally watching the rivers from time to time, has deterred the piratical

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Dyaks from slaughtering our tribes’.134 In April, Datu Tumanggong Mersal interdicted one Iban bala, and Brooke, himself, put to sea in response to reports of another Skrang fleet approaching.135 Brooke believed that Sherif Sahib of Sadong and his brother, Sherif Mullah of Skrang, orchestrated the Iban attacks, and the two brothers were the real targets of his early animus. In February 1842 Brooke wrote to Sahib threatening ‘that if attacks are made on my country, I am determined to retaliate’.136 Brooke considered Sahib ‘to be a fiend and my inveterate enemy, and his undoubted power was not to be despised’. Brooke persuaded Raja Muda Hassim to write to Sahib, instructing him to cease his attacks on Sarawak people.137 When these injunctions failed to constrain the sherif, Brooke raided Sahib’s territory and seized his revenues.138 Brooke had recognised, on his accession to the government, that he would need to develop his military capability. He told his friend, Templer: I want . . . a rifle with eight barrels, on a wheel which can be shifted for eight or more, and so on ad infinitum. I should like wheels enough to carry fifty or sixty charges. With Dyaks it would be invaluable, and I may owe my life to it, when it comes.139

A year later Brooke wrote again, enquiring after guns he had ordered: ‘I must have them for my own safety.’140 Brooke responded to threats to Sarawak’s security by building a fort with a battery of eight 24-pounders.141 The other rivers he ruled were also well fortified.142 Lundu, for example, was protected by two booms of two feet in diameter, and two forts, one on each side of the river. In addition, the village itself was palisaded.143 Low recorded later that the Lundu fortifications included guns which Brooke supplied.144 To further guard his rivers, Brooke prepared 25 warboats.145 The sherifs’ attacks on Sarawak required Brooke to respond in kind. The Sow Dyaks, for example, who had been Sherif Mullah’s especial targets, complained to Brooke: ‘where can we find wives? Can we forget our young children’.146 There was yet another source of pressure on Brooke to raid Sahib’s territory. Following his accession to government, Brooke had outlawed headhunting within Sarawak. Even the much-favoured Iban of Lundu were ordered to desist.147 This edict, though sensible within the constraints of Brooke’s European regard for administrative order and coherence, astonished his followers. To secure their compliance, Brooke promised that he would lead them against the people of the Saribas. Brooke recorded that he told his Dyak followers ‘(in order to reconcile them to my law, that they would not kill within our own territory) . . . that whenever I went against the Sarebus, they should accompany me’.148 As the ritual needs for heads among both Iban and Bidayuh in Sarawak accumulated and intensified, Brooke was placed under increased pressure to attack Saribas. Brooke’s followers, native and European, recognised that Brooke’s subsequent campaigns against the Skrang and Saribas

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Iban provided Sarawak Iban and Bidayuh with their only source of heads. This was widely recognised as the reason that Sarawak Iban and Bidayuh participated in Brooke’s campaigns. Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur even believed that, had Brooke not allowed Sarawak Iban and Bidayuh to take heads, they would not have participated in his campaigns at all.149 Brooke’s need to help his followers take heads was not the sole cause of his conflicts with Skrang and Saribas, but it was a significant one.

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4 The Iban challenge

Sherif Sahib and the Iban of the Skrang and Saribas Rivers could have dispersed Brooke’s population and driven him from Sarawak. The extension of British trading interests had required freedom of navigation and, in 1825, the British had enacted anti-piracy legislation which provided naval officers with handsome financial incentives for the capture or killing of pirates.1 In order to engage British naval support, Brooke began to argue that his rivals were ‘pirates’ within the terms of the British legislation.2 By the end of 1842, Brooke’s interests and the British interest in the extirpation of piracy were, in Brooke’s own mind, identical, and he longed ‘Oh for a small steamer, Jack? Oh! for a fire-ship, as the natives call them, to hunt the pirates from the coast.’3 Shortly after he had raided the Sadong, Brooke sailed to Singapore to persuade the authorities there to suppress the Iban and their rulers. His timing was fortunate. Captain Henry Keppel had taken up his appointment as Senior Officer in the Straits Settlements Naval Station in January of that year. Keppel was a younger son who could anticipate no inheritance. Mrs Keppel was an invalid who needed costly treatment, and Keppel was devoted to expensive county pursuits — shooting, hunting and racing. There were times during 1841 when he appeared almost improvident.4 Marauding by local people in the straits around Singapore was not as extensive or widespread as previously. When Brooke told Keppel about the large numbers of Iban ‘pirates’ who lived on the Skrang and Saribas Rivers he must have anticipated that Keppel would be interested in attacking them. Brooke hoped that his and Keppel’s joint actions would ‘have a great effect on the natives and establish my power’.5 Keppel, no doubt, hoped they would establish his fortune. Brooke estimated the Saribas communities to be stronger than the Skrang, and decided to attack them first. In June 1843 a joint Anglo-Sarawak 70

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force pushed up the Saribas to capture the fortified settlement of Padeh, which was looted and burned, as were the longhouses and farms around it. The plunder and destruction was immense: ‘For the greater part of the night, the burning of the houses made it bright as day.’ The fire at Padeh illuminated the country ‘for miles’.6 The English section of the expedition, under Brooke, relentlessly pursued his opponents up the river, until the Padeh leaders came in ‘very humble and submissive’.7 The Sarawak contingents had been left to mop up around Padeh, with Sherif Jaffar and the Lingga Iban who had joined the attack.8 On their return to Padeh, Brooke and Keppel found ‘The country round had been laid waste. All had been desolated, together with their extensive winter stores of rice. It is a melancholy sight.’9 Keppel was an experienced naval commander. Used to the brutality of 19th-century conflict, he had been happy ‘to carry all the horrors of war’ to Saribas.10 At the sights around Padeh, however, even Keppel momentarily ‘relented at what I had done’.11 The force then ascended the Paku branch of the Saribas and burned Paku town. Paku ‘was larger than . . . Padi, and night settling in, the conflagration had a grand effect’. The following day, the Paku leaders agreed to attend Brooke in Kuching. Three days later the expedition captured Rimbas, the largest and most strongly fortified of the Saribas towns. The destruction and looting continued on the same scale as at Paku and Padeh. Keppel recorded that the ‘plunder was great; and although, with the exception of the guns, of no value to us, it was very much so to our native followers’.12 What could not be taken was destroyed, ‘forts, houses, war-boats, grain, fruit-trees, etc’.13 Nothing was left. The ravaging of Saribas ‘astonished the whole country beyond description’. Everything at Padeh, Paku and Rimbas that could be looted or burned was. Sarawak people had doubted Brooke’s capacity to defeat the Saribas, and the datus had even opposed Brooke’s own participation in the campaign.14 Brooke’s victory secured his nama as it demonstrated the unsurpassed intensity of his semangat. It confirmed that he could attract and command the most powerful warships. It also provided those Sarawak people who had accompanied him with immense quantities of plunder. Brooke was exalted. He hoped to establish control over Saribas people before they could re-establish their power, and he wanted ‘to play the same game with others’.15 Brooke and Keppel were planning a similar descent on the Malays and Iban of Skrang when Keppel received orders from his admiral to sail for China. Following his attack on Saribas, Brooke warned Sherif Sahib to break off relations with the Skrang Iban. In May 1844, Sahib responded by moving to Skrang, to better resist him. From that greater security, Sahib continued to mobilise for war, raiding Brooke’s villages and seizing women and children as slaves.16 Brooke was apprehensive of Sahib’s power, and anxious for Keppel’s support. He received guns and rockets from his agent in England, ordered a gunboat from Singapore and strengthened

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Kuching.17 Brooke’s and Sahib’s forces clashed towards the end of June, near Sadong, and again in July.18 Keppel returned to Kuching at the end of July in HMS Dido, in company with the steamer Phlegethon. The success of the Saribas expedition, and the opportunities for plunder and head-taking it realised, encouraged wide support from Sarawak people for the expedition against Skrang. The pattern established by the campaign against Saribas was repeated. At Patusan (Pemutus Gran), which commanded access to the river above Lingga, Brooke had trouble restraining his native followers, ‘the desire for plunder exceeded the feeling of fear’.19 Many of Brooke’s supporters had suffered terrible exactions at the hands of Skrang people. Except for those who had fought against Saribas the previous year, they had been precluded from taking heads since 1841. At Patusan, much was redeemed: The killed and wounded on the part of the pirates must have been considerable. Our native followers got many heads.

The scale of the victory was substantial: The habitations of 5000 pirates had been burnt to the ground, five strong forts destroyed together with several hundred boats, upwards of sixty brass guns captured, and about a fourth of the number of iron ones spiked and thrown into the river, besides vast quantities of other arms and ammunition . . .

The town ‘made a glorious blaze’.20 Brooke’s forces pressed on to Sahib’s smaller settlement. This too was captured, looted and torched. It took the invaders two days to despoil the area.21 They were unable to carry away all the plunder. What could not be taken, or burned, was thrown into the river. After they had ‘destroyed every boat and sampan, as well as house or hut’,22 they ascended to Sherif Mullah’s town at Undup. It was ‘plundered and burnt’.23 Brooke and Keppel rested their forces before starting against the main Skrang community. Progress up the Skrang to Karangan Pris was slow, the invaders stopping ‘to burn farm-houses, and a number of war prahus’.24 They fought off an ambush, and Karangan Pris was burned. The force then fell down the river, ‘burning houses & destroying a vast number of war prahus’.25 On his return to Sarawak, Brooke heard that Sherif Sahib had returned to Lingga to recruit followers. Brooke pushed up the Lingga River and drove Sahib over the watershed into Pontianak. He persuaded Raja Muda Hassim’s brother, Pengiran Budrudeen, who was with him, to depose Sherif Jaffar from the government of Lingga and appoint new Malay rulers more amenable to Brooke’s own rule.26 Brooke was concerned to impress his power and potency on the Lingga people and staged a firing demonstration, using 15 guns with rockets, port fires, blue lights and musketry. Notwithstanding Marryat’s assessment that the display ‘had a very warlike

Map 2

The Iban rivers, 1835–1868

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effect; and, no, doubt, gave the natives an impression of our superiority in the use of fire-arms’,27 Brooke probably intended it as much to astonish as to intimidate observers.28 Military power can be deployed by rulers to expand the material bases of their regimes; it can provide rulers with increased resources to disperse to followers, and thus increase their support. Brooke initiated his 1843 and 1844 campaigns partly in response to the needs of his Sarawak followers, who benefited enormously. As one observer in Sarawak noted after the Skrang campaign, ‘the pleasure of the natives has been immense & at this moment captured boats laden as deep as possible are coming up the river’.29 Military power, although it can force its target’s submission, is not sufficient to control its target without support from other forms of power. The challenge for Brooke during the years following the 1843 and 1844 campaigns was to develop and project power over the Saribas and Skrang populations and to locate sources of authority among them. THE IBAN CAMPAIGNS IN CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE Clifford Sather has pointed out that the oral sources marshalled by Benedict Sandin do not support the view that James Brooke’s attacks devastated Iban communities, noting that in 1843 Brooke’s forces only reached the middle Paku, where they were turned back.30 Although it is true that Sandin did not represent the 1843 and 1844 campaigns as significant in Iban oral history, it is worth recalling that oral histories do not purport to record the views of the people who participated in the events described but rather the meaning of those events for the people among whom the history is recorded. That the Saribas leadership, both Malay and Iban, visited Kuching to submit to Brooke (see below) surely indicates the significance of Brooke’s attacks to those people at that time. Moreover, Sandin’s narrative is susceptible to more than one reading. Rather than depreciating their importance, Sandin’s account might indicate the extent to which Iban oral tradition has conflated the significance of the 1843 and 1844 campaigns with stories of a later clash at Beting Marau. Thus Sandin’s account of Beting Marau refers to Captain Keppel, who was not there, rather than to Captain Farquhar, who was.31 It is likely that Keppel secured his position in the Iban’s historical imagination because his (1843 and 1844) attacks had been so terrible. The destruction of property and loss of life that these expeditions of 1843 and 1844 inflicted on Saribas and Skrang were beyond the remembered experiences of Borneo people. The Saribas and Skrang communities that Brooke attacked lost everything they owned. Chinese jars, gongs, ceramic plates, woven fabrics, beads, ceremonial headdresses and clothes, brass cannons, tools and implements, preserved heads, boats, mats, cooking utensils, food stores and crops, houses, fruit trees and livestock — all was

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taken or destroyed. The material consequences for the communities must have been dire as the Iban found themselves suddenly devoid of the material bases of existence. The campaigns are likely to have caused widespread trauma to the Saribas and Skrang Iban in profound, non-material ways as well. Iban believed that everything possessed a spirit (semangat), and much of the prestige property they accumulated was valued for its spiritual status. Objects like brass gongs and antique jars were not viewed merely as accumulated economic surplus. Like heads, they embodied potency, and demonstrated and contributed to the potency of the individuals who owned them. Longhouses also manifested ritual relationships and concerns. As Sather has pointed out: the longhouse is the pre-eminent setting in which the great majority of rituals are performed. In the course of these performances, architectural and spatial features of the longhouse are assigned signification as elements constituting a dramatic idiom that reflects on aspects of both the visible and alternative, unseen, realities. This process not only makes explicit the basic social and cosmological categories that structure Iban experience, but also evokes the interconnections that exist between them.32

The widespread destruction by enemies both of Iban houses and the interconnections they evoked was also likely to have fractured Iban cosmology. Moreover, Iban culture centred on rice, which was an axis between Iban and their cosmos: Iban believed that a dead person’s spirit would eventually descend to earth as dew, nourish and be absorbed by rice, which would be eaten by humans who, in turn, would die and their spirits descend as dew.33 In Iban cosmology rice ‘represents a transubstantiation of the ancestors, a direct physical embodiment of their continuing presence in the living world’.34 Of particular ritual importance to Iban welfare was padi pun, strains of sacred rice owned by each Iban family, which was grown in the centre of rice fields to protect the rest of the crop. Freeman noted that no ‘other ritual possession ranks more highly, for not only is padi pun the abode of the chief padi spirits (antu padi); it is also charged with stored up fertility — the fertility acquired during countless magical rites performed by previous generations’.35 For Iban, agricultural prosperity represented spiritual status, and demonstrated the efficacy of Iban leaders in maintaining cosmic balance through the observation of adat. The 1843 and 1844 campaigns, which burned the houses and crops of the Saribas and Skrang Iban, almost certainly destroyed those communities’ padi pun. Brooke not only succeeded in destroying Iban food supplies and the means by which Iban could produce food in the foreseeable future — the widespread destruction of padi pun and other ritual possessions assaulted Iban ritual existence, causing such anomy that powerful leaders hid naked in the jungle,36 and Malay noblewomen were given by their

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families to their own slaves.37 Brooke’s campaigns overturned the cosmic order around which Skrang and Saribas existence revolved. The challenge for Saribas and Skrang Iban during the years immediately following these campaigns was to interpret and overcome the anomy Brooke had engendered and to re-establish their potency. Individuals interpret events according to their expectations and understandings. Saribas and Skrang Iban engaged in large-scale head-taking and marauding activities which they believed enhanced their potency. Brooke’s campaigns confronted this belief and demonstrated to Iban their vulnerability to his spiritual status. For many Saribas Iban, the success of Brooke’s 1843 attacks on them was proof of his magical powers.38 Although it is true that the 1843 and 1844 campaigns ‘did not attempt to solve the more basic problem of establishing some consistent authority over the Iban inhabited rivers’,39 they established Brooke’s centrality to processes pivotal in Iban culture. Iban reactions to the campaigns need to be seen in Iban terms rather than solely in terms of the structural changes that the campaigns initiated in Saribas and Skrang society. Skrang and Saribas Iban reacted to Brooke’s demonstration of his power in two ways. Some sought to participate in his prowess and, through association with him, to re-establish their own spiritual status; others sought to re-establish their potency by resisting Brooke, to increase their status independently of his. Although both reactions were manifested through traditional processes of ngayau (headhunting), bejalai (expeditions) and pindah (migration), they also involved Iban developing new forms of acquiring status and new spheres for competition. POWER STRUCTURES Brooke’s campaigns of 1843 and 1844 had broken the power of the sherifs and exposed the Sadong, Lingga, Skrang and Saribas Rivers to his influence. After Sahib had left Sadong, Brooke had Abang Kassim appointed to rule as Datu Bandar. Kassim was married to a niece of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur,40 and Brooke expected Kassim to be his local representative and project his power into the area. Brooke was concerned, as in Sarawak, however, to recruit supporters directly into his own entourage, and he therefore sent his interpreter, Williamson, to Sadong ‘to establish our influence, and to give a proper impression of our justice and fair dealing’. Although Williamson was to support Datu Bandar Kassim’s authority, ‘by assuring him of my support, as long as he acts justly and properly’, he was also to encourage Sadong people to bring any grievances directly to Brooke.41 Power in the Saribas was fragmented and contested by rival Malay aristocrats and Iban.42 Datu Bandar Hamid and his brother, Datu Laksamana Omar, were based on the Rimbas tributary of the Saribas. Their brothers, Datu Laksamana Amir (who contested the Laksamana title), Datu Pen Hassim, Datu Imam Ayu and Datu Abang Ahmat (who all asserted their

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Datu Nuga Omar

Bandar Bukut

Patinggi Monset of Layar

Patinggi Mula

Patinggi Abas

Patinggi Muda

Patinggi Doll

Patinggi Kedit

Patinggi Udin of Layar

Bandar Laksamana Laksamana Datu Imam Datu Abang Datu Pen Hamid of Omar of Amir of Ayu of Ahmat of Hassim of Paku Rimbas Rimbas Paku Paku Paku

Genealogy 1 Kinship and factional rivalry among Saribas Malays

status as datus but appear not to have claimed any specific title), were based on the Paku tributary. Further upriver their cousin, Datu Patinggi Udin, controlled the lower Layar River. The Saribas Iban communities similarly divided into several large aggregations. The Paku was dominated by Linggir, and the Padeh and parts of Layar by Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana.43 The lower Layar was the country of Bunyau (Apai Bakir) and his son, Panglima Bakir.44 The main Iban leader on the Layar was Bulan Patan, who was allied to Datu Patinggi Udin.45 Although Iban and Malays from the various areas of the Saribas acted together in marauding expeditions, rivalry among them could become intense. The leaders of Padeh had, for example, on their surrender to Brooke in 1843, urged him to inflict on Rimbas and Paku ‘a similar chastisement to that they themselves had suffered’.46 Although Iban and Malay societies differed widely, all the Saribas leaders were concerned to increase and assert their nama. Brooke’s presence at Kuching provided all of them with significant opportunities to repair their damaged reputations and diminished spiritual status, through acquiring titles and potency-imbued objects from him. Thus, Brooke recorded in July 1844 that three Saribas Malay nobles had submitted to him in Kuching and received from him the titles of Datu Patinggi, Datu Bandar and Datu Tumanggong.47 Following the Skrang campaign, Saribas chiefs again assured Brooke of their good faith. At the end of 1844 the Saribas Iban leader, Linggir, travelled to Kuching and professed his support for

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Brooke. Linggir received from Brooke a spear and flag, and took Brooke’s ‘commands’ to the rest of the Saribas leadership.48 Linggir’s excursion provoked more Iban leaders of varying rank to travel to Kuching.49 Following the losses they had sustained during Brooke’s campaign, the Saribas Iban must have been under intense pressure to secure heads. Theirs was a profound dilemma. Without heads they could not re-establish cosmic and spiritual order, and they risked further disaster. They must also have realised, however, that to engage in head-taking would attract the extraordinary retribution that Brooke could unleash. Saribas Iban leaders tried to enlist Brooke’s help in resolving their conundrum, increasingly trying to get him to identify enemies whom they might attack.50 Brooke’s activities provided a new focus for rivalry among the Saribas Malay chiefs as each of the three groups of Malays sought to increase their status through association with him. Brooke recorded of the Saribas Malays that ‘they hate each other worse than they hate me . . . [the] Malays, from their internal dissension, cannot act together for the purposes of piracy; and one of the two [sic] parties would be sure to give us information against the other; or from hope of personal advancement, join us in any measures for the banishment of evil doers’.51 So powerful was Brooke’s attraction as a source of semangat that some Saribas Malays, including nobles like Abang Bit, migrated to Kuching, to closer proximity to the ruler.52 By the end of 1845, Brooke believed that Datu Bandar Hamid and Datu Laksamana Omar supported his power, and that Linggir and Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana were prepared to do so.53 Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana claimed to have dreamt, as a youth, that a white man with grey hair, a high-bridged nose and blue eyes would come to Saribas from the west during his lifetime, and that Iban would be unable to defeat him in war.54 As Brooke hoped, contact with one faction encouraged its rivals to seek contact. Linggir and one of the Laksamanas travelled to Kuching in December and agreed to prevent marauding expeditions leaving the river.55 Brooke does not identify which Laksamana it was, but it was likely to be Datu Laksamana Amir, with whom Linggir was closely associated.56 Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana was keenly interested in his colleagues’ manoeuvrings and sent a group of his own followers to gather information. He was subject to the same pressures to headhunt as other Iban and, in December, sought Brooke’s consent to his attacking the Undup Iban on the Batang Lupar.57 Association with Brooke provided one avenue for Saribas leaders to reestablish their potency. So could opposition to Brooke. Datu Patinggi Udin had probably submitted to Brooke in 1844 to have his title confirmed. He lived further upriver than the other Saribas Malays, however, and in his greater security became the focus of pressure to raid in the river which developed throughout 1845. Brooke was frustrated by Udin’s opposition. He wanted to drive his followers ‘entirely from the frontier’, and encouraged the other leaders to oppose them.58

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Brooke recognised that the Skrang River was used to more centralised leadership under Sherif Sahib and Sherif Mullah, and he hoped that the exclusion of the sherifs would allow him to co-opt their power bases.59 Like Saribas people, the people of the Skrang, following the devastation of their homes and farms, were keen to associate with Brooke. Brooke apparently identified the Skrang Malay, Abang Kapi, as a likely supporter. Brooke might have been encouraged to foster Abang Kapi by Sarawak Malays, with some of whom Kapi had links.60 In December 1844 Brooke gave him financial assistance, which must have helped to consolidate their relationship.61 The downriver Skrang Iban were led by three chiefs, Gassing, Bulan and Lingi. Lingi had been forced by Brooke’s 1844 campaign to hide naked in the forest.62 He arrived in Kuching in January 1845, deputed by some of the other Skrangs to sue for peace.63 A fortnight later Abang Kapi brought the representatives of another eight Iban communities to Kuching to submit to Brooke. They promised ‘to obey me, and look upon me as their chief’. So too did Panglima Laksa, an Iban chief from the Undup, who wanted Brooke’s consent to his attacking the Skrangs.64 After Abang Kapi’s submission, Brooke sought to project his power into the Skrang region by supporting Malay aristocrats against the return of the sherifs. Abang Kapi appreciated his opportunities for advancement under Brooke’s authority. He travelled to Kuching again in September to urge Brooke to send his representatives to Skrang to establish the terms of a peace settlement.65 Like some Saribas Malays, many of the Skrang Malays living at Patusan were unable to resist the centripetal attraction of Brooke’s high status and moved to Kuching, to the epicentre of his power.66 In October 1845, Lingi came to Kuching with information from Abang Kapi that a Sherif Abu Bakar and his sons were assembling Iban supporters, defying Kapi and Gassing and ‘preparing to resist’ Brooke. Brooke resolved to act ‘against them with vigour and celerity’. Confronting the sherifs, he decided, would publicly rally his supporters and unmask his opponents.67 He dispatched Williamson and Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur in force to Skrang to back Abang Kapi. If Kapi and his Iban supporters were prepared to attack the sherifs, Williamson and Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur were to support them ‘as a favour conferred upon them’. Brooke wanted the sherifs themselves killed ‘like dogs’, and Brooke’s Skrang supporters were to be encouraged to kill or punish the sherifs’ followers ‘in any way they please’.68 Brooke recognised in Sherif Abu Bakar’s actions an opportunity to satisfy his Saribas supporters’ need for heads, and he planned to allow Linggir and Datu Laksamana Amir and their followers to join the fighting.69 This opportunity to take heads while retaining Brooke’s friendship was quickly recognised by the Iban at Lingga, however. By the time Williamson and Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur got to Skrang, the Lingga people had already attacked and dispersed the bala.70

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Following the defeat of the sherifs, one of the Skrang Iban leaders, Gila Berani, suddenly fell ill. Gila Berani attributed his illness to Brooke’s powers, and before his death declared his support for the Sarawak ruler. Gila Berani’s deathbed conversion to Brooke’s cause, and his death itself, were regarded by many Skrang people as further evidence of Brooke’s supernatural powers.71 Brooke was keen to consolidate his gains. He sent Williamson to meet Gassing, Lingi, Bulan and Rentap (an Iban leader from the upper Skrang), and ‘a treaty of peace was agreed on, a pig being killed, as is their custom’.72 Gassing, the dominant leader in the lower part of the river, declared ‘that he would with his own hand kill the first who committed piracy on the ocean, or in any way departed from the wishes of Mr Brooke’. He was supported by ‘several other chiefs’. Bulan was of lesser rank than Gassing and, as the leader with specific responsibility for military affairs in his community, must have been particularly diminished by Brooke’s military successes in Skrang. People in Sarawak commonly cultivated external composure to preserve and demonstrate their potency, and believed that the semangat of great figures could be transferred through gifts of cloth. Thus Bulan was recorded sitting ‘without taking the least notice of the proceedings’. As soon as the conference was over, he followed the Kuching delegation to their boats, seeking ‘cloths and handkerchiefs as gifts’. He arranged to send his son and nephew to join Brooke’s entourage in Kuching.73 Bulan, Kapi, Lingi and Gassing wanted to engage Brooke even more directly, travelling to Kuching in January 1846. Brooke integrated them into Sarawak’s ritual hierarchy and power structure by investing them with titles and, no doubt, giving them robes of honour. Brooke hoped that by accepting titles from him ‘they will consider they are his deputies & not those of the Sultan of Bruni’.74 Brooke aimed to establish structures that could prevent Iban from marauding activity that would both confront his own interests and provide Malayo-Moslem rivals with military power. Iban and Malays, however, were concerned to revalidate their spiritual status and re-establish their legitimacy through processes endemic to their cultures. Many of the Saribas and Skrang leaders, like Bulan, participated in Brooke’s rituals and acquiesced to the establishment of his power among them as a means of revalidation, rather than to demonstrate support for Brooke himself or his values. Their preparedness to seek status through associating with Brooke supplemented, rather than precluded, other ways of achieving spiritual rank. Saribas and Skrang Iban needed heads and other ritual objects, and Brooke’s failure to deliver opportunities do so on the necessary scale undermined the monopoly on marauding that he sought to establish. Until he possessed the military power to ensure that Iban status was diminished rather than enhanced by raiding of which he disapproved, Brooke recognised that he would not be able to integrate Iban processes into the structures of his expanding polity. In his own, plainer words, ‘nothing but

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hard knocks can convert these pirates into honest people’.75 In March 1846, having refortified their villages and built new bangkongs, the Skrang, led by Bulan, attacked the Balau Iban of Lingga.76 Marauding by some Iban leaders undermined the capacity of the other leaders to resist pressure to resume marauding from their own followers, so that Brooke tried to enlist the Royal Navy’s help in mounting reprisals against Bulan, again claiming that Iban marauding was piracy.77 Brooke’s attempts to establish his power over the Saribas and Skrang Rivers confronted Brunei’s still active claims to hegemony over the northwest coast. Brooke admitted that, following the 1843 and 1844 campaigns, he prevented the Brunei government from raising revenue in the Skrang and Saribas Rivers or exercising other functions of government.78 At the beginning of April 1846, Brooke heard that Raja Muda Hassim and most of his brothers had been killed by their opponents, including the Sultan, at court.79 In response, Brooke persuaded the British authorities at Singapore to assault Brunei. The city fell almost without a struggle and the Sultan fled. Brooke then attacked Hassim’s rivals and opponents along the coast to Marudu Bay at the northern tip of Borneo.80 Although Brooke’s actions might have avenged his friends, they failed to establish any lasting settlement between him and Brunei. The Brunei court remained purged of Hassim’s anglophile party, and its humiliation at Brooke’s hands encouraged the Brunei elite to confront Brooke’s power wherever local circumstances allowed. Indeed, the scale of the defeat suffered by the Sultan and nobles required them to redeem their reputations. Governor Butterworth of Singapore had lent Brooke the steamer Phlegethon to support him against renewed Skrang and Saribas activity. Notwithstanding the Phlegethon’s cruising the coast, the Skrangs resumed large-scale raiding.81 Gassing and Lingi’s continued collaboration with Brooke cost them authority among their own followers and, as the pressures to raid mounted, people began to transfer their allegiance to those upriver leaders who supported renewed raiding.82 This mobilisation of Skrang was matched by developments in Saribas. Linggir sought Brooke’s permission to raid against the Lundu or Samarahan Rivers to take a head for the rites associated with the death of his brother, which Brooke refused. In early 1847 a Saribas bala left the river and was engaged by Sarawak forces which, according to reports, killed the Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana’s son.83 Brunei’s leaders responded to Brooke’s victory over them by encouraging the Saribas and Skrang, inciting them to attack Sarawak itself.84 Pressures to raid, as they increased, diminished the appeal for Skrang and Saribas people of associating with Brooke. But as the processes of Iban society became increasingly incompatible with Brooke’s power structures and objectives, so they matched those of Brunei. Brunei’s support for Iban resistance to Brooke’s control was extensive. During early 1847 Brunei imported extraordinary quantities of war matériel from Singapore, including

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279 piculs of iron (approximately 16.5 tons), 19 ‘kegs’, 10 cwt and four ‘tubes’ of steel, more than a ton of lead, 600 spear blades, 1200 knives, and 400 pounds of gunpowder. In addition, Brunei imported 1000 sets of iron pans, some of which were probably reworked into weapons.85 In view of Brunei’s continuing attempts to exclude Brooke from Saribas and Skrang, much of this matériel must have gone to the Saribas and Skrang people, whose rebuilt forts were soon believed impregnable to seaward attack.86 This mobilisation was part of a more widespread attempt by the Brunei government to roll back Brooke’s power to the Sarawak River. Although the details remain obscure, Brunei’s rulers also attempted to regain control over the Sadong and Lingga Rivers in 1848.87 Notwithstanding the re-emerging opposition to him on the coast, Brooke returned to England in triumph towards the end of 1847. From his takeover of Sarawak in 1841, he had provided material to his friends in England to promote his activities. The publication of his and Keppel’s journals in 1846 had brought the ‘wild fun’ of his campaigns to a wide audience, and appealed to a re-emerging British expansionism.88 Brooke was received by Queen Victoria at Windsor, named as Governor of the new colony he had urged the British government to found at Labuan, and knighted.89 Brooke’s influence over the British government’s Far Eastern policies appeared established, and Keppel’s new command, HMS Meander, was fitted with boats suited to attacking Saribas and Skrang.90 By early 1849 the scale of marauding by Saribas and Skrang people must have done much to restore their sense of self. Back in Sarawak, Brooke appeared diminished by their successes. The Saribas and Skrang Iban were estimated to have taken hundreds of heads.91 Confident of Keppel’s ability to enforce his prescriptions, Brooke took a high handed course of diplomacy & insisted upon a total separation of all the communities of the coasts from the Pirates. They were to be either for us or against us.92

HMS Meander, however, was ordered to China by a new admiral with whom Brooke’s self-importance cut no ice, leaving Brooke desperate.93 A visit to Sarawak by the Nemesis at the end of March 1849 provided Brooke with a necessary boost in military power. He assembled 55 war prahus and, with the boats of the Nemesis, sailed along the coast, gathering more support, and up the Kalaka River. From the interior of the Kalaka, he dispatched his followers, estimated at about 2000, into the Rimbas branch of the Saribas, where they looted and burned longhouses, ‘destroyed large stores of rice and salt’,94 and, no doubt, inflicted the horrors of war on their enemies. Although Brooke claimed the attack dispersed a bala that was assembling,95 his action failed to contain the resurgent power of the Saribas Iban and Malays. Brooke was under increasing pressure, moreover, from Sarawak people themselves to continue his attacks on Skrang and Saribas.

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The attacks on Sarawak people had expanded their own ritual needs for heads, and Sarawak reprisals would provide opportunities for Sarawak people to loot property and demonstrate and accumulate status, which the Saribas and Skrang had confronted. By May 1849 the pressure on Brooke to overcome his Iban enemies was intense. The ‘chief idea’ among Brooke’s followers in Sarawak, according to Bishop McDougall, was ‘to destroy & to sack the haunts of the Sakarrang & Saribus pirates’.96 When Nemesis returned to Kuching in July, accompanied by HMS Albatross, Brooke led out a combined fleet containing 3000 warriors.97 After their departure, the force was told of a large bala raiding north from Saribas towards the Rejang. Brooke decided to attack as it re-entered the Saribas River. On the evening of 31 July his forces engaged the Iban fleet off Beting Marau, the point of land between the mouths of the Saribas and Kalaka rivers. As the Iban approached the mouth of the Seribas they were met by the Nemesis, whose 32-pounders, loaded with round-shot grape, and canister, scattered them in all directions. They tried the sea, but there the boats under Captain Farquhar drove them back; they tried the sandy point — there a large fleet of prahus poured in their fire upon them; they huddled in a confused crowd — all order was lost . . .

Linggir led a flotilla of 17 boats in an attempt to capture the Nemesis, which was the source of the most devastating fire. When the Iban boats were within 50 yards of the stationary steamer it began to advance, accelerated, and rushed full-speed on the group, destroying all but one or two of the boats.98 The Nemesis was relentless. When a Saribas prahu headed out to sea, Nemesis ran it down ‘and the scene which took place as . . . [the prahu’s] crew, above 60 in number, came in contact with the paddle steamer’s blades beggars all description’.99 The Saribas bala had been a great fleet. It sustained an extraordinary defeat: ‘At daylight the bay was one mass of wreck — shields, spears, and portions of destroyed prahus extended as far as the eye could reach.’100 While Farquhar blockaded the entrance to the Rimbas tributary of the Saribas, Brooke’s forces hunted the survivors.101 William Cobden later claimed that the Iban losses at Beting Marau were greater than British losses at Trafalgar.102 Most estimates put Iban deaths during the battle at between 400 and 500. In addition, about 500 are estimated to have died of wounds during the days following the battle. About 1000 men were killed, in total, from a force of about 3000. In at least two longhouses, only three or four men came home.103 The Sarawak and British forces sustained two dead and six wounded.104 The British were awarded £27 000 in pirate bounties following the battle, £3000 of which was awarded as Farquhar’s share.105 ‘Lucky Farquhar,’ exclaimed the absent Captain Keppel.106 Brooke and Farquhar proceeded in force up the Paku tributary of the Saribas. Mindful of the opportunities that awaited them, the Sarawak forces

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‘pushed ahead, the hindmost anxious to find themselves in the foremost ranks, and these again endeavouring to maintain their position — pushing, crushing, and running one into the other, the crews, some 3000 strong, all shouting at once, either “Back, back”, or “On, on” ’.107 The Paku people had felled such large numbers of trees across the river that it was almost impassable. At one stage a tactical withdrawal from an ambush was misunderstood by Brooke’s followers, who imagined that our men were retreating, and they commenced rushing to their boats. At first I thought that the enemy in overpowering force must be approaching; but the Rajah, speaking quietly to the men as they passed us, and laughing, observed, ‘Don’t be afraid,’ and turning to us said, ‘Let us advance.’ We instantly pushed up the hill. This had an immediate effect, — the men turned and followed the Rajah in crowds.108

Brooke’s followers took two days to loot Paku and its many surrounding settlements, securing vast quantities of plunder. Brooke then fell downriver before ascending the Rejang, the southern tributaries of which were colonised by Saribas and Skrang Iban. His force advanced up the Rejang’s Kanowit tributary for two days, ‘destroying everything in our way’.109 The destruction of the Saribas fleet and the devastation of Paku and Kanowit rivalled Brooke’s campaigns of 1843 and 1844 as demonstrations of his military power and spiritual status. Benedict Sandin’s account implies that for some Saribas Iban, Beting Marau might have represented an even greater defeat than that of 1843.110 Like all ‘men of prowess’,111 Brooke attracted lesser individuals who wanted to share his power and participate in his potency. As the force dropped down the Rejang, it encountered ‘thousands of natives who were coming to join our expedition’.112 IBAN INTEGRATION INTO THE BROOKE STATE Societies are complexes of norms, values, structures and institutions. For structures and institutions to function effectively, they must reflect and integrate the values and norms of the populations they seek to regulate. The alienation of a population from the structures and institutions of its government causes what Huntington described as a ‘motivation-organisation vacuum’.113 During the 1840s James Brooke had attempted to expand his influence over Skrang and Saribas by integrating elite figures from those regions into his entourage. His military successes in 1843 and 1844 established his attractiveness as a patron. They also established, for many Iban and Malays, his superior status. Brooke’s links to the leadership of both areas were underpinned by cosmological factors and appreciated in cosmological terms. The desire of the Skrang and Saribas leadership to engage Brooke’s semangat and be included in his entourage required their visiting him in

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Kuching to receive ritual gifts of cloth and weapons, or titles, which demonstrated and contributed to their rank. But it did not require them to project Brooke’s power into their communities. Moreover, between 1845 and 1849 Brooke was unable to provide access to ritual and high-status objects and activities on a sufficient scale to relieve pressures on Iban to raid or take heads. Thus Brooke had been unable either to develop structures to integrate and contain, or to change, essential processes in Iban society. As Brooke’s nephew explained, ‘we had always been strong enough to attack and conquer our enemies, but then our difficulties lay in keeping them in subjection afterwards’.114 Resurgent Iban raiding in the late 1840s was, in Huntington’s terms, symptomatic of a ‘motivationorganisation’ vacuum. Brooke’s victory at Beting Marau and his subsequent pillaging of the Paku and Kanowit rivers must have devastated Iban status again, revalidating the views of those Iban and Malay leaders who had argued against large scale defiance of Brooke’s injunctions. Among the Skrangs, for example, Gassing and Abang Kapi regained their influence and sought to re-establish their relations with Brooke.115 As in 1844 and 1845, the Saribas and Skrang leadership trooped to Kuching to submit to and associate with him.116 On these occasions, Brooke emphasised to the Iban leaders his material wealth and, probably, the status his possessions demonstrated. He ‘used to take them into his room, show them his swords, his uniform, every curiosity that could amuse them’.117 Brooke had resolved, however, to sustain his power in the Iban areas, signalling his new determination by taking hostages from them.118 Brooke recognised that he needed to project power into the Skrang and Saribas rather than to manipulate Iban processes through elite figures. Following Beting Marau, he sent forces to build a fort at the mouth of the Skrang River to enable him to blockade the river, preventing balas leaving or supplies entering. Brooke recognised that the fort would support those Skrang leaders who upheld his authority. The Skrang leaders recognised this also, and brought their followers to help with the building. Although Brooke appointed one of his supporters from Kuching, Sherif Moksain, to command the fort and govern the river on his behalf, Moksain quickly alienated the downriver leadership, causing Brooke to recall him and to appoint instead his own kinsman, Willie Brereton.119 Brereton was backed by Brooke’s old supporter, Abang Kapi, by Kapi’s relatives, Datu Laksamana Minudeen and his son, Abang Aing, and by the Iban leaders, Gassing, Lingi and Bulan.120 The fort at Skrang was complemented by another at Kanowit, on the Rejang River, which Brooke intended to control the expanding Iban population of the Rejang basin and block an alternative route to the sea from the upper Skrang.121 Although Brooke initially sent Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur’s brother, Abang Durop, with a garrison of Sarawak Malays to take charge of the fort, at the end of 1851 he replaced him with a European.122 In 1852, a third fort was established at Lingga, ‘to keep the Saribus headhunters at a distance’.123

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To consolidate his power in the lower Batang Lupar, Brooke recognised the need to unite traditional enemies within his authority. After months of negotiations, Brereton, Abang Aing and Gassing arranged a peace conference among the Lingga, lower Skrang, Lemanak and Batang Lupar communities, at which the Rajah’s nephew, Brooke Brooke, and Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur both stressed to the Iban that the Rajah’s friendship was conditional on Iban maintaining peace with each other.124 Brooke Brooke avoided trying to untangle or resolve disputes among the groups, attempting, instead to reconcile them through including them in his own ritual status, giving each leader the same potent gifts — a flag, a jar and a spear.125 Following the ceremonies, the various groups were ‘dancing talking & laughing together with every appearance of friendship & goodwill’.126 The hostilities between the Batang Lupar and Skrang communities were too longstanding and intense to be resolved by a single ceremony, however. Continuing clashes among his various supporters led Brereton to organise another ceremony, which Brooke Brooke attended in December 1851. Relations among the various groups were so bad that, in order to persuade some Iban to attend, Brereton had to send to them Skrang Malay women as hostages.127 Following the second Skrang ceremony, Brooke Brooke proceeded to Kanowit, where he conducted peace ceremonies between the Skrang Iban and the coastal Rejang communities, and between the Iban of the southern Rejang basin and the non-Iban peoples of the Rejang.128 The Rajah’s ambitions in the Skrang were manifested in his fort. It ‘was square, with flanking towers, and its heavy armament completely commanded the river, and rendered it secure against any Dayak force’.129 It

The Rajah’s fort at Skrang comprised a massive intrusion into the river

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comprised a massive intrusion into the river and provided a solid basis for containing and manipulating Iban practices, which the Rajah demonstrated by imposing a blockade as soon as it was completed.130 Brereton introduced a system of passes for vessels wishing to leave or enter the river, through which he administered both the movement of individuals and the supply of produce.131 Charles Johnson, following his appointment to Skrang Fort to replace Brereton in 1854, fined Iban who took heads without authority. Johnson enforced fines by threatening to allow his supporters to attack any communities that resisted his authority. Half of any fines collected were given to friendly chiefs, to emphasise the advantages of collaboration.132 This ‘soon brought about a strong party who were on the qui vive to report any who went head-hunting or acted contrary to regulations’.133 Failure to support the Rajah’s officers in any conflict, or any attempts to remain neutral in disputes, also attracted heavy fines.134 The Rajah’s observation about Charles Johnson applies to Brereton and his other officers as well: ‘He first gained over a portion of these Dyaks to the cause of order, and then used them as his instruments in the same cause, to restrain their countrymen’.135 Otherwise unable to secure heads, downriver Iban competed for the regime’s favour and for opportunities to participate in its expeditions. With the power provided by forts and downriver supporters, the Rajah’s officers were increasingly able to integrate Iban processes into a system that both extended Sarawak’s power and facilitated Iban achievement of Iban objectives. The Rajah’s government provided those Iban who associated with it opportunities to take heads, accumulate material wealth and therefore increase their status. His forts themselves became the sites of large collections of confiscated heads and other ritual objects, which contributed to his own standing.136 Writers have emphasised the status accumulated by Charles Johnson in this way.137 Johnson operated under often detailed instruction from the Rajah, however, and he exercised power on the Rajah’s behalf.138 That Johnson’s power was a reflection of his relationship with the Rajah is demonstrated by the ‘perfect confidence’ with which he left Skrang under the rule of his colleague in the Rajah’s service in 1862.139 THE CONSTRUCTION OF BROOKE POWER IN IBAN CULTURE The Rajah of Sarawak was a source from which Iban, after their devastation at his hands, could repair the damage to their standing. His arrival in the river during the construction of the Skrang fort acted as a magnet, and ‘parties walked from the far interior to see the noted chief’.140 Brereton, Lee, Johnson and the Rajah’s other commanders appointed from Kuching must have been attractive to many Skrang people, as their relationship with the Rajah facilitated Iban association with him. Whereas in the 1840s Skrang and Saribas leaders had travelled to Kuching to enhance their status through contact with James Brooke, his appointment in the 1850s of close

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associates to govern rivers provided people with local opportunities. The intense potency that the Rajah’s European officers directed into these communities would establish order and prosperity and assert the rule of the vortex that they represented. This might explain the rapidity with which they attracted such large-scale support among the downriver populations, many of whom were eager to establish and demonstrate close association. As early as December 1852, Brereton had assembled about 2000 Skrang Malays around the fort,141 including, apart from Abang Kapi and his relatives, Sherif Mullah and Sherif Sahib’s widow and her family.142 Iban were also eager to demonstrate their relationship with Brooke. Gassing was particularly keen to associate with Brereton. He wanted to ‘become as the white man’, and prepared to move his followers downriver to settle near the fort.143 Brooke’s officers were potent representatives of a more potent centre. The Iban orang kaya of Lundu expressed their potent attractions clearly. Charles Johnson recorded that ‘one evening, when many were present, and drinking, after the second glass, he called me a diamond, or jewel, which he should keep on the top of his head’.144 Downriver groups did not attribute their material successes under Brereton and Johnson to the structural changes the Brooke regime was making to power relations in the Skrang basin, or to superior military capability. They knew that the source of their prosperity was their access to and participation in the Rajah’s high ritual status, which sustained them both physically and spiritually. Skrang Iban told Willie Brereton that ‘the Rajah was their Sun, their Moon — their FATHER and MOTHER’.145 A missionary at Lundu observed that among Iban there the Rajah’s ‘very name is a benediction’. He reported one Iban’s remarking to him, ‘Sir I have not seen God made man but I think the Rajah is a God on earth — he is so kind to us — he loves us so much.’146 Iban on the Emparan River still relate a number of stories about ‘Rajah Brooke’ which suggest that he was seen as more than human. For some, the Rajah was half spirit (setengah antu), while others have recounted that he was the son of Kumang and her husband Keling (pre-eminent mythical Iban ancestors).147 According to Steinmayer’s informants at Lundu, James Brooke was not Kumang’s son but her lover, and ‘legends of his climbing Santubong to meet and make love with Kumang abound’.148 Downriver groups integrated the Rajah and his officers into ceremonies designed to transfer ritual strength to their communities. Charles Johnson was asked by one group of Iban to punish an antu (spirit) that was persecuting their community.149 Others asked him to spit on their wounds to ensure that they healed properly.150 One Iban leader confided to Charles Johnson that ‘his farms had yielded better harvests than he had ever remembered; and this he accounted for by his being a friend of the white man’.151 Association with the Rajah provided magical benefits, and Iban attribution of their successes to his spiritual power established the supernatural basis of his authority.

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There is a further explanation for how Iban comprehended and represented their support for the Rajah. The Skrang Iban leader, Gassing, who was an early and consistent friend of the Brooke regime, was recorded as having told the Iban of Kalaka that James Brooke was the Iban’s ‘roof-tree (parabong) . . . under which we all find protection and justice, and in its shelter we stand as a support and assistance’.152 Gassing’s analogy can be explicated by examining the place of the perabong in Iban architecture. But to understand the perabong it is necessary also to understand the posts that support it, to which Gassing also alluded and which are represented, in his analogy, by the Iban (leaders) themselves. The tiang pemun or source-post of an Iban longhouse is an intensely potent part of the structure, centring ‘the house both ritually and in terms of the internal orientation of its parts’.153 As the longhouse is constructed, each family raises its own tiang pemun to centre its own apartment. The resulting row of source-posts is an essential feature of the longhouse, physically and metaphysically. The perabong is the ridge capping that runs along the top of these posts. Like the posts, which stand as its support, the perabong has intense ritual importance. Not only is it the highest part of the house, it links the individual source-posts to the central source-post, uniting them into a single physical and ritual unit. Only with the erection of the perabong is a structure complete.154 Noting that the sites of shamanic rituals change in accordance with their scale and seriousness, Clifford Sather has observed that the perabong is the site of the most elaborate rituals. The idea of perabong/rabong as the summit or zenith, as paramount, is expressed in a number of ways. Bukit Rabong is the highest location in the Iban cosmos, the special otherworld of the manang, while perabong hari is the summit of the sky. Yet there is a further set of implications in Gassing’s representation of the Rajah as the Iban’s perabong. Sather has drawn my attention also to the sense not just of the Rajah’s being pre-eminent and highest but to the sense of summation and of his envelopment of coequal parts, which is integral to Gassing’s analogy.155 While Brereton and the pro-Sarawak forces consolidated their position downriver, opposition to the Rajah formed around the upriver Iban chieftain, Rentap. Although the shame Lingi felt at hiding naked from the Rajah’s forces in 1844 probably helped to convince him that Brooke’s own prowess could not be resisted, it is difficult to identify the precise factors that induced some Iban leaders to collaborate with Brooke while others resisted him. Both groups sought to demonstrate and accumulate potency. Sandin suggested that patterns of support and opposition for the Raja reflected pre-existing hostilities among Iban.156 The pattern of opposition that emerged, of downriver collaboration and upriver resistance, also suggests how Iban cosmological perceptions of the Rajah’s power were underpinned by and expressed strategic geography. That pattern derived from the capacity of the Skrang fort to block egress from the river. Unable

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European visitors feasting at Gassing’s longhouse

to leave the river to take heads, and precluded from raiding their former downriver enemies by Brooke Brooke’s ritualised reconciliations, many downriver Iban might have found hostility with their former colleagues convenient. The Rajah had already learned in Sarawak proper the need to provide his followers with opportunities to take heads, and his officers might also have been eager to identify upriver groups as enemies. It is even possible that upriver hostility to Brooke control was partly a response to raids by downriver groups. One of the Rajah’s officers has admitted that it was Sarawak policy on the Skrang to ‘encourage those further down the river to become the enemies of those higher up’.157 In January 1853 the upriver Iban under Rentap attacked Brereton and his supporters, who had been reinforced by Lee’s arrival from Lingga. Brereton succeeded in blocking Rentap’s access to the sea, but Lee was killed during the fighting. Although Graham Saunders saw in Lee’s death evidence that the Skrang was ‘again outside government control’,158 the responses of downriver Iban to Lee’s death suggested the degree to which association with the Rajah had become the central organising principle among them. Following the attack, the Lingga Iban began building war boats, expecting an expedition to be launched against Rentap.159 More importantly, Gassing, ‘without European aid or encouragement, and without Malay support, raised his standard and was joined by three-fourths of the entire tribe’, attacked Rentap in force and ‘brought down his large war prahu . . . [and] all his property’.160 Gassing’s expedition plundered and burned

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20 longhouses.161 Thus was the Rajah a great and potent figure, who could draw powerful followers to share his success and wealth to enhance their own status. The Rajah, more prosaically, explained that ‘the mass of the population, which always leans to the side of power, are inclined to support us’.162 But the enthusiasm with which downriver groups mobilised against Rentap also worried the Rajah. He urged Charles Johnson to restrain that silly dear old Gasin from going too far inland with ballas. Mengayu anak [small expeditions] he may, but with these ballas in the enemy country he will some day come to grief, and bring shame on our beards.163

Fear of shame (malu), as the Rajah knew, was a powerful motivator among Iban and Malays.164 Shame diminished nama. Following his defeat by Gassing, Rentap fortified a position at a place called Sungei Lang, which became a focus of military opposition to the Brooke state.165 In response, the Rajah authorised an expedition against a chief called Apai Dendang, in the watershed between the Skrang and Saribas Rivers. The Brookes believed that Apai Dendang was reinforced by many of those opposed to the Rajah, from the Saribas and upper Skrang. Although Apai Dending and his followers repulsed the attack, the exhibition of the Rajah’s power in deploying forces so far inland seems to have persuaded some Iban to change sides, to pay fines and to submit.166 In an extraordinary further display of military power, the Rajah then raised a force of 7000 Iban and Malays to drive out Rentap himself. Datu Tumanggong Mersal of Sarawak advanced against the Saribas Iban to prevent their rising, and Henry Steele, who had joined the Rajah’s service, led another force up the Kanowit to tie down the Iban communities on that river. After a fierce defence, Rentap’s position fell to the Rajah’s forces, though Rentap escaped to a second stronghold, Sadok.167 Notwithstanding the fall of Sungei Lang, the 1854 expedition failed to overcome opposition from the upriver areas. Although Brooke’s activities and successes established his status among downriver groups, providing them with opportunities to enhance their own ritual standing, Rentap’s opposition to Brooke, and his withdrawal to remote Sadok to avoid submission, established him as a rival centre of prowess among upriver groups.168 Dissidents from upper Skrang, Saribas and the newly settled south basin of the Rejang looked towards Sadok for leadership and support. Among them, Rentap was called Raja Ulu (the inland Raja), in contradistinction to the Rajah of Sarawak. Just as Brooke was believed to possess magical powers, Iban believed that Sadok was protected by Rentap’s magical and intense potency. Rentap’s opposition to the Brooke state challenged the symbolic foundations of its claims over, as well as its physical presence within, the Iban areas. The 1850s therefore were punctuated by a series of campaigns led by Charles Johnson, who succeeded Brereton at Skrang, against Rentap or groups which the Brooke regime believed upheld him.

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The destruction visited by the Rajah’s forces on Iban communities unnerved some of his followers. Spenser St John argued that the Rajah should use blockades to enforce submission. Expeditions like Charles Johnson’s, St John told Brooke Brooke, ‘disgust the whole industrious population of the country’.169 The Rajah, however, recognised that Iban were most vulnerable when their rice crop was ‘ripe for the sickle’.170 He regarded the burning of rice crops as an essential feature of actions against Iban.171 Charles Johnson similarly concentrated on destroying houses, crops and other property rather than on defeating and dispersing enemy forces. ‘An attack,’ Johnson wrote, upon a Dyak force, the destruction of the whole of it, with the lives of all the men, is no permanent advancement towards cessation of head-taking. But the burning down of a village, loss of goods, old relics, — such as heads, arms, and jars, — and putting the inhabitants to excessive inconvenience — all this fills them with fear, and makes them think of the consequences of taking the heads of strangers.172

Such views indicate that the Rajah and Johnson appreciated the deep cultural significance of their campaigns. Both men were sensitive to the spiritual concerns of Sarawak people — the Rajah certainly comprehended the concept of semangat and its relevance to Bidayuh. Johnson also knew that Iban believed that this world was invested with spirits, and he consciously sought to manipulate those beliefs.173 Johnson did not avoid interdicting Iban hostile forces because that ‘required a more efficient use of pro-government groups’ and would widen intertribal warfare, as Ulla Wagner suggested.174 He avoided such actions because, like the blockades St John advocated, they would not diminish Iban ritual status, or establish the Rajah’s ritual supremacy. The destruction of Iban homes, property and rice did both. The Rajah’s forces conducted campaigns against Rentap and those Iban communities supporting him in 1857, 1858 and 1861, visiting destruction over wide areas. The 1857 campaign, for example, included simultaneous attacks on the Saribas and Kanowit Iban as well as the interior Skrangs.175 From a base beside Sadok, Johnson sent forces out into the surrounding country to destroy as many longhouses as possible.176 The pattern of destruction was repeated in 1858.177 Rentap’s defeat became a talisman for the Brooke regime, which seems to have accepted that Rentap himself was too great a figure to be allowed to exist in Sarawak. In 1859 Rentap sent down to ask for terms. He was prepared to accept the Rajah’s authority and pay any fines imposed.178 His offer was ignored or rejected. By 1861 Rentap’s own increasingly arbitrary behaviour violated adat and risked provoking supernatural retaliation against him,179 and his supporters began to fall away. In 1861, Johnson again sent Iban forces to ravage the Julau and upper Skrang and Saribas country in preparation for another assault on Sadok.180 Again, Johnson

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rejected offers by Rentap to submit: ‘Words are at an end, and a punishment must be inflicted — then the door of conciliation may be opened’.181 When Johnson’s host was before Sadok, Rentap yet again sought to negotiate his surrender. Johnson sent representatives into Sadok to discuss Rentap’s capitulation. The fine of 12 rusa jars Johnson sought to impose was insultingly low, and Rentap cut off communications. 182 After three hours’ bombardment, Sadok fell.183 Rentap withdrew to the remote headwaters of the Kanowit, Skrang and Katibas Rivers, where he died a few years later, having fulfilled a vow he made during his flight from Sadok never to see another white man.184 IBAN ADAPTATION, INNOVATION AND INTEGRATION The roots of Iban political culture were in the spirit world and, for Iban, status was essentially spiritual. Every Iban ‘expected to gain for himself and to ritually validate a fluid personal ranking, which is fixed and rendered inalterable only by death’.185 Vinson Sutlive described Iban as ‘culturally mobile’, noting that they are alert ‘to the reactions of members of other ethnic groups to whose values the Iban are adjusting’.186 As James Brooke progressively confronted Iban beliefs that success at marauding, or resistance to Brooke rule, contributed to their spiritual rank, Iban turned to or developed other activities through which they could compete for wealth and ritual status. The tensions caused by Iban attempts to resolve differences between imagined and material levels of existence became a source of cultural change in Iban society. Iban culture valued migration into new areas, where soil for rice crops was fertile and fresh forests were rich in jungle produce. Exact dating of Iban migrations into the southern basin of the Rejang is difficult. Migration from the upper Batang Lupar into the Katibas was occurring prior to Brooke’s arrival.187 Migration from the Skrang and Layar Rivers into the Julau and other Kanowit headwaters began between 1840 and 1850.188 St John recognised that the 1843 and 1844 campaigns accelerated migration into the Rejang basin, while Sandin claimed that many of the Iban settled on the Julau River had moved there from Saribas in response to the Rajah’s attacks on them in 1849.189 Flight by tribal peoples from the authority of coastal polities was an important dynamic in Bornean demography. Nineteenth-century migration away from the centres of James Brook’s power into the remote forests of the Rejang basin was one response to Brooke’s activities. Settlers derived status from the successful colonisation of new land. They were able to develop rice farms; their freedom to raid for heads was less constrained. Migration facilitated ritual activities and therefore the re-establishment of ritual status. The migrants’ headhunting, however, engaged Brooke’s attention, and Iban pindah (urge to migrate) became a catalyst for the expansion of Brooke power further inland.

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The regime applied the same tactics to confront these migrating Iban as it used against the Skrang and Saribas communities. The Rajah had attacked them in 1849 and, in 1856 and 1861, Johnson devastated the Julau tributary of the Rejang. During Johnson’s 1856 attack, the pro-Brooke force of about 3000 Skrang and Lingga Iban was unopposed by the Julau people, whose houses were looted and burned. Johnson took up position in a central longhouse and dispatched parties ‘in different directions to burn and destroy’. His men were thorough: ‘our Dyaks allowed no leaf to pass unturned’. After two days, he organised parties to penetrate further upriver towards the Rejang and ‘attack and destroy all that came within their reach’. When they returned, our work of destruction was complete. Twenty-five long houses had been sacked and destroyed, some large, some small. The amount of property plundered was immense. The ashes of padi were in some places a foot deep, and continued to smoke and smoulder.190

The devastation of migrants’ farms and homes diminished the efficacy of migration as an answer to the threat of James Brooke’s potency. Although eventually the firestorms to which Iban were subjected must have begun to seem escapable only within the realm of the Rajah, the processes of Iban migration away from Brooke authority, and the consequent extension of Brooke power further inland, continued well into the 20th century. Forms of bejalai, no less than pindah, provided Iban with a range of adaptive strategies that could be accommodated by the Brooke state, and even welcomed. As early as 1861, following the death of his wife, the Saribas Iban, Panglima Bakir, asked Charles Johnson to allow him to accompany Johnson to Singapore. As Bakir told Johnson, ‘If I had been in such a plight some years ago, I should have instantly gone into the jungle in search of heads.’191 Another form of bejalai that would not attract James Brooke’s retribution was to develop trading relations with him. There were surges of trading expeditions to Kuching from Saribas and Skrang following both the 1843 and 1844 campaigns, and another following Beting Marau.192 From 1850 to 1852 it was not uncommon for 40 Iban boats to arrive at Kuching at any one time, and there was ‘a continual stream of them in smaller numbers’.193 Although Iban enthusiasm for trade partly derived from the opportunities it offered for associating with the Rajah or his associates, it also provided opportunities to acquire items from Singapore and further afield which were associated with potent places or people and therefore were themselves invested with special meaning. Trade became one focus of competition for status and leadership among Iban that did not attract Sarawak reprisals. By 1854, the trade between Kuching and Skrang and Saribas in piece goods was ‘considerable and increasing’. Iban were also buying high-prestige items like brassware, gongs and crockery ‘in large quantities’.194 Saribas

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trade rose to levels that encouraged Kuching traders to travel to the mouth of the Paku with goods for the Iban markets.195 Contemporaries recognised that this developing trade was not motivated merely by material considerations. As early as 1852 one observer noticed that, among the downriver Skrang, ‘articles becoming a more civilised life’ were as valued as heads and even superseded them.196 Charles Brooke reported in 1864 that ‘trade fast takes the place of headhunting’.197 (The process of replacement continues: Jensen noted that heads are replaced now by outboard motors.198) If trading activity allowed Iban to associate with sources of greater potency and acquire goods that enhanced their spiritual status, so did wage labour. Iban from Saribas and Skrang were working in the antimony mines in Sarawak proper as early as 1853. The operation’s manager, Helms, reported that ‘next to the Chinese these men were our best workmen’.199 The opening of coal mines at Sadong provided additional opportunities for Iban, who were reported working there in 1855.200 Iban developed a new term to describe this form of bejalai in which people worked as coolies — bekuli.201 Brooke Brooke’s formation of a small regular military force, the Sarawak Rangers, in 1858 must have been even more attractive. Brooke Brooke reported that service in the Rangers was ‘popular & Recruits not difficult to obtain’.202 The new emphasis on forms of bejalai acceptable to the Brooke regime was matched by renewed efforts in rice farming. Within two years of Beting Marau, large new areas were in cultivation in the Batang Lupar basin.203 Significantly, those Iban most condemned by the Brooke regime for ‘piracy’ were reported by St John to be more energetic farmers than any others.204 Although St John was a loyal supporter of the Rajah, and possibly his reports were intended to defend the Rajah from criticism, they should not be discounted. The Rajah had created a deep sense of anomy among Iban by the deliberate and repeated destruction of their farms. Farming was a ritual activity for Iban, success at which enhanced an individual’s spiritual rank. Increased, extended or intensified Iban farming in reaction to Brooke attacks reaffirmed Iban cosmology. It also provided an area of competition for individuals that would not provoke Brooke retaliation, and it provided material surpluses that could be traded for status-giving goods from Kuching. St John even claimed that, after Charles Brooke became Rajah, he persuaded some Iban chiefs to substitute a good harvest for a head in ceremonies to end mourning.205 Intensified or diversified Iban migration, trade and farming attempted to overcome the challenges to Iban status posed by successive military defeats. Iban also sought spiritual validation by participating directly in the Rajah’s prowess. The Skrang leader, Gassing, articulated this in his wish to ‘become as the white man’.206 The orang kaya of Lundu, an early beneficiary of the extension of the Rajah’s power, also wanted ‘to acquire the knowledge and wisdom of the “white men” ’, with the young men of his community proving themselves ‘anxious to acquire knowledge’. So intense

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was this desire among the Lundu Iban that missionaries found refusing to hear the lessons of children who misbehaved to be an effective form of punishment.207 Iban also conceived the medical treatments that missionaries dispensed as conveying European potency to patients. Thus, a ‘man will ask for medicine to make his dog brave to fight the wild pig, or for his paddy that the blight may not take it’.208 Similarly, the missionary, Chambers, observed an ‘avidity after bitter draughts and nauseous powders’ among Iban.209 It is clear from contemporary evidence that Iban considered Christianity too in terms of the potency it conveyed to its adherents and its effect on other ritual activities such as rice cultivation.210 The Iban orang kaya of Lingga was convinced that his people’s conversion to Christianity would bring them material advantages.211 A man at Orang Kaya Gassing’s longhouse asked the missionary, Perham, if he might pray to GOD to give him a good harvest of ‘padi’ ie rice, & if sick might he pray for health, & if overtaken by a storm in a river, & was nigh sinking might he pray for deliverance; & an affirmative answer seemed to assure him there was a definite object which apparently satisfied him it was worth considering.212

Others were more cautious. Two Lingga Iban were prepared to accept Christianity only after they had harvested their rice crops. Another argued that ‘the farms of the Christians . . . produce no more rice than other people’s, so I shall not worship God — It is of no use’.213 One Iban community that received a pastoral visit while planting rice urged the priest ‘to come and live with them at once’. We can only speculate how that community interpreted the fact that, during the fortnight it took the missionary to move to their village, their headman became ‘raving mad, and had to be put under restraint as he was very violent’.214 Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana had been a potent and powerful leader of the Saribas Iban. Following his death from smallpox in 1854 his power fragmented, as none of his four sons was able to prevent subsidiary leaders from asserting their independence.215 His sons, Nanang, Luyoh, Aji and Buda, needed to establish their own potency and provide leadership appropriate to their descent. Notwithstanding Brooke’s attempts to co-opt them, their search for spiritual status led them to oppose the Rajah’s pretensions. In 1858 Johnson brought an expedition into Saribas and burned 11 longhouses, including those of Aji and Luyoh.216 When Aji was killed during Johnson’s campaign against Rentap later in the same year, his efforts were continued with great vigour by his brothers. Luyoh and Buda played central roles in the upper Saribas’s open defiance of Sarawak in 1860.217 Nanang and Luyoh joined Rentap at Sadok.218 Charles Johnson’s 1861 campaign against Sadok marked the collapse of Dana’s sons’ attempts to secure spiritual status through opposition to the Rajah. When, in the face of

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Johnson’s massed forces, Nanang and Luyoh made terms, they even helped Johnson to move his 12-pounder gun up the mountain to bombard Rentap’s stronghold.219 For Apai Bakir, association with the Brookes had its reward: all my people are well off this year for padi, because we have paid every attention to the omens of Bertara (God), and appeased the Antus by taking alligators, killing pigs to examine their hearts, and we have judiciously interpreted our dreams. The consequence is a good harvest . . .

For others, Apai Bakir knew ‘the heavens have fallen in, and require many repairs’.220 Among those diminished by their failures were Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana’s family. The repairs they set out to make restored their high ritual status and the legitimacy of their leadership. At the beginning of 1863, the missionary stationed at Lingga was interrupted in his class by the arrival of a stranger from Saribas whose presence terrified the Lingga students. It was Buda, come among his traditional enemies to learn to read.221 He made sufficiently rapid progress to be baptised on Christmas Day 1863.222 Buda wanted access for all his people to the new source of potency and preached his new faith throughout Saribas and the Kalaka basin. He returned to Lingga at the end of 1864 with four young men from his community, whom he left to be instructed. He also brought a message from his brother, Nanang, who claimed that his longhouse had converted to Christianity and wanted a missionary to live with and teach his people.223 Buda brought another group to Lingga for instruction at the end of 1865,224 and by 1867 there was at Lingga ‘a continual presence’ of Saribas people seeking Christian instruction.225 All of these converts, on returning to their communities, ‘in some measure communicated the instruction thus received to their friends’. By 1867 there were 180 baptised Christians among the longhouses of Saribas and Kalaka.226 The determination of so many Saribas Iban to become Christian in the face of significant obstacles did not represent the inevitable extension of militant Christianity. These activities by Buda and the other Saribas converts should be seen as an Iban response to the challenges to Iban ritual existence posed by the Brooke campaigns against them, and as an attempt by Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana’s family and others to re-establish their ritual status and leadership.227 In 1882, 33 years after Beting Marau, Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana’s son, Nanang, whom Buda had converted to Christianity, was recognised by the second Rajah of Sarawak as the paramount Iban chief of the Saribas.228 The extension of James Brooke’s power among Iban was a long and painful process. The military strength that Brooke assembled from his followers in Sarawak and his friends in the British Navy enabled him to defeat Iban forces repeatedly. Through such defeats Brooke punished his

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enemies. But military power did not provide the means to integrate defeated Iban. For that, Brooke needed to establish structures that engaged Iban processes and met Iban objectives. James Brooke’s repeated destruction of those things Iban valued, and from which they derived ritual status and meaning, placed him in the centre of Iban culture. Iban perceived Brooke’s military power in their own terms, in the process creating his power afresh. Iban not only recreated Brooke power in their own terms — they changed their own behaviour in response to his. As Iban sought, through cultural innovation, to develop new ways of satisfying their ritual concerns, they developed and acted on altered perceptions of the world. In doing so, they increasingly concentrated on ritual activities that they could pursue within the Brooke state — activities with material outcomes of which the Brooke state approved, and therefore was prepared to facilitate.

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5 Competition, resistance and ritual in patron–client systems

The expansion of James Brooke’s activities into the predominantly Iban rivers northeast of Sarawak reinforced his importance to Sarawak people as a patron from whom status, power and material advantage derived. It intensified the relationships that bound Sarawak people to him. It also attracted new followers in the Iban areas into his entourage and expanded the area within which recognition of his semangat was the central organising principle of people’s lives. It did not overcome rivalries among the Sarawak Malays, however, or relieve Brooke of the need to extract sufficient economic resources to maintain his polity and its elite. Although Brooke realised that his followers conceived of him in cosmological terms, the Sarawak polity was not maintained solely by ritual relationships. Brooke accumulated and applied power in Sarawak through the development of networks of patron–client relations. James Scott elaborated the operations of patron–client relationships from the work of anthropologists, defining them as a special case of dyadic (two-person) ties involving a large instrumental friendship in which an individual of higher socio-economic status (patron) uses his own influences and resources to provide protection and/or benefits for a person of lower status (client) who, for his part, reciprocates by offering general support and assistance, including personal services to the patron.

Scott argued that, although the relationship between patron and client is unequal, clients have sufficient resources under their control for a degree of reciprocity to exist. Therefore client–patron relations are not characterised by command. Inequality is essential to the relationship, though, since the patron seeks to bind the client by ‘a debt of obligation’.1 The client’s inability to repay results in the development of ‘a cluster of asymmetrical 99

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obligations’,2 which diminish the client’s capacity to form new relationships with other patrons or to ‘square the debt’ and terminate the relationship. It is possible even that this dependence is underpinned by emotional bonds, which strengthen other links between client and patron as ‘repetition and familiarity’ between the two develop over time into ‘interest and affection’.3 The inequality inherent in patron–client relations encourages the creation of multiple relations by the patron, who will develop as many relationships as are needed or can be sustained. Thus clusters of dependent relationships develop around a patron, giving rise to what Hanks has termed the ‘entourage’.4 Patron–client relations facilitate, moreover, the development of layered structures, since patrons can also be the clients of even more powerful figures and clients the patrons of less powerful people. This network, of patrons and their clients and the clients’ own clients, Hanks termed the ‘circle’.5 These linkages are not only resilient, they are expansive; associating large populations over wide areas into an interlocking hierarchy. Errington posited that a large polity could be constructed, arranged in a pattern of entourages whose size, power, and control of human and material resources . . . decline with increasing distance from the ruler at the centre of it all. Each smaller entourage would be similar in principle and in organisation to the larger entourage encompassing it.6

Networks of patron–client relationships centred on James Brooke himself comprised the central integrating structure of the Brooke state. But patron–client relations provide a structural basis for conflict as well as for integration. First, they value vertical relations between patron and client over horizontal relations among patrons or clients. Within a circle of entourages, lesser patrons compete with each other both for the favour of the central patron and for followers and resources that would make themselves valuable to the patron. Patron–client relations promote indifference and hostility among lesser patrons.7 They underpin the development of cleavages within elites and give rise to factions. Secondly, patron–client systems comprise and institutionalise fundamentally unequal relations in which both parties seek to maximise the advantages they derive from the relationship. Notwithstanding the cultural understandings that underpin and legitimise clientage, patron–client systems provide a structure within which conflict and resistance is endemic. Although patron–client systems institutionalise the patron’s power, they also institutionalise the value of the client to the patron. In addition to the dyadic conflict which this implies, patron–client systems provide a structure within which numbers of clients can jointly resist the exactions of patrons in an attempt to maximise their autonomy. The development of joint actions by clients to resist patrons’ exactions is limited by the clients’ need to secure the patron’s favour, which fosters

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conflict and competition among clients. Therefore, clients will unite to resist the exactions of patrons only when they have already formed bonds stronger than the pressure to compete with one another. Notwithstanding the capacity for patron–client ties to cross ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural boundaries, the extractive force of the relationship will be diminished where it transcends boundaries of social identity and loyalty. In fragmented and fissiparous societies, in which communications are primitive and difficult and identities are localised, these bonds are likely to be at village level. Moreover, community resistance to exactions in patron–client systems are more likely to occur at the lower levels of the system, where the economic need for clients to preserve the material bases of their existence is greatest. At higher levels in the system material existence is less uncertain, and struggle focuses on maximising individual benefits. The maximisation of benefits is less amenable to cooperative joint action than is the minimisation of exactions. It is socially aggressive rather than defensive, and individual action will be more effective than communal action. Patron–client systems provide a framework within which people at all levels pursue their interests. The nature of action within a patron–client system varies according to the level in the system at which it occurs. At higher levels in the system, among aristocrats and others who live on economic surpluses extracted from lower-ranking clients, conflict occurs primarily between peers or near-peers, as they compete for titles, rank and control over resources. At lower levels, where economic surpluses are produced, individuals resist patrons as far as they are able without breaking the bonds of patronage. Low-ranking clients, like both their patrons and more aristocratic clients, seek to maximise the benefits they derive from the relationship and minimise the costs. In cosmological conceptions of power competition and resistance, no less than support and dependence, will be conceived of in cosmological terms. The operations of patron–client systems explicate Malay and Bidayan strategies and activities within the Brooke state. Subsidiary leaders like the Malay datus could reflect the Rajah’s glory and fame, and participate in his potency. The datus could also develop and apply their own, lesser power and, through control of people and resources, maintain entourages and establishments that testified to their status. Far from comprising an integrated elite, the Sarawak nobles competed with each other, in the manner of other Malay aristocracies, for titles of rank and for the resources to sustain their rank. Competition over resources and titles of rank reflected rivalry for spiritual status. Paradoxically, relations between the Bidayuh and the Rajah were marked both by Bidayan regard for the Rajah’s supernatural powers and by their determined resistance to his exactions. The Rajah’s perceived powers over the forces of nature provided Bidayuh with essential guarantees of agricultural prosperity. Bidayan resistance to his imposts conserved the material

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bases of Bidayan existence while maximising Bidayan participation in his semangat. MALAY PLOTS AND THE STRUCTURE OF MALAY POWER Successive historians have argued that during 1853–1854 and 1859–1860 a group of Malay nobles attempted to overthrow the Rajah. (The events of 1859–1860 are examined in Chapter 7.) Concise accounts of the alleged plot of 1853–1854 are provided, among others, by Runciman, who presented the standard view of the Brooke ‘court’ historians succinctly,8 and Sanib, who discussed the affair in the post-colonial context of Malay nationalism.9 Despite such differences in judgement and perspective those accounts agree with each other, and with other accounts, in maintaining that Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur became estranged from the Rajah because of the Rajah’s opposition to his daughter’s marriage to a sherif from the Rejang, because of the Rajah’s resuming direct control of the Bidayan population, and because of his appointment of headmen to oversee the affairs of the growing Malay kampongs in Kuching. Dissatisfied with the Rajah’s rule, Abdul Gapur is supposed to have been encouraged to action by the Rajah’s alienation from the British government.10 Abdul Gapur is alleged to have approached the other datus for support in overthrowing the Rajah and, notwithstanding their refusal to join the conspiracy, to have proceeded to try to kill him and his nephew and heir, Brooke Brooke. His plans revealed by a kinsman, Abdul Gapur was stripped of his titles and property and exiled. The primary source material relating to Malay activities in Sarawak during this period reveals a more complicated contest for power than this outline suggests, however. Sarawak Malay society prior to James Brooke’s arrival was fractured, its leadership contested by Datu Patinggi Ali and Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur. On his succession to the government, Brooke brokered a compromise between the rival Patinggis which saw Abdul Gapur’s seniority confirmed, with Ali compensated by his son’s succession as Datu Bandar on the death of an uncle holding that title. Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur’s position was strengthened by the death of Datu Patinggi Ali during the Rajah’s 1844 campaign. Ali’s principal heir was his son, Datu Bandar Molana, whose Bandar title ranked below the Patinggi title and whose ambitions to succeed to his father’s title were frustrated by Abdul Gapur’s command of the Rajah’s favour. During the years immediately following his father’s death, Molana seems to have been unable even to assert his lesser status as Bandar adequately. For example, he played a negligible role in an embassy in which the Rajah included him during 1845. Molana seems not to have been regarded by his fellow members, or the dignitaries they visited, as a person of consequence, since he was excluded from the important discussions.11 Molana was no more effective in Kuching during this period. According to Hugh Low, Molana

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did ‘not interfere much with the affairs of the state: though he regularly attends the court, he always defers his opinions to the more experienced patingi’.12 Nor was Abdul Gapur’s primacy threatened by the third Sarawak datu, Datu Tumanggong Mersal duing this period. Although Mersal was more experienced than Molana and might have been an able administrator, he showed little interest in the details of government. He was, moreover, isolated from the non-Malay population. Whereas Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur was popular among the Bidayuh because of his support for them during the period of Mahkota’s government, Bidayuh hated Mersal because of his oppressive behaviour and extortions.13 In addition, the Rajah probably discouraged Mersal from involving himself too extensively in the government since he entertained vague but continuing doubts about his loyalty.14 Molana’s inexperience and Mersal’s isolation thus allowed Abdul Gapur to consolidate his power under the Rajah during the years immediately following Datu Patinggi Ali’s death. But neither Mersal nor Molana was prepared to acquiesce to Abdul Gapur’s hegemony, and any attempt to improve their status could only be at his expense. Although contemporary sources do not focus on rivalries within the Malay elite, the course of intra-Malay conflicts can be reconstructed by adhering to the injunction of Harrisson and of Ongkili to ‘read between the lines’.15 As Malay aristocrats competed for control of the Sadong and Lundu Rivers, their rivalries found expression in attempts to establish Malay education and in the emergence of Moslem organisations in Kuching. These contests engaged Malay leaders in a series of interlocking struggles for power from 1845 until Abdul Gapur was exiled in 1854. The first opportunity for Molana to challenge Abdul Gapur’s power arose in the Sadong River. After the exclusion of Sherif Sahib from Sadong in 1844, the Rajah appointed one of Abdul Gapur’s followers, Abang Kassim, to rule the river with the title of Datu Bandar of Sadong.16 Molana’s father had claimed rights over some Sadong people and Molana, in an attempt to preserve his family’s interests, sent his brother-in-law and father-in-law to raise revenue there. When Sadong people complained to the Rajah of these impositions, James Brooke reinforced Datu Bandar Kassim’s authority. He instructed Kassim to order Molana’s followers out of Sadong, threatening them with punishment if they disobeyed.17 In 1848, in response to complaints from Sadong people, the Rajah suspended Kassim’s authority over the region. Abdul Gapur’s interests were protected, however, by the Rajah’s transferring responsibility for the province to Kassim’s brother, who was also a follower of Abdul Gapur, being married to his daughter.18 Molana’s ambitions to assert his family’s interests in Sadong would have been simultaneously heightened by Kassim’s fall from favour, and frustrated by Abdul Gapur’s continuing hold on the province. Although Datu Bandar Kassim’s dispossession in 1848 proved to be temporary, he was suspended again from the government of

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Sadong in 1850. Molana’s disappointment over his loss of the Sadong’s resources would have been compounded by the Rajah’s investiture, in 1850, of Abdul Gapur with its administration.19 Although Molana was unable to realise his claims over resources and followers in the Sadong he proceeded to confront Abdul Gapur’s assertion of primacy in Kuching, contesting Abdul Gapur’s influence within the Kuching Malay community. Islam provided a basis from which Molana could compete with Abdul Gapur, and in 1847 Molana initiated a public fund to build a mosque.20 The arrival of Anglican missionaries in Kuching in 1848 stimulated Moslem observance among the Kuching Malays, further expanding Molana’s circle of followers.21 Molana’s efforts to mobilise resurgent Islam indicated a more determined attempt to establish his leadership of the Malay community, to re-establish his family’s fortunes and to confront Abdul Gapur’s dominance. Molana and his Moslem supporters were aggressive and determined adversaries. By the end of 1850, they were reported to be fining Malays who failed to attend prayers regularly.22 Abdul Gapur seems to have recognised the threat that Molana’s expanding Moslem power base posed to his own primacy among Kuching Malays. In 1851, in a bid to strengthen his position, Abdul Gapur married his daughter, Dayang Fatima, to Sherif Bujang. A marriage alliance with a descendant of the Prophet would have reinforced Abdul Gapur’s standing with Moslems. Sherif Bujang was a natural ally for Abdul Gapur. Bujang’s brother, Sherif Masahor, had recently taken over control of the lower Rejang basin, and the ruler he displaced had been an ally of Molana’s family.23 In the Malayo–Moslem polities of maritime Southeast Asia, the conduct of great festivals and ceremonies demonstrated an individual’s potency and power, attracting the attention of lesser people. The presence of dignitaries honoured the host and invested the proceedings with their even greater status. Wedding ceremonies among aristocracies are, moreover, occasions for the overt display of power and status, and both Sarawak Malays and the Hadhrami Arabs from whom Sherif Bujang descended are noted for the lavishness of theirs.24 Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, engaged as he was in a struggle for ascendancy with Datu Bandar Molana, ensured that Dayang Fatima’s marriage was celebrated in spectacular style: ‘For days every house was covered with flags, and cannon fired from dawn to sunset; free tables for all friends were prepared, and the amount consumed per day was a never-ending subject of conversation.’25 The marriage asserted Abdul Gapur’s claims to pre-eminence, unequivocally signalling his determination to resist Molana’s growing influence. In 1848 Molana’s Moslem supporters had opposed Malay participation in a school the Christian missionaries established, emphasising instead the need for Malay children to learn ‘their own language with the Hadji’.26 As the struggle between the two datus intensified, Abdul Gapur responded to this opposition to Western education by throwing his own support behind the missionaries so that, as a result of his efforts, a Malay public day school

Mina

= Patinggi = Dayang Abdul Indah Gapur

Dayang Truan

Abang = Abdul Kahar

Sherif Hassan

Pangeran Ursat of Mukah Bandar Molana

Patinggi Ali

Abang Mir [Patinggi ?]

Patinggi Hashim

Bandar Buassan (formerly Datu Imam)

Bandar Rancha

Datu Imam Metaim

Abang Metaril

Genealogy 2

Kinship and factional rivalry among Sarawak Malays

Notes: Names in bold denote figures aligned with Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur. Names in italics denote figures associated with Datu Patinggi Ali and his successors. Names in bold italics denote figures whose loyalties were ambiguous.

daughter=Bandar Abang = daughter Dayang = Sherif Sherif = daughter Sherif Pangeran = daughter Sherif Dayang= Bandar Dayang = Abang Abang = Dayang Kassim Leman Fatima Bujang Masohor Abu Dipa of Muhammad Saadah Kassim Aton Metusin Osman Khadijah of of Igan Bakar Mukah Sadong Sherif Sherif Sahapudin Mohdzhar

Abang Durop

Abang Abdul Lanchat

Bilal Abdul Latif (from Brunei)

Patinggi Mir

Datu Kebar

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opened in August 1851.27 The religious hierarchy opposed this new school as well.28 Molana avoided attending it and ensured that his followers were too busy to do so. Although Molana promised that he would enrol with his followers,29 he was not mentioned among the students at the end of the year.30 Opposition from Molana and the Moslem hierarchy succeeded in undermining the school, which failed to attract more than 10 regular students.31 Molana’s opposition was directed towards Abdul Gapur rather than the missionaries or Western education. With his ability to mobilise Kuching Malay support proven, Molana moved to consolidate his authority and to isolate Abdul Gapur. Molana suggested to the missionaries that they establish yet another new school, this time in his own kampong. He promised to provide a suitable room and to ‘send his own followers’, which he thought would induce others to attend.32 The missionaries agreed and Molana, in contrast to his earlier opposition, ‘entered into it con amore, is a regular scholar himself & brings all his own people that are at leisure & exhorts others to attend’.33 Abdul Gapur reacted to Molana’s success with characteristic vigour. Although it is not clear how, he assumed control of the new mosque when it was completed in 1852, and he, rather than Molana, became its first imam.34 Possibly Abdul Gapur’s links with Sherif Bujang divided the Moslem hierarchy’s support for Molana sufficiently for Abdul Gapur to secure the position, or the Rajah’s continued backing might have proven decisive. Houses in the Malayo-Moslem world of Southeast Asia were invested with ritual and cosmological meaning. Houses provided an environment to mediate between an individual and a world animated by hostile forces. A properly built house was a safe haven. Moreover, by demonstrating the resources that an individual could mobilise, houses manifested their owner’s potency and pretensions. Building a new house was necessarily a ritual activity.35 It could also represent contests over power. The intense rivalry between Abdul Gapur and Molana that fractured the Sarawak Malay community from 1845 to 1854 found expression in the houses the two built, and rebuilt. Abdul Gapur, as befitted the primary Malay in Sarawak, lived in considerable state. His balai, for example, could easily accommodate several hundred people,36 and he maintained large, separate establishments for each of his two principal wives.37 In 1846 Molana, following his exclusion from Sadong in favour of Abdul Gapur’s followers, constructed an ostentatious house which appears to have quite overshadowed his rival’s. The new house was double-storeyed, in the cosmopolitan style of Brunei, ‘neatly furnished, painted white outside’, and contained every comfort.38 It asserted Molana’s status as Datu Patinggi Ali’s successor. In 1850 Abdul Gapur, responding to Molana’s challenge, built one of his wives, Mina, a new house in the style of the Rajah’s own new residence. Abdul Gapur not only capped Molana’s Brunei-style house, he publicly confronted Molana’s family’s sense of their position by placing Mina above

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her co-wife, Indah, who was Molana’s sister. Indah’s recriminations, and those of her daughter, persuaded Abdul Gapur to relent. His point made, Abdul Gapur, in a further demonstration of wealth and power, built a second house like the Rajah’s for Indah to live in.39 Abdul Gapur’s reassertion of supremacy and his snub of Indah demanded a response from Molana, who in 1851 restated his own claims by building himself a second house. Unlike his previous construction, which followed the Brunei style, Molana’s latest house also followed the lead set by the Rajah. It exceeded Abdul Gapur’s houses by having a shingle roof, like those of the Rajah, his nephew, and their Anglican Bishop.40 Molana’s was the grandest Malay house in all Sarawak. Rivalries among the Sarawak perabangan were enacted also at Lundu. The conflict at Lundu involved figures prominent in Abdul Gapur’s alleged plot, and was contemporaneous to it. In October 1853 Abang Patah tried to raise revenues there ‘without instructions and without rights’, and the Rajah suspected that he had been taxing fisheries off the coast there as well.41 In November the Rajah instructed his officer at Lundu, Charles Grant, to ‘keep your eye on any Sarawak people of influence who may come to Lundu and know what they are about’.42 Developments concerning Lundu were so important to the Rajah that he decided against taking Grant to Singapore for the commission into his activities.43 The situation at Lundu was still too uncertain for Grant to be withdrawn in April 1854.44 In May the Rajah ordered that a Malay settlement there be dispersed to stop it being a ‘nucleus of mischief’.45 Clearly, Lundu was a significant focus of activity, which involved Abang Patah and which the Rajah opposed. By 1854 Moslem missionary activity at Lundu was intense, and some Lundu Iban were reported to be ‘all but Malaised in their language and habits’.46 Resurgent Islam, based in Kuching, was associated with Molana, which suggests that he or his supporters were active at Lundu at this time. There is also evidence, albeit from several years later, that Abdul Gapur had interests at Lundu.47 The point of this detailed reconstruction has been to demonstrate the extent to which the period 1845–1854 was marked by rivalry between Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur and the other Sarawak Malay nobles led by Datu Bandar Molana. Although Molana established the legitimacy of his claims among Kuching Malays, he continued to be outranked by his father’s old rival. The Rajah’s ongoing support for Abdul Gapur not only prevented Molana’s expanding the resources he controlled, it precluded his increasing his rank within the Rajah’s following. The Rajah himself reported in 1850 that the ‘three native Datus or Chiefs are from position naturally jealous each of the other, and though perfectly friendly look to the European chief Govt as their proper and only balance’.48 The solution for Molana and his allies was to upset the balance the government maintained. Following his assumption of government in 1841, James Brooke had tried to retain control over Bidayuh, paying the datus as bureaucrats from the revenues they collected on his behalf.49 During the later 1840s, however,

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Lundu Iban as represented by Europeans in the 1840s

Image rights unavailable

A group of Lundu Iban photographed later in the century: as early as 1854, the Iban at Lundu were reported to be ‘all but Malaised in their langauge and habits’. The impact of Malay culture on these Lundu Iban is evident in their clothes

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when the Rajah was increasingly absorbed with duties and interests outside Sarawak, he gave the datus direct rights of taxation over the Bidayuh and allowed them to retain half the taxes collected. The datus also established their right to ‘first trade’ with the Bidayuh during this period.50 Effectively, the Rajah allowed the datus to convert their bureaucratic roles into chiefly authority. This change in the structure of power favoured Abdul Gapur above the other datus as, in contrast to them, he was popular and enjoyed a reputation for generosity and justice among the Bidayuh. Moreover, the areas he controlled included the most populous parts of the country. Even Abdul Gapur’s extensive economic resources were inadequate to pay for a ceremony on the scale of Fatima’s wedding, however, and he sought to borrow money extensively from among the Malay community in Kuching to meet his expenses. Molana’s influence among the Kuching Malays seems to have denied Abdul Gapur financial support, so the government itself lent him the funds he needed.51 St John reported that Abdul Gapur’s need to pay for Dayang Fatima’s marriage led him to increase his demands for revenue from the Bidayuh he controlled, and that those exactions caused Bidayuh to complain to the government.52 The Rajah was specially sensitive to complaints by Bidayuh against Malays, since his determination to relieve them from Malay oppression had been an important public justification of his rule. He had twice removed Datu Bandar Kassim from the government of the Sadong in response to complaints about his maladministration. The Rajah did not reprimand Abdul Gapur or otherwise respond to these complaints, however. On the contrary: at the same time St John alleged that Abdul Gapur was oppressing his people, the Rajah expanded Abdul Gapur’s influence by appointing his brother to command a new fort at Kanowit,53 and Brooke Brooke depended on him in forging a pro-government community on the lower Skrang. Bishop McDougall, who was not uncritical of Malays, also respected and admired Abdul Gapur at this time.54 Moreover, Abdul Gapur, alone among the Sarawak datus, had not previously been compromised by illegal exactions. All these factors suggest that the complaints St John reported were fabricated or exaggerated. Although neither the Rajah nor his officers took these allegations against Abdul Gapur very seriously, complaints continued to be received, and St John claimed that the government fined some of Abdul Gapur’s followers for their excesses.55 In 1852, in response to yet more complaints, Brooke Brooke toured the Samarahan River to investigate Abdul Gapur’s activities. St John claimed that on this tour Brooke uncovered widespread misgovernment.56 He has exaggerated. Elsewhere he reported that Brooke Brooke found thousands of migrants farming in the district. If Abdul Gapur and his followers were as rapacious and oppressive as St John and others later claimed, he is not likely to have attracted thousands of immigrants under his administration. In fact, far from finding that the people of Samarahan were oppressed, Brooke Brooke found that they were successfully evading Abdul

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Gapur’s legitimate exactions on a wide scale.57 Yet the government continued to receive allegations against Abdul Gapur, to which Brooke Brooke responded by inspecting Abdul Gapur’s areas upriver from Kuching.58 Although St John reported that the Bidayuh under Abdul Gapur’s administration were exploited and oppressed, it appears that they did not complain about these injustices but ‘submitted without denouncing him to the Rajah’.59 Therefore, the source of the string of allegations against Abdul Gapur seems to have been other Sarawak Malays who, from about the time of Fatima’s marriage, began an unrelenting campaign to persuade the Rajah that Abdul Gapur was unworthy of the rank and position he held. Aware of the Rajah’s concern to protect his Bidayan subjects, it seems that Abdul Gapur’s Malay rivals tried to persuade the government that he was oppressive and unjust. The Rajah remained unmoved. St John later argued that Abdul Gapur’s oppressions caused the Rajah to reintroduce direct government administration of the Bidayuh,60 and he and subsequent scholars have seen in this reform the seeds of the plot they allege Abdul Gapur to have initiated. In fact, although Abdul Gapur’s financial difficulties following Fatima’s wedding provided the Rajah with an unparalleled opportunity to reassert direct government control over the Bidayan population, this reform was a longstanding and clearly expressed aim.61 In October 1853 the Rajah reported that Abdul Gapur had transferred control of his Bidayuh to the government and ‘is delighted to receive $100 a month’.62 The Rajah’s financial settlement was generous. It provided cash to the value of the rice revenue which Abdul Gapur was entitled to collect, and added 50 per cent more to cover the potential profits from his trade.63 Since the government actually permitted Abdul Gapur to continue trading with his former people,64 the compensation paid to him for his trading rights comprised a net increase of 50 per cent in his revenue. That the government also neglected to deduct the costs of collecting the revenue from the stipend paid to Abdul Gapur amounted to another significant government subsidy for him. No wonder he was delighted. Moreover, that the Rajah permitted him to continue trading with Bidayuh formerly under his authority further suggests that he had not been behaving oppressively. So too does the fact that Mrs McDougall, who described Malay–Bidayan trading relations at this time, failed to mention Abdul Gapur as being particularly oppressive or unjust.65 Notwithstanding the generosity of the Rajah’s settlement, and Abdul Gapur’s pleasure with it, from about this time relations between him and the Rajah soured. The Rajah wrote that he was angered by Abdul Gapur’s ‘abusing his power and raising his head high at the expense of the government and the finer classes’. In a significant deterioration of relations, he publicly reprimanded Abdul Gapur and fined him. But the Rajah’s failure to identify instances of oppression or excess makes it unlikely that he had any specific grievance against him.66 Rather, the Rajah’s concern that Abdul Gapur had infringed the rights of ‘the finer classes’ indicates that, for some

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reason, he had listened to further complaints from Abdul Gapur’s Malay rivals. The Rajah’s claim that Abdul Gapur’s actions diminished the government might also indicate that the content of the stories brought to the Rajah had changed. It seems that the other Malay leaders, instead of claiming that Abdul Gapur was mistreating Bidayuh, began to foster doubts in the Rajah’s mind about Abdul Gapur’s support for him or for his policies. These doubts, rather than evidence of maladministration, caused the Rajah’s increasing irritation with Abdul Gapur towards the end of 1853. The change in strategy by the Malays opposed to Abdul Gapur coincided with a marked increase in the Rajah’s vulnerability to suggestions of treachery. In May 1853 he had almost died of smallpox. Frank McDougall, who was a well-trained and widely experienced doctor, believed that the gravity of the Rajah’s illness had seriously affected his mental capacity.67 Moreover, the Rajah had been nursed to health by Sherif Moksain, one of Abdul Gapur’s bitterest enemies.68 The long days of the Rajah’s illness and recuperation provided Moksain with opportunities to undermine the Rajah’s faith in Abdul Gapur and capitalise on any sense of obligation that his tireless nursing might have engendered. PLOTS AND PLOTTERS In early 1854, with the struggle over Lundu proceeding, Abang Patah approached St John while the Rajah and his nephew, Brooke Brooke, were away with Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, and told him that Abdul Gapur had proposed to the other datus that they overthrow the Rajah’s government and expel his followers from Sarawak. Patah told St John that the datus refused to join Abdul Gapur and, although they had not told the Rajah or any of his European officers of the plot, they kept a close watch on his proceedings.69 Abang Patah claimed that he was concerned that Abdul Gapur and his armed followers might cut the Rajah and Brooke Brooke off ‘at one blow’. St John immediately dispatched a boat to warn the Rajah, who, St John wrote later, ‘had noticed some very odd proceedings on the part of the Patinggi, but having no suspicions, had not been able to interpret some of his armed movements; but now it was clear that he was trying to get the Europeans together to strike one treacherous blow’.70 In view of Abdul Gapur’s rivalry with the other leaders, and their jealous dislike of him, it is hard to believe either that he would have attempted to conspire with them or that they would have failed to reveal any proposed conspiracy to the Rajah. The Rajah’s failure to act on Abang Patah’s allegation suggests that he also did not believe it. In June 1854, as part of a municipal reform, the Rajah appointed a number of prominent Malays to head the growing number of Malay kampongs of Kuching. Abdul Gapur’s standing was already diminished by the Rajah’s public rebuke of him, his interests at Lundu were contested and his special relationship with the Rajah, which had been the source of his

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pre-eminence for more than a decade, was tarnished. Only his status as senior datu established his authority among Kuching’s Malay population of between 6000 and 10 000,71 over whom Molana and the other more popular leaders would otherwise have exercised influence. Loss of control of the community would have significantly diminished Abdul Gapur and advanced Molana’s power. In a foolish and desperate act, Abdul Gapur summoned the newly appointed headmen (tua kampong) to his house and confiscated their commissions, telling them ‘he was not going to allow everybody to be made a datu’.72 Abdul Gapur’s action was a profound miscalculation. The Rajah was not tolerant of dissent or opposition. Keen to discredit Abdul Gapur, the other Malay leaders ensured that the Rajah was quickly told of his impertinence, presenting it in its worst light by emphasising the defiance of the Rajah’s authority implicit in his actions. The Rajah acted swiftly. In secret talks with Datu Bandar Molana and Datu Tumanggong Mersal he agreed to depose Abdul Gapur. The three concealed their agreement, so that Abdul Gapur appears to have been unaware of the crisis confronting him until, at an assembly in the court, the Rajah, by prior arrangement with Molana and Mersal, suddenly accused him of misgovernment and treason. Abdul Gapur sat quietly and made no attempt to resist the Rajah’s authority. Molana, Mersal and their followers quickly fetched Abdul Gapur’s lelas, muskets and ammunition into the court.73 Although some of the Malays urged Abdul Gapur’s execution, the Rajah refused to condemn him, proposing instead that he undertake the haj to Mecca.74 The first Malay ‘Plot’ was over, Abdul Gapur’s power broken. His fall permitted a redistribution of rank and resources to his rivals. Abang Patah extended his operations from Talang Talang to include the fisheries of Sematan, along the coast from Lundu,75 but none benefited more than Molana and his family. In St John’s words, the ‘next in rank, the Bandar, now succeeded to the chief influence among the Malays; and his brother, as Datu Imaum, was added to the list of trusty counsellors’.76 Although historians have accepted Abang Patah’s allegation to St John that Abdul Gapur plotted to kill the Rajah and Brooke Brooke and overthrow their regime, important inconsistencies and disparities undermine its plausibility. First, the only evidence of treason presented was Abang Patah’s allegations to St John. Abang Patah was a rival of Abdul Gapur’s for power in Sarawak and was, at the time he made the allegations, clearly plotting himself to increase his power at Lundu against the Rajah’s wishes. Moreover, he was believed to be ambitious to become a datu, and his own father distrusted him on this ground.77 The Rajah appears not to have believed Patah’s story, since he declined to act on it. Secondly, scholars should be suspicious of the total lack of detail of Abdul Gapur’s alleged plot in contemporary accounts. St John claimed that, following Patah’s allegations, ‘a few judicious inquiries brought the whole

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story out’,78 but did not record what that story was. Is it conceivable that he would have failed to record the details of a plot to kill his benefactor and friends and overthrow their government? Nor are other accounts of the episode any fuller. Thirdly, the Rajah’s account, quoted by Miss Jacob, is as concerned with Abdul Gapur’s relations with the other Malay leaders as with his actions against the government — ‘he not only intrigued against the Government, but, by threatening the better class of Sarawak people, thwarted our measures, and used language which was treasonable against every constituted authority’.79 In this letter, and in that quoted by St John, the Rajah failed to cite any specific instance of alleged treason.80 The evidence that the Rajah presented to the court assembly against Abdul Gapur related to Abdul Gapur’s opposition to the appointment of tuas kampong, rather than to Abang Patah’s allegations, and the Rajah’s accusations of treason were probably hyperbolic references to the former. Fourthly, the Rajah’s leniency to Abdul Gapur is difficult to reconcile with a belief that Abdul Gapur had plotted his life. The Rajah’s executions of Pa Rimbam and Pa Tumma, and his anticipation of Sherif Sahib’s death, his desire that dissident Skrang sherifs be killed like dogs and the scale of his campaigns against the Iban demonstrate his preparedness to kill his enemies. The Rajah’s Malay supporters would have sympathised with the Rajah’s views, moreover. Not surprisingly, Malay rulers and their supporters regarded treason, or derhaka, with repugnance. Sultan Hussain of Singapore told Raffles that, under Malay adat, anyone convicted of treason should be killed, ‘together with his family and relations to the last man, his house uprooted, roof to the ground, pillars uppermost and the soil on which it stands thrown into the sea’.81 It is not plausible that the Rajah, believing that Abdul Gapur had plotted his death and the overthrow of his regime, proposed that he undertake the haj. Finally, neither the Rajah’s subsequent actions nor those of his supporters were consistent with the Rajah’s believing Abdul Gapur had tried to kill him. Abdul Gapur, on his arrival in Singapore en route to Mecca, was called to give evidence at the commission into the Rajah’s activities. Not once during the proceedings, which were distinguished by the Rajah’s obstructiveness and malice towards other witnesses, did either the Rajah or any of his supporters object to Abdul Gapur’s appearing before the commission as the Datu Patinggi of Sarawak.82 Nor did they tell the Commissioners that Abdul Gapur had been convicted of plotting the Rajah’s death. Even when St John took the stand at his own request to contradict some evidence Abdul Gapur had given, he saw no reason to raise this extraordinary circumstance.83 Historians have identified the three causes of Abdul Gapur’s dissatisfaction with the Rajah as the conversion of his rights over Bidayuh to a salary, the Rajah’s opposition to Fatima’s marriage, and the Rajah’s appointment of tuas kampong.84 Of these, the only cause that withstands scrutiny is the appointment of tuas kampong. Against it, we need to weigh the benefits that

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Abdul Gapur derived from the Rajah’s rule. Under James Brooke, Abdul Gapur’s possession of the Patinggi title was confirmed against the claims of Molana’s family and his rights over most of the Bidayuh in Sarawak, and the wealthy Bau Chinese miners, were recognised. When the Rajah removed his control over Bidayuh, it was on terms advantageous to Abdul Gapur, and it provided him much needed financial relief. The Rajah’s opposition to Fatima’s marriage, moreover, has been overemphasised, since the government lent Abdul Gapur money to help pay for it. The Malay ‘Plot’ of 1853–1854 represented the culmination of intense rivalry between Abdul Gapur and the other members of the Kuching Malay elite, led by Datu Bandar Molana, Datu Tumanggong Mersal and his son, Abang Patah, and Sherif Moksain. Unable to overthrow Abdul Gapur’s power in a series of contests, they appear to have carried stories to the government calculated to destroy the Rajah’s confidence in him. Twice during key episodes in the collapse of relations between the Rajah and Abdul Gapur, the Rajah alluded to complaints by other Malay leaders. At the assembly in November 1853, at which Abdul Gapur was fined for his alleged excesses, the Rajah was angered by his ‘raising his head high at the expense of . . . the finer classes’,85 and in exiling Abdul Gapur from Sarawak, the Rajah accused him of ‘threatening the better class of Sarawak people’.86 With the Rajah’s mental capacity undermined by illness and his objectivity compromised by his gratitude for Sherif Moksain’s ministrations, his relations with Abdul Gapur soured as a result of these exaggerated allegations. Although Abdul Gapur’s resistance to the Rajah’s municipal reforms finally persuaded the Rajah to act against him, resistance to a policy is not evidence of revolt or of planned regicide. If there was a Malay ‘Plot’ in 1853–1854, Molana, Mersal, Patah and Moksain were the plotters, Abdul Gapur the victim. The plotters would not be secure in their power if Abdul Gapur were to regain the Rajah’s confidence. Therefore they urged that the Rajah execute him, opposed the leniency with which he was dispatched to Mecca,87 and welcomed rumours in 1856 that he had died: ‘his relatives take it very coolly and the general feeling in the country is satisfaction’.88 The Rajah’s formation of the Sarawak Supreme Council following Abdul Gapur’s departure helped also to institutionalise and consolidate Molana’s influence. It comprised, in addition to the Rajah and his two nephews, Brooke Brooke and Charles Johnson, Datu Bandar Molana, Molana’s brother, the Datu Imam, his kinsman and follower, the Tuan Katib, who was the executive head of the mosque, and Datu Tumanggong Mersal.89 Abdul Gapur had not died in Mecca, however, and news of his proposed return to Sarawak on completion of the haj threatened the gains his rivals had secured by his overthrow. The Supreme Council deliberated for four days about whether he should be allowed back.90 The Rajah seems to have supported his return. It was the Malay members who repudiated him ‘so that he had to be banished to Malacca’.91 Although the Rajah eventually agreed to the

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Malays’ determination to continue Abdul Gapur’s exclusion, he allowed him $300 and a monthly stipend of $30. The pension was conditional on Abdul Gapur’s living at Malacca or Penang.92 The Rajah reported that the ‘Bandar etc as well as all the chief people are highly pleased with the whole arrangement’.93 BIDAYAN RESOURCES AND RESISTANCE The rice and other taxes that the Rajah imposed on the Bidayan population comprised a significant portion of the material resources necessary for the maintenance of the Brooke state and its elite, European and Malay. The reform of Bidayan administration in 1853 removed the layer of Malay control on which the government relied. Under the datu system, the government, while restraining the most exploitative aspects of Malay governance, received half the taxes collected as a net revenue. While the datus were responsible for tax collection, any Bidayan resistance to government exactions might have been perceived by European observers as evidence of Malay excesses. Bidayan resistance to the government’s exactions appears to have increased after 1853, however, following reform of the Bidayan administration. Such resistance was an important catalyst in the development of state power and techniques of administration in Sarawak, stimulating the introduction of censuses and intensifying the direct nature of James Brooke’s rule. Chapter 3 presents evidence that the Rajah’s success in taking government and his ability to protect Bidayuh was quickly interpreted by Bidayuh as proof of his high ritual status. Bidayuh continued to hold such beliefs for the remainder of his reign. In 1850 Charles Grant recorded Bidayuh claiming that their fruit trees flourished because of the Rajah’s semangat.94 Five years later, Alfred Russel Wallace recorded that: Many of the distant tribes think that the Rajah cannot be a man. They ask all sorts of curious questions about him, whether or not he is as old as the mountains, whether he cannot bring the dead to life.95

The Christian missionary, Abé, also found such beliefs widespread.96 Bidayuh integrated the Rajah into religious rituals designed to ensure their prosperity, seeking opportunities to absorb the Rajah’s semangat, and to facilitate its transfer to their crops and animals. Bidayuh even believed that the Rajah’s potency could be absorbed through other Europeans associated with him. In 1852, when the Rajah and Bishop McDougall of Sarawak visited the Suntah Bidayuh, they were received by elderly women who made yells of welcome, and stroked their visitors’ arms and legs; for they fancy there is some goodness or virtue to be rubbed out of white people.

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They then washed their feet in cocoa-nut water, and set aside this water to steep their seed paddy in, imagining it would help it grow . . . They brought portions of cooked rice on leaves, and begged the Englishmen to spit into them, after which they ate them up, thinking they should be the better for it.97

The Rajah’s presence enabled Bidayuh to replenish their semangat from his. It directed potent energies into their communities, ensuring their spiritual and material welfare. But beyond these more generalised benefits, Bidayuh believed that the Rajah could reverse their specific misfortunes. When the wife of a Bidayan headman was sick, she ‘came to Brooke that he might rub her side’.98 Bidayuh whose crops had failed would try to induce Brooke to visit their village, ‘to remove the causes which had rendered their crop a small one’.99 In 1850, therefore, Bidayuh ‘of various tribes’ begged the Rajah to visit them,100 and in 1853 delegations of all the Bidayuh communities of the western branch of the Sarawak river ‘came and pressed us to go among them’. Although the Rajah’s health in 1853 would not permit such exertion, the Bidayuh leaders insisted that he attend a series of ‘great festivals’ at a number of longhouses.101 When the Rajah failed to visit communities that felt the need of his cosmic revitalisation, their leaders travelled to Kuching to secure his magical bodily fluids. The orang kaya of the Suntah Bidayuh, the Rajah noted in his diary, ‘brought a young cocoa-nut for me to spit into, as usual; and after receiving a little gold dust and white cloth, returned home to cultivate his rice-fields’. The Rajah found Bidayan belief in his supernatural powers ‘highly gratifying’, and recorded with equanimity his subjects’ requests to injest his saliva.102 The capacity to influence the world of spirits and the forces of nature to human advantage was a central function of Bidayan leadership.103 Bidayan conceptualisations about the relationship between this world and other levels of existence gave ideological expression to systems of patron–client relations through which the Rajah was able to convert authority derived from cosmological perceptions into temporal power. Bidayan recognition of the Rajah’s high spiritual status underpinned the establishment of his authority over them. Individuals who participated in his potency derived spiritual status from their association. They were appropriate leaders for their communities, because they facilitated their communities’ association with the Rajah. Aspirants to power, therefore, were keen to claim the Rajah’s support, and drew strength when they received it. Conversely, the Rajah was able also to remove leaders who incurred his displeasure.104 Cosmological perceptions of authority among Bidayuh did not preclude Bidayan resistance to the government’s exactions, however. For too long, scholars have accepted descriptions of Bidayuh as meek and compliant, ignoring evidence of their resistance to oppression and imposition. In his study of peasant resistance, James Scott found that, although violent action by peasants is rare, writers focus on it because it is easily discernible in

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written historical sources.105 The same is true of resistance to the Brooke state. Historians have focused on Rentap and other Iban warriors, tending to overlook the quotidian struggle by Bidayuh to maintain economic autonomy. Scott identified the weapons of peasant resistance as ‘footdragging, dissimulation, false-compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage’. He also noted that non-payment of taxes was a classic constraint on Southeast Asian governments.106 These tactics by the weak avoid open breaches or conflicts. They are deniable: individuals defer and delay rather than refuse; they pretend to cooperate and evade as far as they can without engendering retribution. Within a system of patron–client relations, these tactics serve the client’s need to minimise imposts by the patron, without fracturing a relationship that provides advantages. Although details are often scarce, some of these tactics are identifiable in historical accounts of Sarawak. Even before his assumption of government James Brooke observed that some Bidayuh ‘showed all the characteristics of a wild people; never openly resisting their masters, but so obstinate that they nearly always got their own way in everything; to all threats and entreaties opposing a determined and immovable silence’.107 On his assumption of government Brooke imposed a rice tax on each Bidayan family. In addition, each family had to provide unspecified amounts of free labour to the government.108 Bidayan resistance can be discerned in contemporary sources in several ways, reducing liability for taxes by concealing the number of families in a longhouse, delay in paying taxes and resisting labour imposts. Bidayan attempts to reduce their taxation liabilities by concealing the numbers of families in their communities are well documented in the contemporary sources. In 1845 Hugh Low found that one Bidayan village was three to four times larger than ‘I was at first told’.109 In 1852 Bidayuh on the Samarahan River avoided taxes by crowding two or three families into one apartment. St John estimated that in this way Bidayuh reduced their liability for taxes by 25 per cent, and he recorded that ‘measures have been taken to ensure a proper enumeration’.110 Although I found no details of the measures taken in 1852, continued underpayment of taxes induced the government to conduct a full census of the Bidayan population in 1855. The census found that Bidayuh were evading up to half the taxes claimed by government. The Singe Dyaks, for example, had a taxable population of 195 families rather than 100. Another Bidayan community consisted of 65 taxable families instead of 30. This pattern appeared throughout the Bidayan areas. The Rajah believed that revenues would nearly double once new levels of tax liability were established. Not all Bidayuh cooperated in the census, however. The Singes directly opposed its conduct, causing the government to replace the Singe headman with a more compliant figure.111 The Rajah expected further Bidayan resistance to the higher levels of extraction, however, noting that there would be ‘trouble and expense in

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collection at first’.112 The resistance that developed was overt and determined. Pa Gosting and Pa Jaging, the leaders of two other Bidayan communities, protested by withholding other amounts claimed by the government. They ‘talked boldly and insolently behind our backs’ and tried to organise resistance on a wider scale by urging the Singes to join a tax strike. Their campaign culminated in their leading a large group of Bidayuh to Kuching to protest about the taxes to the Rajah. James Brooke deposed both men from their positions, ‘read them a lecture — clapped them in the fort, and ordered the revenue to be paid immediately’.113 Although the government census of 1855 determined taxable populations, cholera outbreaks provided Bidayuh with new opportunities to undermine its authority. Bidayuh exaggerated fatalities to reduce their tax liabilities. One community claimed in 1858 that it had lost 70 families.114 The Sentah Bidayuh claimed that cholera reduced their community from 100 families to 63. The government did not believe them, and Charles Grant reported that he was ‘looking at the size of the Sentah village’.115 A new census to resolve disputes with Bidayan communities about tax liabilities was conducted in 1859.116 By 1862, avoidance was again so widespread that the government was considering a third census.117 Mrs McDougall reported that when the Bidayuh were under the authority of the datus, Bidayuh leaders brought the rice taxes to Kuching to pay the Rajah direct.118 Following the introduction of a centralised administration in 1854, however, Bidayuh habitually delayed paying the amounts due, so that the government had to send officers on tours after the rice harvest to enforce compliance. March and April were harvesting and threshing months for Land Dyaks.119 Charles Grant returned from an excursion upcountry on 12 April 1858,120 and by the beginning of May he was at another Bidayan community ‘arranging about the revenues’.121 His colleague, Hay, was similarly engaged among the Bidayuh of the Sadong River.122 These tours were not isolated events but annual systematic attempts to extract revenue. Thus, in May 1859, Brooke Brooke wrote to Hay that he was ‘glad to hear that your visit to the Dyaks was satisfactory. I suppose the revenues will be coming in shortly.’123 Bidayan communities appear to have developed considerable skill at deferring the delivery of their taxes. In one year, the Sadong taxes were still being collected in September, some five months after the harvest.124 The government’s tussle with the Bidayan population for taxes, requiring regular censuses and annual tours of upriver areas, was expensive. Bidayan resistance to taxation raised administrative costs as well as reducing the levels of revenue raised. It forced the government to have regard for the net revenue affects of introducing new taxes. Such constraints on government actions were strengthened by the Rajah’s recognition that a ‘contented population is better than a full purse’ and his concern to ‘avoid defeats or chance of collision’.125 As early as 1853, the government decided against introducing a tax on the use of timber because it ‘could not collect it with

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any profit’.126 By 1864, the difficulties associated with enforcing taxation on the Bidayuh were recognised as being so great that the British Consul in Sarawak reported that the government would need to increase indirect taxes if it wanted to expand its revenue base.127 The Rajah’s initial imposts on Bidayuh had included unspecified labour for the government. Demands for Bidayan labour were mostly limited to transporting antimony ore from mines to sites from whence it could be loaded onto boats, and to providing porters for government officers and other Europeans travelling upcountry. Notwithstanding their eagerness to associate with the Rajah and other Europeans, Bidayuh resisted both sorts of demands. In 1858, for example, Grant appears to have been unable to overcome Bidayan reluctance to carry down antimony ore, so that Brooke Brooke, himself, had to go upcountry to persuade them.128 The Rajah was even prepared to reinstate Pa Gosting and Pa Jaging if they were able to marshall the necessary workers.129 Nor were Bidayuh happy to act as porters for travellers. Alfred Wallace recorded his frustration in 1855 in trying to get Bidayuh from the Sadong to help him to the next village: ‘The orang kaya said that if I insisted on having men, of course he would get them, but when I took him at his word and said I must have them, there came some fresh remonstrance.’ Wallace’s own remonstrances failed to impress the orang kaya and Wallace was obliged to stay the night in the village.130 At yet another village, the leading men left the house to avoid having to provide him with a guide and porters, and Wallace obtained the help he needed only ‘by dint of threats and promises’.131 He told the men in the village that the chiefs had behaved very badly, and I should acquaint the Rajah with their conduct, and that I insisted on going on at once. Every man present made some excuse, but after much trouble and two hours delay, we succeeded in getting off.132

CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF COMPETITION AND RESISTANCE Malay aristocrats did not conceive their actions in terms of direct rivalry with near-equals over resources. As Milner demonstrated, Malay aristocrats were primarily concerned to preserve and improve their nama (title, rank, reputation).133 Nama derived from the ruler. It manifested an individual’s participation in a ruler’s potency, and indicated the intensity and expansiveness of the individual’s own semangat. Like other elements in cosmological conceptions of power, nama integrated the physical world with other levels of existence. Because Malays believed that nama affected an individual’s status after death, competition for it was particularly intense. If the allocation of titles and rank by rulers created power relationships, it also needed to reflect them. As Shelly Errington observed, one ‘of the

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basic political forces of the ranked polities of the archipelago . . . was precisely the need to make the polity’s titles and honours (whose font was the ruler) relatively congruent with political influence (whose basis was the people who followed the potential title-holder)’.134 Errington explored the relationship between the recognition of rank and the demonstration of power on Sulawesi. She found that: The ruler’s attention was drawn to someone who was striving upward and succeeded in acquiring and maintaining a large following . . . A ruler would be politically very unwise to ignore a person with a large following when the ruler distributed appointments, titles, and honors. People who sought honors from above, then, also had to look down to their inferiors and followers, attending to their needs in order not to alienate and lose them. The font of honours and prestige was from above, but the groundswell of influence and power on which those honors were predicated . . . came from below.135

Although the activities of all the Malay leaders, like Abang Patah and Sherif Moksain, reflected their concern to improve their nama, the contest between Abdul Gapur and Molana over the Patinggi title was especially intense because, as Abdul Gapur himself explained, the Patinggi title established its holder’s seniority over all other title holders under the Rajah.136 Molana was not concerned to secure his family’s interests, for example, in the Sadong, only because of the resources he would acquire as a patron. He wanted to acquire resources and followers that would demonstrate to the Rajah his right to the Patinggi title. The Rajah recognised that the disputed title, of itself, was the cause of disruptive rivalry within his elite and, following Abdul Gapur’s exile in 1854, he allowed it to lapse into disuse. Bidayuh’s belief that the Rajah’s participation in their lives was essential to their prosperity did not preclude their determined resistance to his imposts and exactions. Bidayuh’s primary concern was to maintain cosmic harmony through the ritual activity of rice farming, and by the observation of other adat. The Rajah’s potency and his supernatural powers assisted in this process. Bidayuh sought to associate with him in order to ensure successful harvests and adequate agricultural surpluses. How, then, could they try to cheat him out of his taxes, and stall paying them? Why did they refuse the opportunities to associate with him and his officers which the government’s need for porters and guides offered? Bidayuh needed a cosmological justification for their resistance to the Rajah’s exactions. Geddes’ experiences in the 1950s provide an insight into one way Bidayuh might have conceptualised and legitimised such actions. Bidayuh believed rice to be ‘a living thing with its own soul’,137 and Geddes found that they were terrified should the souls of rice be frightened or threatened. Rice growing in the fields or being threshed could be approached safely. Rice stores, however, where Bidayuh kept their harvests after the rice grain had been dried, were inviolable. Indeed, Geddes found

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that for ‘a European to get into a Land Dayak’s padi store is far harder than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle’. The sudden intrusion by strangers, especially Europeans unaware of the vulnerability of rice souls, might frighten the semangat into leaving the rice. At the very least, it would weaken the semangat, impair its vitality and cause illness. Although Geddes found that his Bidayan friends agreed that he could measure their rice stores, they had no intention that he should do so: ‘There was no lack of goodwill, but ideology firmly barred the door of the padi store.’ Bidayuh were prevented from cooperating by a fear of the supernatural.138

Procession welcoming Charles Grant to a Bidayuh village

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Geddes’ experiences parallel the Rajah’s efforts to enforce the rice tax. Bidayuh could justify resisting the Rajah’s demands for a share of their rice by reference to the needs of the rice, itself. Bidayuh obviously made the Rajah aware of their concern to protect the semangat of rice in their stores, since Brooke noted that ‘the Dyaks in stowing their rice at harvest, do it with great care, from a superstitious feeling that the simungi of the Padi will escape’.139 Moreover, rice can be accurately measured, whether by weight or volume, only when it is properly dried. Bidayan concepts, therefore, specifically denied the Rajah’s officers access to rice that could be accurately measured for tax purposes in favour of heavier, larger, undried grains, measurement of which would reduce the real levels of tax paid. The Bidayan objective of retaining their rice and controlling their own labour also was justified by cosmological understandings in a more direct way. Bidayuh seeking to maximise their participation in the Rajah’s semangat needed to attract him, or his high-ranking associates, to their villages. Historical sources are replete with Bidayuh requests that the Rajah visit them. Prior to the displacement of Malays in the administration of Bidayan areas, Bidayuh used the payment of taxes as opportunities to associate with the Rajah, bringing the rice personally to Kuching. The Rajah’s withdrawal of Malays from the administration of Bidayan areas resulted in his employing European associates, who Bidayuh believed shared, more extensively than Malays, the Rajah’s potency. Bidayan resistance to tax and labour imposts ensured that the Rajah’s European officers visited villages. The longer payment could be delayed, the more visits from Grant and the other officers could be provoked — each visit accompanied by rituals and ceremonies to facilitate the transfer of the visitor’s (and the Rajah’s) semangat to the community. That Bidayuh regarded Charles Grant’s attempts to extract taxes as opportunities for ritual association is evident from Grant’s journal of his tour in 1858. Far from avoiding Grant or discouraging his presence, tax-evading Bidayuh urged him to visit their villages and encouraged him to stay the night. When he did so, the familiar rituals associated with the transfer of semangat were staged: Grant’s feet were washed, his blessing invoked.140 Similarly, avoidance and delay in providing porterage to travellers delayed their progress through villages. Even short delays prolonged a visit by hours, exposing the village to the potency of the Rajah’s associates. Failure to provide guides or porters might force travellers to stay the night, providing opportunities for more complex ceremonies to transfer semangat. Therefore, Bidayuh integrated their need to minimise the Rajah’s material exactions with a need to maximise his participation in their ritual existence. Material resistance and spiritual dependence were realised, one in the other.

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6 Chinese power and the failure of prowess

Notwithstanding the Rajah’s struggles with Iban and Bidayuh, or the instability engendered by competition and conflict within the Malay elite, his power was most nearly overthrown in the 1850s by one of Sarawak’s expanding Chinese communities. The Bau Chinese are unique among Sarawak people of the period because of the unity with which they opposed the Rajah’s attempts to integrate them into his realm. The Chinese ‘revolt’ of 1857 has been scrutinised by successive scholars. Craig Lockard suggested that it was the culmination of competition between two urban centres for control over the mineral and agricultural resources of upper Sarawak. In addition to this contest, as Lockard observed, the Chinese revolt represented a struggle for ascendancy between differing organisational forms and rival foci of identity.1 The extent to which such differences also expressed the Rajah’s failure to extend over the Chinese the authority that derived from his semangat, and which he exercised with such effect over other Sarawak people, is easily overlooked, however. On the evening of 18 February 1857, a Malay trader in upper Sarawak passed a large, armed party of Chinese moving downriver from the mining settlement at Bau. He hurried ahead to Kuching and told a relative, who informed Datu Bandar Molana of the threat. Molana assured him that he would warn the Rajah in the morning.2 In the early hours of the following day the population of Kuching was awakened ‘by shouts and screams and the firing of guns’ as the Chinese goldminers attacked government installations and residences in the town.3 The surprise and scale of the attack were overwhelming. Mr Nicholetts, a recent recruit to the Rajah’s service, was killed trying to reach the Rajah. His colleagues, Henry Steele and the Chief Constable, Middleton, fled into the forest.4 Although Mrs Middleton escaped being killed by hiding in a 123

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water jar, her two children and a Borneo Company employee who was staying with the Middletons were killed.5 Despite the violence of the attack on the Middletons, the Chinese reserved an intense hatred for Arthur Crookshank, the Rajah’s Police Magistrate. Crookshank escaped, but Mrs Crookshank was attacked and left for dead.6 The attacking Chinese made no attempt to interfere with non-government Europeans who, along with some Chinese Christians from Kuching, made their way to the Mission House. Bishop McDougall decided against arming the increasing number of people gathering around him because that would only provoke the attackers, and instead led prayers ‘to turn the hearts of these wretched men that they should not hurt us — & to protect our Rajah’s life’.7 Roused by the sounds of the attack, the Rajah had panicked, convinced he was going to be killed. He slipped out of his house and, abandoning his servant, Penty, made his way to Datu Bandar Molana’s.8 From there he fled downstream to safety. By daylight, the Chinese leaders controlled the town. They sent for Bishop McDougall, the leaders of the small European commercial community, Helms and Ruppell, and Datu Bandar Molana. They tried to persuade Helms to become Rajah and rule Sarawak’s downriver areas and, when he refused, appointed all three Europeans to a triumvirate.9 They offered rewards for the Rajah’s capture and for Crookshank’s.10 St John claimed that Bishop McDougall reminded the Chinese leaders that perhaps Mr Johnson might not quite approve of the conduct of the Chinese in killing his uncle and friends . . . At the mention of Mr Johnson’s name there was a pause, a blankness came over their faces, and they looked at each other as they now remembered apparently for the first time that he, the Rajah’s nephew, was the resolute and popular ruler of the Sakarangs, and could let loose at least 10,000 wild warriors upon them.11

Since McDougall’s own contemporaneous account makes no reference to such grandiloquent threats, St John appears to have embroidered a more simple observation by McDougall, which his wife reported, that the Dyaks would attack the Chinese when they heard that the Chinese had attacked the Rajah.12 On 21 February the Chinese began to withdraw upriver. The Malays were restrained from attacking them during their retreat only by urgent messages from Bishop McDougall to withhold their forces for the moment. At the same time the Rajah sent a message to Kuching announcing his intention to return the following day with ‘plenty of men’.13 McDougall, who had assumed leadership of Kuching during the crisis, travelled downriver to meet the Rajah and urge his immediate return. McDougall found him ‘utterly depressed and hopeless’. Disturbed by the Rajah’s state, McDougall returned to Kuching, remarking that ‘if the Rajah deserts his country, I must look after my diocese’.14 By the time the Bishop got back

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to the town, the Chinese were rumoured to be preparing a new attack in response to the Malays’ military preparations, and refugees had begun fleeing to the coast.15 McDougall was as good as his words, however. That night, Tidman recorded in his journal: ‘we were sent from house to house with a party of Malays, searching for arms . . . and all the night long the Bishop was about like the rest of us, keeping everyone together, encouraging everyone, and directing everything’.16 The Chinese returned in force the following day. Their second attack was not focused only on European government officers. They attacked the general population and fired on the Kuching Chinese in the bazaar.17 The Rajah, persuaded by McDougall’s arguments that his presence was necessary in Kuching, arrived during the fighting. Instead of rallying his supporters, however, he withdrew again in the face of the Chinese attack.18 This second retreat precipitated a mass flight from the town, ‘boats by the dozen were pulling down the river — everyone was bolting’.19 Those refugees who had already reached the coast had gathered at the mouth of the Sarawak River — miserable, but believing themselves safe. On his arrival from Kuching the Rajah ‘started a panic by announcing the Chinese were in full pursuit’. As he headed northwards up the coast, he told Helms: ‘Offer the country, on any terms, to the Dutch.’20 While Kuching’s Chinese and European communities fled into the forest or up the coast to the Rajah’s forts in Iban country, Kuching’s Malay population continued, unassisted, to resist the Chinese attack.21 The Rajah was a charismatic leader, the success of whose career depended on his ability to think clearly and decisively during military crises and to inspire others to action. His ignoble abandonment of his servant, his flight to save himself and his failure to provide leadership to the Kuching community during the days of Chinese attacks and occupation need to be explained. In February 1857 the Rajah was physically and emotionally debilitated. He was exhausted from bouts of recurring malaria, and he was worried and depressed by reports that his natural son, Reuben, whom he had been trying for more than two years to trace, had been killed.22 Five days before the first Chinese attack, he admitted being ‘in that sort of state which makes life less bright’.23 Two nights before the Chinese attacked he was too tired or depressed to dine with his Bishop, as arranged. He had even decided to cancel a planned trip to his outer territories.24 These circumstances go some way towards explaining the failure of his leadership during the attacks on Kuching, and provide the context within which his actions should be evaluated. Whatever the perceived intensity of his semangat, the Rajah remained human. When Charles Johnson at Skrang received the news of the attacks he left immediately for Kuching, issuing instructions for a great bala to be raised and sent after him. The next morning, at the mouth of the Batang Lupar, Johnson met ‘nearly all the white community of Sarawak’ on their way to Lingga, which the Rajah had appointed as a rendezvous after the flight from Kuching. The Bishop told Johnson that the Rajah was following, and

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Johnson took the party up to Lingga Fort. When the Rajah failed to arrive the next day, Johnson set off again for Kuching.25 The Rajah was not following the other refugees, however. As Helms had left the Sarawak River he met the Borneo Company’s steamer, Sir James Brooke, en route to Kuching. Helms boarded the vessel and decided at once to proceed to the town: ‘the guns were got out, the rifles, cutlasses, etc all piled, and the decks cleared’. The Rajah joined him on board and immediately recognised the importance of the increased military capability that the steamer provided for his recovery of Kuching. With this recognition, his ‘gloom and depression’ lifted.26 When the steamer arrived at Kuching, the Malays were still resisting the Chinese attack, and might even have been supported by some of the Bidayuh who lived near the town.27 Reinforced by the English guns, the defenders quickly cleared Kuching of insurgents. The Rajah’s arrival in Kuching gave heart to his followers in and around the capital and coincided with the arrival of increasing numbers of Malay and Bidayan loyalists from upcountry.28 For Bidayuh, the suppression of the revolt provided welcome and much-needed opportunities to take heads, and they ‘rushed in every direction on the Chinese, driving them from their villages, and compelling them to assemble and defend two spots only, Siniawan and Bau’.29 The Chinese broke through the Bidayan siege and established a new fort at Leda Tanah to protect their positions.30 The Rajah dispatched Molana and a force of Malays to support the Bidayuh, who successfully stormed the new fort, forcing the Chinese to retreat. After Molana’s success at Leda Tanah, the Rajah himself proceeded upcountry. At Kuching the population heard with relief news that Bau itself was destroyed and the Chinese forced to flee towards Sambas.31 The capture of the Chinese position at Siniawan by the Rajah’s forces remains a source of bitterness for some Chinese to this day. According to Chinese oral traditions recorded by Paul Yong, the Rajah is supposed to have offered a peaceful settlement to the Chinese at Siniawan, to have sent large amounts of alcohol as a gift to his adversaries and, while they were drunk, to have attacked and slaughtered them.32 The story seems unlikely. Although the Rajah was sufficiently ruthless to have attempted such a trick, the Chinese were surely not so naive as to fall for it. The arrival of Iban from the Skrang and Saribas, ‘thirsting for heads’,33 and the continuing mobilisation of Bidayuh and Malays, increased the Rajah’s military power still further and his expanded host harried the Chinese retreat relentlessly. The Rajah estimated that his followers killed 2000 Chinese men during their flight to Sambas.34 They probably also killed large numbers of women and children. Yong also recorded traditions that several hundred Chinese women and children were suffocated in a cave when the Rajah’s forces fired its mouth. The killing was unfettered. Sarawak Chinese still recall that the Sarawak River ran red with Chinese blood.35 Charles Johnson’s account of his life in Sarawak was published in 1866 to legitimise his displacement of his brother as the Rajah’s heir, and his

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treatment of the Chinese revolt emphasised his own importance and that of his Iban war party.36 Successive scholars have accepted without question Johnson’s assessment of his role in restoring the Rajah’s power in Sarawak. According to Pringle, the timely appearance of a steamer belonging to the Borneo Company played a large part in dislodging the rebels, who had captured and sacked Kuching. However the Tuan Muda and his Iban were equally responsible for the eventual Brooke victory.

Pringle downplayed the role of Bidayuh in driving the Chinese out, and ignored completely the determined actions of Malays.37 Daniel Chew suggested that ‘rumours of Charles Brooke’s retaliation with the help of his Iban warriors caused the kongsi to abandon its plans of governing Kuching’, and to withdraw immediately to Bau.38 Crisswell went a step further to claim that the Rajah himself ‘appreciated that his nephew and his Iban followers had saved the Brooke regime’.39 Charles Johnson and the Iban from Skrang and Saribas played a significant role in driving the Chinese insurgents from their positions in upper Sarawak. They were not essential to the survival of the regime, however, and their role should not be overemphasised. The Borneo Company steamer, the Sarawak Malays and the Bidayuh played more critical roles than Charles Johnson and the Iban. The Rajah’s account of the affair does not support claims that Johnson was pivotal to securing the country, or that the Rajah thought he was. The Rajah considered that ‘the opportune arrival of the steamer Sir James Brooke has helped us. The fidelity of Malays and Dyaks is exemplary’.40 Charles Grant, similarly, identified the steamer’s arrival as the central factor which strengthened the Rajah’s position. His account does not even mention Charles Johnson, and he described how Dyaks ‘hunted the rebels down’ after ‘Sarawak was regained’.41 St John’s contemporaneous account also reported that the Chinese were driven out ‘by the gallantry of the Sarawak Malays assisted by the Dyaks’, and fails to mention Johnson’s role at all.42 According to Tidman, the fury of the Malays at the Chinese attack ‘knew no bounds’,43 and their reprisals were indiscriminate. At the mouth of the Sarawak River, they massacred a small Chinese farming community that had in no way been implicated in the revolt.44 Mrs McDougall found it necessary to explain the level of Malay ferocity towards the Chinese, which she attributed to Malay contempt for Chinese people: ‘That such people should have taken their lives, burnt their dwellings, compelling them to seek safety for their families by flight, was so great an insult that their most violent passions were aroused, and only the blood of the entire Kay tribe could wipe out the disgrace they had incurred.’45 When the Rajah decided to put the very few Chinese prisoners taken by his forces on trial, the ‘Malays assembled in great numbers from the different kampongs, all

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the dattus and chiefs were present’.46 After one insurgent was condemned, the Malays were barely restrained from killing him where he stood in the court: ‘He was dragged away to the green close by, and then, almost as he was being beheaded, five or six spears were sticking in his body.’47 There is no reason to believe that European observers exaggerated the severity of Malay reaction. The ferocity described by Tidman, however, was uncharacteristic of Malay behaviour, which was normally and selfconsciously ‘graceful and dignified’.48 Malay reaction cannot be attributed solely to racial ill-feeling: it needs further explanation. As Errington has observed, in hierarchical Malayo-Moslem polities the ‘political centre, located and locatable by the presence of the ruler, the royal residence, and the state regalia, was the state’s highest and most inner central place, at once its most vulnerable to insult and attack and the most powerful in its intrinsic potency’.49 Donald Brown’s analysis of indigenous accounts of the Brunei dynasty’s origin suggests that, among Malays in northwest Borneo, the ritual importance of the royal city was no less central.50 The burning of Kuching had ritual as well as a military significance for Malays. It threatened the cosmic order which Sarawak Malay support for the Rajah presupposed and was concerned to maintain. The Rajah, like all rulers in Malayo-Moslem polities, was the source and guarantor of Malay titles and rank, which determined Malay status after death as well as before it. In forcing the Rajah to flee and overthrowing his government, the Chinese actions diminished the Rajah’s semangat and, consequently, the nama of his followers. The Malay reaction to the Chinese attack was extreme, not just because the Chinese threatened the secular order of the state with which the Malay hierarchy was associated, but because it threatened the Malays’ ritual existence. The Undang Undang Melaka prescribed the qualities of a ruler as merciful, generous, courageous and decisive.51 Although nothing could contrast with these qualities greater than the Rajah’s behaviour during the Chinese assaults, the outcome of the revolt confirmed his prowess and ritual status and, therefore, that of the Sarawak Malays who associated with him. It was not simply that the Rajah regained his country, thereby demonstrating his right to rule. For Malays, the ability to achieve success without apparent effort was an indication of semangat, as was the ability to achieve success through the agency of others. The Rajah regained Sarawak without exerting himself. The Malays, having seen him withdraw from the second Chinese attack, must have been astonished by his return within hours, on board a steamer bearing his name. Moreover, having retaken Kuching, the Rajah, notwithstanding military exigencies, carefully avoided any personal action against the Chinese. When Charles Johnson arrived in Kuching, he found the Rajah ‘busily employed writing letters, and endeavouring to regain that prestige which had been so materially damaged’.52 The Rajah stayed in Kuching: the fighting was done by the Malays and Bidayuh, led by Datu Bandar Molana, Datu Tumanggong Mersal, Abang

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Patah and, after their arrival, by Iban led by Charles Johnson. The Rajah’s progress into the interior followed in the wake of other people’s victories, achieved without his participation or even his presence. The Rajah’s actions during this period seem to have been designed to reinforce Malay and Dyak belief in the intensity of his semangat. Odoardo Beccari testified to his success in doing so, observing that the Chinese attack ‘did nothing to lessen the prestige and authority of Rajah Brooke’.53 BASES OF CONFLICT The attack by the Bau Chinese on Kuching was the culmination of 15 years’ resistance to the Rajah’s attempts to assert authority over them. If the Sarawak state reflected the political culture and concerns of downriver Malayo-Moslem polities, the Bau Chinese were part of a tradition of independent Chinese mining and farming republics in western Borneo. Modern Chinese settlement in western Borneo dates from 1740–1760, when the ruler of Mempawa invited about 20 Chinese to mine for gold in his territories. To increase the efficiency of their operations, the miners formed small cooperatives or kongsis and recruited additional members. By 1770 they were resisting the exactions of their Malay overlords. The richness of the deposits caused a gold rush, with kongsis reported to be recruiting up to 3000 Chinese annually in the early 19th century.54 The area became the major source of gold in Asia, producing about 15 per cent of world supplies.55 Kongsis diversified their economic activity to ensure their selfsufficiency, developing wet rice and sugar cultivation, fishing, manufacturing and retailing. As the areas they controlled grew, they subjected Dyak tribes to their government and attracted Chinese agriculturalists and other settlers who, though subject to kongsi administration, were not involved in its economic activities.56 The leader of one of the most powerful kongsis governed 40 000 people, styled himself President of Great China or King of Western Borneo, and wanted to establish his realm as an outpost of the Chinese state.57 Although they were a distinctly Chinese form of organisation opposed to external control, kongsis should not be confused with secret societies or triads. Kongsis were characterised by popular participation and elected leadership, and managed both the economic enterprises and the government of Chinese communities. Dutch intrusions into western Borneo threatened kongsi interests as Dutch monopolistic policies forced the kongsis to trade through Dutchcontrolled ports. The kongsis responded by suspending production and allowing their surplus crops to rot.58 Despite the strength of Chinese resistance, by the 1820s the Dutch had extended their control over the southern kongsis. The northern kongsis defended their autonomy until the 1850s.59 Individual Chinese miners had migrated from the kongsis south of Sarawak and were mining antimony at Bau in the 1820s. Chew cited

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Chinese oral traditions which date the establishment in Sarawak of a colony of a Sambas kongsi, San-tiao-kou, to mine for gold at Bau to about 1830.60 The establishment of the Chinese at Bau was contested by Malays. St John reported that some Chinese were killed by Sarawak Malays and that Datu Patinggi Ali’s town at Siniawan was attacked in response. The Chinese attack was repulsed.61 This engagement was probably part of a longer struggle over the area. As well as gold deposits, it was rich in birdnest caves,62 access to which was important to Malay power. The Chinese recognised the opportunities presented by the Malay insurgency of the late 1830s to secure control of the district. James Brooke recorded that about 200 Sambas Chinese joined Rajah Muda Hassim’s forces attacking the Sarawak Malays at Siniawan in 1840.63 Following the fall of Siniawan, and the surrender and dispersal of the insurgents, the Chinese settled there.64 Brooke considered that where ‘a Chinaman is found, there the land flourishes, mines are dug, and produce of every description is procured’,65 and initially regarded the Chinese miners as his ‘greatest allies’.66 In this he was quickly disabused, however. By early 1842, he admitted that his great difficulty now is with the Chinese, who are showing dispositions which must be checked in the bud; taking upon themselves an independent authority, and intriguing a great deal with Sambas through the opposition, but they are not strong enough or rich enough to appeal to arms, and they must either succumb or leave the country. At Sambas, they have been allowed to have their own way, and to buy permission to commit any outrage they have a mind for, but for me they will be differently tutored.67

Privately, he recognised that ‘perhaps, some day or other, it will come to a struggle’.68 The miners were determined to evade Brooke’s power and pretended that they had not found any gold.69 In response, Brooke decided to allow another kongsi to mine in the area and act as a check on them. Although the first kongsi, the San-tiao-kou, produced evidence that Raja Muda Hassim had given them exclusive mining rights, Brooke declared it forged, and introduced the rival Chinese.70 It was probably these miners to whom Belcher and Bethune referred in claiming that Brooke advanced Chinese miners capital to establish their operations.71 The strategy seems to have worked, initially. The Rajah reported the Chinese ‘flourishing, and have got gold’.72 The Rajah’s actions contradict Chinese oral traditions, reported by Lockard, that James Brooke recognised Bau’s independence from his government.73 Notwithstanding the admission of their rivals to Sarawak, the Santiao-kou miners consolidated their position quickly, laying claim to considerable tracts of country and developing a diversified local economy. By the end of 1842 they had established four settlements. In addition to two mining communities, they had farms around Siniawan and, upriver

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from Siniawan, a river port.74 There is no mention of the second kongsi in the Rajah’s fiscal records after March 1843.75 Either it failed and withdrew, or it was absorbed by its rival. From early 1843, the San-tiao-kou miners again felt strong enough to defy the Rajah. He was again unable to ascertain what gold deposits, if any, they were working, or to enforce their payment of taxes.76 From his cash books, it appears that economic relations between Kuching and Bau, though not the Rajah’s ambitions, had virtually ceased by 1844.77 Throughout the 1840s the kongsi successfully resisted the Rajah’s attempts to establish control over them. Even when they appeared outwardly ‘humble and obedient, and in no way consider themselves independent of the Government’, they were reported ‘not [to] produce the gold they undoubtedly get, and are extremely backward in paying their debts and revenue’.78 In 1845 they hid half their people in the forest to reduce the head tax the Rajah tried to collect.79 The kongsi’s various ventures in upper Sarawak were coordinated by a representative of its Sambas parent organisation,80 and the two centres were in constant communication. The Sarawak operations remitted their gold to Sambas four times a year.81 These ties to the powerful Sambas kongsi increased the capacity of the Bau Chinese to resist the Rajah’s claims to share the gold or exact obedience. By 1846 the Rajah recognised that he could not govern the kongsi Chinese and that he would need to drive them out if he were to regain control of the gold deposits.82 This, apparently, he was unwilling or unable to do. In 1849 the Dutch reorganised their administration of Chinese-occupied areas of Sambas and, from 1850, implemented an aggressive policy to overcome the military power of the remaining kongsis. With the support of the Sambas San-tiou-kou, the Dutch attacked the powerful Ta-Tang kongsi at Montrado. The Montrado Chinese, in response, drove the San-tiou-kou from their territory.83 In Sarawak, the Rajah thought that the extension of Dutch control over the Chinese would diminish the capacity of the Bau-Siniawan community to defy him: ‘the fight between the Dutch and the Chinese at Sambas must benefit Sarawak. The Chinese require humbling — they will be safe subjects afterwards.’84 Dutch actions had a more direct impact, however, as up to 5000 San-tiao-kou refugees poured into Sarawak. Concerned already with his inability to control the BauSiniawan community, the Rajah was ambivalent about the consequences of such an influx.85 Chinese use of opium provided governments in Southeast Asia with significant opportunities for raising revenue, and Chinese labour, even when organised into kongsis, was essential to economic development. The potential of the influx to expand the Rajah’s revenue base appears to have overcome his reservations about its consequences for his power. The Rajah tried to contain the threat posed by the new arrivals by resettling them in downriver areas away from the kongsi. The kongsi’s leaders opposed his efforts, however, and urged the refugees to join them.86 Their success increased the kongsi ‘to inconvenient dimensions’, which

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caused ‘much confusion’ upriver.87 This threat to the government’s interests was too serious for the Rajah to ignore and, in November 1850, he travelled upriver to negotiate a new relationship with the kongsi. He wanted the Chinese to renounce any claims either to governing powers or to receive revenue. They were to ‘frankly, freely, and unreservedly’ acknowledge his authority. Although he was prepared to concede to the kongsi leaders minor judicial powers, he wanted all important cases submitted to him. Finally, he tried to establish a framework through which he could enforce power over the kongsi. He proposed a system of dual administration by his representative, a kapitan Inglis, and a representative of the kongsi, kapitan China.88 He appointed Henry Steele as his kapitan Inglis and the Chinese appointed Atiow as the kapitan China. Those two were to oversee government relations with the kongsi and supervise kongsi relations with local Bidayan communities. Through Steele, the Rajah hoped to know ‘where the Chinese live, how many there are, and what the general feeling is’. Although the Chinese agreed to these terms, as the Rajah recognised, ‘the difficulty is in the detail of execution, and not in the wholesale of words’.89 The Rajah’s settlement with the Chinese was shortlived. Two years later the kongsi refused to hand over an alleged criminal, and its members ‘offered resistance’ to the party the Rajah had sent to make the arrest. The Rajah mounted a blockade of Bau and sent a large force upriver. Under threat of attack, the Chinese acquiesced and were fined 100 ‘stands of muskets’ for their actions. Recognising that his only source of power over the Chinese was military, the Rajah built a fort on the river at Belidah, about 10 miles from Bau, which had emerged as the principal settlement. The Rajah had wanted initially to build the fort overlooking Bau, but had been dissuaded.90 The new strategy reflected the Rajah’s determination to use force, if necessary, to control the gold deposits. The kongsi leaders continued to resist him, however, and the government sent another large force upriver to intimidate them in 1853.91 Again the kongsi submitted, and even paid revenues for 1853 in January the following year.92 Despite the growing challenge to his power which the Bau-Siniawan community posed, the Rajah continued to give sanctuary to refugees from Dutch-controlled Sambas. The defeat of the Ta-tang kongsi by the Dutch in 1854 caused another surge of Chinese migration to Sarawak. In March 1854 the Rajah reported Chinese arriving at the rate of 100 a month.93 Far from acquiescing to the Rajah’s military attempts to impose his rule, the kongsi seems to have begun to mobilise its resources and to develop its strength. In 1855 Spenser St John toured the Chinese areas around Bau and was alarmed by its increased power.94 When at the end of the year kongsi members raided Sambas and burned some Sambas villages, the Rajah determined to use the incident as pretext for asserting his power.95 The government seized the kongsi’s books and found further evidence against it. The kongsi was fined in ‘a grand Bechara in Court which was very derogatory to their dignity’.96 The Chinese again appeared to submit, paying their revenues for 1855.97

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Strengthened by the arrival of the Ta-tang refugees, who were also determined to oppose European impositions, the kongsi intensified its preparations to resist the Rajah and began a large-scale recruitment of new members. A group of more than 300 Chinese arrived in June 1856.98 St John claimed to have seen new recruits ‘by the hundreds crowding the sheds and houses of the Chinese town at Bau’.99 Bidayuh living on the Sarawak/Sambas border reported that ‘a continual stream of small parties of Chinese was constantly passing’ into Sarawak.100 To secure their lines of communication with the areas to the south where they were recruiting, the Bau leaders built an outpost on the border with Sambas.101 They also constructed a road from Bau to Siniawan, which increased their strategic mobility by giving Bau easy access to the river.102 The kongsi was mobilising for war. By late 1856 rumours were circulating in Kuching that the Bau miners were planning to overthrow the government, sending forces downriver on the pretext of opening a new temple. With the Rajah away, the officer administering the government in his absence was sufficiently concerned both to summon Charles Johnson with a force from Skrang to garrison the forts guarding the town and to post a gunboat upriver to blockade Bau itself.103 He also contacted the Governor of Singapore, who sent a steamer to Sarawak to protect British life and property.104 These measures precluded any attack. On his return, the Rajah fined the kongsi and, in an extraordinary lapse in judgement, suspended the precautionary deployments that had been made.105 As the Rajah later admitted, he ‘was so confident in my own power, utterly, to destroy the Chinese, as quite to neglect precaution’.106 A number of specific issues have been identified as causing friction between the Rajah and the Bau Chinese immediately preceding the attack on Kuching. The Rajah had been convinced that the kongsi was smuggling opium. He fined the leaders £150, and ordered them to pay for 60 balls of opium whether they used them or not. About the same time, a Bau woman fled to Kuching to escape her husband. Although the government ordered her to return, she fled downriver. When her husband and his friends caught her, they flogged the boatman who had given her passage. The government, in turn, had them flogged for the assault.107 The Chinese who attacked Bertha Crookshank were calling the woman’s name, and Chinese oral tradition ascribed the attack to Bau outrage over the government’s action.108 Much of Southeast Asia’s Chinese population was unsettled by the end of 1856. The Governor of Canton had offered a bounty for English heads, and overseas Chinese communities expected foreigners to be expelled from China. Singapore’s Chinese population was barely suppressed by government intimidation. St John claimed that, during this agitation, the Heaven and Earth Society in Singapore dispatched emissaries to Sarawak to provoke rebellion.109 The Borneo Company began mining in upper Sarawak shortly before the attack on Kuching, and Chew referred to Chinese oral tradition which

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ascribed the attack to Bau anger at the new competition for minerals.110 This tradition, however, is difficult to accept. Although the Borneo Company monopolised antimony, it ignored gold deposits, which were the focus of Chinese mining.111 Moreover, apart from stealing a cashbox, the Chinese left Borneo Company property and installations alone during their attacks on Kuching.112 Far from targeting the Borneo Company, the Chinese pressed the Company’s Sarawak manager, Helms, to assume government. Searches for such specific reasons for the Chinese attack undervalue evidence that the Rajah’s demonstrations of military power provoked the kongsi leadership to mobilise for war with Kuching as early as the end of 1855. Although some of the Sarawak government’s actions in 1856 and 1857 might have further angered the Bau Chinese and provided rallying cries during the attack, they were peripheral to the central issue. The kongsi needed to destroy the Rajah’s ability to to enforce his demands if it were to maintain its own position. Moreover, the Dutch successes in destroying the kongsis in Sambas in the mid-1850s had driven those Ta-tang kongsi members most committed to independence to join the Bau-Siniawan community. Although the 1857 attack on Kuching, as Lockard suggested, resulted from attempts by the kongsi Chinese to preserve their independence from the Rajah,113 it was also the culmination of vigorous attempts by the remnants of the kongsis of Dutch west Borneo to preserve their freedom. CHINESE COLLABORATION: 1841–1857 As in other parts of Southeast Asia, Chinese comprador communities developed in Sarawak and, in contrast to the Bau-Siniawan kongsi, pursued their interests in collaboration with the government. As early as 1843, visitors to Kuching noticed the ‘excellent gardens’ maintained by the small Chinese population there.114 In 1844 Marryat reported ‘many Chinese settlers at Kuchin’ working as carpenters and blacksmiths, and running small farms. Although the community was large enought to maintain a temple, little information about Chinese affairs of this period has survived.115 The testimony of Lo Choon Chang to the commission into the Rajah’s activities in Borneo provides one of the few contemporaneous first-person accounts of Chinese settlement in Sarawak extant. Lo left the kongsi settlement of Montrado south of Sarawak in 1842 and moved to Kuching, where he set up as a trader. He recognised the commercial opportunities provided by the expansion of Sarawak power along the coast. In 1844, following Sherif Sahib’s removal, Lo moved to Sadong, and in 1846 to Sarikei. Although he returned to Kuching to live permanently in 1852, his wife continued to live at Sadong, where presumably he maintained financial interests.116 The expansion of the Rajah’s power into Skrang and Saribas opened those rivers also to Chinese traders, who were reported to be operating there by 1852.117 Thus, whereas the expansion of the Rajah’s

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power threatened the interests of the kongsi at Bau-Siniawan, and was resisted by it, the interests of the Kuching compradors were served by and dependent on the expansion of the Rajah’s power into new areas. Although many of the Kuching Chinese community reached Sarawak from the settlements in Dutch Borneo, others arrived direct from Singapore. The Rajah was keen to attract Chinese settlers who did not have ties to the kongsis. He sent his nephew, Brooke Brooke, to China to recruit migrants in 1849,118 and was pleased with the arrival of 100 Chinese from Singapore in 1850.119 By 1851 the Kuching Chinese community was sufficiently large for Miss Pfeiffer to report (prematurely) that it controlled ‘all the commerce’ of Sarawak, and all the trades.120 Although most of the refugees from the kongsi wars settled around Bau, the Rajah provided more than 300 families with economic assistance to establish themselves downriver.121 Many of them had been farmers in Sambas, and they cleared the forest and established gardens around Kuching.122 By 1855 one visitor to the town estimated that there were ‘many thousands’ of Chinese ‘in the immediate neighbourhood of the Rajah’s residence’.123 The dependence of Kuching Chinese interests on the maintenance and extension of the Rajah’s power along the coast facilitated the establishment of his authority within their community. As early as 1842, the Rajah appointed a kapitan China to administer the Chinese community’s affairs.124 Mrs McDougall transcribed his name, or that of his successor, as Aboo.125 Aboo’s power over the Kuching Chinese was not autonomous. He depended on the government to enforce his jurisdiction. When a Chinese debtor fled to Sematan leaving outstanding debts in Kuching, Brooke Brooke ordered his apprehension and return to the capital.126 Although the Rajah was unable to disband the kongsi at Bau-Siniawan, he was determined not to allow the Kuching Chinese to form organisations that would enable them to oppose him. When in 1851 he uncovered an attempt by a Singapore secret society to extend its operations to Kuching, he arrested the two recruiters and 12 other Chinese. In a display of severity he executed one person, fined two others $100 each, and had two more flogged and jailed.127 Notwithstanding such treatment, the Chinese community in and around Kuching remained staunchly pro-government and, as Craig Lockard noted, a large number of Chinese risked their own lives to protect and help the Rajah and other Europeans during the Bau Chinese revolt.128 A Chinese woman, for example, smuggled bread to the Rajah hiding in the forest, and took Crookshank news that Mrs Crookshank was alive.129 Mrs Middleton was found hiding in the pond in her garden by a Kuching Chinese friend, who took her home and, for safety, dressed her as a Chinese woman, before taking her to Helms.130 Bertha Crookshank had been left for dead, horribly wounded. Owen, a Chinese schoolmaster, tried to move her but was stopped by a crowd of kongsi Chinese.131 As word of her plight spread, a group of Kuching Chinese gathered around her and stopped the kongsi

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Chinese from killing her. They stayed with her, shading her from the sun.132 Some Kuching Chinese supported active resistance to the kongsi’s attack. They retrieved guns and ammunition from the kongsi for Bishop McDougall and gathered information on its intentions and actions.133 When James Brooke visited Lundu in 1839, he found a Chinese community already established by 35 immigrants from Sambas. It was a farming settlement that grew rice, sweet potatoes, corn and betel. ‘Nothing could have been more flourishing’, Brooke recorded.134 The subsequent discovery of gold at Lundu, the area’s good soil and the success of the settlement attracted more immigrants. By 1853 about 200 Chinese were living there.135 As with the community in Kuching, the government was determined to prevent the Lundu Chinese from developing independent power. When the Lundu Iban complained that Chinese settlement was impinging on Iban farms, the government restricted the Chinese to defined boundaries.136 At the same time, the government appointed a kapitan China, insisting that ‘all becharas concerning land, and becharas in minor affairs, must come through him’.137 To facilitate its influence over the Chinese the government built a road from the Iban and Malay town to the Chinese area, and partially funded the employment of a Chinese teacher for the community.138 The government was particularly concerned to prevent the Bau-Siniawan kongsi from gaining control of the settlement, with the Rajah instructing his officer at Lundu, Charles Grant, that this was his highest priority. The Rajah was concerned that the community not increase beyond his power to control it, and forbade ‘any measures of advancement or development . . . and pray do not make arrangements for locating anyone’.139 The Rajah was determined also to prevent the establishment of a secret society at Lundu and, when he uncovered plans to do so, fined and imprisoned two Lundu Chinese leaders. He reported that a third Lundu Chinese leader and a Singapore secret society organiser ‘have tasted whip & are sentenced to banishment’.140 In colonial Malacca and elsewhere in the archipelago, Chinese communities were largely self-governing, under the authority of kapitans who exercised extensive executive, judicial and administrative powers.141 The Sarawak government’s fierce struggle with the Bau Chinese community, however, alerted it to what it perceived as the dangers of Chinese autonomy. In both Kuching and Lundu, the evidence suggests that the government tried to exercise real power within the Chinese communities and prevented the development of organisations capable of resisting it. Whereas kapitans elsewhere in the archipelago functioned as chiefs, mobilising Chinese power in support of alien hierarchies, the kapitans of Kuching and Lundu functioned far more as government officials, dependent on the government for authority and projecting government power into their communities. Lockard’s suggestion that ‘the Chinese from the very first were able largely to govern their own affairs and structure their social and political organisation under strong leaders’142 applies only to the kongsi. The use of the same terminology in

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Sarawak as elsewhere in the archipelago has concealed real differences in the way Sarawak’s comprador Chinese communities were administered. CHINESE POWER AND CONFLICT AFTER 1857 The revolt and its suppression destroyed the Bau-Siniawan Chinese and devastated the Kuching Chinese. The Bau-Siniawan people were killed or driven into Sambas. The Kuching Chinese either fled downriver during the second attack on Kuching or were forced to withdraw with the kongsi in reprisal for supporting the government.143 Many Kuching Chinese were probably killed also by Kuching’s Malay population during the fighting and after it. The Rajah recognised the need to re-establish a significant and prosperous Chinese community in Sarawak because Chinese people provided the fiscal basis of his regime, ‘they smoke opium, and swizzle spirits, and so pay revenue’.144 Within days of his reoccupying Kuching, the Rajah received news of several hundred Chinese refugees from Sambas crossing into Sarawak. He sent an escort to bring them safely to the capital.145 As his government succeeded in re-establishing his control, the Kuching Chinese community reassembled and, by July 1857, the Chinese farms around Kuching were reoccupied.146 The gold and antimony deposits around Bau ensured that a Chinese population would reassemble there. The destruction of the kongsi opened the gold deposits for exploitation by other Chinese miners. By May 1857 about 80 Chinese mining families were in the Bau area and the number was ‘daily increasing’.147 Additionally, the Borneo Company used Chinese labour to operate its antimony mines at Bidi, near Bau, and was settling new recruits there by the middle of the year.148 By early 1858 the Company had 300 workers in the area.149 John Chin suggested that after the revolt the Rajah ‘began to see the unwisdom of his past policies, and little by little he adopted a more conciliatory attitude towards the Chinese’.150 I found no evidence of this. The Rajah’s experience confirmed his belief that ‘the danger of dealing with the Chinese is that they act in a manner altogether unreasonable’.151 It also strengthened his view that, in order to reduce their capacity to be ‘unreasonable’, Chinese settlers should be restrained from organising to prevent the government’s asserting power within and not just over their communities. Of all the officers in the Rajah’s government, Charles Grant at Lundu had had the most success in administering Chinese settlements. He had prevented the Lundu Chinese from forming a kongsi or a secret society, projecting the government’s power into the community and extracting the taxes and other forms of economic surplus for which the Chinese were valued. The Rajah, therefore, redeployed Grant to govern BauSiniawan. Grant built a fort to underpin his power and provide a solid base for his activities.152 Even more than at Lundu, he interfered in Chinese affairs and insisted on the government’s right to regulate Chinese activities. He inspected their mining operations, and settled ‘squabbles between

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jawing Chinese’.153 Although the Chinese attempted to resist paying taxes and created ‘a good deal of petty trouble’,154 Grant appears to have enforced the government’s exactions without real difficulty. As Hugh Low seems to have been aware, the organisational strength of the kongsi derived in part from its capacity to provide financial support to individuals who would not otherwise have had the resources to establish mines, and from its ability to translate economic dependence and obligation into power.155 The destruction of the Bau kongsi allowed the Chinese community in Kuching to extend its business interests into the mining areas. Without cooperative support from a kongsi, miners needed alternative sources of finance. After 1857 the Chinese mining communities obtained economic backing from Kuching Chinese businessmen. As a result, the re-emerging Bau Chinese community was integrated into the Kuching economy by relationships of credit dependence.156 The destruction of the Bau kongsi served the interests of the Kuching plutocracy as well as the Rajah. Credit proved a particularly effective mechanism for aspiring leaders of the Chinese community to assemble an entourage of clients. In order to secure control of primary products, Chinese middlemen encouraged primary producers to become indebted to them, pledging future crops as security for loans.157 In order to extend credit, the middlemen themselves needed the support of financial backers in Kuching. The scale of such credit monopolies, and the amount of credit or capital to which

The Rajah’s fort at Belidah, from which Charles Grant governed the Chinese mining areas

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Chinese middlemen needed access, is indicated by trade figures from Kalaka for 1868. In the five months prior to the rice harvest, goods worth $14 066 were imported into Kalaka, while exports were worth only $4304.158 Chinese credit networks helped to integrate outlying areas into the Brooke state, and Brooke power provided a stable framework for Chinese commercial activity, within which credit could be offered and repayment ensured. The expansion of Sarawak power along the coast ensured that money lent from Kuching was recoverable from Bintulu.159 The interests of the Kuching Chinese plutocrats and the government again coincided. As the government power expanded along the coast, Chinese commerce expanded with it. The Sarawak-wide links established by Chinese trading and credit relationships comprised a highly organised system. The essential interrelationship between trading and power is reflected by the Sarawak word for merchant, towkay, a Hokkien word that also means leader or family head.160 The Chinese plutocrats in Kuching at the centre of these complexes of patron–client structures were believed by Mrs McDougall to be so rich that ‘they don’t seem to know what to do with their money’.161 In fact, they needed to manage carefully demands on their capital to secure leadership in the Chinese community, and Mrs McDougall misinterpreted their conspicuous expenditure. In addition to lending their money to clients to create relationships of dependency, they needed to legitimise their power through public spending on charitable and other community foundations. In 1859, for example, Chinese leaders instigated a public subscription for a hospital, and donated generously to it,162 while in 1866 they supported the construction of a ‘House of Charity’ for impoverished or decrepit Chinese.163 In the provision of credit facilities to clients, towkays tended to favour merchants from their own clan name or dialect group, and clan and dialect loyalties also helped to institutionalise and legitimise extractive and unequal relations of dependence. In consequence, the wealthiest Kuching towkays dominated different dialect communities. Law Kian Huat was the leading Teochiu, Ong Ewe Hai was the leading Hokkien and Chan Ah Koh led the Chaoann community.164 Patron–client linkages which derived from control over credit were protected by the towkays’ preparedness to resort to violence in their competition with each other. By 1860 rivalries among Chinese leaders appear to have become particularly intense, endangering public order in Kuching. Boyle reported that violent confrontations between rival groups of 200–300 Chinese men occurred nightly in the capital.165 These clashes involved about 20 per cent of Kuching’s Chinese population, which one contemporary estimated at 2000.166 The government responded quickly and decisively, and anyone caught during the clashes was ‘severely flogged’. Although Boyle did not detail the causes of the clashes beyond ascribing them to ‘absurd local jealousies’, their scale and intensity suggest deep rifts between the various Chinese communities.167

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The government’s failure to address, or even understand, the underlying causes of Chinese violence in 1860 presaged a drift away from the Rajah’s policy of intervention in and vigorous government of Chinese communities. The Rajah’s nephew, Brooke Brooke, began instead to devolve responsibility for Chinese affairs onto Chinese community leaders.168 In common with many Europeans in other parts of Southeast Asia, the Rajah’s officials found little in Chinese culture or society to interest them. With few exceptions,

Ong Ewe Hai was Kuching’s leading Hokkien

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19th-century Europeans in Southeast Asia found Chinese people less interesting and engaging than Malays, Bidayuh or Iban: Charles Grant told his mother, ‘it is never so pleasing an occupation dealing with Chinese as it is with Dyaks & Malays’.169 Whereas the Rajah’s officials became interested in Malay, Iban or Bidayuh cultures, the Chinese were valued by the government because they provided revenue. The increasing withdrawal of the government from active management of Chinese community affairs after 1860 meant that Chinese conflicts were resolved within the Chinese community, and power accumulated by Chinese leaders rarely intruded on national affairs. Increasingly after 1860 the Sarawak Chinese community established a similar autonomy to that enjoyed by Chinese communities elsewhere in the archipelago. THE FAILURE OF PROWESS Like Malays and Dyaks, the Chinese believed that gods and spirits infused the material world with meaning, and affected every facet of human experience. Richard Fidler noted, in Chinese folk religion, a belief in a direct and reciprocal relationship between this world and the ‘other world’, and between man and the various gods and spirits generally. Gods, ancestors and other spirits share a mutual dependence with human beings, bestowing aid in return for worship and honour.170

Chinese daily life, therefore, was punctuated by a ‘vast number of magical practices and beliefs’,171 and Chinese maintained temples and rituals to communicate with a wide range of entities. Moreover, like Malays, Bidayuh and Iban, Chinese cultures recognised that different humans could secure different levels of access to the supernatural forces that governed the world. Chinese political culture, like Malay ideas about power, sought to imbue state structures with authority from the supernatural world. Just as sultans were endowed with daulat, the Emperor of China was the ‘son of heaven’, with power over the elements of nature. Chinese would raise temples for the worship of great or successful men,172 and people’s own ancestors could intercede on their behalf. Whereas in the case of Malays, Iban and Bidayuh James Brooke was able to interpose himself in spiritual and ritual hierarchies, he failed to do so among the Chinese. Although there is little direct evidence to explain why Brooke failed, it appears that immigrant Chinese in Borneo sought to assure their prosperity through the development of a new Chinese diety, rather than engaging James Brooke. Richard Fidler suggested that T’u Ti Kong, the earth god linked to prosperity in southern China, was of limited utility for migrants to Borneo because he was associated with a specific, immovable place, This place — some locality that every individual emigre would recognize as being relevant to his/her own subsistence niche . . .

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The Place where I make my living. A Place that cannot be taken along on the voyage south.

Moreover, the alternative wealth god in the Chinese pantheon, Ts’ai Shen, was associated with the old wealth of the Imperial Court, Mandarin gentry and landlords, and was, according to Fidler, ‘more censorous than comforting to the penniless pioneers’.173 Although Chinese migrants continued to worship gods and spirits who exercised universal authority, such as T’ien Kung (King of Heaven) and Kwan Yin (Goddess of Mercy), migration also required Chinese to overcome the challenges posed by the specific natures of Chinese wealth gods. Chinese migrants needed to establish a supernatural source of prosperity in Borneo itself.

The Chinese wealth god, Tua Pek Kong, was conceived by immigrant Chinese to represent ‘the pioneer spirit, the struggle for survival and success in a new land’

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Accordingly, Fidler explained, ‘T’u Ti Kong gave way to Tua Pek Kong, resembling him in both form and function but representing the new subsistence techniques’, and exhibiting much of the imagery and iconography of Ts’ai Shen, whose wealth symbols retained cultural meaning for Chinese in Borneo. In their innovative merging of the iconography of T’u Ti Kong with that of Ts’ai Shen, immigrant Chinese conceived a deity to represent ‘the pioneer spirit, the struggle for survival and success in a new land’.174 Along with Kwan Yin, Tua Pek Kong was able ‘to fullfil most of the ordinary spiritual needs of the Chinese community, for any occupation, in any Place’.175 Thus, although Chinese folk religion, like those of Malays, Bidayuh and Iban, ‘focuses attention on the soul, the bridge between this world and the other’,176 there is almost no evidence of Sarawak Chinese attempting to engage the Rajah’s semangat, or valuing opportunities to associate with him or his officials for other than secular, instrumental reasons.177 Whereas Malays, Bidayuh and Iban sought to engage the Rajah’s semangat to ensure their prosperity and success, Chinese in Sarawak turned to Tua Pek Kong. When Oliver St John reported in 1874 that the Chinese had staged a procession to give thanks for their luck and success, he made no mention of the Rajah, observing that the ceremonials were dedicated to ‘Teh-peh-Kong [Tua Pek Kong]’.178 In contrast to his essential participation in Malay, Bidayan and Iban rituals, the Rajah attended Chinese ritual and religious occasions only as an observer or guest. His presence was not itself of ritual significance. Chinese invitations to him to attend such occasions, and the honour shown to him, were secular attempts to flatter a more powerful man and achieve particular instrumental advantages. Even they were rare.179 To those who had trembled before the son of heaven, the Rajah of Sarawak seems to have been just another barbarian with too much power. Chinese cosmology did not support the development of ritual relationships between the Rajah and the Chinese communities in Sarawak. Although the integration of the Chinese into the Brooke state was essential in order to secure Sarawak’s finances, the structural and institutional problems that Chinese integration posed were not amenable to ritual solutions.

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7 The Rejang basin

In the mid-19th century the Rejang River basin was, after Java and Bali, one of the richest and most productive regions in the Indonesian archipelago. There were two sources of wealth in the Rejang. In the delta and along the adjoining coast, Melanau communities produced more than half of the world’s sago, the control of which provided economic surpluses to sustain the Brunei elite.1 Contrasting with the agricultural wealth of the coast were profits made from controlling trade into the Rejang hinterland. The Rejang is the third-largest river in Borneo, and the Rejang basin was rich in rainforest products which tribal people traded for salt and other goods from the coast. These two sources of wealth sustained two regional power systems — the Brunei provincial administrations in the sago areas, and a Malay chieftaincy at Sarikei, on the Rejang. Understanding the political economies of these systems is essential to comprehending the development of James Brooke’s power within them. Although James Brooke did not formally annex the Rejang Basin and adjacent coast until 1861, his struggle for power over those areas and their resources followed closely on his ascension to government at Kuching. The story of those struggles, themselves necessarily complex, is further complicated by the manner in which they also reflected factional disputes among Malay nobles from Kuching and the Rejang. As a result, it is difficult to explore the complexities of power in the Rejang in a single narrative. SOURCES OF POWER AND CONFLICT: 1841–1849 World demand for sago increased dramatically during the early part of the 19th century as its utility as an industrial starch was recognised. The foundation of Singapore in 1819 created a new local market for sago producers, with Singapore quickly becoming a centre for sago processing 144

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and refining.2 Singapore’s success as a free port helped to undermine the position of the Brunei court aristocracy by encouraging provincial elites to trade directly with Singapore and to evade court trading monopolies. As the court’s other sources of income diminished, the importance to the Sultan and his officials of control over the sago areas between the Rejang delta and the Brunei capital increased. The court sought to maintain its control over the sago areas by the appointment as governors of royal kinsmen who, through intermarriage with the local Melanau elite, encouraged the spread of both Islam and the royal family’s influence. Malay power among the sago communities, as among other communities, was maintained and continued to be expressed through trade and the exercise of trading monopolies. Developments in Sarawak consequent to James Brooke’s accession to its government threatened Brunei’s control of the sago coast in new ways. The Rajah’s efforts to constrain trading relations between Sarawak Malays and Bidayuh caused the Malays to seek trading opportunities further afield, and the sago trade provided the richest and closest alternative. Sarawak Malay intrusion into the sago trade undermined Brunei control, causing Brunei officials to complain to the Rajah about Sarawak activities and evasion of royal monopolies by 1846.3 By 1847 it is clear that Sarawak traders had garnered a significant portion of the area’s commerce, operating vessels of up to 100 tons on annual trips to Singapore with ‘sago and the other productions of the coast’.4 Sarawak Malay success at breaking the Brunei monopoly created opportunities for other non-royals to enter the trade also: by 1847 traders from Sarikei, and from the sago towns of Mukah and Oya, were also carrying sago to Singapore.5 The weakening of Brunei’s monopoly over the sago trade and the development of significant economic interests in sago areas by Sarawak Malays provided opportunities for the Rajah to extend his power into the region. Following the death of Rajah Muda Hassim in 1846, he began increasingly to encourage Brunei-appointed governors to resist Brunei authority. The Rajah seems to have identified Pengiran Matali, Brunei’s governor in Oya, as a potential supporter. He visited Oya in 1846 and held discussions with the Pengiran which lasted several days.6 Although the subject of the discussions was not recorded, one European present considered Oya at this time to be integrated into the Rajah’s realm.7 Certainly, in the following year the Rajah was reported to be helping Pengiran Matali to exclude Brunei officials from Oya.8 In 1850 Matali clashed with the Brunei governor of Mukah, Pengiran Ursat, and sought the Rajah’s assistance.9 In keeping with his practice in Sarawak and Sadong, the Rajah sought to develop influence beyond, and independently of, ruling elites. He cultivated multiple, direct relationships among the wider populations of the sago communities. According to one Mukah nakhoda, the people of Mukah ‘benefited exceedingly’ from the Rajah’s expanding interests, ‘more than if he gave us a dollar a month each’.10

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The Rejang River was the second major source of wealth in the area. Control over the products of the Rejang basin — rice, beeswax and other forest products, fine cloths and dried fish — supported a large and affluent Malay community based at Sarikei, which was ruled by Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman. Keppel considered Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman to be ‘the most powerful and influential man along the coast’.11 Abdul Rahman’s mother was a Kayan from upriver, and the support of the Kayan chiefs underpinned his influence. He was closely allied with the paramount Kayan chief, Akam Nipa, who brought his people down to Sarikei to trade in large numbers, and he guarded against Akam Nipa’s developing commercial relationships with other downriver Malays in competition with him.12 Abdul Rahman’s relationship with Akam Nipa provided him with military resources as well,13 which probably underpinned his control of the Malay communities on the neighbouring river, Kalaka. Control over Kalaka was essential to Abdul Rahman’s domination of the Rejang, since the Kalaka Malays manufactured salt, which was the primary item of trade with upriver groups.14 As with the sago towns of the coast, the Rajah began to try to extend his power into the Rejang-Kalaka basins during the mid-1840s. In contrast to

House of Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman at Sarikei

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the sago towns, where the Rajah’s developing interests were primarily economic, in Rejang-Kalaka he identified military and strategic interests important to his conflict with the Iban of Skrang and Saribas. Skrang and Saribas Iban had been migrating into the Kanowit and other southern tributaries of the Rejang since about 1840. The rate of Iban settlement of the Rejang increased in response to Rajah Brooke’s attacks of 1843, 1844 and 1849, as Iban migrated away from Kuching’s reach. Expanding Iban settlement of the southern Rejang basin, and Iban raiding against downriver Melanaus and upriver Kayan, created in the Rejang new conflicts that confronted Abdul Rahman’s power. Pioneer Iban communities did not accept Abdul Rahman’s authority and, as their numbers increased, they were able to assert their right of egress from the Rejang for raiding expeditions. By 1845 Abdul Rahman, who had never been able to control Iban, was unable even to contain them.15 The Rajah urged him ‘to be strong with the Dyaks of Kanowit, because unless the Dyaks of Kanowit assisted the people from Serebas and Sakarran, they could not make boats and come down the river’.16 In 1846 the Rajah took the British steamer Phlegethon to Sarikei, remonstrating with Abdul Rahman about the Iban’s continuing access through the Rejang. The Phlegethon then ascended the Rejang to Kanowit, where the Rajah urged that community to block Iban access to the sea.17 The importance of Kalaka’s salt industry to the development of power on the northwest coast of Borneo also engaged the Rajah’s interest, as it engaged that of the Brunei court. Although the Rajah’s involvement in Kalaka’s affairs during the 1840s remains unclear, he was keen to exclude Brunei from the area. Hugh Low recorded details of a mission that the Rajah sent to urge the Kalaka Malays to resist Brunei exactions, and to promise them his support in doing so.18 The resources and followers that derived from control over the Rejang basin attracted the ambitions of other nobles. Like Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman, Sherif Masahor of Igan had kinship links with upriver pagans,19 and he appears to have used these ties to confront Abdul Rahman and to compete for control of the area. He was well placed to do so. Like Sarikei, Igan controlled one of the mouths of the Rejang and, like Kalaka, it was an important centre for salt production.20 It was also one of the principal sago towns on the coast, and its large population of 3000 Malays and Melanaus provided Masahor with significant military power.21 Sherif Masahor appears to have been closely related to Sherifs Sahib and Mullah. Edward Belcher referred either to Sherif Masahor or to his father as ‘Tuanku Schriff Sa karran’, the most likely meaning of which is ‘the lord sherif from (or of) Sakarran (Skrang)’. Charles Brooke also understood that the three sherifs were related.22 These suggestions are supported by a genealogy preserved by the descendants of Masahor’s brother, which lists among Masahor’s nephews two brothers named Sahapudin and Mohdzhar.23 It is likely that Sahapudin and Mohdzhar can be identified with the Sahib and Mullah of European accounts. Sahib was also called Sahap by his

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contemporaries, while the softly aspirated Malay pronunciation of Mohdzhar is easily misheard by Anglophone ears as ‘Mothah’ or ‘Mollah’. Whatever Masahor’s precise relationship with Sahib and Mullah, he appears to have retained influence among the Iban associated with them and was able to call on Skrang and Saribas Iban for military support. Throughout the 1840s, Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman struggled to overcome the threat from Masahor and his allies. Abdul Rahman was reported to be at war with the Skrang in 1844,24 and he attacked Igan and the other sago towns in 1845.25 The following year he led a mixed force of Sarikei Malays and Kayan in an attack on Skrang and Saribas Iban, who in 1847 attacked his own operations at Kalaka.26 His followers went out to attack Igan again in 1848.27 The expanding Iban presence in the southern Rejang basin strengthened Masahor’s ability to overcome Abdul Rahman, by allowing him to attack Sarikei from upriver as well as from seawards. In this context, Masahor’s relationship with the Iban leader, Buah Raya, is instructive. According to Iban oral traditions Buah Raya was a Skrang Iban who migrated to the Entabai tributary in the southern Rejang basin. The Iban histories record that Buah Raya accepted from Masahor the title panglima, and that he led Iban attacks on the population of the Rejang delta.28 Although the circumstances are unclear, Masahor succeeded in taking over Sarikei and the Rejang some time during 1849.29 Since none of the primary sources refer again to Abdul Rahman, he probably died or was killed in the process.30 Masahor’s success displaced Abdul Rahman’s nephews and other relatives, who are unlikely to have been pleased with their loss of power to their family’s enemy.31 The Malay population of Kalaka responded vigorously to Masahor’s victory, entirely removing themselves to Kuching, leaving their kampongs deserted.32 POWER AND CONFLICT: 1849–1859 By 1849, therefore, antagonisms in the Rejang basin and the adjoining coast were complex and intense. The Rajah’s intrusion into the area, Brunei’s diminishing control of the sago trade, the expansion of Iban settlement and the displacement of the Sarikei perabangan by Sherif Masahor created new conflicts and opportunities. The ensuing contests were enacted principally at Kanowit, Mukah and Sarikei. Kanowit Following the Sarawak victory over Iban forces at Beting Marau in 1849, the Rajah began the construction of a number of strategically located forts which commanded access to and from Iban inhabited areas. His fort at the junction of the Rejang with its tributary, the Kanowit, was built in 1851. In addition to constricting Iban marauding, it projected the Rajah’s power deep into the Rejang chieftaincy.

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Having witnessed the destruction of his kinsmen’s power at Skrang, and uncertain of the stability of his own recently acquired position at Sarikei, Sherif Masahor was keen to attract the Rajah’s favour and support. Masahor recognised that the construction of the Kanowit fort provided opportunities to associate with the Rajah, bringing five boatloads of followers to help with the building.33 Since the fort enabled the Rajah to guarantee the Kanowits in the area security from Iban attack, they welcomed its construction. The Rajah induced one group to settle nearby, and another group, under its headman, Tani, accepted his guarantees of security and settled downriver at Sibu.34 The fort was fiercely resented by Iban from the Kanowit River, and probably by the Rejang Kayan from upriver whose trade with coastal centres it could disrupt. The Rajah tried to recruit the Kayan leader, Akam Nipa, into his entourage with gifts of ritually important clothes. The Rajah recorded that he ‘made the most friendly advances to Kum Nipa, and sent him my Governor’s uniform as a present’.35 These advances failed, however, and both Kayan and Iban resented and resisted the Rajah’s attempts to control their activities. Although the Rajah initially sent Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur’s brother, Abang Durop, from Kuching to command the Kanowit fort, in a fatal lapse of judgement he replaced Durop with Henry Steele. Steele’s tactless and overbearing behaviour increased the fort’s vulnerability. Kanowit was a difficult posting, and even the Rajah eventually recognised that Steele was ‘not equal to his task in administrative ability’.36 In 1853 Sarawak authorities heard rumours of ‘a great conspiracy’ between Iban and Kayan to kill Steele and overthrow the Rajah’s power.37 Although the Kanowit population had welcomed the construction of the fort because it shielded them from Iban attack, Steele’s behaviour quickly alienated them, so that they had attacked the fort three times by August 1854.38 The Rajah retaliated by sending forces from Sarawak to attack his opponents around the fort, and he even planned to let Iban from Lingga and Lundu, who were firm supporters of his regime, ravage the area. By the end of 1855 the Rajah had no faith in Steele’s ability to administer Kanowit, and was trying to post a Malay to the fort to look after affairs.39 The Rajah failed to remedy Steele’s inadequacies, however, so that Brooke power in the Kanowit region remained precarious throughout 1856 and 1857. In 1859 new rumours of a planned attack on the fort induced Charles Johnson to take a force to Kanowit. Johnson found that Steele enjoyed little respect among the local population, having surrounded himself with ‘slave-born’ followers with no influence in the area. Johnson recommended that Steele endeavour to obtain some Malays of respectability to take up their abode near, with whom he might act and whom he might trust. At present there was not a person of any rank living at Kanowit, and the population was as unprincipled a

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gang of cut-throats as could be found anywhere, living here because they were beyond law, and could obtain a dishonest livelihood from the Dyaks, and accumulate large profits, attended by little trouble or outlay. They stood by Mr Steele and the fort, knowing this to be their only means of security, as alone they could not have held their own in such a place.40

Johnson was sufficiently concerned about affairs to post Charles Fox to Kanowit to support Steele. Fox was as untalented as Steele, however, and equally unlikely to contribute to developing support among the local population. Not only was he ‘inclined to push reforms too fast, and very excitable’,41 he was a sinophile who was contemptuous of other people in Sarawak. ‘A Malay,’ he considered, ‘does not understand what it is to be in earnest about anything except in the matter of running “amuck” & a Dyak much less so.’42 He appears to have been unable to conceal his disdain, having a brusque manner even with ‘natives of rank’.43 One day in June 1859, Fox was supervising the digging of a ditch while Steele was relaxing in the fort with two men, Abi and Talip. A party of Kanowits entered the fort and killed Fox, while Abi and Talip killed Steele.44 Europeans in Sarawak came, or claimed, to believe that these killings were the first blows in another Malay plot to overthrow the Rajah’s power. Although I discuss such interpretations in detail below, the point to be made here is that Fox’s and Steele’s deaths can be adequately explained by local Kanowit grievences. The wonder was that they had not occurred sooner. The Sago coast Although the deaths of Fox and Steele represented a setback for the Rajah, tumultuous power struggles down on the coast comprised a greater threat to his position. The Sarawak government’s response to the killings needs to be placed in the context of these developments. By 1851 Sarawak’s economic fortunes were firmly tied to its growing interest in the sago trade from Mukah, the largest of the sago centres on the coast. The trade was so extensive that it caused a shortage of specie in Kuching. ‘The impetus of trade,’ as Mrs McDougall recorded, ‘makes money very scarce.’45 Sarawak’s intrusion into the sago trade reduced the income of Brunei nobles there, intensifying competition and exacerbating existing tensions among them. By 1854 the Mukah elite was divided into two armed, mutually hostile camps led by Pengiran Ursat and Pengiran Matusin. Pengiran Ursat had been appointed governor by the Sultan, and had extensive kinship links with the Mukah elite through his mother, who was a high-ranking Melanau. In contrast, the mother of his cousin and rival, Pengiran Matusin, was ‘one of the Bumi or working class’.46 Melanau social structure pays close attention to the rank of an individual’s mother, which modifies descent status inherited patrilineally. Melanau oral traditions ascribed the enmity between the two factions to Ursat’s determined and public assertion of higher status than Matusin.47 Although Pengiran

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Ursat exiled Matusin in 1854, he allowed him to return the following year. After his return, Matusin gathered his forces and attacked Ursat’s house, killing him and 11 of the women and children of his family.48 It is not clear whether Matusin’s attack was an isolated event or part of a wider attempt to seize power in the sago areas. St John reported that the ruler of another of the sago towns, Mato, was killed in a rising at about the same time as Matusin’s attack on Ursat, and the two events might have been connected.49 Since St John presented the Mato killing as a liberating blow by Mato people against Brunei oppression, it is possible that it was supported by the Rajah. Matusin’s actions galvanised opinion against him. Ursat’s son and successor, Pengiran Dipa, looked for support to Sherif Masahor who, through his control of both Igan and Sarikei, was probably the most powerful nobleman in the area, and who was married to Dipa’s sister.50 Masahor raised a large force, including Iban from the southern Rejang basin and Saribas, and attacked Matusin, who abandoned his family to be killed and fled to Sarawak. Incensed by Masahor’s mobilisation of Iban, the Rajah levied a large fine on the sherif. In response, Masahor withdrew from Sarikei to Igan,51 and joined with Dipa in expelling Sarawak traders from his town. As early as 1850 the Rajah had anticipated ‘being able to extend the benefits of good government along the entire coast’.52 The conflict at Mukah in 1854 destabilised Brunei control and provided him with new opportunities in the sago areas. The Brunei government responded to this threat by dispatching his old rival, Makhota, to re-establish order at Mukah. The Rajah tried to secure Mahkota’s recall and the appointment of his own follower, Pengiran Matali of Oya, to ‘settle the affairs of these rivers’.53 Although the Sultan seemed to agree to these arrangements readily enough, he did nothing to implement them. The Rajah’s failure to secure control over the sago areas through the appointment of Pengiran Matali, and his loss of Igan through his alienation from Sherif Masahor, crystallised his ambitions. He seems to have recognised that he could not take control of the coast simply through attracting elite figures into his entourage as clients, and from 1855 began planning to impose his control through military means. He began to pepper his letters from England to his nephew with obsessive instructions for military mobilisation. He urged on Brooke the need for Sarawak to acquire a ‘steamer — a steamer — a steamer’. When ‘you hesitate about a steamer remember the approaching crisis in Brunei — in Mukah etc’, he wrote.54 A steamer would provide ‘political influence’ and ‘security for trade’ and the highest priority was to be accorded to the acquisition of one: ‘If you can by hook or by crook buy a steamer do so by all means without considering the means of keeping her’. A ‘steamer is the thing to be bought borrowed or stolen!!!’55 As well as the steamer’s increased military capability, which was ‘absolutely needed’, he wanted ‘muskets and carbines galore — we must advance with our position’.56

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The subsequent reopening of Mukah to Sarawak nakhodas failed to divert the Rajah’s territorial ambitions. His candidate for the government at Mukah, Pengiran Matali of Oya, continued to oppose the Mukah administration.57 The Rajah himself interfered in Mukah affairs and encouraged the Sarawak traders there to resist any imposition of duties.58 In 1856 he sent Datu Tumanggong Mersal and Sherif Moksain to secure his interests at another of the sago towns, Bruit,59 and at this time consolidated his control over Mato.60 Of the five main sago towns of Mato, Igan, Bruit, Oya and Mukah, by 1856 only Igan and Mukah remained outside his control. The Chinese attack on Kuching in 1857, however, weakened the Sarawak government and allowed the Rajah’s opponents to improve their position. Pengiran Dipa reasserted Brunei’s control over Oya.61 In September 1857 the Rajah reopened negotiations with the Sultan over the political future of the sago areas. Although the Rajah claimed to have ‘got full power to act in Muka’,62 the Sultan had again evaded the Rajah’s attempts to negotiate with polite phrases and platitudes. St John, who was also party to the negotiations, reported that ‘very little appears to have been settled . . . the Rajah was requested to see that right was done, whatever that might mean’.63 Although this fell short of meeting the Rajah’s ambitions, he used it secure Matusin’s return to Mukah, and was pleased that: The impression I wished was produced. If the rajas fight, they will not have backing, and the people will look to me more and more. Thus two points are won: 1. The trade secured. 2. My authority to interfere granted. It is a great gain, and a relief to my mind.64

In early 1858 Brooke Brooke, who was administering the government during the Rajah’s absence in England, resumed preparations to annex the area by force. He wanted ‘good Iron Guns’ sent to him, six fivehundredweight six-pounders, and six 18-pounders.65 Brooke Brooke proposed to the Rajah that they ‘seize the Sago towns and put them under Mat Hussein [Pengiran Matusin] with a good fort, to hold under the Sarawak Govt independent entirely of Bruni’. As part of his mobilisation he formed a small troop of regular artillery, the Sarawak Rifles.66 He wanted the Borneo Company to support his invasion with their steamer, but was confident of his own military capacity if the Company refused.67 In addition to military preparations for invasion, the Sarawak government tried to develop support among the Mukah population, backing Pengiran Matusin and using the Sarawak traders at Mukah to build entourages and extend Sarawak’s influence.68 According to St John, the Sarawak traders were ‘always interfering, instead of attending to their trade’.69 The Mukah authorities responded by trying to curtail the Sarawak commerce.70 By 1859, when open fighting again broke out between Dipa and Matusin, the activities of Sarawak traders ensured that they too were attacked by Dipa’s supporters. Charles Johnson was in charge of

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the government while both the Rajah and Brooke Brooke were in England. Johnson went to Mukah and, under the threat of his guns, imposed fines on one of the Sultan’s own officials. He was unable to overcome Pengiran Dipa’s supporters, however, and was forced to withdraw Matusin from the town. From Kuching Johnson sent ‘a conciliatory letter’ to Dipa, ‘begging him to do his utmost to foster trade between Sarawak and Mukah’. Having evicted Matusin from the town, Dipa seems to have been happy to comply, and for the remainder of 1859 trade was ‘brisk’.71 Sarikei The Rajah’s demonstration of prowess during his wars with the Skrang and Saribas communities established him as an attractive ‘centre’ in the area. Following the 1844 campaign against Skrang, for example, chiefs from all over the northwest coast had sent him gifts and messages of support,72 and in 1845 many of the people at Sarikei even wanted to relocate to Kuching to engage him more directly.73 The Rajah’s expanding power in the Rejang and the adjoining coast necessarily diminished the Sultan’s authority and that of his court. Moreover, the Rajah’s leadership of the Royal Navy’s successful attack on the Brunei capital in 1846 in reprisal for the killing of Raja Muda Hassim and his brothers clearly diminished the nama that Malay aristocrats like Sherif Masahor could secure by associating with the Sultan, presenting them even more clearly with an alternate source of semangat. The Rajah’s attractiveness as both a patron and a potent centre fragmented the Malay elite as individuals perceived the advantages to their own status of associating with the Rajah or the Sultan. Sherif Masahor’s assistance in building the fort at Kanowit had demonstrated his eagerness to associate with the Rajah. Masahor must have hoped that his cooperation with the Rajah’s expanding presence would consolidate his own power over Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman’s family and the other Sarikei Malays. His acceptance of the Rajah’s authority and his desire to be integrated into the Rajah’s entourage led him to seek association also with the Rajah’s Kuching followers. The Rajah’s initial appointment of Abang Durop, Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur’s brother, to command the fort at Kanowit provided Masahor with direct access to the faction then dominant among the Sarawak perabangan. The subsequent marriage of Masahor’s brother, Sherif Bujang, to Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur’s daughter, Dayang Fatima, integrated Masahor into that faction and closely linked him to the Rajah’s pre-eminent supporter. Masahor made the most of the opportunity provided by his brother’s wedding in Kuching to associate with the Rajah and his high-ranking followers. In Kuching, Masahor ‘was open handed in his liberality’ and ‘appeared to seek European society’.74 Masahor’s association with Abdul Gapur strengthened the latter in his struggle with Datu Bandar Molana and the other Sarawak perabangan

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leaders. Molana’s family had longstanding links with the Sarikei perabangan who had been displaced by Sherif Masahor, and Molana and his supporters are likely to have sought countervailing alliances with them.75 Thus, the extension of the Rajah’s authority over the Rejang river extended the framework of conflict within the Sarawak Malay community into the Rejang and expanded the scope of Sarawak Malay rivalries to include the equally intense conflicts within the Sarikei Malay elite. Moreover, although Masahor was prepared to project the Rajah’s power into the area and to protect his interests,76 the intensifying conflict on the sago coast complicated his attempts to do so. Masahor’s status as Pengiran Ursat’s son-in-law and his possession of the sago town of Igan necessarily involved him in the contest between Pengirans Dipa and Matusin at a time when the disgrace and exile of his ally, Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, deprived him of support in Kuching and access to the Rajah’s favour. At the same time, the Sarikei perabangan, probably encouraged by the growing power of the Sarawak Bandar family, opened direct contact with the Sarawak government to repudiate his leadership. Thus, when Brooke Brooke travelled to Sarikei in 1855 to fine Masahor for calling out Iban against the Rajah’s wishes, he also planned to ‘move the Sarekei people who are desirous of leaving that river’.77 Following Masahor’s withdrawal to Igan, the Sarawak perabangan leaders, Datu Imam Buassan, Datu Tumanggong Mersal and Abang Patah, themselves commanded the Sarawak forces which patrolled the Rejang delta to prevent Masahor’s return and to contain the pagan populations of the delta who supported him.78 Masahor’s exclusion provided opportunities for the Sarikei Malays to reassert their leadership in the area. By the end of 1855 the Rajah was planning to install at Sarikei ‘Abang Usop or some other good man’.79 He travelled to Sarikei in early 1856 and constructed a fort there, noting that, of the Sarikei perabangan, ‘Abang Ali and Abang Usop were with us and promise well’. The Rajah sent messages through the area ordering the Sarikei Malay community to reassemble around the fort.80 Although Masahor was ‘sore-hearted and angry’, the Rajah did not believe he would retaliate against his exclusion from Sarikei. The Rajah’s ‘soothing but warning’ letters81 failed to deflect Masahor, who raised a force of Rejang people and fortified a strategic position in the delta.82 I have noted elsewhere the need for rulers in Malayo-Moslem polities to ensure that the distribution of titles and positions of honour integrated actual relationships of power. Masahor’s capacity to mobilise support in the Rejang was too extensive for the Rajah to ignore or overcome. In September 1857 the Rajah reversed his policy, decided to abandon the Sarikei perabangan and issued instructions that Masahor ‘now should reside at Sarekei’. Those Sarikei people who refused to live under Masahor would have to leave the town.83 Brooke Brooke, however, was under pressure from the Sarikei nobles, led by Abangs Ali, Usop and Mohammed, to continue

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Masahor’s exclusion.84 The Rajah rejected Brooke Brooke’s stated concern that Masahor would support the Sultan’s ambitions in the Rejang at Sarawak’s expense, advising Brooke to single Masahor out for special favour: ‘make much of him . . . for he has always (even in disgrace) known a consistent distrust of Brunei and all that thereto pertains’.85 Brooke Brooke believed that Masahor’s possible return to Sarikei had encouraged the Brunei authorities to demand that he pay the levies customary on accession to high office.86 When Fox, who had been administering the lower Rejang in cooperation with the Sarikei abangs, and who was notorious for his brusque manner and bad manners, sought to interrogate Masahor about his relationship with Brunei, Masahor equivocated. Perhaps interpreting Masahor’s disdain for him as support for the Sultan, Fox urged Brooke Brooke not to allow him to return to Sarikei. The Sarawak datus backed up Fox’s advice, which would have allowed their Sarikei allies to remain in power. In June, however, Brooke Brooke had to concede to the Rajah that he had ‘failed in proving satisfactorily that the Sultan offered the Rejang & Kaluka to Serib Masahor & believe that Fox was misled’.87 The Sarawak government confirmed Masahor’s position as the senior Malay noble in the Rejang, and the Sarikei perabangan again lost resources and rank to their rival. In control of Sarikei again and included, however precariously, in the Rajah’s entourage, Masahor seems to have been determined to prove his service to the Sarawak government. When Charles Johnson went in force to Mukah to support Matusin, Masahor joined him ‘and professed the most ardent friendship and desire to assist’.88 Masahor’s preparedness to assist the murderer of his wife’s father and female relatives against her brother gives some indication of the strength of his concern not to lose the Rajah’s favour again. MALAY PLOTS: 1859–1861 The deaths of Steele and Fox in 1859 came to be regarded by Europeans in Sarawak, and subsequent historians, as the opening of another widespread Malay plot to overthrow the Rajah’s rule. According to these accounts, Sherif Masahor and the former Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, whom the Rajah had invited to return to Sarawak with the title Datu Haji following the Chinese attack on Kuching,89 planned a general rising. Allegedly, the Kanowit killings were intended to be part of this activity, although they occurred before the other arrangements had been finalised. Sherif Masahor is alleged to have executed all of the men involved in the killings to prevent suspicion falling on him. Such accounts claim that Datu Haji Abdul Gapur subsequently was uncovered attempting to incite the Lundu Iban to attack Kuching, and was again exiled. Shortly afterwards, Sherif Masahor is supposed to have sent a slave, posing as the emissary of the Pengiran Tumanggong (and heir presumptive) of Brunei, to foment

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revolt in the Sadong, from whence he was to travel into Dutch Borneo and meet Datu Haji Abdul Gapur. The slave is alleged to have written to Malay nobles at Kuching, Lingga and Saribas urging their cooperation in overthrowing the Rajah. Finally, Sherif Masahor is claimed to have attempted to attack Kuching with two prahus of followers. His boats were sunk by Charles Johnson, and Masahor himself was driven out of Sarikei. Johnson pursued the sherif to his other town, Igan, which he allowed the Sarawak forces to loot and burn. Masahor settled his family at Mukah, married his sister to Pengiran Dipa, and supported Dipa’s attempts to preserve Mukah from Sarawak.90 The events that are alleged to have comprised the second Malay plot undoubtedly occurred. Steele and Fox were killed, Datu Haji Abdul Gapur was active in some way at Lundu, a person called Tunjang did travel up the Sadong collecting revenues before crossing into Pontianak and, finally, Charles Johnson did intercept Sherif Masahor on his way to Kuching with two prahus, and attack him. Alone among historians, David Bassett rejected the plot theories promulgated by Charles Johnson. Bassett argued that Johnson accused Masahor of conspiring to overthrow the Rajah’s regime in order to justify the Sarawak government’s own attempts to annex Mukah.91 Bassett also noted that the details of the alleged plot were inconsistent and incredible. Although Bassett’s suggestions have not been pursued, they have much to recommend them. The events normally associated with this second ‘Malay plot’ are supposed to have been part of a coordinated rising, yet they occurred over an eight-month period. If Malays were planning a simultaneous uprising in various parts of Sarawak they were repeatedly unsuccessful in doing so. Nor were recorded events consistent with attributed motives. Masahor, far from precipitantly killing people who could testify to his involvement in the deaths of Steele and Fox, tried to reserve the fate of one of the killers for Charles Johnson, only agreeing to his execution at the insistence of Abang Ali and the other Sarikei perabangan.92 Nor, as Bassett observed, is it credible that Masahor was attacking Kuching. Would the sherif have attempted to do so with only two prahus containing a total of 70 followers, as Charles Johnson alleged,93 when he could have called on the resources of Igan and the Rejang, including the Iban of the southern Rejang tributaries? From Igan alone Masahor could have raised 300 warriors.94 And why would Datu Haji Abdul Gapur have tried to persuade the Lundu Iban to attack Kuching? They were among the Rajah’s oldest and strongest supporters. Additionally, claims of a widespread Malay conspiracy are undermined by the evidence of some of the original correspondence of those Europeans in Sarawak or involved in its affairs. At the time of Steele and Fox’s deaths, Mrs McDougall, for example, was concerned that her mother might ‘think there was a more general rising here but such is not the case’.95 Mrs McDougall assured her mother that the episode at Kanowit was ‘quite a

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local affair and does not in any way endanger the well being of any other English folks at Sarawak’.96 St John was also originally confident that, notwithstanding the ‘general feeling of uneasiness among all classes’, Steele and Fox were not killed as part of any wider plot.97 Moreover, despite his later, official support of plot theories, St John privately remained sceptical of claims of conspiracy by Masahor and others. As the Rajah, in England, complained: ‘there is a great deal of confusion in the accounts I have received — Charlie [Johnson] writes of events as having happened and St John direct from Brunei, not mentioning them, or rather intimating that they had not occurred’.98 There is a further difficulty with linking these events to Sherif Masahor and other Malay aristocrats. The Governor of Labuan and Acting-Consul General at Brunei, George Edwardes, took a comprehensive statement from Masahor, which he verified, wherever possible, by careful examination of other witnesses. In it, Masahor categorically denied that he was party to any plot to overthrow the Rajah. Masahor’s refutation of allegations that he organised the killing of Steele and Fox was absolute, detailed, and often corroborated. It is also consistent with oral traditions collected from among Kanowit people.99 Subsequent historians, however, have accepted the Brooke versions of events. Although Pringle considered it ‘fruitless to attempt any judgement at this distance in time’,100 he proceeded to assume that Masahor was indeed guilty, and that his plot had been the Sarawak government’s ‘greatest trial’.101 That Crisswell found it ‘difficult to ascertain’ the extent of Masahor’s involvement in a plot prior to Johnson’s attack on him did not prevent his concluding that Masahor’s involvement was ‘probable’.102 Sanib ignored Masahor’s detailed denial of any participation in a plot, attributing to him leadership of an integrated and determined resistance to foreign rule by a group of closely related Malay nobles.103 As Bassett observed, the Brooke versions of events can be believed only if Masahor is adjudged an inveterate and persistent liar. That the Brookes claimed this of him is not surprising, but nor is it necessarily true.104 Masahor’s denial of any plot to overthrow the Rajah’s government, or of complicity in the Kanowit killings, cannot be sidestepped. If Masahor told the truth there was no Malay plot. Therefore, interpretation of the events of the alleged Malay plot should only follow judgement on which of the two versions of events, the Brookes’ or Masahor’s, is to be believed. Masahor’s version derives credibility from his preparedness to name witnesses and recall details amenable to corroboration. This contrasts with Brooke accounts, which remained free of detail or corroboration. As a contemporary Colonial Office official noted: Captain Brooke says a thousand incidents afterwards came to light which turned suspicion against Musahore into certainty. He does not, however, state any of the incidents.105

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Moreover, some of the evidence that was produced in support of the Brooke version was demonstrably false and had been fabricated. For example, St John’s report that one of the alleged killers of Fox and Steele fled the Rejang to Brunei because Masahor was going to kill him to prevent his testifying that he had been paid by Masahor to kill Steele and Fox106 was untrue. The man in question had not been seen in Brunei.107 Similarly, St John’s later claim that the Sultan of Brunei told him that Masahor had paid his followers to kill Steele and Fox was denied by St John’s amanuensis, who attended St John during his interview with the Sultan.108 Not surprisingly, Governor Edwardes’s commitment to establishing the truth or otherwise of the allegations against Masahor, and his subsequent refusal to acquiesce to a Sarawak attack on Brunei, attracted hostility from the Brookes and their supporters. According to Brooke Brooke: all the world knows that George Edwards the club lounger & man about town, is not a man of very high character or of any very fixed principles. I believe him to have been activated in reality by very small mean motives.109

The Rajah was even more forthright. For him, Edwardes was ‘ ‘‘Babi Labuan” — the Hog of Labuan’.110 Such vitriol would be risible were it not echoed by modern scholars’ assessments of Edwardes. Pringle dismissed him as ‘another bitter enemy of the Brookes . . . deeply jealous of Sarawak’.111 Ingleson and Tarling attributed his actions to personal jealousy and rivalry with St John.112 No modern scholars seem prepared to concede that Edwardes might have been motivated by the professional standards of his high office. Certainly, Edwardes had reason to harbour animus against the St John family. He believed, probably correctly, that St John was involved in the attempts of Brunei pengirans to compel people to trade at Brunei rather than Labuan.113 Moreover, he had tried unsuccessfully to discipline Spenser St John’s brother, James, who served in the civil administration of Labuan as Superintendent of Convicts and who, Edwardes discovered, had flogged one prisoner believing him to be another.114 Edwardes clashed with Spenser St John over the jurisdictions of their relative offices,115 and is likely to have suspected, as did his colleagues in the Colonial Office, that St John was ambitious to replace him as Governor.116 Edwardes’ concerns were not unreasonable. I share his outrage at James St John’s callous incompetence and agree with his position in his jurisdictional dispute with Spenser. The important point is that, although these factors could have motivated Edwardes to animosity against the St Johns and their friends at Sarawak, there is no evidence that they did so. In fact, examination of the Labuan files during Edwardes’s term as Governor reveals him to be a conscientious and cautious bureaucrat. He was liberal and humane, reforming, for example, the prison system in the colony to make it less oppressive.117 Moreover, independent contemporary

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observers praised Edwardes’s energy and administrative ability. According to Captain Cresswell: His Excellency the present Governor has done much to improve the sanitary conditions of the inhabited part of the island, by cutting down jungle, draining, etc. It is quite wonderful what he has done considering the very small means at his disposal.118

Edwardes had little respect for the government of Brunei, whose exactions and oppression of Brunei people he resented.119 Nor was he easily misled by Malay reports, however official they seemed, always being careful to confirm them.120 Highly principled and professional, George Edwardes was well qualified to assess the conflicting claims about Malay plots. His detailed investigation concluded that the Brookes’ assertions that Sherif Masahor planned the deaths of Steele and Fox were without foundation. His judgement was supported by that of Hugh Low,121 whose command of Malay language, deep affection and admiration for the Rajah and continuing friendship with the Europeans in the Rajah’s government well qualified him as an adjudicator. Masahor’s denial of any involvement in a Malay plot requires historians to explore its circumstances in greater detail. In 1860 Brooke Brooke demanded rhetorically of his uncle, ‘what political intrigues have there ever been in this country of late that have not had for their first object the murder of the white men?’.122 This perception of Malay leadership not only assumed that Malay power was directed against Europeans, it imposed on the Malay community an undifferentiated unity which denied historical and social reality. Historians have remained unwilling to investigate cleavages in the Sarawak Malay community and, too often, have focused on the structures of control rather than the sources and processes of conflict. For example, Lockard identified, in late 19th-century Kuching, a strong, prestigious, and well-defined Malay elite able to hold the allegiance of the entire Malay community . . . here there existed no ambiguities about local leadership and no divided loyalties, for Charles Brooke governed the Kuching Malays through the traditional chiefs of the community, men who held the rank and title of datu.123

Malay nobles competed with each other for titles of high rank, however, and for the followers and resources to support and give substance to such titles. The datu titles caused conflict as well as reflected consensus. The events of 1859–1860 cannot be explained by recourse to a widespread plot against the Rajah’s government. Rather, they resulted from the resumption of intense rivalry within the Malay elites of Sarawak and Brunei. The expansion of the Rajah’s power into the Rejang basin facilitated the expansion of conflicts within the Kuching perabangan into the Rejang Malay community, as factions within the Kuching and Sarikei perabangan found

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common causes and common enemies. Similarly, those nobles at Brunei whom the Rajah had supported against the Sultan and Mahkota sought to secure resources and followers in Sarawak to establish their rank in Brunei. The deaths of Steele and Fox, however, resulted simply from localised resentment by Kanowit people over Steele and Fox’s high-handed, insensitive and sometimes unjust behaviour, and over their support of disreputable traders who settled around the fort to exploit tribal people. By 1859 Steele and Fox were alienated from upriver Kayan, Iban settlers on the southern tributaries of the Rejang, Kanowits in the area of the fort, and even from the immigrant commercial community which depended on them for security.124 That Sherif Masahor moved so quickly to protect the Sarawak government’s interests on hearing of the deaths of Steele and Fox belies any suggestion that he was behind them. Masahor called for reinforcements from the sago towns and sent Abang Ali in force to secure Kanowit and maintain the boom that protected Sarikei from upriver attack. While Ali proceeded to Kuching to report to Johnson,125 Masahor dispatched parties into the interior to retrieve government property that had been looted from the fort. He compiled inventories of the recovered goods, which he sent to Johnson. His actions and Abang Ali’s testimony reassured the Europeans of his loyalty to the Rajah.126 When Charles Johnson, who was in charge of the government, heard of the Kanowit killings, he formed a ‘concentrated desire to seek out and bathe my hands in the blood of those who had murdered our much-lamented friends’.127 Johnson returned to the Rejang with Abang Ali, whose accusations and recommendations formed the basis of a bloody purge. It is probable that Ali used this opportunity to settle old scores and attack his opponents in the lower Rejang. For example, one of the figures whom Johnson agreed to execute on Ali’s recommendation was Tani. None of the sources outlines the evidence against Tani, who had been an early supporter of the Rajah, and St John maintained his innocence.128 Ali also attacked and killed a group of Malays living near Sarikei, whom he claimed were implicated. Johnson himself ordered the execution of all the fortmen from Kanowit. ‘Death’, he decreed, ‘was the punishment for men having quitted their posts without doing their utmost to protect the Government name and property’.129 The Kanowit people who had been involved in the killings had withdrawn to a fortified position at Kabah, some distance from Kanowit. Johnson’s attack on them was implacable. After heavy artillery bombardment, the Kanowits signalled their unconditional surrender, ‘but a white flag was little regarded by us from such rascals as these, who had no more principle than pigs’. Late the same afternoon the Kanowits managed to inform Johnson again of their wish to surrender, but Johnson was resolved to ‘never receive them except to hang them all, minus the women and children’. The following day Johnson’s forces succeeded in setting fire to Kabah, and then ‘came the horrors of war indeed’.130 Although the two leaders of the Kanowit resistance escaped, all of the other people at Kabah

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either died during the fighting and fire or were killed after they were taken prisoner.131 Walter’s distinction between the victims and targets of stateorganised terror is apposite: ‘The victim perishes, but the target reacts to the spectacle or the news of that destruction with some manner of submission or accommodation.’132 If the people of Kabah perished, the rest of the people of the Rejang, and of all Sarawak, learned the horrible consequences that flowed from killing the Rajah’s officers. At Kabah, Charles Johnson took the use of terror by the Brooke state to new depths. It is clear from the documentary evidence that at this time Johnson and the other Europeans were still convinced that Masahor and the other leading Malays of the Rejang were loyal to the Rajah. Charles Grant reported that ‘Tuanku Mushahor & more particularly Abang Ali have behaved admirably & showed excellent judgement’.133 Johnson himself ‘could not say more in the Serip M’s favour’. Johnson was also sufficiently impressed with Abang Ali’s conduct to appoint him to command the fort that he rebuilt at Kanowit.134 Masahor expressed surprise at Ali’s being invested with such an important and independent command, for which he apparently considered him unsuited.135 Abang Ali’s ambitions to secure rank and status from the Rajah had been frustrated by Masahor’s return to Sarikei and the Rajah’s favour in 1858. Ali’s establishment at Kanowit provided him with rank and resources to rival Masahor’s own position. His appointment represented a significant new opportunity for the Sarikei perabangan to establish their power independently of Sherif Masahor. Masahor is unlikely to have acquiesced to Ali’s promotion at his own expense and, with his extensive kinship links to upriver groups and his influence among the Iban settlers of the southern basin, was well placed to maintain his authority against Ali’s pretensions. Although Ali had emerged as a leader of the Sarikei perabangan during the 1850s, he was originally from Lingga, and only married into the Sarikei elite.136 The Lingga perabangan had attempted to colonise both Kanowit and the Kapit area upriver until they were driven out by Akam Nipa about 1830.137 This longstanding animosity between Ali’s relatives and upriver pagans inhibited Ali’s ability to compete with Masahor for power around Kanowit. Although Ali’s appointment to the upriver command gave expression to and consolidated the divisions within the Sarikei elite, Ali was unable to establish his independence from Masahor, remaining a subsidiary leader in his entourage.138 While these rivalries were being played out in the Rejang, changing circumstances in the capital allowed the re-emergence of old conflicts among the Kuching Malays. The exclusion of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur from Sarawak in 1854 had established Datu Bandar Molana as the preeminent Malay figure in Sarawak, allowing him to entrench his family at the head of the Kuching perabangan. Molana’s brother, Buassan, had replaced Abdul Gapur as the third Kuching datu with the title Datu Imam, and his followers controlled the religious hierarchy associated with the mosque.

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Abdul Gapur had always enjoyed a strong following among the Bidayuh, however, and following the Chinese attack on Kuching the Rajah recalled him to Sarawak, ‘apparently by the wish of the people’.139 Although the Rajah did not re-establish Abdul Gapur in any government position, he entitled him Datu Haji, which confirmed his datu status and encouraged equating his rank with that of the Datu Imam by similarly emphasising religious authority. Ambiguity about the relative status of the two men was furthered by the Datu Imam’s being paid $30 per month, compared with the Datu Haji’s pension of $25 per month.140 Charles Johnson saw much of Abdul Gapur while administering Sarawak in 1859, and believed him to be well disposed to the government.141 Johnson’s confidence in Abdul Gapur’s abilities and loyalty led him to include Abdul Gapur in the expedition to the Rejang after the deaths of Steele and Fox. Johnson considered that Datu Haji distinguished himself during the campaign by his concern for Johnson’s safety.142 Although this developing relationship between Johnson and Abdul Gapur must have concerned the Bandar family, Johnson’s administration was only temporary. Abdul Gapur’s position would diminish when Johnson’s brother, Brooke Brooke, resumed his place at the head of the government. Brooke Brooke’s trust and affection rested with Datu Imam Buassan, whom he considered ‘the best native I ever met’.143 Datu Bandar Molana fell seriously ill, however, while Brooke Brooke was still in England. Although Molana travelled to Singapore ‘for a change of air’,144 his health continued to deteriorate. The gravity of Molana’s illness presaged a vacancy at the top of Malay power structures, providing an opportunity for Abdul Gapur to resume his former position and leadership. The principal constraint on Abdul Gapur’s asserting his claim to preeminence was financial. Without an official role in the government he depended entirely for resources on his pension, which was inadequate for the creation of a following. If he were to succeed to Molana’s leadership, Abdul Gapur needed to obtain revenues and to mobilise supporters. Since he had ‘few friends among the Malays’,145 he would need considerable financial resources if he were to build an entourage to rival that of Datu Imam Buassan, who was the most powerful contender for pre-eminence in succession to his brother. Conflicts within the Datu Tumanggong’s family over the control of their property and interests provided him with the opportunity he needed. Datu Tumanggong Mersal was traditionally associated with the coast and islands of Sarawak. Since 1841 he had been represented in these areas by his son, Abang Patah, and Patah’s children. But Mersal enjoyed an uneasy relationship with his son and in early 1859 began trying to assert direct control over the revenue-rich Talang Talang Islands and other areas.146 The spectre of direct control by Mersal cannot have pleased local people. It created uncertainty and resentment, which Abdul Gapur could exploit to his own advantage. In September 1859 therefore he left Kuching and travelled

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downriver, ‘calling at some Dyak houses’, then proceeded along the coast to Lundu. In Kuching, the other Datus began to spread rumours that Abdul Gapur was organising another revolt. Datu Tumanggong Mersal warned Johnson against going around unarmed or alone,147 while Datu Bandar Molana visited Charles Grant ‘with tears in his eyes to pray him to take every precaution: and not to go around unarmed’.148 In the aftermath of the Chinese Revolt and the deaths of Steele and Fox, the Indian Mutiny and the recent killing of Dutch colonialists at Banjermassin in the south of Borneo, these rumours had a profoundly unsettling effect on the non-Malay community at Kuching. Johnson, who by his own admission was close to a nervous breakdown,149 issued ammunition to all Europeans and requested that they wear arms, fortified the Astana, strengthened Kuching’s fort and evacuated European women and children to a vessel lying in the river. Bishop McDougall recruited guards to secure his Mission against attack, while armed Chinese patrolled Kuching streets.150 The datus moved quickly against Abdul Gapur. Even before he had returned to Kuching they persuaded Johnson to send him again into exile.151 They gave Abdul Gapur no chance to respond to their claims or to explain his actions. On his return to Kuching from Lundu the datus imprisoned him in his house.152 On the following day, they assembled the Nakodahs and population in the native Court. The Bandar addressed them in these curt words: I follow the Sarawak Government; there is business to be done. All those who are disposed to follow and assist me, hold up their hands.153

It is important to emphasise the extent to which, in these accounts, the datus initiated the accusations against Abdul Gapur, orchestrating his arrest and prosecution. Johnson, who was in charge of the government, seems to have done little more than observe and acquiesce to the datus’ actions. Datu Haji Abdul Gapur agreed to go into exile again, and Johnson, in an extraordinary repetition of his uncle’s magnanimity towards a man who was supposed to have plotted his death, promised to continue his pension. The datus were delighted at their victory. Datu Tumanggong Mersal held a great feast to celebrate.154 Following Datu Bandar Molana’s death six months later, Datu Imam Buassan succeeded as Bandar. His kinsman, the Tuan Khatib, succeeded him as Datu Imam.155 The Bandar family’s hegemony had been preserved and would be maintained until the final years of Brooke rule.156 In January 1860, only weeks after Abdul Gapur’s second exile, a person named Tunjang ascended the Sadong, where he raised ‘heavy contributions’ from the population in the name of the Pengiran Tumanggong of Brunei.157 Tunjang proceeded up the river and crossed into Pontianak, ahead of the parties Johnson sent to arrest him. Tunjang ‘had made the most

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extortionate demands, and had eagerly received what came into his net; but was most anxious all the time to make his way as fast as possible into the Kapuas headwaters, beyond the territory of Sarawak’.158 At about the same time, Datu Haji Abdul Gapur arrived from Singapore at Pontianak, where he was arrested by the Dutch authorities at Sarawak’s request.159 The Brookes and their historians have assumed that Tunjang’s progress up the Sadong and Abdul Gapur’s arrival in Pontianak were related. They also argued that Tunjang was the slave of Sherif Masahor, who had sent him to raise an army, rendezvous with Abdul Gapur and attack Kuching.160 The Tunjang episode is a key element in conventional accounts of the Malay plot. The only evidence for Tunjang’s allegedly military intentions is provided by Charles Johnson, who claimed that Tunjang sent letters to Pengiran Matusin, who was in Kuching, and to the perabangan of Lingga, Saribas and Skrang calling on them to support him against Sarawak. Johnson

Datu Bandar Buassan in old age

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claimed to have many copies of these letters.161 These claims should be treated with extreme caution. Not one of the many copies Johnson claimed to possess is to be found in the Brooke archives at Kuching or Rhodes House, Oxford, in Foreign Office files or in the private archives of senior British officials. It is difficult to avoid doubting their existence. Nor do other aspects of Johnson’s claims that Tunjang was raising forces against the Sarawak government on Masahor’s behalf withstand scrutiny. As Bassett observed, Pengiran Matusin was dependent entirely on the Sarawak government to protect him from his enemies. He would have been an impossible candidate for rebellion against the Rajah.162 Nor would Masahor have approached him. The two men had killed each others’ families. They were enemies, reconciled only in the entourage of their Rajah. Moreover, Tunjang was unconnected with Masahor and unknown either at Sarikei or Igan.163 Finally, according to Johnson’s own descriptions of Tunjang’s progress up the Sadong, Tunjang made no attempt to raise forces, procure war matériel or secure strategic positions. Tunjang, whoever he was working for, was interested only in raising revenue. Although the Tunjang episode requires explanation, it was not part of a Malay plot by Masahor and Abdul Gapur. Two explanations of the Tunjang affair need to be considered. First, it is possible that Abdul Gapur, recognising that his career in Sarawak was over, attempted to raise money in the Sadong to supplement the pension he was allowed by the Sarawak government. Sadong would have been an attractive target for him. Abdul Gapur had long been connected with the area, which was dominated by his follower, Datu Bandar Kassim, and Kassim’s brother, who was Abdul Gapur’s own son-in-law. This scenario would explain Abdul Gapur’s travelling to Pontianak, where he might have expected to rendezvous with Tunjang to collect the loot. There are two principal problems with this reconstruction. First, none of the contemporary accounts links Tunjang with Abdul Gapur. The hostility of the Kuching perabangan to Abdul Gapur and the Brookes’ need to prove a Malay plot would have uncovered and reported any connection, had it existed. Secondly, the strength of Abdul Gapur’s influence in the Sadong makes it unlikely that he would have used the authority of the Pengiran Tumanggong to raise revenue there. Abdul Gapur’s own name would have attracted contributions, and his followers would have extracted them. The more likely and simplest explanation of the affair accepts Tunjang’s claims that he was raising revenue on behalf of Brunei’s Pengiran Tumanggong. This explanation is supported by developments in Brunei. In 1857 the Rajah, finding that the Sultan of Brunei and Mahkota were united in excluding the Pengiran Tumanggong from power, threw his support behind the latter.164 The Rajah clearly expected that cleavages at Brunei would spill into Sarawak as the Pengiran Tumanggong tried to secure support. He even anticipated the Pengiran Tumanggong’s arrival in Sarawak, instructing his officers to ‘allow no sort of homage to be paid to

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him’.165 Tunjang’s reported flight from Brunei during this period is consistent with his being associated with the Pengiran Tumanggong.166 Mahkota’s unexpected death in 1858 intensified factional conflict in Brunei, as the great officers of state and other claimants for rank struggled over appanages, resources and titles.167 Acute rice shortages in Brunei itself inhibited the capacity of contenders for power to maintain their followers. By the end of 1858 the shortages had become chronic, and adjoining areas were combed for supplies.168 The most likely explanation of the Tunjang affair is that the Pengiran Tumanggong dispatched Tunjang to the Sadong to raise rice and other supplies which he needed to build support in Brunei. Sadong was a rich rice-exporting area and the source of most of Kuching’s own rice supplies.169 Until the expulsion of Sherif Sahib in 1844 it had been an integral part of the Sultan’s dominions, and it was sufficiently important for the Brunei government to have tried to recover control of it in 1848.170 Attempts by needy Malay nobles to extract resources from the populations of other rulers were common in Borneo. For example, a prince from Sambas tried to raise revenues at Sematan in 1862.171 Moreover, Charles Johnson himself appears to have believed that Tunjang was the Pengiran Tumanggong’s agent, since he wrote to Brunei protesting about Tunjang’s actions.172 Abdul Gapur’s arrival in Pontianak should be considered as unrelated to Tunjang’s activities. Abdul Gapur was a member of one of northwest Borneo’s most prominent families and is likely to have had kinsmen at Pontianak. His daughter’s marriage to Sherif Bujang is likely to have connected him with the Arab-descended elite of Pontianak. Excluded for a second time from the Rajah of Sarawak’s entourage, Abdul Gapur would have felt compelled to seek another ruler in whose service he could acquire nama. For an aristocrat like Abdul Gapur, life outside the entourage of a ruler would have been unimaginable and meaningless; the Sultan of Pontianak would have been an ideal lord for him. Following Tunjang’s progress up the Sadong, Charles Johnson received information implicating Sherif Masahor in a plot to overthrow the government. As he travelled down the Sarawak River with his forces, en route to Sadong, he encountered Masahor’s two heavily laden prahus ascending to the town. Whereas Johnson claimed that he ordered Masahor to return to Sarikei, Masahor claimed that he was ordered to follow Johnson’s forces. When Masahor followed Johnson to Sadong and anchored inside the Sadong river, Johnson fired on him, sinking his boats and forcing the Sherif to flee.173 Johnson’s suspicion of Masahor developed only after Abdul Gapur’s second exile. When Johnson had left the Rejang after the deaths of Steele and Fox, he had been convinced of Masahor’s loyalty. Masahor, indeed, ‘was in the constant receipt of letters and communications on questions of the Government as a most trusted officer’.174 Abdul Gapur’s second exile, however, again weakened Masahor’s position and strengthened Abang Ali and the other Sarikei perabangan. It is clear from Johnson’s own account that, after achieving Abdul Gapur’s exile, the Sarawak datus turned their

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attention to Masahor, against whom they began plotting. The Sarawak datus were the source of the accusations against Masahor. They came to Johnson ‘cautiously and secretly, and earnestly breathed their anxieties about this individual, saying, “Do what you think best for the safety of the country; we are ready to follow you”’.175 The descendants of Sherif Masahor’s brother, Sherif Muhammad, recall that Masahor’s other brother, Sherif Bujang, was also involved in the plot against Masahor. Although they do not recall details, they believe that Bujang agreed to betray Masahor because he wanted to be appointed ruler of a town or district of his own.176 It is possible to reconstruct how the Sarawak Malays set Masahor up to be attacked by Charles Johnson. When Johnson encountered Masahor ascending the river to Kuching, he sent Sherif Moksain to instruct him to return to Sarikei. Moksain was an old ally of the Bandar family in the struggle against Abdul Gapur. Witnesses confirmed that, instead of telling Masahor to return home, Moksain told him to follow the expedition to Sadong. Moksain stopped Masahor from seeing Johnson, and so uncovering the conspiracy, by telling him that Johnson was too sick to be disturbed. Moksain seems to have acted in concert with Datu Imam Buassan. He had consulted with Buassan before bringing Johnson’s instructions, coming to Masahor directly from Buassan’s boat. As Johnson’s flotilla moved downstream, Buassan himself sent messages urging Masahor to follow.177 Someone in Masahor’s entourage must also have been party to these proceedings, at Sadong sending word to Johnson that Masahor was planning to attack him.178 It is possible to deduce this person was Abang Ali of Kanowit. On receiving the warning, Johnson returned downstream and sent to Masahor’s party for Abang Ali, Abang Kassim, Abang Atib and Abang Jenudin.179 Since, after the four abangs consulted with Johnson, Kassim and Jenudin returned to their own party, they are beyond suspicion. Abang Ali and Abang Atib ‘sent for their things, and quietly took a place among . . . [Johnson’s] force’.180 Abang Atib later rejoined Masahor and testified in his support to Edwardes,181 so he too appears to have been innocent of any plot. After Johnson had talked to the four abangs he sent people to take Masahor’s sampans so that he could not escape, and fired on his boat. Johnson’s intention to kill Masahor was frustrated when Masahor’s burning prahu was blown ashore and he and his surviving followers fled into the forest.182 With Johnson’s support, Abang Ali established himself at Sarikei, where he tried quickly to consolidate his power against Masahor’s return, expelling Masahor’s mother and remaining followers.183 When Masahor recaptured Sarikei, Johnson burned the town and pursued him to Igan, which the Sarawak forces also looted and burned. Masahor and his family fled to Mukah. With Sarikei utterly destroyed, Johnson reappointed Abang Ali to govern the Rejang from Kanowit.184 Although Ali continued to experience difficulty establishing his control in the Rejang, Johnson’s ongoing military support helped him to maintain his position,185 ending two decades

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of conflict between the Sarikei perabangan and Masahor. Henceforth in the Rejang, Abang Ali was regarded as ‘the chief of the Malays’.186 Sherif Bujang is not remembered as receiving rewards for his treachery. Sherif Muhammad’s descendants recount that, when Bujang petitioned the Rajah for the preferment he believed he had been promised, the Rajah rejected his claims because his loyalty was so easily bought.187 THE CONSOLIDATION OF POWER Although the events of 1859/60 placed the Rajah’s power in the Rejang basin beyond threat and resolved the conflict between Sherif Masahor and the Sarikei perabangan, they further threatened Sarawak’s precarious but economically vital interests at Mukah, where Masahor persuaded Pengiran Dipa to reimpose sanctions against Sarawak traders. By mid-1860 the trade between Mukah and Sarawak was entirely stopped, and the Sarawak government was ‘getting the gunboats ready to visit the Sultan and arrange this business’.188 Brooke Brooke bought a new gunboat of 60–70 tons, able to carry heavy guns, and began building two new steam gunboats.189 In 1857 the Rajah had correctly forecast that ‘financial dislocation’ would be the main consequence of the Chinese revolt.190 The destruction of the kongsi interrupted the exploitation of gold deposits and destroyed the basis for the indirect taxation that comprised Sarawak’s main revenue. Whereas in 1856 the government recorded a surplus of revenue over expenditure of between $1000 and $1500 per month,191 following the expulsion of the Chinese kongsi the monthly revenues themselves totalled no more than $1500. As the monthly interest payable on the government’s debts amounted to between $1200 and $1400,192 from 1857 the government faced a deepening financial crisis. The government’s main creditor was the Borneo Company, whose royalty payments on mineral deposits also comprised the government’s only reliable revenue. Thus the Sarawak government’s economic viability depended entirely on the Borneo Company’s continued commitment to its Sarawak activities. By 1858 the Company was disappointed with the returns from its coal mine on the Sadong, and the possibility that the Company might suspend operations threatened to cost the government £1000 annually in forgone revenue.193 The Company was concerned about the government’s capacity to repay its debts and sought reassurances from Brooke Brooke,194 who became increasingly ‘alarmed’ at Sarawak’s financial position. Brooke was unable to raise more than $2400 per month or to reduce monthly expenditure below $2800. Moreover, the Company had begun pressing for repayment of its debt by every mail.195 By the beginning of 1859 the government was unable to meet its ordinary monthly expenses, and depended on an operating overdraft with the Company for solvency.196 The Company’s directors began to consider discontinuing their operations in Borneo. The Company’s withdrawal would have caused the government to

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collapse. Although the Rajah’s friend, Angela Burdett Coutts, lent him £5000 to pay some of the debt to the Borneo Company, finances remained tight.197 Brooke Brooke was astounded when the Company advised him that the total debt was £17 000.198 By mid-1859 the Company had begun writing off losses on the loans.199 During this financial crisis the Company’s sago interests were its most promising, and the sago trade from Mukah was an increasingly important source of profit.200 The Company had invested heavily in the sago industry, in 1856 constructing a ‘large sago works’ at Kuching.201 Masahor’s alliance with Pengiran Dipa, and their suspension of trade between Mukah and Kuching, therefore threatened the future of the Brooke state itself. The annexation of Mukah became the government’s highest priority. ‘Take Sicily as your example,’ the Rajah urged his nephew, ‘and find a Sarawak Garibaldi.’202 The Sarawak government’s identification of Sherif Masahor as the mastermind behind the alleged Malay Plot of 1859/60, Masahor’s reception at Mukah by Pengiran Dipa and the civil disorders that had racked Mukah for the previous decade provided convenient grounds for the Sarawak government to justify its annexation of Mukah. The Rajah believed that Brooke Brooke would ‘be a poor diplomat if you do not commit the enemy to aggression which will justify you’. The Rajah was concerned to avoid any Sarawak action being perceived as ‘an act of piracy’, advising Brooke that the mode of proceeding would be for the Pangerans & the people there to act by hoisting the Sarawak flag. They would be supported by the Nakodahs. You would seek and give explanations & man the fort as mediator etc etc. This will place you in the right position.203

In May 1860 Brooke Brooke assembled the Sarawak nakhodas and sent them to Mukah with letters requesting that they be allowed to trade. Dipa refused to allow them into Mukah or Oya and would not receive their letters.204 In early June therefore Brooke Brooke took the Sarawak gunboats and a flotilla of Malay and Iban vessels to Mukah.205 He found limited local support, however, and was unable to secure a pro-Sarawak rising among Mukah people. The population was well prepared to resist the Sarawak forces, surprising Brooke with the strength of their defences.206 Not intending to abandon its richest province without a struggle, the Brunei government dispatched officials from the capital to supervise Mukah’s defence.207 The Sultan made urgent representations to Governor Edwardes of Labuan who, as Acting Consul-General in St John’s absence, was responsible for British subjects in Borneo. Edwardes was convinced of his duty to prevent Queen Victoria’s subjects from making war on a prince with whom the Queen had agreed a treaty of friendship. Edwardes, knowing that he ‘was embarking on dangerous waters’, took a steamer to Mukah and insisted that the Sarawak forces withdraw. Although Brooke Brooke accepted Edwardes’ argument that, as a British subject, he was

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subject to Edwardes’s powers as Consul-General, he claimed that Edwardes had no power over the Malay datus and the rest of the Sarawak host. Brooke repeatedly asked me what would be the penalty of non compliance, I replied, it was not for me to say, I used no threat. To the native Councillors, I said, they came with Mr Brooke, I knew them only as part of his array. If they continued the attack, they would have to fire at the British Flag. These were the words I used.208

In the face of Edwardes’s obdurance, the Sarawak forces withdrew. Brooke Brooke’s failure to reopen the sago trade caused difficulty for the Sarawak government in several ways. First, it gave comfort to antiBrooke dissidents and provided them with a course of action for opposing the Brooke regime. Charles Johnson claimed that during the siege of Mukah he observed a number of men who had formerly served under him at the Skrang Fort defending the town.209 In Saribas, after the withdrawal of Sarawak forces from Mukah, a group of Iban declared their support for Masahor. Although the Rajah’s forces drove them from their positions, they re-established their fortifications and were dislodged only by the threat of attack from Skrang loyalists.210 Moreover, both Iban and European sources reported that Luyoh, one of Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana’s sons, made common cause with Masahor.211 The withdrawal also presented a second set of problems for the regime. Sarawak nakhodas were reported to have advanced $10 000 worth of goods on credit to sago producers.212 These advances were jeopardised by the conflict. It was obvious to the Europeans in Sarawak that failure by the Sarawak government to secure the nakhodas’ interests would create ‘among the influential & hitherto well-affected class discontent and dissatisfaction with the Govmt’.213 Finally, Sarawak’s failure to reopen the sago trade further damaged the Borneo Company, whose interests were vital to the state’s own. The Borneo Company’s directors organised vigorous protests to the British government against Edwardes’s causing ‘the entire loss of our Sago Trade; our Manufactories must be closed, and our Schooners and other Vessels laid up’.214 From England, the Rajah instructed Brooke to maintain his control of the Rejang and Igan and to prepare for a renewed attack on Mukah.215 The Rajah intended to settle the Mukah ‘question’ and collected war matériel for Sarawak ‘to enable Brooke to do his work with certainty’.216 His purchases included 5600 pounds of cannon powder, 500 pounds of rifle powder, four 18-pounder cannonades with 800 rounds of shot, 50 ninepound rocket shells, 40 carbine rifles, three 32-pounder cannons, 600 pieces of shot, 300 grapeshot, 1000 percussion tubes and 900 cartridges.217 Spenser St John persuaded the Foreign Office to recall him to duty. Although he returned to Brunei with instructions ‘to mix yourself up as little as possible in local disputes’,218 he negotiated with the Sultan on the

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Rajah’s behalf for the cession of the entire sago district to Sarawak. St John remained reticent about how he persuaded the Sultan to surrender Mukah and the other towns. He almost certainly misrepresented the British government’s position, possibly telling the Sultan that his return to duty represented not only his government’s repudiation of Edwardes’s actions but also its support for the Rajah’s claims. Such dissembling would explain why, when the Rajah himself arrived at Brunei, the government ‘received him most cordially, and agreed to all he required’. At the Rajah’s insistence, the Sultan wrote to his officials at Mukah ordering them to receive the Rajah and cooperate with him in restoring order. St John disingenuously recorded that, as ‘I had been directed by our Government to do my best to see the affair settled without bloodshed, I undertook the part of mediator, and decided to go down to Singapore and obtain a ship of war in which to visit Muka, and convey the commands of the Sultan to the chiefs’. St John secured the services of a British corvette and delivered the Sultan’s orders under its 21 guns. This demonstration of the Royal Navy’s apparent support for the Rajah’s takeover, however unfounded, overcame any further resistance at Mukah, and the Rajah was admitted to the town unopposed.219 Pengiran Dipa withdrew to Brunei.220 Sherif Masahor and his followers were taken to Singapore, where Masahor entered the service of Sultan Ali of Singapore. Masahor served Sultan Ali with distinction, and after his death joined the entourage of Ali’s heir, Tengku Alam.221 In August 1861 the Rajah returned to Brunei, and negotiated the terms of a formal cession of the sago areas to Sarawak, agreeing to pay $4500 annually to the Sultan in return for control.222 This was a low price to pay for Sarawak’s economic viability.

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8 The succession to Sarawak

During October 1862 the Governor of Singapore, Colonel Cavenagh, visited Kuching to compile a report for the Governor-General of India on future relations between Sarawak and Britain. Included among the papers that Cavenagh showed the Rajah’s nephew and heir, Brooke Brooke, were proposals drafted by Spenser St John to cede Sarawak to the British Crown. Finding these proposals unacceptable, Brooke Brooke wrote to the British government to repudiate them, protesting ‘against this free People being offered for sale without reference to their desires or my Rights’.1 To his uncle, who had retired to England, Brooke wrote announcing his defiance, his assumption of full powers over Sarawak and his determination to exclude the Rajah from the country: Rajah you must blame yourself that you have forgotten that Brooke blood runs in my veins as well as in your own. You have overstrained the bow of my patience and it has broken at last, we must try our relative strength now — and all I can say is, that if I prove the stronger I shall always bear in mind that you were the founder of Sarawak — that you [are] my relative and that for many years you were my friend. I don’t write this in anger but in calm determination & if justice & right is not on my side I pray God that I may not succeed.2

A fortnight later Brooke wrote again to the Rajah, reiterating that he had acted in accordance with the interests of Sarawak people and suggesting that he had the support of the European officers in the administration. He restated his determination to overthrow the Rajah’s power.3 The Rajah reacted to these threats with alacrity. He summoned his younger nephew, Charles Johnson, who was on leave in England, established the terms of his support, and arranged for him to change his surname to Brooke. The Rajah had quickly formed a determination to expel Brooke 172

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Brooke,4 and Charles Johnson’s readiness to assume the Brooke name testifies to his early willingness to supplant his brother.5 Charles Johnson’s cooperation provided the Rajah with a capacity to confront Brooke Brooke which he would otherwise have lacked. The Rajah was old and infirm, and too accustomed to his comfortable retirement in Devon to relish the permanent resumption of day-to-day responsibility for Sarawak’s government. Charles Johnson’s support freed the Rajah from any compulsion either to compromise with Brooke Brooke or to resume life permanently in Kuching. As the Rajah himself later explained, ‘without confidence in the Tuan Muda [Charles] there can be no solid foundation of government in Sarawak’.6 After changing his will to exclude Brooke from the succession and replace him (for the time being) with his friend, Angela Burdett Coutts,7 the Rajah sailed for Sarawak with Charles Brooke (as he should be known from this point). Keen to prevent a clash in Sarawak itself, Brooke Brooke met the Rajah and Charles in Singapore, only to be persuaded to return to England. The Rajah travelled to Sarawak, where in April he decreed ‘that Mr Brooke shall forfeit the rank, title, and privileges of Rajah Muda’.8 Although the Rajah had agreed to reconsider Brooke’s position after three years, he reconvened the Supreme Council in July and ‘decreed that Mr Brooke should forfeit all rights whatsoever and be banished’. The Rajah considered that Brooke Brooke was thus made an outlaw.9 Almost uniformly, writers about Sarawak have sought to explain Brooke Brooke’s actions by reference to his mental health. The Rajah’s first biographer claimed that ‘Captain Brooke was in a very depressed state, arising probably from ill-health and mental distress combined. He had remarried and again lost his wife.’10 Emily Hahn considered that ‘Demons possessed him.’11 More recently, Max Saint explained that ‘Brooke was harassed lonely and desolate’, and that his actions were caused by troubles ‘so numerous and complex as to be almost insupportable’.12 Writers have accepted also claims by both the Rajah and Charles Brooke that Brooke Brooke took no steps to implement his threats to the Rajah, nor told anyone else about them.13 Saunders concluded, for example, that ‘Brooke’s rebellion had been on paper only.’14 Brooke’s actions of late 1862 and early 1863 cannot be explained simply as the misjudgements of an unstable depressive. Although he had suffered from melancholia in the middle of 1862 he recovered, so that by the beginning of December he did not know when last he had enjoyed such good health.15 Additionally, as Reece recognised, to attribute Brooke Brooke’s actions to depression or other mental instability ignores longstanding conflicts between the Rajah and his Rajah Muda over Sarawak’s relations with foreign governments, aspects of domestic policy, titles and rank.16 Finally, we should be cautious about the Rajah’s claims that Brooke’s actions drew no support from Sarawak people. To have suggested anything less would have compromised his own legitimacy. Moreover, such assessments ignore important evidence about the actions of people in Sarawak to protect

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what they saw as their own interests. The primary sources, including Charles Brooke’s own testimony, actually reveal widespread support for Brooke Brooke and opposition to the Rajah’s resumption of power in Sarawak. BASES FOR CONFLICT The conflict between the Rajah and his heir, which culminated in Brooke Brooke’s attempt to exclude the Rajah from power, had its origins in divergences between the Rajah and the Sarawak Malay elite about Sarawak’s viability as an independent Southeast Asian country in an age of European imperialism, and the Rajah’s ambivalence about the nature of his own ambitions. As Rajah, James Brooke was forever uncertain about whether he wanted to be a petty king or a great colonial official — the builder of someone else’s empire, like Hastings or Raffles. From the beginning of his government of Sarawak, James vacillated between consolidating his position as a ruler and seeking to establish Sarawak as a British colony. In 1842 his agent, Henry Wise, sought from the British government ‘formal recognition of his proceedings’.17 By early 1843, however, the Rajah had begun to consider the terms under which he could agree to transfer his rights over Sarawak to Britain.18 In July 1843 he again hoped to maintain his independent position at Sarawak, albeit with the support of a British steamer,19 but in early 1844 instructed Wise to offer Sarawak to Britain because there ‘can never be an imperium in imperio’.20 The following year he was seeking to establish Sarawak as a British Protectorate.21 Although there is no evidence that James Brooke thought to consult his Sarawak collaborators at all during this period about his plans for their future, he was likely to have been aware that they would not readily agree to colonisation. Since the mid-1830s the Sarawak Malays had asserted their right to what we should now call self-determination. They had risen in armed revolt against the Sultan of Brunei, in 1839 even sending a delegation to Batavia to negotiate for Dutch support.22 In 1841 they dispatched Datu Tumanggong Mersal and a high-ranking delegation to offer James Brooke the rulership of their country. When Brooke finally decided to act against the Bruneis, he marched to the residence of the Brunei viceroy at the head of 200 armed Sarawak Malays. Whatever the international legal status of Bruneian documents ceding Sarawak to James Brooke, Sarawak Malays knew that his sovereignty derived from them, that Sarawak’s independence was their achievement.23 As the Rajah later recognised, his position emanated ‘from the will of a free people to choose its own form of Government and the Functionaries by whom it shall be administered’.24 The Rajah’s confusion about his intentions and ambitions in Sarawak necessarily complicated his relations with his family. He explained to

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his sister’s husband that his securing perpetual rights to rule Sarawak meant that ‘the heir of my appointment succeeds when my perpetuity ceases’.25 From this early period, Sarawak was regarded by the Rajah’s relatives as a prospective inheritance, with his nephew, Brooke Johnson, being particularly keen to serve under him. Although the Rajah assured his nephew that he ‘should be glad to transmit this as an inheritance to you and to your heirs’,26 he declined Brooke Johnson’s offers to join him, fearing that Sarawak’s viability was not sufficiently assured to guarantee the younger man’s future.27 The Rajah’s enthusiastic public reception in England in 1847 and his subsequent appointment as a colonial governor (of Labuan) overcame these reservations. As Governor of Labuan, James Brooke expected to be much away from Sarawak and ‘should be very glad to have Brooke there for it would give stability and confidence one of us being at the head of affairs for no other person can supply the place of the legitimate Ruler’.28 Brooke Johnson, therefore, adopted the Rajah’s surname as his own and travelled to Sarawak where, in September 1848, Frank McDougall reported that everything was ‘in a hub-bub. Brooke Johnson Brooke is arrived & the Rajah is feasting the people for the entertainment of the heir apparent’.29 From Brooke Brooke’s arrival in Sarawak in 1848 until his departure for England on leave in 1855, he appears to have enjoyed the Rajah’s confidence and affection. In the later 1850s, however, this relationship began to disintegrate under pressure from the Rajah’s acknowledgement of a son and disagreements over the timing and terms of his retirement. Most importantly, the Rajah’s doubts about Sarawak’s viability as an independent country re-emerged, threatening both Brooke Brooke’s prospects and the aspirations and achievements of the Sarawak Malays. When Brooke Brooke was in England in October 1855, the Rajah sent to him a letter for a young man, Reuben Walker, who, he explained, ‘was my servant when in England’: ‘will you find him out, see him & give him my note and a sovereign, and forward a reply if he wants to write?’. The Rajah wanted to know from Brooke ‘what the young fellow is like and whether he promises to be steady’.30 In June 1856 he complained that Brooke had not sent any news of Walker. He again urged Brooke to locate him and, if he had a good character, to send him to Sarawak.31 The Rajah’s determination to find and favour Walker became an obsession, and he was increasingly irritated at Brooke’s failure: ‘you have allowed so long a time to elapse that to find him may be difficult and you may have impeded the good fortune I meant for him’. The Rajah even began to threaten Brooke vaguely but ominously with the consequences of his failure: ‘I do not like to be disappointed in little matters and they long hold in my mind’, he wrote.32 In 1857 the Rajah’s own agents found Walker serving in the British Army. The Rajah made arrangements to buy the young man’s discharge and, on his own return to England at the end of 1857, was united with him.33 On Christmas Day 1857 the Rajah wrote from England to Brooke in Sarawak, to tell him that Reuben Walker was his son and that he was

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Robert = Elizabeth Brooke, Collett Capt, HEICS Speke Robert = Ruth Lady Pengiran Brooke, Casson Christian Abdulkadir Capt, Pattle Bruce HEICS Speke [?] Sir Dyson = The Begum Thomas = Anna Maria Janet Marshall of Oudh Brooke Stuart Erskine Raja Muda Hassim

Charles, Earl of Elgin Thomas, Earl of Elgin

[?] Lady Henry Charlotte = Charles Pengiran= James Margaret William James, Earl Lady of Elgin, Lucy Augusta Brooke Marshall William Fatimah Brooke, Brooke Hay Governor Bruce Bruce Rajah, (Mrs Brooke [1] General of 1841– Savage) India, 1860–63 1868 Daughter William John Others Elizabeth = Reuben Robert Matilda =Charles Alan Brooke Cheape Mowbray Walker, Hay Hay Grant Grant Brooke (George Brooke)

James Stuart

Ruby James

Reuben Walter Charles George Nicklett William

Ellen

Annie = Brooke Grant Brooke Rajah Muda 1861–63

Basil Hope

Notes: I am indebted to Margaret Noble’s, ‘Pedigree of Families connected by service to Sarawak’, Basil Brooke Papers, MSS Pac. s. 90, Box 3, file 11. Names in bold denote figures who entered the Sarawak Government Service during James Brooke’s rulership. [1] . . . Although James’s reported marriage to Pengiran Fatimah has not been confirmed, it should not be discounted. Genealogy 3

Kinship in the formation of Sarawak’s European elite

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Emma = Francis Brooke Charles Johnson

John Charlotte Samuel Johnson Willes

177

Harriet = Sir John Johnson Edwards, Bt.

= Julie Stuart Mary = Gilbert Harry Lily Arthur = Bertha Mary = George, Welstead Johnson Johnson Nicholetts Nicholetts de Windt Crookshank Edwards Earl Vane, MP, 1847–1854 [?] Margaret Dayang = Charles = de Windt Mastiah Brooke Rajah 1868–1917 Agnes Isaka Charles Bertram Harry (Escq) Vyner Rajah 1917–1963

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resolved to acknowledge him ‘and give him our name’. He wanted to ‘place Reuben in his proper position’, thinking him fitted ‘for a higher sphere of life’. The Rajah claimed that he had concealed Walker’s true identity from Brooke because he had been unsure about whether to recognise him or not. He did not envisage that his acknowledgement of a son would affect Brooke — he planned to bequeath to Walker ‘a small independence which will not inconvenience you in Sarawak’. Walker’s confidence in the Rajah was, James reported, ‘unbounded and he wishes to start for Sarawak directly’.34 With Brooke’s prospects depending on remaining his uncle’s heir, he and his parents reacted angrily to what they saw as a threat to his succession. The Rajah was at pains to disarm them. He assured Brooke that his claim to the succession ‘is beyond my control and rests on your own merits and the necessity of the state’. Brooke and his brother, Charles Johnson, were ‘the children of my love, friends tried in adversity — the support of my power in my life time and you are my inheritor at my death’.35 The Rajah argued to his sister, Mrs Johnson, that Reuben would become ‘as men in his position always long to be the devoted friend of the family — the faithful adherent of Brooke and . . . of young Basil’, Brooke’s son.36 Brooke Brooke was not convinced by the Rajah’s arguments, however, believing that his own ‘prospects & happiness depend utterly on that man not being allowed to come to Sarawak’.37 Brooke wrote angrily, but accurately, to the Rajah: The young man who you have publically proclaimed as your son, given your name, and taken into your heart and who you propose to send out to Sarawak, it requires less common sense than God has granted to me, to see must dispossess me and mine of my promised inheritance, indeed he wd be wanting in spirit if he were (whenever he found himself qualified) to fail in asserting his claims. They wd be backed by you and would succeed.38

Although the circumstances of Walker’s birth would normally have precluded his threatening Brooke’s position, under English usage the Rajah could leave the succession wherever he chose. The Rajah’s rights in Sarawak were not entailed or even inherited family rights over which Brooke could make any claim by virtue of descent. Moreover, although the stigma of bastardy was becoming an almost irredeemable social taint in Victorian society, it could still be overcome by sufficient paternal recognition and sponsorship. The third Earl of Egremont, for example, succeeded in having his natural son created Baron Leconfield in 1859.39 Although the Rajah disclaimed any intention of including Reuben Walker in the Sarawak line of succession, clearly he was concerned that his son overcome the social disadvantages of the circumstances of his birth. He had Reuben change his name to the more aristocratic-sounding George Brooke.40 He leased a house for three months at Harrow where George, as

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we must now call him, received ‘the highest education which falls to mortal man’.41 Not only was the Rajah unrelenting in forcing the Johnsons to accept George as a full member of the family, he ensured that George was received in more aristocratic society as well. It is clear, for example, that George accompanied his father to stay with the baronet, Sir Thomas Fairbairn, in October 1858.42 Evidently the Rajah was concerned to dismantle the barriers to George’s acceptability in society that derived from his illegitimacy. Brooke was correct in arguing that George’s arrival in Sarawak, bearing the Brooke name and recognised as the Rajah’s son, would undermine his own position in the country. Although Brunei court traditions might have restricted royal succession to legitimate claimants,43 descent from royal women did not normally convey royal status among Malayo-Moslems, still less succession to the throne itself. For the Malays of northwest Borneo, a wife, however noble, ‘was merely a receptacle in which her husband’s seed develops and is brought forth’.44 Brooke could not be confident that his claims, based on legitimate descent from the Rajah’s sister, would outweigh George’s illegitimate descent from the Rajah himself. Brooke was determined to maintain his position as heir, however. The European elite in Sarawak had formed mainly around Brooke’s Johnson kinsmen who had entered the Rajah’s service. By 1860, kinship and marriage ties placed Brooke, rather than his uncle, at the genealogical centre of the European community in Sarawak. Brooke could appeal to kinship loyalties in a way that the Rajah could not. Brooke recognised that the Rajah was too ill to carry on his government alone, depending on Brooke and the other Europeans to maintain his administration.45 This vulnerability provided Brooke with the means to oppose the Rajah, and he inspired within the European community a determined and united resistance to receiving George in Kuching. Brooke’s brother, Charles Johnson, his brother-in-law, Charles Grant, and his cousin, Arthur Crookshank, all protested hotly to the Rajah about his plans, resolving to leave Sarawak if George were sent out.46 In the face of this united opposition, the Rajah backed down. He promised Brooke that George would go to Sarawak only with Brooke’s agreement. George had ‘no rights — no claims, he has none from his birth, none from my wishes’. The succession was Brooke’s.47 Although the Rajah resiled from a breach with Brooke and his other European officers over George, he continued whenever possible to press the latter’s claims on Sarawak. In December 1859 he probably had George (as well as the need for a European ally) in mind when he wrote to Brooke that it ‘is a disagreeable prospect to be considered that both Charlie [Johnson] & yourself, will be worn out, long before your boys can act their parts — I shall be dead — Charlie Grant absent — and not a single rising man in the service — not one fitted to rule’.48 He was more direct six months later, when discussing Brooke’s need for more European officers. ‘George would become very useful in time with encouragement’, he wrote.49

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Brooke’s success in overcoming the challenge to his position posed by the Rajah’s recognition of George destroyed forever the trust that had existed between him and the Rajah. The Rajah had been forced to give way to Brooke and to recognise his dependence on his nephew, dependence created by age and increasing ill-health. Conversely, Brooke had recognised how vulnerable to the Rajah’s caprice his prospects in Sarawak were, and had even looked elsewhere for an inheritance to bolster him against displacement.50 Brooke would not trust the Rajah again, while the Rajah would not forgive Brooke for thwarting his wishes. This was not a happy basis for future relations. As Charles Grant observed, the Rajah’s recognition of Reuben Walker as his son was ‘the commencement of that mutual distrust which afterwards culminated in irretrievable rupture’.51 While the dispute over Reuben’s status and rights was unfolding, the Rajah’s health gave new urgency to Brooke’s concern for his own prospects. Having spent almost all his life in tropical Asia, the Rajah was aged by climate and disease.52 In October 1858 he suffered a stroke and, although left with no permanent disability, believed that his ‘active life was over’.53 His retirement would require considerable funds to maintain him in an appropriate style. His closest friends in England were prominent in society. Thomas Fairbairn was a baronet and Angela Burdett Coutts possessed one of the country’s largest fortunes. Having expended his own wealth on Sarawak, the Rajah was dependent on its revenues for income. Not only was Sarawak unable to provide the funds he required, it was vulnerable to internal convulsion or to annexation by any of the increasingly imperialistic European powers, either of which events would reduce him to penury. In order that the Rajah enjoy a stable and financially secure retirement, Fairbairn and other friends launched a Testimonial Fund which they hoped would raise him £20 000.54 On hearing of the Rajah’s stroke, Brooke Brooke had hurried to England to ‘guard . . . and protect’ his succession against George.55 He was enthusiastic in supporting the Testimonial Fund and succeeded in having established as one of its conditions that the Rajah ‘resign in favour of Brooke becoming Rajah’.56 The Rajah agreed, even introducing Brooke to the Fund’s managing committee and to at least one public meeting ‘as Rajah of Sarawak’.57 Brooke’s hopes of a stable succession in 1859 were to be disappointed, however. Once it was clear that the Testimonial was going to succeed in raising significant funds, Brooke urged the Rajah to ‘consider how best to notify to the Public generally & to the BCL [Borneo Company] & Govt particularly that you resign the active admn of Sarawak to me’.58 The Rajah agreed to do so, however, only when ‘the Testimonial is completed and in my hands’.59 At this time also the Rajah appears to have ‘clarified’ with Brooke the question of their respective titles following his retirement. Brooke would not be styled ‘Rajah’ but only ‘Rajah Muda’, and he would himself be known as the ‘Rajah Tuah’.60 Brooke continued to press for a transfer of power, irrespective of how he was described:

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Image rights unavailable

Brooke Johnson Brooke

I think if you trust me the time is now pretty near come to place the Govt in my hands — with the Title of Rajah Muda & to intimate this to the B. Govt the BCL and to the natives of Sarawak. A formal investment might take place afterwards.61

By July Brooke, running out of patience with the Rajah, was unable to contain his exasperation: I expect that you will place the Governt of Sarawak in my hands on the Sole condition of acting as the State Advisor or that you will terminate at once the

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Image rights unavailable

Charles Johnson Brooke

anomalous position in wh I am placed at present which is as intolerable to me as injurious to Sarawak. A divided rule must be fatal therefore for Heavens sake be the Rajah yourself & let me act as your irresponsible agent or let me be the Rajah. If your health is such that you could resume your duties I should Thank God for it & willingly resume my old position as your minister only.62

This was a dangerous tone to adopt with the Rajah, who replied that to ‘throw the government into your hands like a cricket ball could only end in subsequent misunderstanding & confusion’.63 Although he eventually

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agreed to a transfer of power, he saw no urgency, and planned ‘next year or the year after’ to ‘bid farewell to my people, and formally install Brooke in the Raj’.64 The Rajah’s ambivalence about Sarawak’s independent viability, which dated from the very beginning of his rule, intensified following the attack on Kuching by Chinese goldminers in 1857 and throughout the financial crisis in Sarawak which that conflict precipitated. Although, following the Testimonial, Sarawak’s vulnerability no longer threatened the Rajah’s own financial security, he remained anxious. Moreover, the Testimonial had raised only £8800, well short of the £20 000 anticipated.65 This was sufficient for the Rajah to buy what his friend, Wallace, described as ‘a comfortable cottage-farmhouse’ and a few acres in Devon — to maintain him at the level of minor gentry.66 It did not compare with the £30 000 he claimed to have sunk into Sarawak, which, if reimbursed, would have enabled him to live in England at a level comparable to that enjoyed by his friends. As his relationship with Brooke deteriorated, the Rajah was increasingly unsure of his nephew’s capacity to meet the responsibilities of sovereignty and became even less sanguine about Sarawak’s future. In February 1858 he submitted a detailed proposal to the British government to cede the country to Britain. The Rajah suggested that the British refund him for monies he had expended in establishing his rule and compensate him for revenue rights and public property transferred, raising the possibility of yet further payments for the transfer of sovereignty. Although the Rajah claimed to be concerned that ‘the rights of the natives . . . should be respected’, it is clear that he expected his Sarawak supporters to oppose the colonisation of their country. He suggested that the British delay any actual transfer of government because ‘the native mind might be disturbed by sudden change’.67 Following discussions with British officials, the Rajah submitted a more modest proposal for Sarawak to become a British protectorate and for the British government to repay the Rajah the monies he had expended.68 This second proposal was less contentious, and the Rajah instructed Brooke to tell Sarawak people that he had opened negotiations with Britain and that ‘as a free people nothing should be done without their consent’.69 As the heir to Sarawak, Brooke Brooke did not relish surrendering ‘the prospect of being the Independent Ruler of a free people’ to become a colonial governor, ‘a small Govt Functionary under the Regime of Red Tape’. If Sarawak were to be ceded, however, Brooke was determined to secure his own status and financial security. He wanted the Rajah to receive from the British government an estate in England capable of producing £3000 a year and landed property ‘with or without a title’. In a clear bid to secure his inheritance against the threat from George, Brooke wanted the Rajah’s settlement with the British to be ‘strictly entailed on me & my Heirs Male’. For his brother, Charles Johnson, he wanted £10 000 and the option of employment.70 Lord Palmerston’s government fell, however,

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before any agreement on Sarawak had been reached, and Lord Derby’s incoming government declined the Rajah’s offer.71 Between 1858 and 1863, the Rajah made proposals to cede Sarawak to the British, Dutch, Belgian and French governments. Although the paths of his negotiations are complex, it is not necessary to recount them in detail here, where they are important only to the extent that they provoked opposition from people in Sarawak and caused a further divergence of interest between the Rajah and Brooke.72 Whereas the Rajah was concerned to secure personal financial security for his old age, Brooke was concerned to maintain Sarawak’s sovereignty and establish the Sarawak government beyond the threat of annexation by Holland or any other European imperialist. As he told the Rajah in 1858, ‘I love the country & feel that I can rule it if unmolested by Foreign Powers’. Brooke favoured negotiating a protectorate that left Sarawak autonomous.73 Although during these difficult years Brooke would give in to the Rajah’s arguments or fury, agree to proposals to sell the country and quibble over formulae to divide the purchase price, such agreements resulted from Brooke’s inability to withstand emotional pressure from a man he had so long followed and revered; and from his determination, if Sarawak were to be sold from under him, to secure a just share of the spoils. But although Brooke was bullied by the Rajah into agreeing to his proposals from time to time, reflection always led him to retract his agreement, further infuriating the Rajah who saw such behaviour as evidence of inconstancy. Brooke’s position, however, was more or less consistent. His interests were in seeking British protection and opposing cession. Brooke’s interests coincided with those of the Sarawak Malays, and his opposition to the Rajah’s various proposals to cede Sarawak to European powers drew their support. As the Rajah continued to press the advantages, as he saw them, of ceding the country, Brooke became convinced that the Malays would be prepared to resort to force, if necessary, to preserve their independence.74 Brooke admitted urging the Malays to oppose the Rajah, and in late 1858 even initiated a petition to the Rajah from ‘all the best men now in the country’ protesting against his negotiations.75 The support of the Sarawak Malays became essential to the legitimacy of Brooke’s attempts to oppose the Rajah. He wrote to the Rajah’s English friends that the ‘scheme for making over Sarawak & its people to England for a sum of money is beyond Sir James Brooke’s power Is in opposition to my rights as Heir & moreover has been already most strongly protested against by the people of Sarawak who are attached to their present Govt and will not willingly submit to a change’.76 The Rajah himself conceded that if the matter were referred to Sarawak people, ‘the party who espoused the rejection of all protection would win their vote’.77 When Brooke urged the Rajah to solve the impasse on Sarawak’s future that had developed between them by formally consulting the Malays, the Rajah responded that Brooke’s idea, ‘pretty in theory, would be ruin in practice, exciting passions not to be healed under the present constitution’. Brooke’s implied threat worked,

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however. Rather than risk Brooke’s again raising the matter with the Malays, the Rajah agreed to suspend his negotiations.78 Brooke also claimed the support of the other Europeans in the Rajah’s service. Echoing his successful campaign against the Rajah’s sending George to Sarawak, he argued that the Europeans would resign if the Rajah persevered with his proposals to cede the country to a foreign power.79 Brooke’s opposition to the Rajah’s attempts to negotiate Sarawak’s cession, his reliance on support from Sarawak Malays in doing so, and his determination to secure what he considered a just share of any cession monies caused his relationship with the Rajah, which already had been fractured by the Rajah’s recognition of Reuben, to disintegrate. It also alerted the Malay elite to the dangers to their independence that the Rajah posed. Frustrated by and deeply suspicious of his nephew, by 1860 the Rajah had determined never to abdicate.80 He considered disinheriting Brooke,81 whom he warned to act with caution if all were to be ‘well for the present & during my lifetime’.82 Brooke responded with renewed determination to secure from the Rajah a more public and secure title to his own position: altho’ I should regret your absolutely disconnecting yourself from Sarawak, or resigning the Rajahship during your lifetime still as there can be little doubt that as the future active Government of Sarawak must devolve on me I think my position and rank shd be more clearly defined. At present to the natives I am the Tuan Besar, a meaningless title, to the Europeans, I am plain Mr Brooke. I wish to sign myself Rajah Mudah and to have your written authority to assume this title, also a letter from you to the Datus and people announcing it.

Brooke explained that such recognition would make him ‘much more comfortable in mind — & will actively remove the shade of distrust that you accuse me of putting away in some out of the way corner of my head’.83 In 1861 the Rajah returned to Sarawak to resolve the Mukah crisis, which neither Brooke nor Charles Johnson had handled to his satisfaction. The Rajah wanted to pursue negotiations to cede Sarawak to the Belgian government. During his visit he sought to bind Brooke to whatever terms he might secure ‘without reference to their merits and [to] carry them out to the best of your ability’.84 Brooke later claimed that ‘again and again threats were used by Sir James . . . to enforce on his nephew a compliance with his projects’.85 The Rajah’s letters to Brooke bear out this allegation. With thinly veiled menace, the Rajah argued that Brooke’s rights rested ‘upon the obligation of a promise and his position as heir to the State entails the obligation of obedience. The duties are reciprocal.’86 By 1861 Brooke’s tolerance of the Rajah’s games and inconstancy was exhausted. Spenser St John recalled later that Brooke had confided to him and Charles Grant that he ‘had nearly made up his mind to seize the guns and stores and retire up the country and defy the Rajah’.87 St John, who was trusted by both the Rajah

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and his nephew, succeeded in establishing an outward reconciliation between the two men. At St John’s suggestion Brooke wrote to the Rajah, again requesting that he invest him publicly with the title, Rajah Muda, before he returned to England. The Rajah agreed, in return for which Brooke acquiesced to his uncle’s negotiations with Belgium.88 The Rajah organised a great installation ceremony in Kuching, at which he told the assembled dignitaries: I have dwelt among you many years. I am now old, and in bad health and soon I may be called away — before I leave Sarawak I wish to tell you, that my son, I create Rajah Muda that I make over the Government of the country to him, and I beg and intreat of you all, that as you have lov’d and obeyed me as your Rajah — so now you will love and obey him as your Rajah.89

In spite of the Rajah’s clear assurances to Brooke that he did not intend to surrender his links with Sarawak and that he would return to the country whenever his health permitted,90 Brooke later claimed to have understood that, in creating him Rajah Muda, the Rajah had abdicated in his favour.91 Brooke’s understanding was shared by Charles Grant, Fitz Cruikshank and Arthur Crookshank, who all testified that the Malays and Europeans present also believed that the Rajah had abdicated and installed Brooke as ruler.92 Although the Rajah neither intended to abdicate nor did so, there are compelling reasons to accept that the investiture of Brooke as Rajah Muda formalised Brooke’s participation in the sovereignty of Sarawak, as coruler, constituting a public recognition that the Rajah shared power with his nephew. First, Brooke had been publicly installed as the Rajah’s heir in 1848. To have done so again made no sense. Secondly, Brooke had exercised power in Sarawak during the Rajah’s lengthy absences in the 1850s and, except during short visits when the Rajah’s health permitted, was expected to do so during the remainder of the Rajah’s life. He had become already, in fact, the executive head of government and co-ruler. Thirdly, he was already co-lessee with the Rajah of the mineral rights leased to the Borneo Company,93 to whose directors the Rajah himself explained in 1858 that, in Sarawak affairs, ‘Brooke’s position and my own are identical, and they cannot be considered separately . . . Brooke is the Rajah of Sarawak.’94 By 1859 Brooke was recognised as co-lessee of lands in Sarawak as well, with Charles Johnson executing land grants ‘in the name of the Rajah, and of John Brooke Brooke Esquire (the Tuan Besar)’.95 Finally, he was named with the Rajah as a principal party to the treaty by which Brunei ceded Mukah and the sago districts to Sarawak.96 Brooke’s participation in the rulership in the late 1850s was neither arcane nor obscure, and in Sarawak was marked by the Rajah’s allowing him to display a yellow umbrella, the universal symbol of Malay sovereignty, on official occasions.97

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The Rajah’s investiture of Brooke as Rajah Muda institutionalised the two men’s conflicting claims on the state and each other so that Brooke, following his installation, was addressed as either Rajah or Rajah Muda. Many people seem to have used the two titles interchangeably. Rosina Koch addressed her letters to Brooke as Rajah,98 as did the missionary, Zehinder.99 The schoolteacher, Miss Roche, and the missionary and Government official, Gomes, addressed their correspondence with Brooke to the ‘Rajah Muda’ and opened their letters ‘Dear Rajah’.100 Far from resolving the ambiguity of Brooke’s position, his installation as Rajah Muda served to increase it, further confusing people about his status and authority.101 THE STRUGGLE FOR SARAWAK Although the Rajah had extracted Brooke’s agreement to cede Sarawak to Belgium as the price of his installation as Rajah Muda, Brooke had determined to prevent any transfer of sovereignty and to maintain control of the country, if necessary by force of arms. And it is clear that he made careful preparations to do so. Following the Rajah’s departure in 1861, Brooke initiated a radical upgrade of Sarawak’s defences. He resurrected his idea of maintaining a regular military force102 and undertook the construction at Kuching of what he considered to be ‘the first real fort ever built in Sarawak’, with massive 24-foot earthworks and defensive ditches.103 When completed the fort would accommodate a garrison of 100, and even before it was completed Brooke had 50 men in place under specially recruited European commanders.104 Building the fort became his highest priority during 1862 and he diverted resources away from other important public works to speed construction. Charles Brooke recognised that the fort was designed to resist European rather than Malay, Chinese or Iban forces.105 Bishop McDougall confirmed that Brooke ‘had a vague idea of resisting the transfer of Sarawak to a European nation’.106 Two years later, the British Consul also thought that the fort clearly had been designed to defend Kuching against European rather than Malay or Iban attack.107 Although these claims have not been pursued by historians, the timing and priority, as well as the scale, of the fort’s construction confirm them. Brooke had decided to move Sarawak’s capital to the coast to better service passing shipping.108 This expensive and massive fort, therefore, was constructed to protect Sarawak against short-term threats that Brooke perceived arising, and the only threats to his control of Sarawak in the short term were from any European power to whom the Rajah might cede the country. The fort’s construction proves that Brooke’s decision to repudiate and if necessary to resist the Rajah had been taken long before his letters of defiance were dispatched. Colonel Cavenagh’s visit to Sarawak in late 1862 was to gather information for the Governor-General of India, Lord Elgin, who was preparing

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recommendations for the British government on Sarawak’s status and future relations with Britain. There is no doubt that Cavenagh’s visit revived widespread concern among Sarawak people that they were in imminent danger of being colonised. Charles Brooke confirmed that ‘reports ran rife for many months along the coast, that the intention of the British Government was to take possession of the country, when their slaves and religion would cease to be acknowledged as rights’.109 Although I found no surviving correspondence to prove that Brooke canvassed Malay leaders for support in repudiating the Rajah, it is almost impossible that he did not do so. The Malays were intensely concerned about the independence of their country: Brooke had called on their support successfully in 1859. Moreover in rejecting the Rajah’s proposals, Brooke specifically reminded the British government of the Malay leaders’ ‘already expressed dislike to any change of Government involving a loss of their independence’.110 In asserting his own rights, he asserted the rights of the Malays as well. The evidence that Brooke canvassed his intentions among his senior European officers to secure their backing is unequivocal. He told Robert Hay that he objected to the proposals that St John had drafted to cede Sarawak to Britain, foreshadowing his writing to Lord Elgin to repudiate them. He also predicted that he and the Rajah ‘shall have a tremendous fight and I suppose the Rajah will be coming out again to tell me to pack up my trunks’.111 A fortnight later Brooke confirmed to Hay that he was ‘in rebellion agst the proceedings of the Rajah & St John in England’. He repeated that he expected the Rajah to come out to Sarawak, ‘and a struggle will then take place between us & of course if I prove the weaker I shall have to pack up my things and try a change of air’. Brooke hoped, however, ‘that matters will not go to extremities and that the poor Rajah will yield to superior force if not to reason’.112 Over the next week Brooke wrote to his other senior officers, Walter Watson, Arthur Crookshank and Fitz Cruikshank, telling them of the Rajah’s plans for the British to ‘take possession of Sarawak and form it into a British colony’, and canvassing their views on ‘the effect on the Malay population of this change of Govt and the consequent abolition of slavery’.113 Watson was strongly opposed to the proposals and supported Brooke’s right to repudiate them. ‘I suppose’, he wrote to Charles Johnson, ‘the Rajah will come out and try and break up the Government, if he does I think Brooke will have the support of both Europeans and Natives’.114 Arthur Crookshank thought the effect of any attempt to cede the country would be: ‘Disaffection among the whole Malay, Millano & Sea Dyak population — probably revolt.’115 Brooke attracted support from among the wider European community in Sarawak as well. The Bishop’s wife, Mrs McDougall, knew in December 1862 that Brooke expected the Rajah. She hoped ‘you will stay dear Brooke and be our Rajah and persuade Sir James Brooke to give you up the country unconditionally’.116

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On hearing that the Rajah was returning to Sarawak in early 1863, Brooke decided to meet him in Singapore, hoping to persuade him to accept his loss of power and support the new regime. Brooke was well placed to do so, after all. The Rajah’s poor health precluded his returning permanently to Sarawak to fulfil the duties of ruler. Brooke commanded the support of both the Malay and European elites. He had been able to force the Rajah to back down over George in 1858 and over negotiations to cede Sarawak in 1859. When confronted by united opposition, the Rajah would have no choice but to agree to Brooke’s demands. Brooke’s strategy was undermined, however, by his discovery in Singapore that his brother, Charles, supported the Rajah. Charles had backed Brooke in 1858 and 1859, and Brooke had counted on Charles’s continued support, which he had had no reason to doubt. Moreover, the Rajah’s personality was difficult to withstand, and Brooke had overestimated his capacity to do so on this occasion. The Rajah, at his first meeting with Brooke, claimed that the latter had ‘violated his trust, defied his authority, subverted his government and was prepared to resist him by force’.117 The years of dispute and distrust had engendered such acrimony between the two men that ‘it was very unpleasant to be even witness in it’.118 Although Brooke was unable to prevent his uncle from travelling to Sarawak, he was confident that, in view of the loyalty of his own supporters, the ‘Rajah will not be able to do much mischief’. Bouyed by this complacency he agreed to return to England, where he hoped to build support for his claims.119 This was a tactical error of the greatest importance and for the Rajah, who seems to have recognised the weakness of his own position in Sarawak, an essential victory. The Rajah recorded that his vital object . . . [had been] to avert a local disturbance, and we cannot overrate the importance of this point . . . To get Mr Brooke out of the way quietly, without a struggle, was everything and made me master of the position without injury to Sarawak.120

On their arrival in Sarawak the Rajah and Charles Brooke found little support. Hay, Watson, Fitz Cruikshank and Arthur Crookshank were as one in their loyalty to Brooke.121 Support for Brooke extended beyond the senior ranks of government officials into the wider community. Charles Brooke found it ‘the universal opinion here — that the country has arrived at its quiet & prosperous state thro Brooke’s sole wisdom & work’. Charles reported that Brooke retained ‘the sympathy of most of the Sarawak people — both European & native’.122 Brooke’s departure for Singapore had renewed rumours that the British were about to annex Sarawak,123 and the Rajah’s resumption of government added to public uncertainty. According to Bishop McDougall, the population of Kuching was ‘all bothered, & there is no saying what may be the result of the change’.124 Some in Kuching openly repudiated their Rajah: ‘they said the Rajah Mudah had gone home

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for good & the principals in Sarawak were the Datus and chiefs’.125 The Rajah, therefore, notwithstanding his claims to have been received in Sarawak ‘amid every demonstration of welcome and attachment, public and personal’, proceeded cautiously in attempting to re-establish his control.126 His reassertion of power can be divided into four stages. First, he needed to restore public calm in Kuching to prevent the evident disquiet from developing into disorder. Secondly, he needed to secure his control of Sarawak’s outstations. Thirdly, he needed to recruit Brooke’s Malay supporters into his own entourage, or to isolate them. Finally, he needed to re-establish a regime with sufficient resilience to maintain his authority against Brooke’s return. It took him six months to achieve these objectives. The Rajah’s first priority was to rebuild public support in Kuching. Recognising that Brooke’s strength derived from popular opposition to his attempts to cede Sarawak, his discussions with Malays focused on the nature of his negotiations with foreign governments. The day after his return to Kuching he assembled about 40 of the leading Malays to guarantee them that he would not attempt to change Sarawak’s status without the agreement of the Supreme Council. In a series of unambiguous lies, he denied having already sought to do so, claiming that he had sought only a treaty of protection. Two days later the Rajah attempted to win over the wider population of Kuching. At a public assembly in the courthouse he repeated his guarantees not to attempt to change Sarawak’s international status without the Supreme Council’s agreement, again denying that he had already tried to do so. He avoided referring overtly to his breach with Brooke, merely telling the assembly that Brooke had decided to return to England for a period. The Rajah considered that the assembly ‘passed off famously’.127 A fortnight after his public meeting the Rajah convened the Supreme Council, and, in his own words, ‘minutely went over the later occurrences and the conduct of Mr Brooke’. The Rajah advised the Council that he had sent Brooke into exile and that he ‘had not — nor would — engage to restore him to his position or rank’. When Datu Bandar Buassan expressed concern about the succession should anything happen to the Rajah, the latter blustered and obfuscated rather than admit that he had appointed a woman as his heir. He replied that I had provided against the contingency by appointing a friend whom I could implicitly trust to become the ruler of Sarawak in the event of my death — that their rights would be respected, their wishes attended to and the proper measures taken to place Sarawak in security . . . They might rely on my successor as they relied upon me; for that, dead or alive, I would be responsible!!

Nor was the Rajah prepared to confront Brooke’s popularity in Kuching by denouncing him publicly. He told Council members they should just stop

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referring to Brooke as the Rajah Muda ‘and their example would be followed by the people in general’.128 By returning to Sarawak and persuading Brooke to leave for England, the Rajah regained direct control over the resources of the state. This control included the patronage, economic and military structures through which power was accumulated and exercised; and the sources of status and wealth, the pursuit of which were important motivators among Sarawak people. With this control the Rajah was well placed to negotiate support from leading figures, offering them material inducements to support his claims against those of his nephew. As the Rajah admitted to his friends, he ‘increased some salaries, bestowed rewards’.129 Details of some of his negotiations have been recorded in the contemporary correspondence. Fitz Cruikshank and Arthur Crookshank were both sympathetic to Brooke. The Rajah induced Fitz to reconsider by offering him appointment as Resident of the Rejang River basin at a much-increased salary.130 Arthur Crookshank was a key figure in the Rajah’s government, and the longest-serving of James’s European officers. A cousin of Brooke Brooke as well as a close friend, he demanded a higher price for his loyalty than Fitz. Crookshank was adamant that he would not serve under Charles Johnson, complaining to Brooke that: I know not what part your brother is going to play over here, whether he returns to his own place Sakarran, or whether he remains here, certain if he is required here I am not . . . The Rajah and yourself I acknowledge as Rulers of the country, but not your brother.

Crookshank considered that, having run the country several times when both Brooke and the Rajah had been absent, it would be ‘a hard morsel to swallow’ to have Charles placed over him. He conceded that ‘jointly with him I would willingly work — but to be under him — we should clash in a week’.131 In order to accomodate Crookshank’s objections, the Rajah offered him control over Kuching and the Sarawak River area, independent of Charles, with the title ‘Resident of Sarawak’. His new, grander rank was to be matched by his accommodation and his salary. Brooke’s half-completed new fort was converted into an imposing residence into which Crookshank and his wife moved. Rises in Crookshank’s salary also testify to the importance the Rajah placed on securing his support. From his arrival in Sarawak in 1843 until 1862, Crookshank’s salary had risen in modest increments. In May 1863 it was suddenly raised from $150 to $200 per month. By 1870 he was receiving $430 a month in salary and allowances, nearly three times his salary of only seven years earlier.132 Nicholas Tarling is typically generous in noting that Crookshank’s conduct ‘is open to two interpretations’.133 The Rajah expressed his determination to isolate Brooke from Sarawak,134 and his control over the structures of the state provided him

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with the capacity to do so. Spenser St John’s nephew, Oliver, was the postmaster in Kuching, and with his cooperation the Rajah secured direct control of external communications. Bishop McDougall believed that the Rajah monitored private mail.135 If this were true, the Rajah would have been well placed to discover the private loyalties of his officers and enforce their repudiation of Brooke’s cause. The threat of surveillance was sufficient to intimidate Crookshank, who wrote to Brooke that he had handed Brooke’s letters to him to Charles, as in my present position it would be quiet impossible to conceal what you have written to me. I, with others, have received strict orders from the Raja (on pain of forfeiture of our positions here, and immediate dismissal if disobeyed) to treat every communication from you as official, and not private. I must therefore beg of you, dear Brooke, in future not to write to me confidentially, as I cannot in honour or obedience to the Rajah withhold your letters from him.136

The Rajah’s inducements and intimidation worked as well with most of the other Europeans, among whom, by July, Charles Brooke was confident that support for his brother had collapsed.137 At the end of April the Rajah reconvened the Supreme Council to further denounce Brooke. Again he concentrated on the sensitive issue of Sarawak’s independence. He ‘opened the proceedings by stating that if a member of the government, in the position of the Rajah Mudah, could appeal to a foreign govt against the acts of his Raja . . . the independence of the govt was sacrificed’, and he ‘insisted that as . . . [Brooke] had appealed to a foreign government we must maintain the independence of Sarawak, and strongly marking our sense of his guilt, by his condemnation’. In fact, Brooke had championed Sarawak’s independence, writing to the British

The Rajah converted Brooke Brooke’s new fort into a grand residence for Arthur Crookshank

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government to repudiate the Rajah’s negotiations. He had not appealed to the British in the way the Rajah suggested. The Rajah’s reversal of his and Brooke’s positions provides further evidence of his vulnerability to Brooke’s popularity. The Malay leaders acceded to the Rajah’s wishes, however, and ‘One by one’ convicted Brooke of ‘having defied the Rajah’s authority, subverted the Constitution, and appealed to a foreign government upon a question solely within the jurisdiction of the State of Sarawak’.138

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Arthur Crookshank, whose acquiescence was essential to the Rajah’s success in excluding Brooke Brooke from the country

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Of the senior European officers, Robert Hay, the Resident at Mukah, was the least inclined to acquiesce to the Rajah’s taking back the country from Brooke. In March he had rejected the Rajah’s indictment of Brooke, claiming that Brooke had no more than asserted legitimate rights. Although the Rajah was incensed, he allowed Hay to return to his post.139 In June the Rajah wrote to Hay, telling him he intended to summon all his European officers to Kuching in September to establish the terms of a new government and to ‘secure the peace of the country’.140 Hay was popular with Mukah people and enjoyed ‘their confidence and affection’.141 Shortly after

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Robert Hay, whose loyalty to Brooke the Rajah could not subvert

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hearing of this further threat to Brooke Brooke’s rights, Hay told Pengiran Matusin of Mukah that the Supreme Council had stripped Brooke of his titles. This provoked among the people of Mukah unrest and opposition to the Rajah. Hay’s actions infuriated Charles Brooke, who instructed him not to ‘make your private feelings known so as to excite people to do mischief’.142 It is not clear from Charles Brooke’s autobiography whether it was Hay or Matusin whom Charles ‘threatened with banishment if he did not immediately undo what he had done’. Nor is it clear from surviving records the nature of the disturbances at Mukah: Charles Brooke simply reported that the area was ‘in an alarmed state in consequence of flying rumours being repeated in all directions’.143 The sago areas were essential to the Sarawak economy, and Charles Brooke moved quickly to quell the ‘momentary panic’ around Mukah, ‘the result of false reports’. Charles ‘met the inhabitants of each place, and did all I could to restore confidence’.144 Although he did not record the details of his meetings, he is certain to have denied that the Rajah had attempted to cede or was considering ceding Sarawak. The Rajah demanded Hay’s resignation. ‘There can only be one Rajah of Sarawak to whom obedience is due’, he wrote, ‘and the officers who serve him must maintain his authority against the pretensions of a usurper’.145 The Rajah’s repeated promises that he would not cede Sarawak had not been sufficient to win the support of the Malay elite at Kuching, however.146 There is some evidence that Datu Tumanggong Mersal’s family led opposition to the Rajah’s resumption of power. Bishop McDougall reported that there was ‘a strong feeling not only among the Malays along the coast in . . . [Brooke’s] favour but also with the respectable Nakodahs & others’ in Kuching.147 Mersal’s family was based on Sarawak’s coast and islands. Its extensive maritime interests linked it to Kuching’s nakhodas, among whom one of Mersal’s sons and a number of his grandsons were prominent and with whom his family forged new marriage ties at about this time.148 Moreover, Mersal died while the Rajah was in Sarawak in 1863.149 Yet the Rajah, at a time when he needed to increase and demonstrate his support among Malays, did not invest Mersal’s son and heir, Abang Mohammed Hassan, as Datu Tumanggong. That Mohammed Hassan was not styled Datu Tumanggong for another decade suggests some deep rupture between his family and the government.150 Although Datu Bandar Buassan avoided outright conflict with the Rajah, he also avoided repudiating Brooke, managing for several months to divert the Rajah from insisting that the Sarawak Malay leaders pledge themselves against the Rajah Muda.151 Neither the Rajah nor Charles Brooke at this time enjoyed close personal relations with the Malay members of the Supreme Council, and neither was the unambiguous focus of Malay loyalties. Both the Rajah and Charles had relied on and favoured Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur at the expense of the Datu Bandar’s family and connections. Moreover, the Rajah’s open reliance on Charles Brooke to overcome Brooke’s authority would have displeased Malay leaders. The Malay

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aristocrats of Kuching, far from liking Charles Brooke, would have viewed with contempt his intense interest in Iban culture. His admiration for Iban egalitarianism and independence, for example, was anathema to them. They would have despised Charles for wanting to go and live like the Dyaks.152 Even in 1866 Bishop McDougall suggested that Charles’s influence among Kuching Malays was minimal,153 while in 1875 Oliver St John claimed that Charles was ‘most unpopular’ among them.154 In contrast, Brooke Brooke shared the Malays’ commitment to Sarawak’s independence, and Brooke and Datu Bandar Buassan had enjoyed a long and close friendship. As St John observed, Brooke, through his long residence at Kuching, ‘had found out the way to win the hearts of the Malays — a talent which his brother Charles did not possess in the same degree’.155 Moreover, following the death of Datu Bandar Molana less than three years previously, Datu Bandar Buassan, the Tuan Imam and Tuan Katib had received new titles from Brooke ‘with great ceremony in full Court’.156 The status and titles these men enjoyed derived, therefore, from Brooke’s own. However important the support of senior Europeans to the Rajah’s securing the administration, control of the country would depend on his converting the Sarawak Malay leadership to his cause. Although none of the European sources explain how the Rajah persuaded the Datu Bandar, Tuan Imam and Tuan Katib to transfer their allegiance from Brooke to him and Charles, the three Malays wrote to Brooke in late 1863 to renounce him.157 The Rajah’s great reform in the 1850s had been to remove Bidayuh from Malay control. It is clear that this was undone following Brooke Brooke’s exile. In 1866 Datu Bandar Buassan was reported to exercise authority on the eastern branch of the Sarawak River.158 Although its timing remains obscure, this transfer of power was officially sanctioned. In 1874 Oliver St John, who had been posted to administer upper Sarawak, complained that he had no responsibility for Bidayuh, who were again under Malay control.159 Six months later Denison confirmed of the Bidayuh that the Datu Bandar has them in hand . . . and from one year’s end to another no Government officer goes near them, or if he does he is satisfied with a hurried run through the villages.160

It is likely that Buassan received control over the Bidayuh as the price for his support against Brooke in 1863. The Rajah’s conscious strategy since his return to Sarawak had been to seek to draw ‘English and native chiefs into the vortex of the storm — so that their position will depend upon keeping Mr B out of the country’.161 By the end of July he had negotiated support for, or overcome opposition to, his exclusion of Brooke and was eager to prepare for his own return to England. During early August, therefore, he and his Malay and European officials met to commit each other publicly to the terms of their agreements.

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On 6 August 1863 the Supreme Council consented to the Rajah’s continuing to negotiate protection from a European power on the condition that any negotiations be submitted for its consideration and promulgated under its authority.162 The Malay leadership thereby established its right to determine Sarawak’s future. In return, the Council agreed that Brooke ‘should forfeit all rights whatsoever and be banished the territory of Sarawak . . . This makes him an outlaw’.163 On 8 August the Rajah accepted a loyal address from his European officers, who publicly confirmed their devotion to your person and our fidelity to the State of Sarawak, we obey your commands as the Rajah of Sarawak and the commands of your representative administering the affairs of the State by your appointment, and we acknowledge or obey no person whomsoever excepting those bearing your commission to exercize lawful authority.164

Notwithstanding these public protestations of loyalty, the Rajah remained concerned to prevent Brooke’s seizing the government after his own return to England. He was determined that everyone ‘with the slightest leaning to Mr Brooke shall be torn out by the roots from Sarawak & cast into darkness’. Hay was ordered out of the country and Charles Grant’s younger brother, Alan, who had arrived to take up an appointment in the Rajah’s service, left ‘by wish of his parents, which saves me the trouble of sending him away’. Fitz Cruikshank’s brother, who was the doctor in Kuching, left ‘on account of his health’.165 Even Brooke’s infant daughter, Agnes, had to be sent back to England without delay.166 Mrs McDougall claimed that the Rajah employed two men in Singapore to monitor steamers arriving from Europe and two to monitor sailing ships arriving. The Governor of Singapore was asked to guarantee that if Brooke arrived he would be prevented from departing for Sarawak. Lastly, the Rajah warned local shipping that any vessel that transported Brooke to Sarawak would be seized as an enemy platform.167 Although Saunders claimed that these ‘extraordinary measures confirm McDougall’s views on the Rajah’s lack of balance when crossed’,168 he underestimated the real danger to the Rajah’s power which Brooke had posed. The Rajah and Charles did not have everything their own way, however. Crookshank’s refusal to serve under Charles Brooke’s command shaped the governance of Sarawak for the remainder of the first Rajah’s life. As Resident, Crookshank was ‘to have charge of Sarawak’, which, as Charles Brooke, putting the best gloss on the arrangement that he could, noted ‘will leave me free to work along the Coast’.169 When the Rajah decided that, to preclude Brooke Brooke’s return following his own departure for England, Charles ought to remain in Kuching for a time, the Crookshanks decided to travel to China for the winter.170 When they returned to Kuching, Charles Brooke resumed his residence at Skrang.171

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DEMONSTRATIONS OF NAMA Although the Rajah’s control over the structures of power, wealth and status in Sarawak enabled him to induce and intimidate people into repudiating Brooke, his actions needed to be legitimised in the understandings of Sarawak people. In the thinking of people in Sarawak, power was exercised by those who possessed the potency to do so. Such potency was indicated by the ability to attract great figures into an entourage and to achieve objectives through the efforts of others, in the ability to affect the forces of nature to human advantage and through ritual activities and possessions. In 1861 and 1862, Iban rice crops failed extensively in the Saribas and Skrang. In some areas, Iban were almost entirely without rice.172 The successive failure of rice crops, and the extent of the areas affected, provided powerful testimony to Brooke Brooke’s inability to ensure agricultural prosperity. Although the failure of two crops might not have been sufficient in itself to undermine Brooke’s legitimacy, it provided a conducive environment in which to do so. Agricultural prosperity reflected, after all, the virtues of the ruler as well as the community.173 Moreover, at the same time that Brooke’s ability to fulfil the potent functions of Southeast Asian kingship was so challenged, King Mongkut of Siam provided evidence of the esteem with which the Rajah continued to be regarded by regional rulers. Mongkut wanted to buy a high-quality brass cannon which the Rajah had brought from England and which, Mongkut believed, had been installed on the Rajah’s own war boat.174 The Siamese King’s desire to possess objects belonging to the Rajah expressed the latter’s high ritual status — his distribution, as it must have seemed, of potent objects to supplicant rulers proof of his undiminished standing. From his earliest days in Sarawak the Rajah had been alert to indigenous conceptualisations of power, adjusting his behaviour and the way it was presented to Sarawak people to provide evidence of his semangat, daulat and nama. Like guns, steamers were regarded with awe by Borneo people as evidence of magical control over the most uncontrollable of the elements. For the Kayan chieftain, Tamawan, for example, a steamer was a ‘wonderful vessel which came with oars of fire’.175 In a similar vein, the arrival of the steamer Phlegethon at Kanowit in 1846 was recorded as causing ‘horror and consternation’ among the people there.176 Recognising this supernatural regard, the Rajah sought to engage it. Although he had been keen to persuade the British government to provide him with a steamer to convey him from Singapore to Sarawak, he was clear that his request reflected the symbolic importance of steamers per se, rather than from any wish to enhance his military capability. He stressed to his friend, the parliamentarian, Abel Smith, his resolve under any circumstances not to embroil Her Majesty’s Government, or the Steamer which carries me across, in any dispute relative to the affairs of

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Sarawak. The moral influence will be considerable & I rely on you to explain to Lord R[ussell] how grateful I am for it.177

A ruler’s ability to attract powerful followers into his entourage was an essential manifestation of the spiritual status that underpinned power and legitimacy. The Rajah’s return to Sarawak in 1863 was followed shortly by the arrival of a British naval squadron, and interest among Sarawak people in the squadron’s purpose was intensified by the secrecy of its sealed instructions. The Rajah consciously excited public interest in the squadron, encouraging speculation about its intentions.178 The squadron’s orders were to cruise the seas between Borneo and Singapore. Notwithstanding the crisis in Sarawak, the Rajah decided to accompany the British forces, considering ‘it prudent to connect Sarawak with this movement’. The Rajah’s reception on board HMS Scout with royal honours179 and his departure with the squadron were not just evidence of possible support from the British government. For Sarawak people they must have recalled the days of the Rajah’s greatest power in the 1840s, when his presence at Kuching attracted officers of the Royal Navy eager to attack his enemies and extend his authority. The Rajah’s departure with this British squadron provided powerful evidence of his undiminished prowess and power to command, as he intended that it should. The Rajah’s concern to demonstrate his semangat and enhance his nama can also be discerned in the anti-Kayan campaign he raised on return from the British expedition. In 1859 Sawing, Talip and Sekalai, the leaders of the party that had killed Fox and Steele at Kanowit, had retreated far up the Rejang to find refuge among the Balui Kayan. During 1862 Brooke Brooke had planned an attack on the Kayan, in reprisal for this and for their attacks on Sarawak people downriver.180 In late May 1863 the Rajah dispatched Charles Brooke to do so. Charles assembled the largest force ever raised in Sarawak, according to Reece, perhaps 50 000 men,181 and penetrated far above the Pelagus Rapids. But control of such large numbers of men was beyond Charles. He recorded that the party split ‘in all directions, and some have made considerable marches inland, staying the night in the jungle’ as his force swarmed up the Rejang and its tributaries in search of plunder and heads.182 Although the people of the Balui withdrew upriver ahead of the Sarawak advance, many were killed during their retreat and large amounts of plunder, mainly jars and guns, were seized by the invaders from evacuated houses. After more than a week’s pillaging, Charles Brooke mustered his forces and fell downriver. Charles had failed to capture or kill Sawing, Sekalai and Talip, though he claimed to have destroyed the longhouse where they had been living.183 Some time after the expedition, the people of the Balui themselves apprehended the three men.184 However extraordinary an example of the military power of the Brooke state the expedition might have been, Tuton Kaboy argued that it actually had little direct effect on the Kayan against whom it had been

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directed. Most of the houses looted and burned belonged to Kajaman and Sekapan people, upriver relatives of the Melanau.185 Nor did the expedition establish even the most rudimentary government control in the upper Rejang and Balui: eight years later Kayan neither paid taxes nor were included in the government’s population census.186 The expedition’s lack of direct effect on the Kayan, its timing, and the Sarawak government’s lack of interest in sustaining its power in the upper Rejang should refocus the attention of scholars on the expedition’s purpose. Pringle accepted at face value Charles Brooke’s claims that he wanted to avenge the deaths of Fox and Steele, considering that the expedition was ‘the aftermath of the Malay Plot’, and that Charles Brooke’s ‘main concern . . . was still the very survival of Sarawak’.187 But neither the three fugitives nor the Kayan of the remote interior posed any threat to the Rajah’s regime. Although it is likely that the expedition was informed by a desire to kill Sawing, Talip and Sekalai, it had three more significant and interrelated functions. First, the expedition represented an attempt by the Rajah and Charles Brooke to bolster support for their government from the powerful Iban communities of the Skrang and Saribas Rivers. In urging the Rajah to authorise the expedition, Charles Brooke was responding to pressure on him from Iban during his tour of outstations in March.188 As Anthony Richards told Ulla Wagner, among Sarawak people at the time he conducted fieldwork, the expedition was ‘well known to have been an Iban inspired undertaking’.189 Although it is possible that this pressure on Charles Brooke by Iban derived from increasing conflict with Kayan over land in the Rejang basin, as both Pringle and Crisswell suggested,190 it is also likely to have derived from the widespread failure of Iban rice crops in 1861 and 1862, which confronted Iban assumptions about their ritual status and intensified their need for heads and other potent objects. This interpretation derives support from the marked reluctance of the Iban at Banting to join the expedition.191 In 1862 the Banting people had no need to reassert their ritual status as, unlike Saribas and Skrang Iban, theirs had been ‘a famous harvest’.192 Secondly, the expedition was a statement of unity and a claim to legitimacy by the Rajah and Charles Brooke. Unity in Malay polities was the key to ensuring prosperity, fertility and harmony. The source of a polity’s unity was its most intensely potent centre, the ruler, and his immediate entourage.193 Brooke’s repudiation of the Rajah’s authority, though overcome, had shattered the unity at the centre of the Sarawak realm. The Rajah therefore needed to demonstrate to all Sarawak people his undiminished semangat. He had faced a similar need after his capital had been burned by the Chinese in 1857. On that occasion he had reacted by sending forces into ‘the Sarebas country, and by increased activity evincing that we have lost neither the will nor the power, to rule’.194 The attack on the Kayan filled the same need in 1863. I have argued elsewhere that the movement of

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the ruler or his high officials around the realm extended the unity of the centre to include its remotest parts. Conversely, and in an apparent contradiction, the ability to project power into remote areas concentrated and demonstrated the potent unity at the centre.195 Charles Brooke’s ability to raise 50 000 fighting men and take them deep into Borneo provided a powerful testament to both the ritual strength of the Rajah and ritual unity of his regime. Lastly, the Rajah recognised that demonstrations of military prowess helped to legitimatise claims to power in Sarawak among his European officers, the directors and staff of the Borneo Company and other sectors of the ‘Borneo lobby’ in England. In 1862 he had congratulated Brooke Brooke on Brooke’s defeat of an Illanun fleet, noting that it ‘will attract attention in this country [England], your reputation will be raised & it will help to fix you in your position and make your character known, and appreciated’.196 In 1863 it was Charles Brooke who needed to demonstrate his worth. The Kayan expedition, as the largest and most ambitious expedition Sarawak had ever undertaken, was one way to meet this need. CHARLES BROOKE’S SUCCESSION: 1863–1868 On his return to England, Brooke Brooke mobilised support for his claims to be reinstated as Rajah Muda and head of government. He met with the directors of the Borneo Company to argue his case,197 wrote to the British government urging it to suspend any negotiations with the Sarawak government until ‘an arrangement of this dispute’ could be reached,198 and published a pamphlet setting out his claims and justifying his actions.199 His first wife’s aunt, Lady Augusta Bruce, had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria’s mother and remained intimate with the Queen. Brooke ‘managed to get the story into Lady Augusta’s hands at Balmoral’, hoping that she would engage Queen Victoria’s sympathies on his side.200 Brooke and his family recognised the influence that Angela Burdett Coutts exercised over the Rajah, and considered how best to secure her support.201 Both Miss Burdett Coutts and her companion, Mrs Brown, disliked Brooke, however, and urged the Rajah to withstand any pressure from his relatives to be reconciled.202 The dispute between the Rajah and Brooke split their family and caused immeasurable pain. Notwithstanding the meddling of his friends, by the end of 1864 the Rajah claimed to be prepared to consider some form of reconciliation in order to relieve the suffering of his sister, Mrs Johnson.203 The Rajah’s other sister, Mrs Savage, acted as the conduit for negotiations. Although Brooke was prepared to resign his pretensions to have been installed as Rajah and to recognise his uncle as the sole ruler of Sarawak, he would not acknowledge that the Rajah had the authority to remove him from the succession, as the Rajah claimed to have done.204 The Rajah would agree to no terms in advance, suggesting that, should Brooke be prepared

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to acknowledge him as sole ruler, he ought communicate his submission to the Rajah’s solicitor: This first step concluded, I shall be able to take the subject into my consideration. Mr Brooke will find me just, and ready to form a dispassionate judgement.205

Although perhaps the Rajah wanted to spare Mrs Johnson, it is difficult to credit that he intended, as he seemed to suggest to Mrs Savage, recognising Brooke as his heir again. A fortnight earlier he had written to Charles Brooke: ‘You are my successor, either directly or indirectly, in Sarawak, and the inheritor of the chief part of my private fortune.’206 Nothing came of Mrs Savage’s attempts, and the Rajah’s subsequent letters to Brooke, though kindly, were uncompromising. Sources of power in Sarawak were not located in Britain but in Sarawak, over which the Rajah and Charles Brooke retained control. Brooke Brooke lost Sarawak when he surrendered possession of it to the Rajah. He was not about to regain it by agitation in Britain. Queen Victoria’s sympathy was no substitute for the support of the Kuching Malays or the Skrang Iban. Within a year of his departure from Sarawak, Brooke recognised his tactical error and contemplated returning. ‘Will you follow me out if I go and retake Sarawak?’ he asked Robert Hay. ‘It is the only way left I am afraid.’207 He needed a base near Sarawak from which he could test the strength of his support, and which would provide him with sufficient status and rank to attract followers. Labuan was convenient to Sarawak. In 1865 he tried to persuade the British government to appoint him its governor.208 Spenser St John was confident that were Brooke to return he would be well received by the population of Sarawak, who preferred him to his brother,209 and the Rajah was sufficiently concerned about Brooke’s activities to warn him off, claiming that no ‘letter from you to the government of Sarawak would be noticed’.210 Charles Brooke took no chances. He tried to subvert Hay’s loyalties by offering him a new position in the Sarawak government,211 strengthened Kuching’s fortifications, increased the number of Malay and Iban fortmen, posted a gunboat in the river and recruited 50 Indian sepoys.212 In November 1866 the Rajah again proposed to cede Sarawak to the British government. On this occasion his conditions included the British meeting the Sarawak government’s outstanding debts, which the Rajah estimated at £75 000 and for much of which he was the creditor.213 In accordance with the Supreme Council’s resolution of 6 August 1863, he sought its agreement to his opening negotiations. The Council, however, agreed only to his seeking protection or other arrangements short of a transfer of government, to which the Sarawak Malays remained resolutely opposed.214 In December 1866 the Rajah suffered a second stroke at his home at Burrator. Spenser St John took up residence in the house to prevent Brooke

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or any of his family from seeing the Rajah to obtain concessions on the succession.215 The Rajah survived the stroke and, although Brooke made a further effort to secure a reconciliation in July 1867,216 he remained estranged from his uncle. On 8 June 1868 the Rajah of Sarawak suffered a third stroke. He died on 11 June, aged 65.217 Within hours of the Rajah’s death, Arthur Crookshank in England had telegraphed the news to Charles Brooke, care of the Rajah’s old friend, W.H. Read, in Singapore.218 On 12 June Read dispatched a fast boat to Kuching, being careful to keep the momentous intelligence secret. ‘I do not think the sampan men know the news so you are the only one in Sarawak acquainted with it’, he reassured Charles. Read detained the Sarawak government’s steamer, the Rainbow, at Singapore to carry the Rajah’s will to Charles the moment it arrived from England, recognising that ‘unless you have such a document you may be rather fettered in your action’.219 Thanks to Read’s discretion, Charles was able to keep the Rajah’s death secret until official notification was received in Sarawak on 25 July. Charles Brooke was proclaimed Rajah on 1 August.220 The first Rajah’s will left the sovereignty of Sarawak, his house in Devon and most of his other assets to Charles. To his son, George, he left £5000.221 That Charles kept the Rajah’s death secret for six weeks raises doubts about his confidence of an uncontested succession. Pybus suggested that Charles used these weeks to negotiate for support from the Kuching datus. Although no documentary evidence to prove this contention has survived, it is likely. Charles’s relations with the Kuching perabangan were difficult, and he probably suspected them of preferring his brother’s rule to his own. Moreover, as Pybus has pointed out, Charles at this time repudiated a Skrang Malay noblewoman, Dayang Mastiah, with whom he was publicly connected. The Kuching datus would not have welcomed the competition of Skrang Malay influence in the capital. Such concern might also help to explain why Charles left his most trusted companion, Abang Aing, in Skrang when he moved to Kuching, and why Abang Aing, despite his great service, never achieved the datu rank his father had enjoyed.222 In the weeks between learning of the Rajah’s death, and proclaiming it, Charles proceeded with plans to attack the Katibas Iban. This campaign not only served to demonstrate his prowess and increase his standing, as Pybus also suggested,223 it demonstrated to the Kuching datus his undiminished power to raise thousands of Iban warriors in his support. In the event, Charles’s position as ruler was not disputed. Brooke Brooke, whose claims could have destabilised the new regime, was gravely ill. His health had begun to collapse in late 1867. He suffered ‘severe fits, which have been followed by an utter prostration of the mental faculties’.224 He died on 1 December 1868.225 Years before, the Rajah had told Brooke Brooke that if he died in England he wanted his heart to be buried in Sarawak, where he thought that his grave would become ‘a karamat and my name pass into a tradition of

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good which is the highest fame of man’.226 Charles Brooke was more prosaic. He buried all of his uncle’s remains together, in the graveyard of the Devon village where he had died. The Rajah’s death, nonetheless, resulted in a new kramat, as the Rajah had anticipated. Many people believed that the Rajah’s semangat returned to Sarawak, to inhabit the peak at Santubong and to safeguard the country.227 Although St John claimed that, when the Rajah appointed Charles his heir, he left ‘it with him to adopt . . .[Brooke’s son] Hope as his successor if he wished to do so’, James’s will formally excluded Hope from the line of succession.228 Charles, moreover, far from adopting Hope, refused even to repay his orphaned nephew the monies that Brooke had advanced the Sarawak government, on the grounds that Brooke had been proclaimed an outlaw and his property in Sarawak confiscated.229 Ten years later, Charles wrote to congratulate Hope on his attaining his majority: Don’t ever let a thought disturb your mind that I shall feel otherwise towards you than a friend, that is, if you entertain the same feeling towards me. There is no point for discussion or dispute between us.

Charles offered Hope a small allowance, on condition that he not ‘open anything like discussion which can lead to nothing and do no good’.230 Hope took the allowance and refrained from acrimony. Many years later he wrote to Charles suggesting that, if Charles were to die before his children were old enough to assume government, he should ‘be allowed to try my hand at governing Sarawak’.231 Not surprisingly, nothing came of Hope’s offer. J.M. Gullick has observed in Malay polities an ‘inherent tension between a monarch and his heir, the effects of dynastic and polygamous marriage’.232 Although polygamy among ruling class Malays might have provided a structure for succession and other dynastic conflicts, such struggles also reflected the reluctance of rulers to acknowledge their diminishing authority to an ascendant generation keen to exercise power in its own right. In Malayo-Moslem polities, where sovereign power was perceived in cosmological terms and reflected the ruler’s religio-magical status and potency, such reluctance was inevitable. To accommodate the ambitions of a thrusting heir was to diminish one’s own semangat and nama. As the conflict between the Rajah and Brooke demonstrates, succession disputes should not be seen simply as conflicts within ruling families, however. They could provide a framework for resolving differences or redressing other imbalances within elites. Claimants needing supporters would offer to change policies and practices, and to redistribute titles and other sources of elite status. Whatever the motivation of individual claimants in a succession conflict, their need to mobilise support provided opportunities to others to achieve change or other objectives. The Sarawak Malay elite and other Sarawak people achieved their objective of preserving Sarawak’s independence in 1862 and 1863, first, by supporting the

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Rajah Muda’s repudiation of the Rajah and, subsequently, by establishing Sarawak’s independence as a condition of their transferring allegiance back to the Rajah. The Rajah’s reassertion of authority and his exclusion of Brooke Brooke from Sarawak and the succession ultimately derived from Sarawak people, and it depended on his acceptance of their determination to maintain Sarawak’s independence. These circumstances challenge scholarly assumptions that Sarawak during the rule of the first Rajah was a peculiar sort of British colony, or that Sarawak’s past can be comprehended principally in terms of British imperial and colonial history. When Charles Brooke succeeded his uncle as Rajah in 1868, it was to an independent rulership created and defended by some 35 years of Malay struggle.

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9 ‘Doing honour to the Rajah’

The development of Brooke rule in Sarawak until the death of the first Rajah can be understood on several levels. Power in Sarawak, including that established or appropriated by James Brooke, derived principally from Sarawak people and resources. The state that James Brooke helped to create was not simply an expression of British colonialism, and Britain was not the source of James Brooke’s power as Rajah. Brooke seized control of the provincial administration of Sarawak in 1841 with the support of 200 Sarawak Malays. The expansion of his authority throughout larger geographic areas and among wider groups of people was due to his ability to define his interests so as to integrate the objectives of an increasing number of local supporters. Integral to understanding Brooke’s power is a recognition that opposition to or support for him was not the only source of conflict in Sarawak. Imposing such a simplified model of conflict onto 19th-century Sarawak history at once detracts from and distorts the complex experiences of people in northwest Borneo. The subsequent expansion and consolidation of Brooke’s power contributed to new patterns of conflict, particularly among the Iban communities of the Skrang, Saribas and Rejang basins. Brooke’s position derived, however, from competition among Sarawak people for rank and status, or nama, often within the entourage of a leader of proven potency or spiritual rank — a leader with intense and expansive semangat. This is not to deny that James Brooke deployed resources in Sarawak that he accumulated elsewhere. In particular, during the 1840s he expended his considerable personal fortune to establish dominance in Sarawak. During the same period he attracted high levels of British naval support for his attacks on Malay and Iban rivals in neighbouring rivers. From the latter 1850s until his death in 1868, his regime was indebted to his friend, Angela Burdett Coutts, who lent him money to relieve 206

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economic pressures from his other creditors and to enhance his military capabilities. Brooke’s own inherited wealth, and that of Miss Burdett Coutts, contributed directly to his pre-eminence. To be properly understood, however, these military and financial subventions need to be viewed in the context of the cultures of Sarawak people. The essential process underpinning Brooke’s position as raja was the capacity of people in Sarawak to comprehend the material sources of his power in cultural terms, which themselves expressed important ritual relationships. James Brooke was Rajah because so many in Sarawak recognised the intensity and expansiveness of his semangat and sought opportunities to engage it. This has been a fundamental process in state formation in Southeast Asia. Like the archetypal kings whose origins have been examined by Wolters, Brooke ‘was able to mobilise his coalition not because he could claim to be the descendant of an earlier overlord but because his supporters were able to perceive that he was distinguished by personal qualities and self-confidence, which guaranteed the success of his enterprise’.1 Brooke embodied cosmic forces which other people wanted to engage, and which became the focus of association. The annals of Sarawak are replete with references to Malays, Iban and Bidayuh seeking opportunities to enhance their ritual status through association with him. Malays, Iban and Bidayuh testified to their identification of Brooke’s own vitality and power with the prosperity of his country and followers. Many Bidayuh esteemed him because they saw him as a source of fertility and fecundity.2 One Iban leader attributed his good harvests to his association with Brooke and his officers.3 Another represented Brooke in architectural terms as a perabong, encompassing and completing Iban social and ritual forms and realities.4 Even Europeans, who might have been more sceptical, recognised these connections. One European missionary noted of Brooke’s recovery from smallpox in 1853: ‘the danger was past; it seemed as if a new accession of good was to flow in upon the province, and this wonderful land was to become more wonderful now that its creating and directing spirit was restored to it’.5 As Wolters observed of 7th-century Cambodia, ‘what we would define as “the kingdom” was no more than the territorial measurement of a particular lord’s prowess’.6 Sarawak expanded along the coast as more and more people transferred their allegiance from local leaders or the Sultan of Brunei to his over-mighty vassal. Each cession of territory from Brunei — the Sadong, Skrang and Saribas basins and the Rejang basin and adjacent coast — occurred after the Rajah had already become a focus of association in the area. Cessions of territory from Brunei to Sarawak were important because they conveyed title in international law, not because they established the Rajah’s power. Cessions simply recognised the expanded population which sought to engage the Rajah’s semangat and to acquire nama through association with him. Cessions gave to the Rajah legal sovereignty over land occupied by people for many of whom his pre-eminence had become already a central organising principle of their lives.

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For many people in northwest Borneo, establishing and publicly enacting relationships of dependence on great and potent figures enhanced rather than diminished their own claims to status. In the periods between the Rajah’s intrusion into an area, or the extension of his nama among a population, and his establishment of government over them, such people were forced to find ways of engaging him. Often populations could not resist the opportunity to increase their status that closer association with the Rajah offered, even before the areas in which they lived were integrated into his realm. Many people moved into closer physical proximity to him — often to his capital, the ritual as well as the administrative centre of his power, and in other cases into outlying territories that he controlled. As the Rajah explained to Charles Grant, ‘birds have wings and Dyaks have legs and one and the other will fly or run to the tree which bears fruit’.7 The scale of the Rajah’s successes, and of the prowess that they indicated, induced many chiefs and people who were unable or unwilling to relocate closer to Kuching to send gifts and messages offering service and homage, and to seek titles of distinction and robes of honour from him. European records testify that almost wherever the Rajah travelled in northwest Borneo, he attracted crowds of supplicants. Frank McDougall, perhaps unconsciously, identified a process essential to state formation in Sarawak when he recorded in 1848 that, after the Rajah’s return from England, ‘all native boats from all parts are here, doing honour to the Rajah’.8 James Brooke was sensitive to a remarkable degree to cosmological concepts of state and society. In part this can be attributed to his prolonged childhood in India, exposed to his father’s professional interest in Indian power struggles in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In Sarawak, James quickly developed a detailed awareness of key ideas like semangat and being halus, recognising that Sarawak people perceived his actions within their own conceptual frameworks. Thus he urged his agent, Henry Wise, to ‘be very careful not to apply English rules to Sarawak whether in trade or politics’,9 and he ensured that his own behaviour was appropriate to the cultural contexts of power in Sarawak. He recognised how even his demeanour conveyed ritual meanings and therefore had consequences for his power. In 1844 he contemplated the need to cultivate, when among Sarawak people, ‘a kind and gentle manner; for their habitual politeness is such that they are hurt by the ordinary brusquerie of the European’.10 Thirteen years later he described a meeting he hosted of both sides in the bloody contest for Mukah. He recounted how he spoke ‘in the subdued tone which suits a native auditory — most gentle when threatening most’.11 Nothing could be further from the Eurocentrism of colonialists, or of some scholars, than James Brooke’s cultural awareness. Although the ritual basis of Brooke’s regime manifested a potent ideological source of power in Sarawak, its efficacy also derived from its capacity to integrate other forms of power into a single state system. In

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particular, three material or structural sources of power and conflict were essential to Brooke’s position: his military strength; the hierarchies and other structures through which power was expressed, deployed and accumulated; and the demands and constraints of economics. Although this might indicate that semangat and other cosmological concepts are not of themselves sufficient basis for explaining power and conflict, the operations of these material and structural factors, and the way they were perceived by Brooke’s followers, were intimately connected to cultural ideals. James Brooke established a role in Sarawak initially because of his capacity to provide military support for Raja Muda Hassim. Military power provided the basis for his career in Sarawak. Moreover, a significant proportion of his military capability derived from sources outside Sarawak. The importance of English naval support for James Brooke’s activities in the 1840s cannot be overstated, and has contributed significantly to conventional views of Sarawak as a peculiar form of colonial administration. But James Brooke’s military activities did not just demonstrate to his adversaries and potential enemies his capacity to defeat them. The cultural understandings of Sarawak people ensured that his victories were perceived as evidence of his potency and spiritual prowess — of his ‘soul-stuff’, of his semangat. They enhanced his nama and therefore the nama that could be acquired through association with him. The levels of military power that Brooke brought from outside Sarawak — the crew and guns of the Royalist, the backing of Keppel, Mundy and the other officers of the Royal Navy who flocked to his support — were important because they testified to these qualities. It is not just that, in the perceptions of his Sarawak followers, Brooke’s military power was used to empower rather than to suppress them, the capacity of such resources to empower provided a powerful incentive, beyond just the threat of retribution, for opponents to become supporters. As Brooke himself observed of the Skrang Iban, ‘the mass of the population, which always leans to the side of power, are inclined to support us’.12 As Rajah, Brooke needed to establish structures that enabled him to extract resources and allocate benefits, and in doing so he established networks of patron–client links which expressed, applied and accumulated power among Sarawak people. Through such networks, Brooke regulated his contacts with individuals over wide geographic areas and social spaces. Participation by Sarawak people in these networks, or rejection of them, manifested individuals’ relationships with Brooke. But the power structures Brooke established or enhanced provided frameworks for conflict as well as for integration, as individuals competed with each other for nama, for place and rank, and for the resources to sustain or enhance their ambitions and demonstrate their semangat. Thus, conflict in Sarawak did not occur only between the Rajah and those people who opposed the extension of his power: conflict also occurred among the Rajah’s supporters, focusing on rank within his entourage and on place within the hierarchy of his state.

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James Brooke’s inheritance gave him some measure of independence from the necessity to extract economic surpluses from Sarawak people in the early 1840s, when he was establishing his power. Unlike his early rival, Mahkota, Brooke could afford to be generous and to avoid some of the more oppressive practices by which Malay elites sustained themselves. Like elements of his military capability, therefore, Brooke’s economic independence in the 1840s might be regarded by some as evidence that his power over Sarawak derived from sources outside the country. Yet, while £30 000 was a comfortable fortune for an adventurer, it did not provide the fiscal basis for a state or the economic resources necessary to maintain a state elite. Notwithstanding his early generosity, most of James Brooke’s rule was marked by his continuing struggle to expropriate sufficient economic surpluses from subject populations to ensure his government’s economic viability. Brooke found the surpluses produced by the Chinese and the Bidayuh inadequate, and his aggressive expansion into Brunei territories to the northeast, particularly along the sago coast, reflected his need to expand the financial basis of his state as well as to meet the material and ritual needs of his followers. Robert Winzeler suggested, in a different context, that it would be ‘misleading to suppose that it is possible to distinguish between “practical” and “transcendental” dimensions of belief and practice’.13 Distinguishing between these dimensions must indeed distort any attempt at representing the experiences and understandings of people for whom no such distinction existed. But to recognise the transcendental dimensions of power necessarily involves distinguishing them from the practicalities, and the mechanics, of power. If the distortions inevitable from making such distinctions are to be minimised, scholars need to explore how these different levels of experience, and sources or types of power, operate within a single, coherent system. When Weber sought to ‘decompose’ political sociology into material interest, authority structures and value orientation, it was to aid analysis of all three rather than to deny their essential interdependence.14 Moreover, although distinguishing between the practical and transcendental dimensions of power diminishes our capacity to represent fully the ‘internal’ comprehension of some indigenous actors, it makes it easier for us to overcome the tendency of culturist analyses to overlook dissent, pluralism and the material bases of existence in favour of symbolic coherence and integration.15 Comprehension both of cultural and of material and structural forms and sources of power will be expanded when each is perceived in the context of the other. The transcendental aspects of power, and its mechanics, describe two interdependent sets of experience, and their dialectical relationship to each other is itself important.

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I Notes

Spelling, weights and measures 1 Peter Vandergeest, ‘Hierarchy and Power in Pre-National Buddhist States’, Modern Asian Studies, 27(4), 1993, pp. 843–70 at pp. 866–7. Approaching 19th-century Sarawak 1 Gertrude L. Jacob, The Raja of Sarawak: An Account of Sir James Brooke, KCB, LLD, Given Chiefly Through Letters and Journals (London, 1876). 2 Spenser St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East (London, 1862); The Life of Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak (Edinburgh & London, 1879); and Rajah Brooke: The Englishman as Ruler of an Eastern State (London, 1897). 3 S. Baring-Gould & C. A. Bampfylde, A History of Sarawak under its Two White Rajahs, 1839–1908 (London, 1909). 4 Steven Runciman, The White Rajahs: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946 (Cambridge, 1960). 5 Robert Payne, The White Rajahs of Sarawak (New York, 1960). 6 Emily Hahn, James Brooke of Sarawak: A Biography of Sir James Brooke (London, 1953). 7 Nicholas Tarling, British Policy in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago: 1824–1871 (Kuala Lumpur, 1969 [1957]); Piracy and Politics in the Malay World (Melbourne, 1963); Britain, the Brookes and Brunei (Kuala Lumpur, 1971); The Burthen, the Risk, and the Glory: A Biography of Sir James Brooke (Kuala Lumpur, 1982). 8 Craig A. Lockard, The Southeast Asian Town in Historical Perspective: A Social History of Kuching, Malaysia, 1820–1970. University of Wisconsin: PhD, 1973. 9 Graham Saunders, Bishops and Brookes: The Anglican Mission and the Brooke Raj in Sarawak (Singapore, 1992). Ooi Keat Gin, World Beyond

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10 11

12

13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

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the Rivers: Education in Sarawak from Brooke Rule to Colonial Office Administration, 1841–1963 (Hull, 1996); and Of Free Trade and Native Interests: The Brookes and the Economic Development of Sarawak, 1841–1941 (New York, 1997). Robert Pringle, Rajahs and Rebels: The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke Rule, 1841–1941 (London, 1970). Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, 1980). O.W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore, 1982). Benedict R.O’G. Anderson, ‘The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture’, in his Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (Ithaca, 1990), pp. 17–77. A.C. Milner, Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule (Tucson, 1982). Shelly Errington, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm (Princeton, 1989). Margaret Weiner, Visible and Invisible Realms: Power, Magic and Colonial Conquest in Bali (Chicago, 1995). For the cultural construction of ‘common sense’ see Marshall Sahlins, How Natives Think: About Captain Cook, For Example (Chicago, 1995). Vinson H. Sutlive, ‘Preface’, in Robert L. Winzeler (ed.), The Seen and the Unseen: Shamanism, Mediumship and Possession in Borneo. Borneo Research Council Monogragh Series vol. 2, 1993, pp. vii–ix at p. vii (emphasis added). Benedict Sandin, The Sea Dayaks of Borneo before White Rajah Rule (London, 1967), p. 71. ‘Introduction’, Eric B. Ross (ed.), Beyond the Myths of Culture: Essays in Cultural Materialism (New York, 1980), pp. xix–xxix at p. xxiii. G. Carter Bentley, ‘Indigenous States of Southeast Asia’, Ann Rev Anthropology, 15, 1986, pp. 277–305 at p. 297. Robert Pringle, ‘The Brookes of Sarawak: Reformers in Spite of Themselves’, SMJ, 19(38–39), 1971, p. 54. See also his Rajahs and Rebels, p. 4. Ulla Wagner, Colonialism and Iban Warfare (Stockholm, 1972), pp. 1–2. Otto C. Doering, ‘Government in Sarawak under Charles Brooke’, JMBRAS, 39(2), 1966, p. 95. Craig A. Lockard, ‘The Early Development of Kuching, 1820–1857’, JMBRAS, 49(2), 1976, p. 111. Craig A. Lockard, From Kampong to City: A Social History of Kuching, Malaysia, 1820–1970 (Athens, Ohio, 1987), p. xi. Leigh R. Wright, ‘Raja James Brooke and Sarawak: An Anomaly in the 19th Century British Colonial Scene’, Journal, Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, 17, 1977, pp. 29–40. David James Oats, The First White Rajah: Alexander Hare in Southeast Asia, 1800–1831. University of NSW: MA, 1997. J. Thomas Lindblad, with Peter E.F. Verhagen, Between Dyak and Dutch: The Economic History of Southeast Kalimantan, 1880–1942 (Dordrecht, 1988), p. 10.

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26 G.J. Resink, ‘The Eastern Archipelago under Joseph Conrad’s Western Eyes’, in his Indonesia’s History Between the Myths: Essays in Legal History and Historical Theory (Hague, 1968), pp. 307–23 at pp. 312–13. For an outline of Torrey’s career see K.G.P. Tregonning, ‘Steps in the Acquisition of North Borneo’, Historical Studies, Australia and New Zealand, November, 1952, pp. 234–343 at pp. 234–7. John Dill Ross, Sixty Years: Life and Adventures in the Far East (London, 1911), p. 4. 27 Graham Saunders, ‘Seekers of Kingdoms: British Adventurers in the Malay Archipelago’, Brunei Museum Journal, 4, 1980, pp. 137–54 at p. 137. 28 ‘Dr Leyden’s Sketch of Borneo’, in J.H. Moor (ed.), Notices of the Indian Archipelago and Adjacent Countries (London, 1968 [1837]), pp. 93–109 at pp. 101–6. Pringle also noted the parallels between Brooke’s career and that of Syed Abdul Rahman. Rajahs and Rebels, p. 61. 29 L.W.C. van den Berg, Hadhramout et les Colonies Arabes dans l’Archipel Indien (Jakarta, 1989), p. 202. 30 Raja Ali Haji, The Precious Gift (Tufhat al-Nafis) (translated by Virginia Matheson & Barbara Watson Andaya) (Kuala Lumpur, 1982), pp. 66–7, 187. 31 J.J. Ras (ed.), Hikayat Banjar: A Study in Malay Historiography (The Hague, 1968), p. 239. 32 D.E. Brown, Brunei: The Structure and History of a Bornean Malay Sultanate (Brunei, 1970), p. 136. 33 Resink, op. cit., p. 313. 34 Francis McDougall, Address delivered by the Bishop and Summary of the First Diocesan Synod. Sarawak, 1864. Copy in USPG D 23, B, Original Letters Received, at ff. 1033–44. 35 James Augustus St John, Views in the Eastern Archipelago Borneo, Sarawak, Labuan etc (London, nd). item d. 36 Lockard, From Kampong to City. p. xi. 37 D.K. Bassett, British Attitudes to Indigenous States in Southeast Asia in the Nineteenth Century (Hull, 1980), pp. 41–9. 38 For example, see James Brooke’s letter to Templer of 19 October 1839. J.C. Templer (ed.), The Private Letters of Sir James Brooke, K.C.B. Rajah of Sarawak (London, 1853), vol. 1, pp. 73–4. Templer appears to have edited two or more letters into a single missive. 39 Tom Harrisson, ‘Review of The White Rajahs . . . by Steven Runciman’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, 3(1), March 1962, pp. 160–5 at pp. 161, 165. 40 James Ongkili, ‘A New Look at Sarawak History’, Sarawak Gazette, 28 February 1975, pp. 25–7 at p. 25. 41 A.C. Milner, ‘Colonial Records History: British Malaya’, Kajian Malaysia, 4(2), December 1986, pp. 1–18 at p. 8. See also Yeo Kim Wah, ‘The Milner Version of British Malayan History — A Rejoinder’, Kajian Malaysia, 5(1), pp. 1–28. 42 Sandin, op. cit.; and ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, SMJ, XLVI(67) December 1994.

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43 See, for example, Tuton Kaboy, ‘The Murder of Steele and Fox: Two Versions’, SMJ, 12(25–26), July–December 1965, pp. 207–14. 44 I.D. Black, ‘The Political Situation in Sabah on the Eve of Chartered Company Rule’, Borneo Research Bulletin, 3(2), 1971, pp. 62–5 at p. 62. 45 Bassett, op. cit., p. 55. 46 Milner, ‘Colonial Records History’, p. 9. 47 ibid., p. 14. 48 Patrick Sullivan, Social Relations of Dependence in a Malay State: Nineteenth Century Perak. MBRAS: Monograph no. 10; 1982, pp. xiv–xv. Chapter 1 — Power and prowess in northwest Borneo 1 Robert Pringle, Rajahs and Rebels: The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke Rule, 1841–1941 (London, 1970), p. 8. 2 Odoardo Beccari, Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo (Singapore, 1989 [1904]), p. 5. See p. 382 for a detailed description. 3 James C. Jackson, Chinese in the West Borneo Goldfields: A Study in Cultural Geography (Hull, 1970), p. 15. 4 Hugh Low, Sarawak; Its Inhabitants and Productions: Being Notes During a Residence in that Country with H.H. The Rajah Brooke (London, 1848), p. 42. 5 ibid., pp. 44–61. 6 S. Baring-Gould & C.A. Bampfylde, A History of Sarawak under its Two White Rajahs, 1839–1908 (London, 1909), p. 213. 7 Jan W. Christie, ‘Ironworking in Sarawak’, in Jan W. Christie & V.T. King, Metal-Working in Borneo: Essays on Iron- and Silver-Working in Sarawak (Hull, 1988), pp. 1–27 at pp. 19–20. 8 Quoted by Craig A. Lockard, The Southeast Asian Town in Historical Perspective: A Social History of Kuching, Malaysia, 1820–1970, University of Wisconsin: PhD, 1973, p. 4. An exception to this school of thought is Reed Wadley, ‘Warfare, Pacification, and Environment: Population Dynamics in the West Borneo Borderlands (1823–1934)’, Moussons, 1, 2000, pp. 41–66 at p. 45. 9 Christopher Healey, ‘Tribes and States in “Pre-Colonial” Borneo: Structural Contradictions and the Generation of Piracy’, Social Analysis, no. 18, December 1985, pp. 3–39 at p. 11. 10 Graham Irwin, Nineteenth Century Borneo: A Study in Diplomatic Rivalry (Singapore, 1955), pp. 24, 69–70. 11 Low, op. cit., p. 169. 12 Ida Nicolaisen, ‘Form and Function of Punan Bah Ethno-Historical Tradition’, SMJ, 24(45), 1976, pp. 63–95 at p. 70. 13 Rita Armstrong, People of the Same Heart: The Social World of the Kenyah Badeng, University of Sydney, PhD, 1991, p. 211. 14 R. Burns, ‘The Kayans of the North-west of Borneo’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 3(1), 1849, pp. 138–52 at p. 141.

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15 Donald E. Brown, Socio-Political History of Brunei, A Bornean Malay Sultanate, Cornell University: PhD, 1969, p. 264. 16 Jan Wisseman Christie, ‘On Po-ni: The Santubong Sites of Sarawak’, SMJ, XXXIV(55), December 1985, pp. 77–89. 17 See James P. Ongkili, ‘Pre-Western Brunei, Sarawak and Sabah’, SMJ, 20(40–44), January–December 1972, pp. 1–20 at pp. 2–4; Robert Nicholl, ‘Some Problems of Brunei Chronology’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 20(2), September 1989, pp. 175–95 at pp. 178, 193. 18 ibid., pp. 179–82. See also Mohd Jamil Al-Sufri, ‘Islam in Brunei’, Brunei Museum Journal, 4(10), 1977, pp. 35–42. 19 Low, op. cit., p. 99. 20 Robert Nicholl (ed.), European Sources for the History of the Sultanate of Brunei in the Sixteenth Century (Bandar Seri Begawan, 1990 [1975]), p. 28. 21 Bob Reece, Datu Bandar Abang Hj. Mustapha of Sarawak (Kuching, nd [1993?]), p. 4. 22 Nicholl, European Sources, p. 63. 23 ibid., p. 74. 24 ibid., p. 69. 25 Benedict Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’. SMJ, XLVI(67), Special Monograph no. 7, pp. 1–78 at p. 167. 26 Jan O.M. Broek, ‘Borneo on Maps of the 16th and 17th Centuries’, SMJ, XI(21–22), July–December 1963, pp. 649–54 at pp. 652–3. 27 Nicholl, ‘Some Problems of Brunei Chronology’, pp. 191–2. 28 ‘Borneo Proper’, in J.H. Moor (ed.), Notices of the Indian Archipelago and Adjacent Countries (London, 1968 [1837]), p. 3. 29 Y.L. Lee, ‘The Chinese in Sarawak (and Brunei)’, SMJ, XI(23–24), July–December 1964, pp. 516–31 at p. 517. 30 Irwin, op. cit., pp. 23–7. 31 Jensen, op. cit., p. 3. 32 Emily Hahn, James Brooke of Sarawak: A Biography of Sir James Brooke (London, 1953), p. 7. 33 See Zainal Kling, The Saribas Malays of Sarawak (Their Social and Economic Organisation and System of Values), University of Hull: PhD, 1973, pp. 2–3. 34 Craig A. Lockard, ‘Malay Social Structures in a Sarawak Town in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Mario D. Zamora et al. (eds), Studies in Third World Societies, No 2: Sarawak: Research and Theory (Williamsburg, 1977), p. 93. 35 Brown, op. cit., pp. 27–9. 36 Henry Keppel, The Expedition to Borneo of HMS Dido for the suppression of Piracy: With Extracts from the Journal of James Brooke, Esq., of Sarawak, (now agent for the British Government in Borneo) (London, 1846 [2nd edn]), vol. 1, p. 30. (To distinguish between the two principal journals published herewith Brooke’s will be cited as ‘Brooke, Dido’ and Keppel’s as ‘Keppel, Dido’.) Low, op. cit., pp. 226, 160. See also Ulla Wagner, who suggested that Malay economies were based on wet rice cultivation. Colonialism and Iban Warfare (Stockholm, 1972), p. 18.

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37 John H. Kautsky, The Politics of Aristocratic Empires (Chapel Hill, 1982), p. 191. 38 Low, op. cit., p. 135; and Mrs (Harriette) McDougall, Letters from Sarawak Addressed to a Child (Worwich, 1854), p. 42. 39 Peter Leys, ‘Observations on the Brunei Political System, 1883–1885’, JMBRAS, 41(2), 1968, pp. 117–30 at p. 125. 40 ‘The Maritime Code of the Malays’, JSBRAS, 3 July 1879, pp. 62–84 at pp. 64–5. 41 Raja Ali Haji, The Precious Gift (Tufhat al-Nafis) (translated by Virginia Matheson & Barbara Watson Andaya) (Kuala Lumpur, 1982), p. 187. 42 J.J. Ras (ed.), Hikayat Banjar: A Study in Malay Historiography (The Hague, 1968), p. 239. 43 ‘Dr Leyden’s Sketch of Borneo’, in J.H. Moor, op. cit., pp. 93–109 at pp. 101–6. 44 ‘Notices of the city of Borneo and its inhabitants, made during the voyage of the American brig Himmaleh in the Indian Archipelago, in 1837 — Part 1’, Chinese Repository, VII(III), pp. 121–36 at p. 130. 45 C.T.C. Grant, A Tour among the Dyaks of Sarawak (Borneo) in 1858 (Printed for private circulation, 1864), p. 170. 46 Abang Yusuf bin Abang Puteh, Some Aspects of the Marriage Customs Among the Sarawak Malays with Special Reference to Kuching (Kuala Lumpur, 1966), pp. 43–6. 47 ibid., p. 1. 48 James Francis Warren, The Sulu Zone 1768–1898: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and Ethnicity in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime State (Singapore, 1981), p. 201. 49 Rodney Mundy, Narrative of events in Borneo and Celebes, down to the Occupation of Labuan: From the Journals of James Brooke, Esq., Rajah of Sarawak, and Governor of Labuan. Together with a Narrative of the Operations of HMS Iris (London, 1848), vol. 1, p. 376. (To distinguish between the two journals published herewith, Brooke’s will be cited as ‘Brooke, Iris’ and Mundy’s as ‘Mundy, Iris’.) 50 Spenser St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak (Edinburgh and London, 1879), p. 52. 51 Pringle, op. cit., pp. 39–41. 52 Vinson H. Sutlive, The Iban of Sarawak (Arlington Heights, 1978), pp. 62–4. 53 Clifford Sather, ‘The One-Sided One: Iban Rice Myths, Agricultural Ritual and Notions of Ancestry’, in Contributions to Southeast Asian Ethnography: Rice in Southeast Asian Myth and Ritual. No. 10, January 1994, pp. 119–49 at p. 130. 54 St John, op. cit., pp. 160–2. 55 Low, op. cit., p. 169. 56 ibid., pp. 166–8. See also Brooke, Dido, I, p. 97. According to Benedict Sandin, a Saribas Iban, however, the scattered location of Iban at Lundu, Lingga and Samarahan predated serious intra-Iban hostility and was not

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57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67

68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80

217

caused by it. Benedict Sandin, The Sea Dyaks of Borneo Before White Rajah Rule (London, 1967), p. 65. Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 55–6. Federick Boyle, Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo (Kuala Lumpur, 1984 [1865]), p. 203. Saribas Iban accounts record that hostility between them and the Balau Iban of the Lingga River was orchestrated about 1800 by a Malay aristocrat from Lingga, Indra Lela. See Benedict Sandin, ‘The History of the People of Bangkit, Paku, Saribas’, SMJ, XIX(38–39), July–December 1971, pp. 21–36 at p. 35. Pringle, op. cit., p. 18. Peter Mulok Kedit, Modernization among the Iban of Sarawak (Kuala Lumpur, 1980), p. 31. Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 53, 61. See also Boyle, op. cit., p. 285. Sutlive, op. cit., p. 27. Low, op. cit., p. 209. ibid., p. 174. Peter Mulok Kedit, The Iban of Skrang Village: A Study of Some Social and Cultural Consequences of Sudden Ecological Change on the Iban Community of Sarawak. University of Queensland: BA (Hons), 1970, p. 39. Pringle, op. cit., p. 36. Clifford Sather, ‘“All Threads are White”: Iban Egalitarianism Reconsidered’, in James J. Fox & Clifford Sather (eds), Origins, Ancestory and Alliance: Explorations in Austronesian Ethnography (Canberra, 1996), pp. 70–110 at pp. 74–5. Kedit, Modernization among the Iban of Sarawak. pp. 32–3, 87. Wadley, op. cit., p. 46. See ‘Memoir of a Residency on the North-West Coast of Borneo’, in Moor, op. cit., pp. 5–14 at pp. 9, 11; and George Windsor Earl, The Eastern Seas, or Voyage and Adventures in the Indian Archipelago in 1832–33–34 . . . (London, 1837), pp. 270, 312. Testimony of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, FO 12/20/23. Earl, op. cit., p. 269. Testimony of Nakhoda Mahomed, FO 12/20/250. St John, op. cit., p. 161. Boyle, op. cit., p. 293. St John, op. cit., p. 154. Benedict Sandin, ‘The Westward Migration of the Sea-Dyaks’, SMJ, 7(7), June 1956, pp. 54–81 at p. 68. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 197. See also Benedict Sandin, ‘Iban Leaders’, SMJ, XVIII(36–37), pp. 89–161 at p. 89. Anthony Richards, ‘The Descent of Some Saribas Malays’, SMJ, VII(21–22), July–December 1963, pp. 99–107 at pp. 104–5. See also Benedict Sandin, ‘Descent of Some Saribas Malays (and Ibans) — II’, SMJ, XI(23–24), 1964, pp. 512–15. Quoted by Pringle, op. cit., p. 53.

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218 81 82 83 84 85

86 87 88

89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

109

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Brooke, Dido, I, p. 61. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 29 April 1850. Letters, II, p. 289. Low, op. cit., p. 163. St John, op. cit., pp. 194, 205–6, 79. J. Brooke to Lord Palmerston, 6 March 1849. FO 12/7/34. Grant confirmed also that the Saribas at this time had ‘very few firearms’. See C. Grant to Mrs Grant, 5 March 1850. Basil Brooke Papers, Box 5, Item 6. Nor did Iban on the Lingga River have firearms. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 362. W.R. Geddes, The Land Dayaks of Sarawak (London, 1954), p. 6. M.R. Allen, ‘A Comparative Note on Iban and Land Dyak Social Structure’, Mankind, 7(3), June 1970, pp. 191–8 at p. 191. For examples see Brooke, Dido, II, p. 197; Beccari, op. cit., p. 60; Low, op. cit., p. 165. Though Gomes perceived that their languages and traditions were ‘quite distinct’, he did not elaborate. Edwin H. Gomes, Seventeen Years among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo (London, 1911), p. 35. Craig A. Lockard, The Southeast Asian Town in Historical Perspective, p. 24. Wagner, op. cit., pp. 18–19. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 46. See also Brooke, Iris, I, p. 330. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 330; Brooke, Dido, I, p. 231. Geddes, The Land Dayaks of Sarawak, p. 279. Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 230–1. Geddes, The Land Dayaks of Sarawak, p. 9. Low, op. cit., pp. 281–2. Geddes, Nine Dayak Nights, p. 21. Low, op. cit., p. 288. See also Grant, A Tour among the Dyaks of Sarawak (Borneo) in 1858, p. 5. Geddes, Nine Dayak Nights, p. 4. Geddes, The Land Dayaks of Sarawak, p. 48. Allen, op. cit., p. 192. Geddes, Nine Dayak Nights, pp. 10–12. Low, op. cit., p. 232. Geddes, The Land Dayaks of Sarawak, p. 9. ibid., p. 20. ibid., pp. 22–3. Also Geddes, Nine Dayak Nights, p. 17. A.J.N. Richards, Sarawak Land Law and Adat (Kuching, 1971), p. 4. Shelly Errington, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm (Princeton, 1989), p. 9. For the classic exposition of this view see Benedict R.O’G. Anderson’s ‘The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture’, in his Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (Ithaca, 1990), pp. 17–77. Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, Volume One, The Lands below the Winds (New Haven, 1993), p. 6. Shelly Errington, though, has cautioned against assuming that etymological similarities in the terms for soul/soul-stuff, e.g. semangat, sumangé, semengat, across Southeast Asian cultures denote similarities in belief and practice. See her ‘Embodied Sumangé in Luwu’, Journal of Asian Studies, XLII(3), May 1983, pp. 545–70 at p. 545fn.

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110 Derek Freeman, Report on the Iban (London, 1970 [1955]), p. 35. So did O.W. Wolters, History, Culture, and Religion in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore, 1982), p. 6. 111 K.M. Endicott, An Analysis of Malay Magic (Singapore, 1985 [1970]), p. 41. 112 Carol Laderman, Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medecine, and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 41–2. 113 Wolters, op. cit., p. 6. 114 Weber applied the term charisma ‘to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are . . . not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual is treated as a leader’. Max Weber, quoted by Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (New York, 1962 [1960]), p. 88, fn 15. 115 Wolters, op. cit., p. 6. 116 R.O. Winstedt, ‘Karamat: Sacred Places and Persons in Malaya’, A Centenary Volume, 1877–1977. MBRAS Reprint no. 4; 1977, pp. 48–63. See also Endicott, op. cit., pp. 90–5. 117 Batu Kinyang on Rock Road, a ‘sister’ stone on Ong Kee Hui Road, batu Kawa and the alleged tomb of Datu Landi at Landeh. See W.J. Chater, Sarawak Long Ago (Kuching, 1969), pp. 40–50. 118 ‘Dr Leyden’s Sketch of Borneo’, op. cit., p. 100. 119 ‘Journal of a Tour of the Kapuas’, Journal of the Eastern Archipelago and Eastern Asia, 1856, pp. 84–126 at pp. 109–10. 120 Spenser St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East (London, 1862), vol. 1, p. 134. 121 Charles Brooke, Ten Years in Sarawak (Singapore, 1990 [1866]), vol. II, p. 12. 122 Barbara Watson Andaya, ‘The Nature of the State in Eighteenth Century Perak’, in Anthony Reid & Lance Castles (eds), Pre-Colonial State Systems in Southeast Asia. MBRAS: Monograph no. 6, 1979, pp. 22–35 at p. 25. 123 Brown, op. cit., p. 213. 124 A.C. Milner, ‘Malay Kingship in a Burmese Perspective’, in Ian Mabbett (ed.), Patterns of Kingship and Authority in Traditional Asia (London, 1985), pp. 158–83 at p. 162. See also his Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule (Tucson, 1982). 125 Derek Freeman, Some Reflections of the Nature of Iban Society (Canberra, 1982), p. 13. 126 Vinson H. Sutlive, ‘The Iban in Historical Perspective’, SMJ, XL(61), December 1989, pp. 33–43 at p. 40. 127 For a 19th-century understanding of Iban concepts of semangat, see A. Horsburgh, Sketches in Borneo (London, 1858), p. 24. 128 Kedit, Modernization among the Iban of Sarawak, p. 34. See also A.J.N. Richards, ‘The Ibans’ in Tom Harrisson (ed.), The Peoples of Sarawak. Kuching: Government Printing Office, 1959, pp. 9–26 at p. 22.

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129 Pringle, op. cit., p. 33. 130 Raymond Kennedy (1942), quoted by Andrew P. Vayda, ‘The Study of the Causes of War, with special reference to head-hunting raids in Borneo’, Ethnohistory, 16(3), 1969, pp. 211–24 at p. 213. Wallace encountered a community on the Sadong River which argued precisely this point. A.R. Wallace to unknown correspondent, May 1855. James Marchant (ed.), Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (New York, 1975 [1916]), p. 45. 131 For examples, see St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, I, pp. 300–1. 132 Beccari, op. cit., p. 62. 133 Geddes, The Land Dayaks of Sarawak, p. 23. 134 They are discussed in detail by William Nais, The Study of Dayak Bidayuh Occult Arts of Divination (Kuching, 1993). 135 Noel Denison, ‘Notes on the Land Dyaks of Sarawak Proper’, Sarawak Gazette, 124, 10 October 1876, p. 7. 136 Geddes, Nine Dayak Nights, p. 15. 137 Quoted by Richardson in his report of January 1864. USPG, E 15, Missionary Reports, 1864, f. 1605 (emphasis added). 138 Low, op. cit., p. 301. 139 Pringle, op. cit., p. 60. 140 ibid., p. 62. 141 Anderson, op. cit., pp. 74–5. 142 John Crawford, ‘Sketch of Borneo’, Crawford Papers, f. 67. 143 Ras, op. cit., p. 239. Chapter 2 — Insurgency and the foundations of Brooke power 1 According to Dutch sources cited by Irwin, op. cit., p. 73. 2 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 270. By left-hand branch European observers meant the eastern branch. The western branch was referred to as the right-hand branch. See ‘Diary of Hugh Low, 1844–1846’, John Pope-Henessey Papers, Box 5/1/1, f. 52 (Typescript). 3 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 64; Lockard, The Southeast Asian Town in Historical Perspective, p. 54. 4 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 184, 188. 5 Harriette McDougall, Sketches of our Life at Sarawak (London, nd.), p. 178. 6 See Leo Moggie, Astana Centenary 1870–1970 (Kuching, 1970), particularly the biographical essay about Tun Haji Openg, Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur’s great-grandson. 7 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op., cit., p. 64. 8 Crawford, op. cit., f. 86. 9 Wong Lin Ken, ‘The Entrepot Trade of Singapore’, JMBRAS 33(4), 1960, pp. 159–75 at p. 160. 10 Annabel Teh Gallop, ‘Malay Sources for the History of the Sultanate of Brunei in the early Nineteenth Century: Some Letters from the Reign of Sultan Muhammad Kanzul Alam’, in Victor T. King & A.V.M. Horton (eds),

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11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24

25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

221

From Buckfast to Borneo: Essays Presented to Father Robert Nicholl on the 85th Anniversary of his Birth, 27 March 1995 (Hull, 1995), pp. 207–35. J. Dalton, ‘On the present state of piracy, among these Island, and the best method of its suppression’ [1829], in Moor, op. cit., pp. 15–29 at p. 15. ibid. See also C.M. Turnbull, The Straits Settlements, 1826–67: Indian Presidency to Crown Colony (London, 1972), p. 164. ‘Borneo Proper’ [1821], in Moor, op. cit., p. 3. ‘Trade with the West Coast of Borneo’ [1829], in Moor, ibid., pp. 13–14. Earl, op. cit., p. 310. Earl’s report that Singapore/Brunei trade was reopened in 1834 by Armenian commercial interests based in Singapore necessarily implies that it had lapsed for a period prior to this. ibid., pp. 316–17. ‘Memoir on the Residency of the North-West Coast of Borneo’ [1829], in Moor, op. cit., pp. 5–14 at p. 10. Earl, op. cit., p. 310. ‘Pengiran Indera Mahkota’ was the official’s title. He later rose in Brunei’s court hierarchy and is remembered in Brunei as Pengiran Shahbandar Mohammed Salleh. See Donald E. Brown, ‘Review of Britain, The Brookes and Brunei’, Brunei Museum Journal, 3(2), 1974, pp. 306–9 at p. 309. I shall follow the (incorrect) convention of referring to him as Mahkota. I have calculated the year of his arrival from Low’s statement that the Sarawak revolt began 10 years afterwards. Low, Sarawak, p. 17. Craig A. Lockard, ‘The Early Development of Kuching, 1820–1857’, JMBRAS, 49(2), 1976, pp. 107–26 at p. 108. Lockard, The Southeast Asian Town in Historical Perspective, p. 25. John Bastin, ‘Raffles and British Policy in the Indian Archipelago, 1811–1816’, JMBRAS, XXVII(1), 1954, pp. 84–119 at p. 98. Earl, op. cit., p. 310. Irwin, op. cit., p. 69. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 208. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 25 September 1841. Letters, I, p. 114. Hahn reproduced part of a report to the Dutch government by the Dutch Indies Deputy Governor-General, Merkus, which confirms Usop’s role in raising the rebellion. See Hahn, op. cit., pp. 66–7. G. Tradescant Lay, ‘A Few Remarks made during the Voyage of the Himmaleh in 1837’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 6(2), 1852, pp. 574–85 at p. 583. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 25 September 1841. Letters, I, p. 114. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 10 November 1841. Letters, I, p. 132. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 20 August 1839. Letters, I, p. 67. Pengiran Usop, quoted by Lay, op. cit., p. 583. Sabihah bt. Osman, Malay-Muslim Political Participation in Sarawak and Sabah, 1841–1961. University of Hull: PhD, 1983, p. 15. Errington, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm, p. 94. Andaya, op. cit., p. 23. Anderson, op. cit., p. 31. Errington, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm, p. 60.

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35 Spenser St John, Rajah Brooke: The Englishman as Ruler of an Eastern State (London, 1897), p. 28. 36 See ‘Minutes of a Conversation between the Datu Bandar, the Datu Imaum, the Datu Tumanggong and the Tuan Khatib . . . and Mr. St John . . . .’ Brooke Family Papers, Box 23, file 1, ff. 47–50 at f. 47. 37 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 154–6. 38 See Brooke’s letters to J.C. Templer of August 1839. Letters, I, pp. 66–8; and his diary entry for 23 August 1839, Brooke, Dido, I, p. 36. 39 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 20 August 1839. Letters, I, p. 67. See also Brooke, Iris, I, p. 19. In 1837 the Brunei court had expressed concern over Dutch intentions during the visit of the Himmaleh. See ‘Notices of the city of Borneo and its inhabitants, made during the voyage of the American brig Himmaleh in the Indian Archipelago, in 1837 — Part 1’, Chinese Repository, VII(3), pp. 121–36 at p. 132. 40 See Low, Sarawak, p. 17; and St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 51. 41 Lockard, ‘The Early Development of Kuching, 1820–1857’, p. 109. 42 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 10 November 1841. Letters, I, pp. 134–5. 43 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 2. 44 ‘Papers concerning Colonel Charles William Brooke’, Brooke Family Papers, vol. 14, f. 118. 45 Through their Pattle descent, the Brookes were distant cousins to Virginia Woolf, and kin to Edward Gibbon Wakefield. 46 See entries ‘Brooke of Sarawak’ and ‘Brooke late of Horton’, Burke’s Landed Gentry, 1937, pp. 253–4; and G.E. Brooke, Brooke of Horton in the Cotswalds with Notes on Some other Brooke Families (Singapore, 1918), p. 75. 47 Hahn, op. cit., p. 12. 48 Nicholas Tarling, The Burthen, the Risk, and the Glory: A Biography of Sir James Brooke (Kuala Lumpur, 1982), p. 3. 49 Bernard S. Cohn, ‘The British in Benares: A Nineteenth Century Colonial Society’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, IV(2), 1962, pp. 169–99 at p. 177. 50 Lord Hastings to Lord Liverpool, 4 September 1823. HO 80/1. 51 Debrett’s Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage & Companionage, 1955, p. 645. 52 C.A. Bayley (ed.), The Raj: India and the British 1600–1947 (London, 1990), pp. 169–70; Debrett’s Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage & Companionage. 1955, p. 490. 53 ‘Merchant Genealogies’, http://whatson.northnet.net.au/users/blackheath/ genealo.htm. 54 C. Kegan Paul, Memories (London, 1971 [1899]), p. 10. 55 See Tarling, op. cit., p. 3. 56 According to a genealogy in the Brooke Family Papers, Box 29/4, f. 60. The document is annotated, anonymously, ‘this may not be true’. 57 Robert H.W. Reece, ‘European-Indigenous Miscegenation and Social Status in Nineteenth Century Borneo’, in Vinson H. Sutlive (ed.), Female and Male

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58

59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78

79

223

in Borneo: Contributions and Challenges to Gender Studies (Williamsburg, nd) pp. 455–88 at p. 459; Tarling, op. cit., p. 3. See ‘Correspondence of Thomas Brooke at Benares with Major M. Shaw, Secretary to Lord Wellesley, 1803–1805’, Wellesley Papers, Series III, vol. VIII. For an example of his humane regard for Indian welfare, and his diligence and persistence in protecting it, see ff. 202–3. See Thomas Brooke’s letters to Shaw, from 8 and 9 December 1804, Wellesley Papers, Series III, vol. VIII, ff. 253, 260. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 August 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 166. Robert W. Stern, ‘An Approach to Politics in the Princely States’, in Robin Jeffrey (ed.), People, Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in the Indian Princely States (Delhi, 1978), p. 360. T. Brooke to Shaw, 9 December 1804, Wellesley Papers, Series III, vol. VIII, f. 260. See also, for a differant view, Graham Saunders, ‘James Brooke and Asian Government’, Brunei Museum Journal, 3(1), 1973, pp. 105–17. Sydenham to Shaw, 16 December 1804, Wellesley Papers, Series III, vol. VIII, f. 260. T. Brooke to Shaw, 2 January 1805, Wellesley Papers, Series III, vol. VIII, f. 274. T. Brooke to Shaw, 20 June 1805, Wellesley Papers, Series III, vol. VIII, f. 318. Brooke Family Papers, Section C, f. 47. James Brooke, quoted by Jacob, op. cit., I, p. 19. ibid., pp. 3–5. See also ‘Papers concerning Colonel Charles William Brooke’, Brooke Family Papers, vol. 14, f. 135. quoted by Jacob, op. cit., I, p. 233. ibid., I, pp. 8–9. See also St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 3. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 1. Jacob, op. cit., I, p. 9. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 2. Hahn, op. cit., p. 15. Owen Rutter, ‘Introduction’, in Owen Rutter (ed.), Rajah Brooke and Baroness Burdett Coutts: Consisting of the Letters from Sir James Brooke, first White Rajah of Sarawak, to Miss Angela (afterwards Baroness) Burdett Coutts (London, 1935), pp. 18–19. Hahn, op. cit., p. 26. The Brooke and Burdett Coutts families also believed, for example, that James Brooke and Angela Burdett Coutts had known and loved each other in their youth and Hahn claimed that they certainly knew each other. ibid., p. 27. In fact, they did not meet until 1847. Baroness Burdett-Coutts Papers, vol. X, f. 71. For evidence supporting James’s claims to Reuben’s paternity, see J.H. Walker, ‘ “This Peculiar Acuteness of Feeling”: James Brooke and the Enactment of Desire’, Borneo Research Bulletin, 29, 1998, pp. 148–89 at pp. 184–5.

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224 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

89 90 91 92 93

94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

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Jacob, op. cit., I, pp. 11–22. ibid., p. 11. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 6–7. Frank S. Marryat, Borneo and the Indian Archipelago (London, 1848), p. 4. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 8. Walker, op. cit., pp. 160–2. ibid., pp. 161–2. Jacob, op. cit., I, pp. 35–42. Reuben was conceived probably during early 1833. See Felicite' Brooke Gill to Margaret Noble, 27 May 1975. ‘Papers concerning the descendants of Reuben George Brooke . . .’, Brooke Family Papers, vol. 14, f. 195. Jacob, op. cit., I, pp. 47–50. ibid., pp. 55–6. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 10. Walker, op. cit., pp. 160–2. St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 8. It is not clear how Thomas made such a fortune. He was not a wealthy man in 1805 when he envied Shaw’s return to England and he appears to have been unable to afford a commission in the cavalry for Charles William in 1803. See C.W. Brooke to Thomas Brooke, 17 August 1803. ‘C.W. Brooke, letters from India’, f. 3. Notwithstanding his acquittal of conspiracy charges, the financial potential of his position as judge must have been especially lucrative and well managed. James Brooke, ‘Sketch of the Island and Gulf of Symi, on the South-western Coast of Anatolia, in February, 1837’, Journal, Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. 8, 1838, pp. 129–34. Earl, op. cit., pp. 322–4, 332–3. James Brooke, ‘Proposed Exploring Expedition to the Asiatic Archipelago’, Journal, Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. 8, 1838, pp. 443–8. Jacob, op. cit., I, pp. 67–9. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 11–12. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 18 June 1839. Letters, I, p. 55. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 16. Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 13–14. Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 26–8. Mundy, Iris, I, p. 26. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 20 August 1839, Letters, I, p. 66. Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 29–30 (original emphasis). Brooke, Dido, I, p. 31. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 18. Jacob, op. cit., I, p. 93. Barbara Watson Andaya, Perak: The Abode of Grace — A Study of an Eighteenth Century Malay State (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), p. 183. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 8. Errington, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm, p. 161. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 32.

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113 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 32 (original emphasis). Compare to the description of the ruler’s going abroad given in the Sejarah Melayu: ‘In front of the Raja went . . . the heralds bearing the swords of state (and?) in front (of them?) those who carried spears. What was called the ‘standard’ was in front of the Raja, as were the drums and kettledrums on the Raja’s right and the trumpets on his left . . . In front of all went the lances and pennons followed by the musical instruments of every description. Behind the Raja went the Bendahara with the chief ministers and judges.’ C.C. Brown (trans.), ‘Sejarah Melayu or ‘Malay Annals’, JMBRAS, XXV(2/3), October 1952, p. 57. 114 Horsburgh, op. cit., p. 4. 115 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 18. 116 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 33. 117 Wolters, op. cit., p. 14. 118 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 33. 119 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 92. 120 For examples, see Brooke, Iris, I, p. 20; J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 20 August 1839. Letters, I, p. 67; Brooke, Dido, I, p. 80. 121 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 20 August 1839. Letters, I, p. 66. 122 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 42–4. 123 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 72–5. 124 See ‘The Career and Character of Rajah Brooke’, Temple Bar, VXXIV, November 1868, pp. 204–16 at p. 205. 125 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 93. 126 Brown, Socio-Political History of Brunei, p. 195. 127 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 258. 128 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 176. 129 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 139. 130 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 142. 131 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 142–9. 132 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 153–66. 133 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 170–1. 134 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 41. 135 Anderson, op. cit., p. 28. 136 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 177. 137 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 41. 138 ibid., p. 46. 139 See Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 172–5. 140 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 175–8; Brooke, Iris, I, p. 178. 141 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 182. 142 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 180. 143 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 182–8. 144 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 254. 145 Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 241–2; Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 213, 192–201. 146 J. Brooke to H. Wise, 31 March 1841. Letters, I, pp. 209–10.

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226 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154

155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180

181 182

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Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 245–6. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 24 July 1841. Letters, I, p. 106. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 248. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 197. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 150. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 164. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 266. ‘Minutes of a Conversation between the Datu Bandar, the Datu Imaum, the Datu Tumanggong and the Tuan Khatib . . . and Mr. St John . . .’ Brooke Family Papers, Box 23, file 1, ff. 47–50 at f. 48. Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., pp. 72–3. Testimony of Sir James Brooke, FO 12/21/56. ‘I instantly repaired on board the yacht, sent a firm remonstrance to Muda Hassim, and succeeded in preventing the expedition.’ Brooke, Iris, I, p. 247. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 217. St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 46. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 55. Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 228–31. See p. 167 for Brooke’s relationship with the Chinese. J. Brooke to James Templer, 14 September 1841. Letters, I, p. 110. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 270. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 247. Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 268–9; Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 243–7. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 28 September 1841. Letters, I, p. 117. Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 270–1; Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 251–2. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 28–29 September 1841. Letters, I, p. 118. Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 239, 252–3. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 245. Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 252, 257. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 261. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 178. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 171. J. Brooke to Mrs Brooke, 18 April 1841. Letters, I, p. 99. Brooke, Dido, II, p. 78 (original emphasis) J.M. Gullick, Rulers and Residents: Influence and Power in the Malay States, 1870–1920 (Singapore, 1992), p. 281. Anderson, op. cit., p. 50. St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 10. Quoted by C.J. Bunyon, Memoirs of Francis Thomas McDougall, DCL, FRCS, Sometimes Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak and of Harriette his Wife (London, 1889), p. 126. Milner, Kerajaan, pp. 14–28. Ras, op. cit., p. 239.

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Chapter 3 — Integration and exclusion in the early Brooke state 1 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 10 November 1841. Letters, I, p. 132. 2 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 4 October 1841. Letters, I, p. 118. See also J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 1 October 1841. Letters, I, pp. 123–4. 3 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 253–4. 4 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 265. 5 Brooke, Iris, 1, p. 277; Brooke, Dido, I, p. 273. 6 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 285, 314; Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 307, 326–7. See also ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’. J 1, ff. 27–30, 38. 7 Rancha was Datu Patinggi Ali’s paternal uncle. Mohammed Yusuf Shibli, ‘The Descent of Some Kuching Malays’, SMJ, V(2), 1950, pp. 262–4 at p. 264. 8 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 296. 9 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 77. This reconstruction differs significantly from Craig Lockard’s. Lockard accepted that Datu Patinggi Ali was ‘the local leader’ prior to the insurgency. He speculated that Abdul Gapur succeeded Rancha as Datu Bandar and was promoted to Patinggi following Ali’s death. He suggested that Molana succeeded Abdul Gapur as Bandar. Lockard, The Southeast Asian Town in Historical Perspective, p. 54. 10 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 78. 11 St John, Rajah Brooke, pp. 304 fn, 305 fn. 12 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 289, 20–3, 283. 13 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 305; ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’. J 1, ff. 122, 137. 14 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East. I, p. 133; C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 265. 15 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 49. 16 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 296. 17 J. Brooke to T. Williamson, 18 March 1845. Letters, II, p. 57; Low, Sarawak, pp. 112, 28. 18 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 318; Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 301–2; Low, Sarawak, p. 221. 19 Edward Belcher, China Pilot, Appendix No 2, General Observations on the Coast of Borneo, the Sulu and Mindoro Seas (London, 1859), p. 8. 20 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 16 March 1842. Letters, I, p. 180. 21 For Brooke’s relations with Budrudeen see Walker, op. cit., pp. 164–5. For Hassim see Jacob, op. cit., I, p. 187; Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 112; Brooke, Dido, I, p. 315. 22 Douglas, quoted by D.E. Brown, ‘Another Affair of James Brooke?’, Brunei Museum Journal, 1, 1969, p. 206. 23 Sharifah Zaleha Syed Hassam, ‘Gift-giving and Overlordship: The Idealogical basis of Social Exchange in Traditional Malay Society’, Kajian Malaysia, 1(1), June 1983, pp 29–39, at p. 35. 24 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 65–9. 25 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 22 June 1842. Letters, I, p. 198. 26 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 19 August 1842. Letters, I, p. 206. St John later wrote that ‘the Bandar was installed by a chop from Brunei’. S. St John to C. Grant, 21 April 1876. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 64.

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27 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 334. Malay letters were talismans of the power of their sender, and therefore were accorded the respect which that power commanded. Further, they were ritual objects, imbued with the potency of their sender. See Annabel Tey Gallop (with Bernard Arps), Golden Letters: Writing Traditions of Indonesia (London, 1991). 28 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 69–70. 29 J. Brooke to H. Wise, 14 July 1844. Letters, II, pp. 215–16. 30 Edward Belcher, Narrative of the Voyage of HMS Samarang during the years 1843–46: Employed Surveying the Islands of the Eastern Archipelago (London, 1848), vol. 1, p. 159. 31 ibid., p. viii. 32 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 68. Brooke, in fact, accompanied Belcher’s expedition to Brunei and used ‘the presence in the river of a British squadron’ to persuade the Sultan to cede him the right to nominate his successor in the government of Sarawak. This transformed Brooke from an official, albeit an overly independent one, to a ruler, albeit a tributary one. See St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 85. 33 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 368. 34 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 64. 35 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 291. 36 Testimony of Datu Patinggi Gapur, FO 12/20/216. Low listed 15 tribes of Dyaks living on the eastern branch, compared to six on the western branch. Low, Sarawak, pp. 290–1. 37 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 18 April 1841. Letters, I, p. 100. 38 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 255. 39 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 330; Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 298, 255. 40 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 281. 41 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 299–312. 42 Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 326–8. The Singes were under Datu Patinggi Ali’s authority. That Brooke sent Datu Patinggi Gapur as well might again be evidence that Gapur was the senior datu. 43 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 29 November 1842. Letters, I, p. 233. 44 Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 326–8. 45 He told Templer in October 1842 that between 8000 and 10 000 Land Dyaks had immigrated since he had taken power. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 12 October 1842. Letters, I, p. 221. 46 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 281, 297. 47 For examples see Brooke, Iris, I, p. 383; St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 66, 99; Brooke, Dido, II, p. 128; Low, Sarawak, p. 366. 48 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 257. 49 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 59. 50 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 16 March 1842. Letters, I, p. 181. 51 Low, Sarawak, p. 132. 52 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 60. 53 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 267.

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54 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 60. 55 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 4 October 1843. Letters, I, p. 298. 56 See Hugh Low’s comments on Hugh Clifford, ‘Life in the Malay Peninsula: As it was and is’, in Paul Kratoska (ed.), Honourable Intentions: Talks on the British Empire in Southeast Asia delivered at the Royal Colonial Institute (Singapore, 1983), pp. 224–56 at p. 250. 57 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke. pp. 59–60. 58 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 267. 59 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 301. 60 C. Grant, ‘Journal, 1848’. Basil Brooke Papers, Box 5/2, f. 22. 61 Lockard, The Southeast Asian Town in Historical Perspective, p. 52. 62 J. Brooke to C. Johnson, July 1843. Letters, I, p. 277. 63 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 1 December 1841. Letters, I, pp. 137–8. 64 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 77–8. 65 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 18 April 1841. Letters, I, p. 101. 66 J. Brooke to E. Johnson, 3 May 1844. Letters, II, p. 16. 67 C. Bethune to Lord Haddington, 20 July 1843. Borneo Dispatch Box, Haddington MSS. 68 He rebuked Williamson for associating too readily with Malay aristocrats, because it was ‘less easy for the poorer people to gain approach for the purpose of privately stating their grievance’. J. Brooke to T. Williamson, 26 January 1846. Letters, II, p. 117. 69 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 19 August 1842. Letters, I, p. 207. 70 Testimony of Sir James Brooke, FO 12/21/74. 71 Belcher, The Voyage of HMS Samarang, p. 29. 72 ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’, J1, ff. 113, 130, 141, 148. 73 Low, Sarawak, pp. 300–1, 401. 74 Brooke, Iris, II, p. 62. 75 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 13 April 1843. Letters, I, p. 248. He had planned to salary them prior to his accession. See Brooke, Iris, I, p. 243. 76 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 10 November 1843. Letters, I, p. 301. 77 Low, Sarawak, p. 115. 78 ‘Memorandum sent to the Pangeran Budrudeen’, in Letters, II, p. 69. 79 J. Brooke to James Templer, 2 January 1845. Letters, II, p. 49. 80 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 255. 81 J. Brooke to C. Bethune, 21 July 1843. Borneo Dispatch Box, Haddington MSS. 82 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 10 November 1841. Letters, I, pp. 133–5. 83 C. Bethune to Lord Haddington, 20 July 1843. Borneo Dispatch Box, Haddington MSS. 84 Low, Sarawak, p. 389. 85 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 4 April 1842. Letters, I, p. 189. 86 J. Brooke to H. Drummond, nd, Letters, III, p. 152; and J. Brooke to S. Herbert, 22 June 1852. Letters, III, p. 121. 87 ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’. J 1, f. 43.

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230 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

100 101 102 103 104 105 106

107 108 109 110 111 112 113

114 115 116

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J. Brooke to T. Williamson, 26 January 1846. Letters, II, p. 115. Testimony of Sir James Brooke, FO 12/21/74. Low, Sarawak, p. 161. Bethune, ‘Geographical Sketch’, FO 12/3/245. FO 12/21/339. Zainal Kling, op. cit., p. 175. Wee, op. cit., p. 207. Errington, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm, p. 166. Barabara Watson Andaya, To Live as Brothers: Southeast Sumatra in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Honolulu, 1993), p. 208. Anderson, op. cit., p. 54. Brooke, Iris, I, p. 327. J. Brooke to H. Wise, 26 May 1844. Letters, II, p. 214. He was not joking. See his letter to Templer of 18 June 1844 for an example of his later determination to ensure that the odds were always overwhelmingly in his favour. Letters, II, pp. 29–30. Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns (London, 1899), vol. 1, p. 299. Quoted ibid., p. 320. ibid., pp. 300–1. ibid., p. 298. Sharifah Zaleha, op. cit., p. 33. J.M. Gullick, Malay Society in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Beginnings of Change (Singapore, 1989), p. 21. This information has been assembled from a number of contemporary accounts. See Low, Sarawak, p. 164; Mundy, Iris, II, p. 110; ‘Six weeks on the Coast of Borneo, during the operations against the Sultan of Brunei in the summer of 1846’, United Services Magazine, 227, October 1847, pp. 161–8 at p. 162; Keppel, Dido, II, p. 17. Milner, Kerajaan, pp. 45–6, 97. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 308. J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 16 March 1842. Letters, I, p. 183 (emphasis added). J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 19 August 1842. Letters, I, p. 207. See Otto Steinmayer, ‘The Loincloth of Borneo’, SMJ, XLII(63), December 1991, pp. 43–59 at pp. 46–7. Endicott, op. cit., p. 137. J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 16 October 1842. Letters, I, p. 226. For additional requests for fancy work which he wanted to give to his followers, see Brooke’s letters to J.C. Templer, 14 April 1843. Letters, I, p. 253; and to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 24 September 1843. Letters, I, p. 295. ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’. J 1, f. 12. See Endicott, op. cit., p. 139. Milner, Kerajaan, pp. 86–7.

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117 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 8. Scholars should not overestimate the importance of differences in religion between Brooke and his Malay associates. Sarawak Malays were not religiously devout until the development of Christian missions in Sarawak stimulated religious observance. [B. Brooke to J. Grant, 19 February 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 344.] Moreover, after Brooke became Rajah, Sarawak Malays distinguished between English and other non-Moslems, claiming that restrictions on non-believers extended only to Jews and Catholics. [Gomes’s Report, 3 January 1857. USPG, E 2, Missionary Reports, 1858, f. 791.] By 1874, the then Datu Bandar considered that loyalty to the Rajah was an essential element of Islam as it was practised in Sarawak. [Quoted by Lockard, The Southeast Asian Town in Historical Perspective, p. 188.] As Raymond Williams observed, ‘The traditional culture of a society will always tend to correspond to its contemporary system of interests and values.’ Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth, 1965 [1961]), p. 68. 118 Low, Sarawak, p. 164 (emphasis added). 119 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 1 October 1841. Letters, I, p. 124 (original emphasis). 120 Hahn, op. cit., p. 73. 121 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 315. 122 Low, Sarawak, pp. 259–60. 123 Endicott, op. cit., pp. 134–6. In noting the the pervasive symbolism connecting feet with divine and royal power in Southeast Asia, Wolters observed also that ‘a special power was attributed to the water used for washing the hands and feet of a ruler because the water contained soul-substance [semangat] in the form of sweat from the royal body’. O.W. Wolters, The Fall of Srivijaya in Malay History (Kuala Lumpur, 1970), p. 100. 124 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 308. 125 Brooke, Iris, II, pp. 42–3. Throughout Southeast Asia saliva is also intimately connected with the transmission of power. For example, traditions concerning the conversion of the ruler of Pasai to Islam record that he dreamt that the Prophet spat into his mouth, thus investing him with the ability to recite the Koran. A.H. Hill (trans.), ‘Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai’, JMBRAS, 33(2), 1960, p. 118. 126 Low, Sarawak, pp. 255–7. 127 ibid., p. 405. 128 Craig A. Lockard, ‘The Evolution of Urban Government in Southeast Asian Cities: Kuching Under the Brookes’, Modern Asian Studies, 12(2), 1978, pp. 245–67 at p. 248. 129 Quoted by Milner, Kerajaan, p. 95. 130 Keppel, A Sailor’s Life Under Four Sovereigns, I, p. 298. 131 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 19 October 1839. Letters, I, p. 74 (original emphasis). 132 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 275. This Skrang Matahari should not be confused with Matahari, or Sumbang, from the Paku branch of the Saribas. See Benedict Sandin, ‘The Westward Migration of the Sea Dayaks’, SMJ, 7(7), June 1956, pp. 54–81 at p. 75.

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133 Jacob, op. cit., I, p. 184. 134 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 16 March 1842. Letters, I, p. 180 (original emphasis). 135 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 297. 136 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 277. 137 Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 297–8. 138 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 334. 139 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 4 October 1841. Letters, I, p. 118. 140 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 29 November 1842. Letters, I, p. 233. 141 Marryat, op. cit., p. 98. 142 In addition to the Sarawak River, the area ceded to him by Hassim included the Lundu and Samarahan Rivers. Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 74. 143 See Marryat, op. cit., p. 73; and Belcher, China Pilot, p. 8. 144 Low, Sarawak, p. 220. 145 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 314. 146 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 256. 147 Testimony of Nakhoda Moomin, FO 12/20/271. 148 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 330. 149 Testimony of Datu Patinggi Gapur, FO 12/20/219. See also Testimony of Nakhoda Mahomed, FO 12/20/150. Chapter 4 — The Iban challenge 1 Irwin, op. cit., pp. 144–5. 2 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 22 June 1842. Letters, I, pp. 197–203. Brooke was conscious that in describing Iban as pirates he was extending the meaning of the term. [J. Brooke to T. Cochrane, 5 December 1849. Selections from the Cochrane Papers.] Iban were not ‘pirates’, as the term was then understood. See Alfred P. Rubin, Piracy, Paramountcy and Protection (Kuala Lumpur, 1974), p. 44. 3 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 29 November 1842. Letters, I, p. 233. 4 See Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under four Sovereigns, I, pp. 251–3. 5 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 22 March 1843. Letters, I, p. 241. 6 Keppel, Dido, II, p. 51. 7 Keppel, Dido, II, p. 61. 8 Keppel, Dido, II, pp. 52–3. 9 Keppel, Dido, II, p. 62. 10 Keppel, Dido, II, p. 46. 11 Keppel, Dido, II, p. 62. 12 Keppel, Dido, II, pp. 63–7. 13 Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under four Sovereigns, I, p. 318. 14 Keppel, Dido, II, p. 67. 15 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 20 July 1843. Letters, I, p. 272. 16 J. Brooke to H. Wise, 14 July 1844. Letters, II, pp. 218–19.

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17 J. Brooke to H. Wise, 26 May 1844. Letters, II, p. 214; J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 18 June 1844. Letters, II, p. 29; Governor Butterworth to W. Edwards, 14 September 1844. FO 12/3/73. 18 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 24 June 1844. Letters, II, p. 30; J. Brooke to H. Wise, 14 July 1844. Letters, II, p. 219. 19 Keppel, Dido, II, p. 88. 20 Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under four Sovereigns, II, p. 4. 21 ibid., p. 5. 22 Keppel, Dido, II, pp. 88, 92–3. 23 Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under four Sovereigns, II, p. 10. 24 Keppel, Dido, II, p. 108. 25 H. Keppel to Governor Butterworth, 4 September 1844. FO 12/3/82–83. 26 Keppel, Dido, II, pp. 116–20; St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 66. 27 Marryat, op. cit., p. 69. 28 That was the reported intention of a similiar display enacted at Oya in 1846. ‘Journal kept on board a Cruiser in the Indian Archepelago in 1846’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, VIII, 1854, pp. 174–99 at p. 184. 29 Ruppell to J.C. Templer, 25 August 1844. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 14, f. 304 (photocopy). 30 Clifford Sather, ‘Introduction’ to Benedict Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, p. 19. 31 Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, p. 183. 32 Clifford Sather, ‘Posts, Hearths and Threshholds: The Iban Longhouse as a Ritual Structure’, in James J. Fox (ed.), Inside Austronesian Houses: Perspectives on Domestic Designs for Living (Canberra, 1993), pp. 64–115 at p. 65 (emphasis added). 33 Vinson H. Sutlive, Tun Jugah of Sarawak: Colonialism and Iban Response (Kuala Lumpur, 1992), pp. 10–11. 34 Sather, ‘The One-Sided One’, p. 130. 35 Freeman, Report on the Iban, p. 188. 36 Low, op. cit., p. 186. 37 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 82. 38 Keppel, Dido, II, pp. 67–8. Iban believed that military, as with other, success was ‘supernaturally inspired’. See Sather, ‘All Threads are White’, p. 80. 39 Pringle, op. cit., p. 77. 40 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 117. 41 ‘Memorandum for Mr Williamson on his visiting Sadung’, in Letters, II, pp. 20–1. 42 My reconstruction of Saribas power relations is compiled from material presented by Brooke (see subsequent footnotes for specific references), Anthony Richards, ‘The Descent of Some Saribas Malays’, SMJ, XI(21–22), July–December 1963, pp. 99–107; Benedict Sandin, ‘Descent of some Saribas Malays (and Ibans) — II’, SMJ, XI(23–24), 1964, pp. 512–15; and Benedict Sandin, ‘Origin of the Saribas Malays’, SMJ, XVII(34–35), July–December 1969, pp. 231–44.

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43 Pringle, op. cit., pp. 56–7. 44 Sandin, ‘The Westward Migration of the Sea Dayaks’, p. 77; Sandin, ‘Origin of the Saribas Malays’, p. 244. 45 Brooke, Iris, II, p. 53; Sandin, ‘The Westward Migration of the Sea Dayaks’, p. 71. 46 Keppel, Dido, II, p. 62. 47 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 364. Since Brooke referred elsewhere to Datu Patinggi Udin and Datu Bandar Hamid, these were probably the chiefs he received. I have not been able to identify the Datu Tumanggong Brooke claimed to have appointed. See Brooke, Iris, II, pp. 52–3. 48 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 384; Brooke, Iris, II, p. 8; Brooke, Dido, II, pp. 127–8. 49 Fragment letter from James Brooke, July 1845. Letters, II, p. 78. 50 ‘I always tell them to go to Singapore and kill the English’, Brooke joked to J.C. Templer, 21 October 1845. Letters, II, p. 94. 51 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 10 December 1845. Letters, II, pp. 102–3. 52 Testimony of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, FO 12/20/24; Testimony of Abang Bit, FO 12/8/62. 53 Brooke, Iris, II, p. 52. 54 Benedict Sandin, ‘Iban Hero Dreams and Apparitions’, SMJ, XIV(28–29), 1966, pp. 91–123 at p. 97. I am grateful to Dana’s descendants, Dr Peter Mulok Kedit and Vernon Art Kedit, for drawing my attention to this. 55 J. Brooke to H. Wise, 4 December 1845. FO 12/4/2. 56 Benedict Sandin, ‘Origin of the Saribas Malays’, p. 239. 57 Brooke, Iris, II, pp. 75, 78. 58 Brooke, Iris, II, pp. 53–4. 59 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 10 December 1845. Letters, II, p. 103. 60 For example, the Sarawak nakhoda, Abdul Kassim, stayed with Kapi whenever he went to Skrang to trade. Testimony of Abdul Kassim, The Borneo Question, or The Evidence Produced At Singapore before the Commission charged with the Enquiry into the Facts relating to Sir James Brooke, KCB etc (Singapore, 1854), p. 97. 61 ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’. J 1, f. 113. 62 Low, Sarawak, pp. 183–7. The Skrang Bulan is not to be confused with his Saribas counterpart, Bulan Patan. 63 Brooke, Dido, II, p. 129. 64 Brooke, Dido, II, pp. 140–1. 65 Brooke, Iris, II, pp. 44–6. 66 Low, Sarawak, p. 112. 67 Brooke, Iris, II, pp. 55–6. Sherif Abu Bakar was probably Sahib’s and Mullah’s uncle. ‘Salsilah Syed Muhammad bin Syed Hassan’, a genealogy showing the descent and descendants of Syed Muhammad. Author’s copy. 68 J. Brooke to T. Williamson, 24 October 1845. Letters, II, pp. 97, 96 (original emphasis). 69 Brooke, Iris, II, p. 56.

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70 Brooke, Iris, II, pp. 63–4; Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 117. Brooke was later reconciled to Sherif Abu Bakar and his son, Sherif Long. He reported them living at Kuching in 1851. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 31 March 1851, Letters, III, p. 58. 71 Brooke, Iris, II, p. 65; This is confirmed by Low. See ‘Diary of Hugh Low, 1844–1846’, John Pope-Hennessy Papers, Box 5/1, f. 89. 72 Hugh Low, Sarawak, p. 193. 73 ibid., pp. 183–5. 74 ‘Diary of Hugh Low, 1844–1846’. John Pope-Hennessy Papers, Box 5/1, ff. 117–18. 75 Brooke, Iris, II, pp. 83–5. 76 Hugh Low, Sarawak, p. 193. 77 J. Brooke to Lord Aberdeen, 30 March 1846. FO 12/4/218–219. 78 J. Brooke to Lord Palmerston, 2 February 1850. FO 12/8/43. See also St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 169. 79 Brooke, Iris, II, p. 87. 80 See Tarling, The Burthen, the Risk, and the Glory, pp. 81–102. 81 J. Brooke to Lord Aberdeen, 30 November 1846. CO 144/1/221. 82 Low, Sarawak, pp. 183–4. 83 ibid., pp. 215, 193. 84 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 4 December 1846. Letters, II, p. 159. 85 Statement of Vessels, FO 12/8/240–243. 86 See J. Brooke to Lord Palmerston, 13 September 1848. FO 12/6/56–60; and J. Brooke to Lord Grey, 2 October 1848. FO 12/7/139. B. Brooke to F.C. Johnson, January 1849. USPG, C/ASI/SIN 1, nf. 87 C. Grant, ‘Journal, 1848’. Basil Brooke Papers, box, 5/2, ff. 24–8; B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 16 September 1848. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 4. 88 J. Brooke to J. Harvey, 12 July 1843. Letters, I, p. 262. 89 Tarling, The Burthen, the Risk, and the Glory, pp. 108–10. 90 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 195. 91 F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks. 2 May 1849. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 44. 92 J. Brooke to Lord Grey, 5 March 1849. FO 12/7/28. 93 J. Brooke to Lord Palmerston, 6 February 1849. FO 12/7/36–45. See especially f. 37. 94 A.C. [Arthur Crookshank], ‘Sir James Brooke’s Expedition Against the Sarebas Pirates’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 3(5), May 1849, pp. 276–7 at p. 276. 95 J. Brooke to Lord Palmerston, 16 April 1849. FO 12/7/48–49. 96 F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks, 2 May 1849. USPG CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 44. 97 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 174–6. 98 St John reported that only one boat escaped. ibid., p. 179. Iban oral tradition records that two boats from the flotilla survived. Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, p. 183.

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99 ‘Sir James Brooke and the Pirates in the Indian Ocean’, The Times, 23 November 1849. Copy in USPG, C/ASI/SIN 1. 100 ‘Destruction of the Fleet of the Sarebas and Sakarran Pirates by the Expedition from Sarawak on the night of 31st July 1849’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 3(2/9), September 1849, pp. 589–93 at p. 589. 101 Captain Farquhar to Admiral Collier, 25 August 1849. FO 12/7/179. See also ‘Destruction of the Fleet of the Sarebas and Sakarran Pirates by the Expedition from Sarawak on the night of 31st July 1849’, op. cit., p. 590. Brooke later denied that the survivors had been pursued. See J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 1 April 1850. Letters, II, p. 280. 102 Nicholas Tarling, Piracy and Politics in the Malay World (Melbourne, 1963), p. 136. 103 Testimony of Spenser St John, FO 12/20/300. 104 Captain Farquhar to Admiral Collier, 25 August 1849. FO 12/7/179. 105 J. Brooke to Jolly, 26 October 1849. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 54. 106 Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns, II, p. 127. The scale of the killings provoked widespread outrage in the United Kingdom. See, for example, George Foggo, Adventures of Sir James Brooke, KCB, Rajah of Sarawak, Sovereign de Facto of Borneo Proper (London, 1853); L.A. Chamerovzov, Borneo Facts versus Borneo Fallacies: An Inquiry into the Alleged Piracies of the Dyaks of Seribus and Sakarran (London, nd); and W.N., Remarks on Recent ‘Naval Execution’ (London, 1850). 107 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 183. 108 ibid., p. 186. 109 Captain Farquhar to Admiral Collier, 25 August 1849. FO 12/7/179–180. See also ‘Sir James Brooke and the Pirates in the Indian Ocean’, op. cit. 110 Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’. pp. 183ff. 111 The term is Wolters’, History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives, p. 6. 112 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 102. 113 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968), p. 31. 114 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 98. 115 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 31 March 1851. Letters, III, p. 59. 116 J. Brooke to E. Johnson, 8 January 1850. Letters, II, p. 248. 117 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 213. The uniform referred to was Sir James’s uniform as Governor of Labuan. In a world where gifts of ceremonial clothes were primarily a means of transferring potency, Brooke’s exhibition of the uniform, given to him by Queen Victoria, is significant. 118 He took the son and nephew of Datu Bandar Hamid of Rimbas. See ‘Death of Datu Haji Tamin’, Sarawak Gazette, 1 February 1923, p. 45. He also took six Iban women as ‘hostages for their husbands’ good behaviour’. McDougall, Letters from Sarawak Addressed to a Child, p. 85. 119 Supplementary Paper on the Case of Sir James Brooke, FO 12/21/155; J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 31 March 1851. Letters, III, pp. 59–60.

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120 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 31 March 1851. Letters, III, pp. 58, 64. Bulan’s support was short-lived. By December 1853 he was leading opposition to Brooke’s party. See C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 102. 121 J. Brooke to Major Stuart, 4 December 1849. Letters, II, pp. 243–4. 122 McDougall, Letters from Sarawak Addressed to a Child, p. 122; F.T. McDougall to E. Hawkins, 13 October 1851. USPG Archives, Book 1, 1850–1859, f. 7 (typescript). 123 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 41. It was commanded by Alan Lee. Subsequently forts were constructed on the Saribas (1858) and Kalaka (1865) Rivers, and upriver on the Batang Ai at Lubok Antu (c. 1865). Pringle, op. cit., pp. 142–3. 124 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 245; F.T. McDougall to Sir F. Beaufort, 26 April 1851. USPG Archives, Box 1, 1848–1852, f. 89 (typescript). Brooke Johnson Brooke was the son of James Brooke’s sister, Emma Johnson. He adopted the Rajah’s surname on joining his uncle in Sarawak in 1848. 125 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, I, pp. 25–6. 126 F.T. McDougall to Sir F. Beaufort, 26 April 1851. USPG Archives, Box 1, 1848–1852, f. 90 (typescript). 127 J.B.J. Brooke, ‘Borneo’, Colonial Church Chronicle and Missionary Journal, 5, 1852, pp. 249–351 at p. 349. 128 J. Brooke to C. Grant, 27 December 1851. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 108. 129 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, I, p. 24. 130 J. Brooke to R. Mundy, 18 February 1850. Letters, II, p. 269. 131 See C. Fox to F.T. McDougall, 31 July 1852. USPG CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 248. These passes became a central and permanent feature of the administration of Iban areas in the 19th century and were rigorously enforced. See, for example, ‘Court Cases, Betong/Saribas, 1866–1891’, f. 2. 132 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 143. This accorded with the Rajah’s instructions that fines be ‘liberally and judiciously applied to the purposes of good government, and as rewards for good service’. J. Brooke to C. Johnson, 19 March 1855. Quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 201. 133 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 147. 134 ibid., p. 138. 135 James Brooke, ‘Introductory Remarks’, in C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. xii. These and other structural changes to Iban society caused by the intrusion of the Brookes are the focus of Pringle’s study. See Pringle, op. cit. They are also described by Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, pp. 187–91. 136 Boyle, op. cit., p. 221. 137 See, for example, Wagner, op. cit., p. 153. The most recent in this tradition is Cassandra Pybus, White Rajah: A Dynastic Intrigue (St Lucia, 1996). 138 For example see J. Brooke to C. Johnson, 19 March 1855, quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 201. 139 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 208. 140 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 215.

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141 C. Grant to J. Grant, 12 December 1852. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, ff. 78–9. 142 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 1 April 1852. Letters, III, p. 64. 143 W. Chambers to F.T. McDougall, 29 November 1851. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 198–9. 144 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 34. Iban believed that ‘it is through the anterior fontanelle [on the top of the head] that the semengat leaves the tuboh [body] in dreams, illness and death’. Robert. J. Barrett, ‘Performance, Effectiveness and the Iban Manang’, in Robert L. Winzeler (ed.), The Seen and Unseen: Shamanism, Mediumship and Possession in Borneo. Borneo Research Council Monograph Series, vol. 2, 1993, pp. 235–9 at p. 242. Alternatively, or additionally, Orang Kaya Jugah of Lundu might have been alluding to Bukit Rabong, the highest place in Iban cosmology, which is, according to some manang, associated with the top of the head. I am grateful to Clifford Sather, pers. comm. 17 October 1996, for this insight. 145 W. Brereton to his father, July 1852. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 85 (contemporary copy, original emphasis). 146 E. Gomes to E. Hawkins, 1 October 1853. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 367. 147 Reed L. Wadley, ‘Punitive Expeditions and Divine Revenge: Iban Oral and Colonial Histories in West Kalimantan, Indonesia’, forthcoming. 148 Otto Steinmayer, ‘Groping in the Closet: Response to Walker’s “This Peculiar Acuteness of feeling’’ ’, Borneo Research Bulletin, 29, 1998, pp. 203–8 at p. 207. 149 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 103. 150 ibid., p. 186. Charles Johnson was aware of the traditional authority he exercised among Iban, and claimed that he planned at one point ‘to become chief of a long house in Dyak fashion’. He considered ‘I should have had many followers to attach their doors to my dwelling’. ibid., p. 323. 151 ibid., p. 146. 152 Quoted ibid., p. 176. 153 Sather, ‘Posts, Hearths and Threshholds: The Iban Longhouse as a Ritual Structure’, p. 70. 154 ibid., pp. 72, 76. 155 C. Sather, pers. comm., 17 October 1996. 156 Sandin, The Sea Dyaks of Borneo Before White Rajah Rule, p. 71. 157 C. Grant to J. Grant, 27 July 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 158. 158 Graham Saunders, Bishops and Brookes: The Anglican Mission and the Brooke Raj in Sarawak (Singapore, 1992), p. 39. 159 W. Chambers to T.F. Stooks, 28 February 1853. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo July 1848–June 1859, f. 345. 160 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 22 July 1853. Letters, III, p. 264. 161 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 265. 162 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 22 July 1853. Letters, III, p. 264. 163 J. Brooke to C. Johnson, quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 111.

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164 See Brooke, Dido, II, p. 130. 165 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 265. 166 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 117. According to Benedict Sandin, Apai Dending was innocent of any actions against the Rajah and the attack was entirely unprovoked. Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, pp. 186–7. 167 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 265–8. See also ‘An Exploit in Borneo’, The Times, 9 November 1854, p. 8 and C. Brooke, op. cit., I, pp. 124–8. 168 ibid., p. 236. See Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 172. 169 S. St John to B. Brooke, 8 November 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 211. 170 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 20 September 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 101. 171 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 24 November–8 December 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 31. 172 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 160. 173 For examples see ibid., pp. 36, 180–1. 174 Wagner, op. cit., p. 54. 175 C. Grant to Lady L. Grant, 4 June 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 113. 176 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, pp. 239–63. 177 ibid., p. 304. 178 C. Johnson to R. Hay, 20 January 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 78. 179 Gomes, op. cit., p. 115. See also St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, I, p. 64. 180 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 92. 181 ibid., p. 115. 182 Orang Kaya Pamancha Dana’s son, Nanang, had already defected to Johnson and was fined 40 rusa jars. [ibid., p. 141.] Johnson must have known that his offer would have constituted an unacceptable insult. 183 ibid., p. 147. See Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, pp. 193–4. 184 See ibid., p. 231, fn 9 for an outline of Rentap’s life following the fall of Sadok. 185 Sather, ‘All Threads are White’, p. 75. 186 Sutlive, The Iban of Sarawak. pp. 186–8. 187 Freeman, Report on the Iban, p. 131. 188 Sandin, ‘The Westward Migration of the Sea Dayaks’, p. 69. 189 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 213; Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, p. 165. Sandin also recorded that Lemanak Iban had migrated to the Julau to escape fighting between Batang Ai and Batang Skrang people. ibid., p. 151. 190 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, pp. 186–92 and II, p. 92. 191 ibid., I, p. 200. 192 Brooke, Dido, II, p. 141; Testimony of Robert Hentig, FO 12/20/208; Testimony of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, FO 12/20/24; Testimony of Moosah, FO 12/20/232. Similarly, Iban traditions confirm that ‘after the Sadok war was over, the young warriors of the Saribas turned their attention from warfare to trade’. Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, p. 235.

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Testimony of Spenser St John, FO 12/20/306. Testimony of Sir James Brooke, FO 12/21/71. Testimony of Spenser St John, FO 12/20/307. Chalmers to USPG [?], 31 December 1852. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 307. C. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 15 February 1864. Baroness Burdett-Coutts Papers, vol. X, ff. 2–3. Jensen, op. cit., p. 51. Ludvig Verner Helms, Pioneering in the Far East (London, 1882), p. 132. Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan, and the Bird of Paradise (Singapore, 1986 [1869]), p. 47. Peter M. Kedit, Iban Bejalai (Kuala Lumpur, 1993), p. 3. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 4 February 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 16. S. St John to Lord Malmsbury, 21 September 1852. FO 12/11/106. See also J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 31 March 1851. Letters, III, p. 61. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 204. ibid., p. 195. W. Chambers to F.T. McDougall, 29 November 1851. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 198–9. E. Gomes to USPG, 21 February 1853. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 337–8; St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, I, p. 11. Crossland’s Report, 31 December 1862. USPG, E 12, Missionary Reports, 1862, f. 1109. W. Chambers to T.F. Stooks, 28 February 1853. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 364. For a discussion of the extensive theoretical literature exploring the motivations of converts to Christianity (in Africa), see N.J. Higham, The Convert Kings: Power and Religous Affiliation in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 1997), pp. 11–20. ‘W. Chamber’s Journal of Linga & Linga Mission’, in ‘W. Chambers’ Report’, 7 May 1858. USPG, E 4, Missionary Reports, 1858, f. 1552. Perham’s Report, 29 September 1869. USPG, E 924 Missionary Reports, 1868–9, f. 1958 (original emphasis). Chambers’ Report, 31 December 1861. USPG, E 9b, Missionary Reports, 1861, f. 2046. Zehinder’s Report, July–September 1862, USPG, E 12, Missionary Reports, 1862, f. 1153. Iban believed that sickness was usually caused by a ‘disturbance of the adat order’. Jensen, op. cit., p. 141. Boyle, op. cit., p. 183. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 16 May 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 49. Johnson’s actions provide a clear example of the success with which Iban could manipulate Brooke military power for their own purposes. Sandin recounted Iban oral traditions that Johnson was tricked into attacking the brothers by their rivals for leadership, Apai Bakir and his son, who fabricated

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217 218

219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226

227

228

241

reports that Aji was preparing an expedition. [Sandin, ‘The Westward Migration of the Sea Dayaks’, p. 77.] This was confirmed by Apai Bakir’s son and brother, who told Brooke Brooke that the reports were not true. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 26 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, ff. 43–7. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 4 November 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 374–6. Boyle cited information from Walter Watson that Rentap, not wanting to provoke Johnson, had opposed Nanang and Luyoh occupying Sadok, ‘but might was on the invaders’ side’. He also claimed that Johnson’s final attack against Sadok was directed against Luyoh and Nanang rather than Rentap. Boyle, op. cit., pp. 306–7. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 18 November 1861. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 399. See also C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 141. Quoted ibid., p. 203. Mesney’s account is quoted by Gomes, op. cit., p. 118. Chambers’ Report, 1 January 1864. USPG, E 15, Missionary Reports, 1864, f. 1537. Chambers’ Report, 31 January 1865. USPG, E 20, Missionary Reports, 1866, f. 1263. Chambers’ Report, 26 December 1865. USPG, E 20, Missionary Reports, 1866, f. 1271. Chambers’ Report, January–March 1867. USPG, E 21, Missionary Reports, 1866–87, f. 1219. W. Chambers & W. Mesney to SPG, 11 November 1867. USPG, D 23B, Original Letters Received, ff. 1401–2. For information on Buda and his extraordinary proselytising, see Peter D. Varney, ‘Some Early Iban Leaders in the Anglican Church in Sarawak’, SMJ, XVII(34–35), July to December 1969, pp. 273–89 at pp. 273–6. This approach contrasts with that of other Western or Christian writers by placing the participation of Iban in Christian education in a non-Christian, Iban context. For more conventional analyses see James Madison Seymour, Education in Sarawak under Brooke Rule, 1841–1941. University of Hawaii: MA, 1967, pp. 25–69; and Ooi Keat Gin, ‘Mission Education in Sarawak during the Period of Brooke Rule, 1840–1946’, SMJ, XLII(63), December 1991, pp. 282–373. Colin N. Crisswell, Rajah Charles Brooke: Monarch of All He Surveyed (Kuala Lumpur, 1978), p. 144.

Chapter 5 — Competition, resistance and ritual in patron–client systems 1 James C. Scott, ‘Patron–Client Politics and Political Change’, reproduced in Norman T. Uphoff & Warren F. Ilchman (eds), The Political Economy of Development: Theoretical and Empirical Contributions (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 178–9. 2 W.F. Wertheim, Evolution and Revolution: The Rising Waves of Emancipation (Harmondsworth, 1974), p. 240.

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3 Lucien M. Hanks, ‘The Thai Social Order as Entourage and Circle’, in William Skinner & A. Thomas Kirsch (eds), Change and Persistence in Thai Society (Ithaca, 1975), pp. 197–218 at p. 199. 4 ibid., p. 197. 5 ibid., p. 202. 6 Errington, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm, p. 106. 7 Hanks, op. cit., p. 200. 8 Steven Runciman, The White Rajahs: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946 (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 111–12. 9 Sanib Said, Malay Politics in Sarawak, 1946–1966: The Search for Unity and Political Ascendancy (Singapore, 1985), pp. 14–15. 10 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 210. Radical outrage over the battle of Beting Marau had forced the British government to appoint a Commission of Inquiry into his activities in Borneo, and into the compatibility of his various official appointments with his position as Rajah of Sarawak. It sat at Singapore in 1854. See Tarling, The Burthen, the Risk, and the Glory, pp. 182–8. 11 Low, Sarawak, p. 352. 12 ibid., p. 114. 13 ibid. See also St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, I, p. 133. 14 Low, Sarawak, pp. 114, 132. See also Brooke, Iris, II, p. 62. 15 Tom Harrisson, ‘Review of The White Rajahs . . .’ Journal of Southeast Asian History, 3(1), March 1962, pp. 160–5 at p. 308; James Ongkili, ‘A New Look at Sarawak History’, Sarawak Gazette, 28 February 1975, pp. 25–7 at p. 25. 16 J. Brooke to H. Wise, 14 July 1844. Letters, II, p. 218. Kassim was married to one of Abdul Gapur’s nieces and his brother was married to one of Abdul Gapur’s daughters. Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 143. 17 ‘Extracts from the late Mr Williamson’s Journal’, in Keppel, Dido, II, pp. cv, cviii; J. Brooke to Datu Bandar Kassim, 12 November 1845, Letters, II, p. 99. 18 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 143. 19 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 231, 257. 20 Although Chater dated the mosque project to 1848, following the arrival of Christian missionaries in Kuching, it is clear from the Rajah’s cash accounts that the project had begun in 1847. See Chater, op. cit., p. 53; ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’, J 1, f. 139. 21 B. Brooke to J. Grant, 19 February 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 344. 22 F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks, 13 December 1850. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo July 1848–June 1859, f. 104. 23 Molana’s father, Datu Patinggi Ali, had taken refuge with the then ruler of Sarikei following the Sarawak insurgency. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 254. 24 Abang Yusuf bin Abang Puteh, op. cit., pp. 74–5. R.B. Serjeant, ‘Recent Marriage Legislation from Al-Mukai with Notes on Marriage Customs’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, XXV, 1962, pp. 472–98 at p. 472. 25 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 257.

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26 Sarawak School Report, 3–7 November 1848. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 25. 27 F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks, 14 July 1851. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 155; F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks, 15 August 1851. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 157–8. 28 F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks, 13 May 1852. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 229–30. 29 F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks, 15 August 1851. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 158. 30 Nicholls to F.T. McDougall, 17 November 1851. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 194. 31 Nicholls to F.T. McDougall, 16 September 1851. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 171–2. 32 F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks, 13 May 1852. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 229–30. 33 F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks, 31 May 1852. USPG Archives, Box 1, 1848–1852, f. 145 (typescript). 34 Chater, op. cit., p. 53. 35 Ong Liang Bin (Edric), ‘Malay Houses of Kuching, Sarawak’, SMJ, XXXII(53), August 1983, pp. 97–132 at p. 102. 36 C.T.C. Grant, Draft Book on Borneo, Basil Brooke Papers, Box 4, file 7, f. 5+. 37 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 123. 38 Mundy, Iris, II, p. 275. 39 McDougall, Letters from Sarawak Addressed to a Child, p. 80. 40 F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks, 15 August 1851. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo July 1848–June 1859,. f. 161. 41 J. Brooke to C. Grant, 7 October 1853. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, ff. 154–5. 42 J. Brooke to C. Grant, 25 November 1853. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 165. 43 J. Brooke to Lady L. Grant, 14 January 1854. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, ff. 391–2. 44 J. Brooke to J. Grant, 20 April 1854. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 401. 45 J. Brooke to C. Grant, 18 May 1854. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 182. 46 E. Gomes to E. Hawkins, 22 January 1854. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 373. 47 Bayang, ‘formerly a Lundu Dyak’, was later listed as one of Abdul Gapur’s followers. Koch’s Report, 18 October 1859. USPG E5, Missionary Reports, 1859, f. 1827. See also McDougall, Sketches of our Life at Sarawak, p. 183. 48 J. Brooke to J. Grant, 21 January 1850. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 344. 49 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 13 April 1843. Letters, I, p. 248. 50 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 255. 51 ibid., p. 256–7. The government loan undermines St John’s claim that the Rajah was vigorously opposed to the marriage. 52 ibid., pp. 256–7. 53 McDougall, Letters from Sarawak Addressed to a Child, p. 112.

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54 See T.F. McDougall to Sir F. Beaufort, 26 April 1851. USPG Archives, Box 1, 1848–1852, f. 89. 55 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 257. 56 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, I, pp. 222–5. 57 ibid., pp. 206–7. 58 ibid., p. 141. 59 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 208. 60 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 256. 61 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 17 September 1853. Letters, III, p. 271. 62 J. Brooke to C. Grant, 29 October 1853. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, ff. 159–60. 63 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 256. 64 ibid., p. 258. 65 McDougall, Letters from Sarawak Addressed to a Child, p. 42. 66 J. Brooke to C. Grant, 27 & 28 November 1853. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, ff. 167–8. 67 Max Saint, A Flourish for the Bishop and Brooke’s Friend Grant: Two Studies in Sarawak History, 1848–68 (Braunton, 1985), p. 73. 68 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 248; C.T.C. Grant, ‘A Boy’s Journal, Sarawak’, Basil Brooke Papers, Box 4, file 1, f. 12. 69 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 124. 70 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 259. 71 The estimate is Lockard’s. Craig A. Lockard, ‘The 1857 Chinese Rebellion in Sarawak: A Reappraisal’, JSEAS, IX(1), 1978, pp. 85–98 at p. 90. 72 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., pp. 210–11. For a discussion of the role and history of the position of tua kampong see Lockard, ‘Malay Social Structures in a Sarawak Town in the Late Nineteenth Century’, p. 98. 73 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 259. 74 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 125; Jacob, op. cit., I, p. 116. 75 See ‘Cash Book, 1854–1864’, L 1, f. 18. 76 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 260. 77 Low, Sarawak, p. 148. 78 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 259. 79 Quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 115 (emphasis added). 80 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 259–60. 81 Quoted by Andaya, ‘The Nature of the State in Eighteenth Century Perak’, pp. 22–3. 82 Testimony of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, FO 12/20/216. 83 Testimony of Spenser St John, FO 12/20/312, specifically contradicted evidence Abdul Gapur had given at FO 12/20/31–32. 84 For example, Lockard, ‘The Early Development of Kuching, 1820–1857’, p. 118. 85 J. Brooke to C. Grant, 27 & 28 November 1853. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, ff. 167–8. 86 Quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 115.

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87 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 125. 88 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 27 January–7 February 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 48. 89 Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 211. 90 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 16 August 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 96. 91 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 212. 92 This was a very generous offer. As the chief Malay officer of the Sarawak government, Abdul Gapur’s salary had been $100 a month in Kuching, where the cost of living was high compared to that in the Straits Settlements. 93 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 16 August 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 96. 94 C. Grant to M. Grant, 7 November 1850. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 35. 95 A.R. Wallace to Mrs Wallace, 25 December 1855. Marchant, op. cit., p. 48. 96 Abe’s Report, 2 July 1864. USPG E17, Missionary Reports, 1859, f. 1174. 97 McDougall, Letters from Sarawak Addressed to a Child, p. 57. 98 Captain Bethune, quoted in ‘Dyak Village, Borneo’, in James Augustus St John, Views in the Eastern Archipelago Borneo, Sarawak, Labuan etc. (London, nd). 99 Low, Sarawak, pp. 259–60. 100 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 228. 101 ibid., p. 254. 102 Brooke, Meander, II, pp. 59–60, 66. 103 Geddes, Nine Dayak Nights, p. 21. 104 For example, see St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, I, pp. 142, 225, 158. 105 James C. Scott, ‘Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance’, in James C. Scott & Benedict J. Kerkvliet (eds), Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistence in Southeast Asia (London, 1986), pp. 5–35 at p. 5. 106 ibid., pp. 6–7. 107 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 164. 108 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 255. 109 ‘Diary of Hugh Low, 1844–1846’. John Pope-Hennessy Papers, Box 5/1, f. 100. 110 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, p. 207. 111 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 May 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 63. 112 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 24 November–8 December 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 25. 113 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 May 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 64. 114 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 28 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 43. 115 C. Grant to B. Brooke, 12 May 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 11, f. 49. 116 Gomes’ Report, 3 January 1860. USPG, E 5, Missionary Reports, 1859, f. 1765. 117 A. Crookshank to B. Brooke, 2 July 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 9, f. 262. 118 McDougall, Sketches of our life at Sarawak, p. 70. 119 Geddes, The Land Dayaks of Sarawak, p. 58. 120 C. Grant to J. Grant, 12 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 236.

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246 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139

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Grant, A Tour among the Dyaks of Sarawak (Borneo) in 1858, p. 4. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 16 May 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 4. B. Brooke to R. Hay, 23 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 7, f. 19. M. Grant to L. Grant, 18 September [1860?], Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 11, f. 244. J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 26 March 1861. Rutter, Rajah Brooke and Baroness Burdett Coutts, p. 115. B. Brooke to C. Grant, 5 October 1853. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, ff. 303–4. Consul Rickett’s Report, 25 September 1864. FO 12/32/68. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 14 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 37. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 January 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 153. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, p. 80. ibid., p. 81. A.R. Wallace, ‘Notes of a Journey up the Sadong River, in North-West Borneo’, Royal Geographic Society, Proceedings, vol. 1, 10 November 1856, p. 197. Milner, Kerajaan, p. 104. Errington, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm, p. 103. ibid., p. 177. See Testimony of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, FO 12/20/216. (Patinggi from the Malay tinggi, tall or high.) Geddes, The Land Dayaks of Sarawak, p. 73. ibid., pp. 90–1. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 308. For the rituals associated with storing rice see R. Nyandoh, ‘The Land Dayak Padi-Store Festival’, Sarawak Gazette, XCI (1286), April 1965, pp. 118–19. Grant, A Tour Among the Dyaks of Sarawak (Borneo) in 1858, pp. 12–13.

Chapter 6 — Chinese power and the failure of prowess 1 Lockard, The Southeast Asian Town in Historical Perspective, pp. 84–9; and Lockard, ‘The 1857 Chinese Rebellion in Sarawak’, pp. 86–9. 2 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 295. 3 McDougall, Sketches of our life at Sarawak, p. 127. 4 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 297–8. 5 [Paul Tidman], ‘A Journal kept in Sarawak from February 19th to March 28th, 1857’, in Helms, op. cit., p. 173. 6 Tidman, op. cit., p. 167; S. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 298. 7 ‘Mrs McDougall’s Diary’, USPG, X, 1086 (original emphasis). 8 J. Brooke to Jolly, 28 June 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 110; Penty’s account of the episode is quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, pp. 239–41. 9 Tidman, op. cit., p. 171. 10 ‘Mrs McDougall’s Diary’, USPG, X, 1086. 11 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 349. 12 T.F. McDougall to E. Hawkins, March 1857. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 439–40. McDougall, Sketches of our life at Sarawak, p. 132.

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13 Tidman, op. cit., pp. 174–5. 14 See ibid., p. 178. 15 F.T. McDougall to E. Hawkins, March 1857. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 441. 16 Tidman, op. cit., p. 179. 17 ‘Mrs McDougall’s Diary’, USPG, X, 1086. 18 T.F. McDougall to E. Hawkins, March 1857. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 441–2. 19 Tidman, op. cit., p. 180. 20 Quoted ibid., p. 181 (original emphasis). 21 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 307. This is confirmed by Mrs McDougall, Sketches of our life at Sarawak, p. 146. 22 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 25 December 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 146. 23 J. Brooke to C. Stuart, 14 February 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 208. 24 ‘Mrs McDougall’s Diary’, USPG, X, 1086. 25 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, pp. 216–17. 26 Tidman, op. cit., pp. 158, 183. 27 McDougall, Sketches of our life at Sarawak, p. 146. 28 Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 241. 29 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 354. See also Noel Denison, Jottings Made During a Tour among the Land Dayaks of Upper Sarawak, Borneo, During the year 1874 (Singapore, 1879), Ch. IV, np. 30 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 309. 31 Tidman, op. cit., pp. 188–9. 32 Paul Yong, A Dream of Freedom: The Early Sarawak Chinese (Petaling Jaya, 1991), p. 99. 33 Tidman, op. cit., p. 186. Boyle claimed that Johnson called out 8000 Iban from Skrang. Boyle, op. cit., p. 183. 34 J. Brooke to Jolly, 28 June 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 109. 35 Yong, op. cit., p. 100. 36 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, pp. 214–26 37 Pringle, op. cit., pp. 105–6. Charles Johnson was styled Tuan Muda (junior lord) in contradistinction to his elder brother, Brooke Brooke, who as heir presumptive was styled Tuan Besar (senior or greater lord). 38 Daniel Chew, Chinese Pioneers on the Sarawak Frontier: 1841–1941 (Singapore, 1990), p. 38. 39 Crisswell, op. cit., p. 48. 40 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 29 February 1857, quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 237. 41 Grant, A Tour Among the Dyaks of Sarawak (Borneo) in 1858, p. 179 (original emphasis). 42 St John to Lord Clarendon, 23 April 1857. FO 12/24/44. 43 Tidman, op. cit., pp. 184–5. 44 McDougall, Sketches of our Life at Sarawak, pp. 172–3.

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45 ibid., p. 154 (original emphasis). The kongsi community spoke the Hakka, or Kay, dialect. 46 Tidman, op. cit., p. 191. 47 ibid., p. 184. 48 McDougall, Letters from Sarawak Addressed to a Child, p. 30. 49 Errington, Meaning and Power in a Southeast Asian Realm, p. 95. 50 D.E. Brown, ‘Hiranyagarbha — The Hindu Cosmic Egg — and Brunei’s Royal Line’, Brunei Museum Journal, 4, 1980, pp. 30–7 at p. 31. 51 Khoo Kay Kim, ‘The Peninsula Malay Sultanates: Genesis and Salient Features’, in Second Workshop on Malay Sultanates and Malay Culture (Ujang Pandang, 1978), p. 12. 52 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 218. 53 Beccari, op. cit., p. 359. 54 ‘Memoir on the Residency of the North-West Coast of Borneo’, op. cit., p. 326. See also Wang Tai Peng, The Origins of Chinese Kongsi (Petaling Jaya, 1994), pp. 55–61. 55 Jackson, op. cit., pp. 1–2. 56 ibid., pp. 67, 63–4. 57 Chin, op. cit., pp. 17–19. 58 Earl, op. cit., p. 248. 59 Jackson, op. cit., pp. 4–5. 60 Chew, op. cit., p. 23. See also Lockard, ‘The 1857 Chinese Rebellion in Sarawak’, p. 90. 61 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 321. 62 P. Eaton, ‘A History of the Bau District’, Sarawak Gazette, May 1967, pp. 126–9 at p. 126. 63 Brooke, Dido, I, pp. 147–9. 64 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 189. 65 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 18 April 1841. Letters, I, p. 101. 66 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 14 September 1841. Letters, I, p. 109. 67 J. Brooke to Mrs Thomas Brooke, 16 March 1842. Letters, I, p. 181 (original emphasis). 68 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 281. 69 Brooke, Dido, I, p. 284. 70 Brooke Iris, I, pp. 290–4. 71 Belcher’s Report, 1 October 1845. CO 144/1/69; Bethune, ‘Notes on Part of the West Coast of Borneo . . .’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London; 16 (17), 1846, pp. 294–304 at p. 297. 72 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 22 August 1842. Letters, I, p. 211. 73 Lockard, ‘The 1857 Chinese Rebellion in Sarawak’, p. 91. 74 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 335. 75 See ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’. J 1, f. 33ff. 76 J. Brooke to E. Belcher, 1843. FO 12/21/166. 77 ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’, J 1, f. 93ff. 78 Brooke, Iris, I, pp. 366–7.

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79 Brooke, Iris, II, p. 51. 80 Hugh Low, ‘Extract from Journal, containing description of the cave Lubong Angin, or the Wind-hole, and of a visit to the country of the Gumbang Dyaks’, in Low, Sarawak, pp. 373–4. Low estimated that the Sambas kongsi had about 30 000 members. 81 Low, Sarawak, p. 25. 82 See his ‘Memorandum’, 12 January 1846. Letters, II, p. 130. 83 Jackson, op. cit., pp. 71–2; Chew, op. cit., pp. 20–3. 84 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 26 July 1850. Letters, II, p. 307 (original emphasis). 85 J. Brooke to R. Coxe, 16 October 1850. Letters, III, p. 19. 86 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 328. 87 ibid., p. 324. 88 Brooke, Meander, II, pp. 69–70. 89 Brooke, Meander, II, pp. 69–80. 90 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, pp. 27–8. 91 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 329. 92 ‘Cash Book, 1854–1864’, L 1, f. 1. 93 J. Brooke to W. Read, 2 March 1854. McDougall Papers, f. 20 B (typescript). 94 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 286. 95 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 24 November–8 December 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 26. 96 J. Brooke to C. Grant, 8 December 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 241 (original emphasis). 97 ‘Cash Book, 1854–1864’, L 1, f. 49. 98 J. Brooke to A.R. Wallace, 4 July 1856. Alfred Russel Wallace Papers, f. 5. 99 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 286. 100 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 335. 101 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8–9 May 1856, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 66. 102 McDougall, Sketches of our Life at Sarawak, p. 126. 103 F.T. McDougall to W.T. Bullock, 12 December 1856. USPG Archives, Book 1, 1850–1859, f. 99 (typescript); ‘Mrs McDougall’s Diary’, USPG, X, 1086. 104 Orfeur Cavenagh, Reminiscences of an Indian Official (London, 1884), p. 259. 105 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 289. 106 J. Brooke to Jolly, 6 October 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 117. 107 St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, pp. 337–8. 108 Chew, op. cit., p. 35, fn 60. 109 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 293. 110 Chew, op. cit., p. 33. 111 Martine, The Borneo Company Ltd, p. 21. Borneo Company Papers, GL 27441. 112 ‘Statement of Defence’, Helms v. Borneo Company. Borneo Company Papers, MS 27278. 113 Lockard, ‘The 1857 Chinese Rebellion in Sarawak’.

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250 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

136 137 138 139 140 141 142

143 144 145 146 147

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Belcher, Narrative of the Voyage of HMS Samarang, I, p. 34. Marryat, op. cit., p. 98. Testimony of Lo Choon Chang, FO 12/20/252–254. St John to Lord Malmsbury, 21 September 1852. FO 12/11/107. J. Brooke to C. Johnson, 3 December 1849. Letters, II, p. 246. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 26 July 1850. Letters, II, p. 306. Ida Pfeiffer, A Lady’s Second Journey Round the World (London, 1855), p. 61. St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 324. C. Grant to J. Grant, 7 November 1850. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 36. G. Keane to Sir J. Stirling, July 1855. FO 12/22/363. ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’. J 1, ff. 192–3. McDougall, Letters from Sarawak Addressed to a Child, p. 89. B. Brooke to C. Grant, nd, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 397. Brooke, Meander, II, pp. 127–9. Lockard, ‘The 1857 Chinese Rebellion in Sarawak’, p. 96. McDougall, Sketches of our life at Sarawak, p. 135. ‘Mrs McDougall’s Diary’, USPG, X, 1086. ibid. Tidman, op. cit., p. 168. F.T. McDougall to E. Hawkins, 3 April 1857. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 447. Brooke, Dido, I, p. 65. F.T. McDougall to T.F. Stooks, 29 March 1851. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 139–40; E. Gomes to SPG, 21 February 1853. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, f. 342. Lundu Government Order No. 1, 14 September 1853. Basil Brooke Papers, Box 3, file 12, f. 18. Lundu Government Order No. 2, 16 September 1953. Basil Brooke Papers, Box 3, file 12, f. 20. E. Gomes to E. Hawkins, 1 October 1853. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 364–5. J. Brooke to C. Grant, 18 May 1854. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 181. J. Brooke to C. Grant, 8 December 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 240. Mak Lay Fong, The Sociology of Secret Societies (Kuala Lumpur, 1981), pp. 23, 26–7. Craig A. Lockard, ‘Leadership and Power within the Chinese Community of Sarawak: A Historical Survey’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2(2), September 1971, pp. 195–217 at p. 196. F.T. McDougall to E. Hawkins, 3 April 1857. USPG, CLR 72, Borneo, July 1848–June 1859, ff. 447–8. J. Brooke to Jolly, 8 October 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 116. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 317. ibid., pp. 316–17. C. Grant to M. Grant, 23 May 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 292.

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148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164

165 166 167 168

169

170 171

172 173 174 175 176

251

C. Grant to M. Grant, 13 May 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 280. C. Grant to J. Brooke, 15 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 11, f. 129. Chin, op. cit., p. 41. J. Brooke to Jolly, 28 June 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 109. Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under four Sovereigns, III, p. 12. C. Grant to W. Hay, 20 December 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 315. C. Grant to B. Brooke, 31 January 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 11, f. 48. Low, Sarawak, p. 25. Lockard, ‘The 1857 Chinese Rebellion in Sarawak’, p. 97. T’ien Ju-K’ang, The Chinese of Sarawak: A Study of Social Structure (London, 1953), pp. 37–42. Chapman to C. Brooke, 15 April 1868. Brooke Family Papers, vol. 2. For example see Paul to R. Hay, 14 May 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 14, f. 252. R. Fidler, Kanowit: An Overseas Chinese Community in Borneo, University of Pennsylvania: PhD, 1973, p. 103. H. McDougall to E. Robson, 8 July 1864. McDougall Papers, f. 199. C. Johnson to B. Brooke, 29 May 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 141. Report by Foo Ngien Khoon, 27 October 1866. USPG, E 20, Missionary Reports, 1866, f. 1297. Lockard, The Southeast Asian Town in Historical Perspective, p. 155. See also Lam Chee Kheung, ‘Chinese Social Structure’, SMJ, XL(61), December 1989, pp. 141–52 at pp. 143–4. Boyle, op. cit., p. 148. Hackett’s Report, 20 January 1860. USPG, E 5, Missionary Reports, 1859, f. 1771. Boyle, op. cit., p. 148. In 1860, as part of this policy, Brooke Brooke withdrew Charles Grant from Bau-Siniawan. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 1 June 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 327. C. Grant to Lady L. Grant, 4 June 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 114. The official, Fox, who was killed at Kanowit, was an important exception to this. See Chapter 7. Richard C. Fidler, ‘Religion and Festivals in a Multicultural Bazaar Town’, Studies in Third World Societies, 3, 1975, pp. 167–200 at p. 180. C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society: A Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of their Historical Factors (Berkeley, 1961), p. 3. ibid., pp. 127–8, 102–3. Richard C. Fidler, ‘Tua Pek Kong: An Exercize in Ecological Adaptation’, unpublished manuscript, pp. 4–5 (original emphasis). ibid., pp. 1, 5. ibid., p. 8. See also Wang, op.cit., pp. 74–4, fn. 22. Fidler, ‘Religion and Festivals in a Multicultural Bazaar Town’, p. 180.

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177 A single piece of evidence is provided by Charles Brooke, who claimed that in 1867 some Chinese whose gambier plantations were infested with grubs ‘hoped I would do something to stop it by making exclamations to the Almighty etc etc’. ‘The Journal of Charles Brooke, September 1866–July 1868’, in C. Brooke, op. cit., II, pp. 353–4. 178 O. St John to C. Grant, 21 December 1874. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 14. 179 I have identified only three such occasions: a visit to Bau in 1850 [St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, II, p. 326], an invitation to attend ‘some great ceremonial at Bau’ [J. Brooke to C. Grant, 29 October 1853. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 158], and his attendance at Chinese New Year celebrations at Bau in 1855 [J. Brooke to C. Grant, 10 February 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 212]. Chapter 7 — The Rejang basin 1 Melanaus were a longhouse-dwelling, animist people whose hierarchical and aristocratic leadership traditions contrasted with those of the Bidayuh and Iban. Unlike Bidayuh and Iban, the Melanaus’ staple food was sago, rather than rice, and rice did not occupy the central place in Melanau cosmology that it did among other longhouse-dwelling pagans in Borneo. See works by H.S. Morris: Report on a Melanau Sago Producing Community in Sarawak (London, 1953); and The Oya Melanau (Kuching, 1991). 2 Turnbull, op. cit., p. 182. 3 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 4 December 1846. Letters, II, p. 161. 4 Low, Sarawak, p. 116. 5 ibid., p. 339. 6 Belcher, The Voyage of HMS Samarang, II, p. 163. 7 ‘Journal kept on board a Cruiser in the Indian Archipelago in 1846’, op. cit., p. 198. 8 Low, Sarawak, p. 339. 9 Brooke, Meander, II, p. 72. 10 Testimony of Nakhoda Moora, FO 12/20/334. 11 H. Keppel to C. Bethune, 24 September 1844. Borneo Dispatch Box, Haddington MSS. 12 Robert Burns, ‘The Kayans of the North-West of Borneo’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 3(1), 1849, pp. 138–52 at pp. 143–4; Low, Sarawak, pp. 336, 346. The Kayan were a hierarchical, pagan, longhouse-dwelling people from the central highlands of Borneo. They maintained a rice-centred cosmology and aristocratic political culture. See Jerome Rouseau, The Social Organization of the Baluy Kayan, Cambridge: PhD, 1974. 13 Low, Sarawak, pp. 322–3. 14 Hugh Low, ‘Journal of a visit to Serekei’, in ibid., pp. 351, 356. 15 Mundy, Iris, II, pp. 69–70.

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16 J. Brooke to Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman, nd. Letters, II, p. 106, fn. The Kanowit Dyaks were related both to the coastal Melanaus and upcountry Kayans. See Leonard Edwards and Peter W. Stevens, Short Histories of the Lawas and Kanowit Districts (Kuching, 1971), pp. 93–4. 17 Mundy, Iris, II, pp. 117–21. 18 Low, ‘Journal of a visit to Serekei’, pp. 352–4. 19 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 21. 20 Morris, The Oya Melanau, p. 39. 21 Mundy, Iris, II, p. 126. 22 Belcher, The Voyage of HMS Samarang, II, p. 176; Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 17. 23 ‘Salsilah Syed Muhammad bin Syed Hassan’, a genealogy showing the descent and descendants of Syed Muhammad bin Syed Hassan. Author’s copy. 24 Brooke, Iris, I, p. 364. 25 J. Brooke to H. Wise, 4 December 1845. FO 12/4/16. 26 Testimony of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, FO12/20/26; Low, Sarawak, p. 193. 27 Testimony of William Wilkinson, FO 12/20/187–188. 28 Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, pp. 176–9. 29 Keppel, Meander, I, p. 179. 30 Although Baring-Gould & Bampfylde suggested that Abdul Rahman continued to live under Masahor, I have found no evidence for this. Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 208 fn. 31 Abdul Rahman had no legitimate children. Low, ‘Journal of a visit to Serekei’, p. 368. 32 Testimony of Nakoda Mohammad, The Borneo Question, op. cit., p. 106. 33 McDougall, Letters from Sarawak Addressed to a Child, p. 122. 34 ibid., p. 116; McDougall, Sketches of our life at Sarawak, p. 93. 35 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 17 September 1853. Letters, III, p. 270. The uniform was the Rajah’s official uniform as Governor of Labuan. It represented his own participation in Queen Victoria’s semangat and he used it to impress Borneo people, showing it to leaders who came to Kuching. Because of its associations with Victoria and British power, it was probably the most intensely potent gift in the Rajah’s possession. 36 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 March 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 52. 37 B. Brooke to C. Grant, 20 September 1853. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 301. 38 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 163. 39 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 24 November–8 December 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, ff. 25, 31. 40 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 328. 41 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 330. 42 C. Fox to F.T. McDougall, 1852, USPG, CLR 72, July 1848–June 1859, f. 218. 43 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 344.

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254 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

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C. Brooke, op. cit., I, pp. 339–40. quoted by Saint, op. cit., p. 35. C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 150. Morris, Report on a Melanau Sago Producing Community in Sarawak, p. 59. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, nd, in Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 193. St John to Lord Clarendon, 16 July 1855. FO 12/22/48. Morris, The Oya Melanau, p. 26. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 283. Quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 37. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 20 July 1855, in Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 197. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 March 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, ff. 53, 91. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8–18 May 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, ff. 72–3. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 2 June 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 83. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 March 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 52. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 24 March 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, ff. 53–4. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 4 July 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 91. Lelas (Malay cannon) captured at Mato were listed in his cashbook as revenue for August and September, 1856. See ‘Cash Book, 1842–1853’, J 1, ff. 63, 65. I deduce that Oya was taken from Matali and integrated into the Mukah administration by the Rajah’s agreement in 1858 to Brooke Brooke’s plans to invade Oya [see J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 21 June 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 205] and by Dipa’s presence at Oya in 1861. See J. Brooke to Angela Burdett Coutts, 8 May 1861. Rutter, op. cit., p. 120. Quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 259. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 320. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, September 1857, quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, pp. 260–1. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 23 January 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 14+. ‘Cash Book, 1854–1864’. L 1, f. 104. Expenditure of $237 is the first mention of the Sarawak Rifles in the Rajah’s accounts. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 4 February 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 18. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 323–4. St John to C. Johnson, 15 April 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 303. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 21 June 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 205. C. Brooke, op. cit., I, pp. 329–33. H. Keppel to C. Bethune, 24 September 1844. Borneo Dispatch Box, Haddington MSS. Low, ‘Journal of a visit to Serikei’, p. 366. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 257. Molana’s father, Datu Patinggi Ali, had taken refuge with Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman following the Sarawak insurgency. See Brooke, Dido, I, p. 254.

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76 In 1854, for example, he acted to contain Iban activities and stopped Iban construction of bangkongs. See Testimony of Mataip, FO 12/20/239. 77 B. Brooke to C. Grant, 17 June 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, ff. 327–8. 78 J. Brooke to C. Grant, 3 December 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 240. 79 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 24 November–8 December 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 31. 80 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 March 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, ff. 50–1. 81 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 9 March 1856. Basil Brooke Papers. vol. 2A, f. 54; J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 24 March 1856, Basil Brooke Papers. vol. 2A, f. 56. 82 F.T. McDougall to W.T. Bullock, January 1856, USPG Archives, Book 1, 1850–1859, f. 83 (typescript). 83 Memorandum, 29 September 1857. Basil Brooke Papers. vol. 2A, ff. 136B–C. 84 B. Brooke to A. Brooke, 3 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, ff. 35–6. 85 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 6 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 180. 86 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 14 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 29. 87 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 16 June 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 58. 88 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 333. 89 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 20 April 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 134. 90 B. Brooke to G. Edwardes, 6 June 1860. FO 12/27/82–97 provided the Brooke regime’s official contemporaneous account of the Malay Plot. It supported St John’s official account to Lord John Russell, 26 March 1860. FO 12/27/19–21. Charles Johnson’s published account is in C. Brooke, op. cit., I, Ch. 7 and II, Ch. 1. The most coherent modern accounts of the confused series of events alleged to comprise the Malay Plot were compiled by A.M. Cooper, Men of Sarawak (Kuala Lumpur, 1968), pp. 31–8; and Saunders, Bishops and Brookes, pp. 81–7. 91 D.K. Bassett, British Attitudes to Indigenous States in Southeast Asia in the Nineteenth Century (Hull, 1980), p. 54. 92 See R. Pringle, ‘The Murder of Fox and Steele: Masahor’s Version’, SMJ, 12(25–26), July–December 1965, pp. 212–27 at pp. 218–19. 93 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 9. 94 Mundy, Iris, II, p. 126. 95 H. McDougall to E. Bunyon, 16 July 1859. McDougall Papers, Group H. 96 H. McDougall to Mrs Bunyon, 16 July 1859. McDougall Papers, Group H. 97 St John to Lord Malmesbury, 10 August 1859. FO 12/26/14–15. 98 J. Brooke to F.C. Johnson, 10 March 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 255. Following the British government’s enquiry into James Brooke’s activities and appointments, St John had succeeded him in the office of ConsulGeneral in Borneo in 1855. He established his Consulate-General in Brunei. 99 See Tuton Kaboy, ‘The Murder of Steele and Fox: Two Versions’, SMJ, 12(25–26), July–December 1965, pp. 207–14 at p. 208; and Edwards & Stevens, op. cit., p. 107. 100 Pringle, Rajahs and Rebels, p. 125. 101 ibid., p. 110.

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102 Crisswell, op. cit., p. 71. 103 Sanib Said, op. cit., pp. 14–16. In contrast to Sanib’s nationalistic interpretation, the most pro-Brooke of the modern assessments is John Ingleson, Expanding the Empire: James Brooke and the Sarawak Lobby, 1839–1868 (Perth, 1979), p. 96. 104 Bassett, op. cit., p. 52. 105 ‘10091, Labuan’, CO 144/18/119. 106 St John to C. Johnson, 10 March 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 312. 107 G. Edwardes to Lord J. Russell, 2 July 1860. FO 12/27/71. 108 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 337; Statement of Mohammed, FO 12/27/130. 109 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 9 August 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 344. 110 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 26 March 1861. Rutter, op. cit., p. 115. 111 Pringle, ‘The Murder of Fox and Steele: Masahor’s Version’, p. 215. 112 Ingleson, op. cit., pp. 94–5; Nicholas Tarling, ‘Sir James Brooke and Brunei’, SMJ, 11(21–22), July–December 1963, pp. 1–12 at p. 8. 113 G. Edwardes to H. Labouchiere, 23 October 1857. FO 12/24/249. 114 See CO 144/16/3–49. 115 St John to Lord Clarendon, 19 February 1857. FO 12/24/31. 116 See anonymous annotation at CO 144/16/183. 117 For documentation to substantiate these assessments see CO 144/15/1–29; Edwardes’s correspondence with the Eastern Archipelago Company, CO 144/15/33–40; G. Edwardes to the Duke of Newcastle, 15 August 1860. CO 144/17/75–76; and G. Edwardes to the Duke of Newcastle, 17 September 1860. CO 144/17/80. 118 Cresswell to Admiralty, 28 October 1858. CO 144/15/199. 119 G. Edwardes to Admiral Seymour, 16 June 1858. CO 144/15/185–186. 120 See CO 144/17/42. 121 W. Chalmers to F.T. McDougall, 24 August 1860. USPG, D 23 B, Original Letters Received, Labuan and Sarawak, f. 97. 122 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 9 August 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 341. 123 Lockard, ‘Malay Social Structures in a Sarawak Town in the Late Nineteenth Century’, p. 96. 124 See St John to B. Brooke, 22 April 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 229. 125 See Pringle, ‘The Murder of Fox and Steele: Masahor’s Version’, pp. 216–19. 126 F.T. McDougall to C. Bunyon, 21 July 1859. McDougall Papers, ff. 121–2. 127 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 337. 128 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 185. 129 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, pp. 339–40. 130 ibid., pp. 349–53. 131 C. Johnson to C. Grant, 10 August 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, ff. 15–16. 132 Eugene Victor Walter, Terror and Resistance: A Study of Political Violence (New York, 1969), p. 9. 133 C. Grant to B. Brooke, 23 July 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 11, f. 76.

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134 135 136 137 138

139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160

161

257

C. Johnson to C. Grant, 28 July 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 4. Pringle, ‘The Murder of Fox and Steele: Masahor’s Version’, p. 222. ibid. Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 16 fn; A.J.N. Richards, pers. comm., 9 August 1996. This is the clear implication of Ali’s membership of Masahor’s party in 1860. See Pringle, ‘The Murder of Fox and Steele: Masahor’s Version’, p. 223. Ali seems to have doubted his own capacity to maintain himself against Masahor. Before accepting command of Kanowit, he secured Johnson’s promise to send a European to support him after three months. C. Johnson to C. Grant, 4 August 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, ff. 13–14. St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 319. In contrast, Datu Bandar Molana and Datu Tumanggong Mersal each received $50 per month. ‘Cash Book, 1854–1864’. L 1, f. 86. C. Johnson to B. Brooke, 1 July 1859, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 148. C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 347. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 16 May 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 51. C. Johnson to B. Brooke, 1 July 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 148. Koch’s Report, 18 October 1859. USPG, E 5, Missionary Reports, 1859, f. 1828. C. Johnson to B. Brooke, 8 February 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 136. C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 358–9. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 27 October 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 204. C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 358. Hackett’s Report, 18 October 1859. USPG, E 5, Missionary Reports, 1859, f. 1783. C. Johnson to R. Hay, 14 October 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 90. Hackett’s Report, 18 October 1859. USPG, E 5, Missionary Reports, 1859, f. 1782. C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 361. F.T. McDougall to E. Hawkins, 1 November 1859. USPG Archives, Book 1, 1850–1859, f. 188 (typescript). B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 25 November 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 377. For the 20th-century challenges to the Bandar family’s power see Colin Crisswell, End of the Brooke Raj in Sarawak (Scotland, 1994). B. Brooke to G. Edwardes, 6 June 1860. FO 12/27/87–88. C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 5. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 5 April 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 318. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 9 August 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 333. Brooke Brooke had earlier reported to the Rajah that Tunjang belonged to a merchant from Kalaka. See his letter of 5 March 1860 at f. 317. C. Brooke, op. cit., II, pp. 4–5, 20; C. Johnson to R. Hay, 29 December 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 92B.

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162 Bassett, op. cit., p. 52. 163 Statement of Abang Atib, FO 12/27/126. 164 Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 259. The Rajah’s correspondence suggests that he might have initiated this policy the preceding year. See J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 27 July 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 95. 165 Memo, 29 September 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 136B. 166 See G. Edwardes to Lord John Russell, 2 July 1860. FO 12/27/75. 167 St John to B. Brooke, 14 December 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 223. 168 St John to B. Brooke, 8 November 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 214. 169 A.R. Wallace to an unidentified correspondent, May 1855. Marchant, op. cit., p. 43. 170 C. Grant, ‘Journal, 1848’. Basil Brooke Papers, box 5/2, ff. 24–8. 171 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 21 August 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 474. 172 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 15. 173 ibid., pp. 7–13. 174 Pringle, ‘The Murder of Fox and Steele: Masahor’s Version’, p. 222. 175 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 7. 176 Syed Mustapha bin Syed Alwi, pers. comm., 19 February 2001. 177 Pringle, ‘The Murder of Fox and Steele: Masahor’s Version’, pp. 222–3. For confirmation by Abang Atib, who was present, that Moksain told Masahor to follow Johnson see Statement of Abang Atib, FO 12/27/123. 178 F.T. McDougall to E. Hawkins, 30 April 1860. USPG, D 23 B, Original Letters, Labuan and Sarawak, f. 12. 179 Pringle, ‘The Murder of Fox and Steele: Masahor’s Version’, pp. 223–4. 180 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 12. 181 FO 12/27/123. 182 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, pp. 10–12. 183 Pringle, ‘The Murder of Fox and Steele: Masahor’s Version’, p. 225. 184 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, pp. 21–3. 185 For example, Johnson went to Kanowit again in October. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 14 October 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 364. 186 Crossland to SPG, 30 September 1869. USPG, CLR 73, Borneo Letters Received, f. 146. 187 Syed Mustapha bin Syed Alwi, pers. comm., 19 February 2001. 188 Koch to E. Hawkins, 31 May 1860. USPG, D 23 B, Original Letters, Labuan and Sarawak, f. 32. 189 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 25 April 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 323. 190 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 20 April 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 132. 191 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 12 October 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 110. 192 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 April 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 127. 193 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 14 February 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 15. 194 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 26 March 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 26. 195 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 26 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 46.

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196 C. Grant to R. Hay, 24 January 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 80. 197 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 3 April 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2B, f. 313. Burdett Coutts was the granddaughter of the banker Thomas Coutts and the sole heir to his fortune. She and her companion, Mrs Brown, had become close friends of the Rajah and she had provided financial support for Sarawak on a number of occasions. See Clara Burdett Patterson, Angela BurdettCoutts and the Victorians (London, 1953). 198 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 16 May 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 56. 199 ‘Board of Directors’ Minute Books’, 18 May 1859. Borneo Company Papers, MS 27178 (1). 200 ‘Balance sheets, and profit and loss and suspense accounts, 1857–1858’, Borneo Company Papers, MS 27199. 201 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 May 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 65. 202 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 7 July 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 161. 203 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 7 July 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 160. 204 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 18 July 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 160, f. 328. 205 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 28. 206 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 18 July 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 330. 207 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 248. 208 G. Edwardes to the Duke of Newcastle, 26 December 1860. CO 144/17/167–170. 209 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 38. 210 ibid., pp. 60, 67. 211 C. Grant to R. Hay, 1 October 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 387. See also Boyle, op. cit., p. 299. Although Boyle claimed that Luyoh sent supplies to assist Masahor, Benedict Sandin suggested that Masahor promised to supply Luyoh and Nanang. Sandin, ‘Sources of Iban Traditional History’, p. 192. 212 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 18 July 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 332. 213 Chalmers to F.T. McDougall, 24 August 1860. USPG, D 23 B, Original Letters, Labuan and Sarawak, f. 102. 214 Sarawak Traders (Helms and 25 others) to Lord J. Russell, 23 August 1860. FO 12/28/126. 215 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 18 October 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 189. 216 J. Brooke to E. Johnson, 12 October 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 263. 217 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 9 November 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 197. 218 Foreign Office to S. St John 17 November 1860. FO 12/27/9. 219 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, pp. 342–3. 220 ibid., p. 345. Although the second Rajah later permitted Pengiran Dipa to live at Bintulu, he was exiled again in 1877 after he was ‘heard to use language that was liable to disturb the peace and the minds of the inhabitants of the coast in the vicinity of Bintulu and Muka’. Sarawak Gazette, 130, 16 April 1877, p. 27.

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221 Sanib Said, ‘The Identity of Sharip Mashor of Sarawak-Brunei and Syed Mashhor of Selangor: A Preliminary Investigation’, SMJ, XXXII(53), August 1983, pp 291–9 at p. 292. 222 St John, Rajah Brooke, p. 192. Chapter 8 — The succession to Sarawak 1 B. Brooke to Earl Russell, 26 October 1862. FO 12/30/195. 2 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 26 October 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 489 (original emphasis). 3 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 14 November 1862. Rutter, op. cit., p. 149. 4 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 16 January 1863. ibid., p. 159. 5 J. Brooke to F.C. Johnson, 27 December 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 288. Although Charles later claimed that he had changed his name before hearing of Brooke’s actions [C. Brooke to C. Grant, 30 January 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 36], such a coincidence is not credible. Nor do the reasons for the change that the Rajah gave to Charles’s father withstand scrutiny. 6 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 4 January 1865. Rutter, op. cit., p. 237. 7 ibid., p. 155. 8 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 29 April 1863. ibid., p. 190. 9 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 7 July 1863. ibid., p. 207 (original emphasis). 10 Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 344. 11 Hahn, op. cit., p. 252. 12 Saint, op. cit., pp. 101, 221. 13 James Brooke’s Journal, 26 February 1863, in Rutter, op. cit., p. 167; C. Brooke to C. Grant, 7 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 42. 14 Saunders, Bishops and Brookes, p. 141. 15 C. Grant to B. Brooke, 9 June 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 11, f. 104; B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 21 August 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 478; B. Brooke to C. Grant, 2 December 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 341. 16 R.H.W. Reece, ‘Introduction’, to C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. xii. 17 H. Wise to Sir R. Peel, 13 December 1842. Peel Papers, vol. CCCXL, f. 279. 18 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 22 March 1843, quoted in Jacob, I, p. 229. 19 J. Brooke to C. Bethune, 21 July 1843. Borneo Dispatch Box, Haddington MSS. 20 J. Brooke to H. Wise (extracts), Borneo Dispatch Box, Haddington MSS. 21 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 21 October 1845. Letters, II, pp. 92–3. 22 Dedel to Lord Aberdeen, 20 March 1846. FO 12/17/53. 23 See ‘Minutes of a Conversation between the Datu Bandar, Datu Imaum, the Datu Tumanggong and the Tuan Khatib . . . and Mr St John’, Brooke Family Papers, Box 23, file 1, ff. 47–50. 24 J. Brooke to Addington, 13 March 1852. FO 12/11/72. 25 J. Brooke to F.C. Johnson, 18 September 1843. Letters, I, p. 288.

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26 J. Brooke to B. Johnson, 14 October 1845. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 6. 27 J. Brooke to F.C. Johnson, 14 June 1846, quoted in Jacob, op. cit., I, p. 344. 28 J. Brooke to F.C. Johnson, 16 June 1848. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 128 (original emphasis). 29 F.T. McDougall to C. Bunyon, 18 September 1848. USPG Archives, Box 1, 1848–1852, f. 14 (typescript). On his installation as heir Brooke was accorded the Malay honorific Tuan Besar (lit. great lord), which James Brooke had himself used prior to adopting the title Rajah. 30 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 28 October 1855. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 19. 31 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 2 June 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, ff. 83–4. 32 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 16 August 1856. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 99. 33 J. Brooke to S. Johnson, 24 December 1857. Brooke Family Papers, vol. 1. 34 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 25 December 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, ff. 143–8. 35 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 January 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 151. 36 J. Brooke to E. Johnson, 15 January 1858. Brooke Family Papers, vol. 1. 37 B. Brooke to J. Grant, 19 February 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 349. 38 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 14 March 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 19. 39 Debretts Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage, 1955, pp. 688–9. 40 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 January 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 150. 41 J. Brooke to F.C. Johnson, 9 January 1858. Brooke Family Papers, vol. 1, f. 12. Not, presumably, in the famous school itself, but perhaps from one or more of its masters. 42 J. Brooke to F.C. & E. Johnson, 23 October 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 239. 43 See D.E. Brown, ‘Hugh Low on the History of Brunei’, Brunei Museum Journal, 1(1), 1969, pp. 147–56, at p. 149. Crisswell also wrote that ‘according to Muslim administrative law only a son whose parentage was noble on both sides could succeed as ruler’. See Colin Crisswell, ‘Some Historical Aspects of Local and Sovereign Rights in Nineteenth Century Brunei’, Journal of Oriental Studies, X(1), January 1972, pp. 51–61 at p. 54. 44 Zainal Kling, op. cit., p. 219. 45 B. Brooke to J. Grant, 19 February 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 347. 46 B. Brooke to F.C. & E. Johnson, 20 March 1858, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 34. Their stance was confirmed by McDougall. See F.T. McDougall to C.J. Bunyon, 20 March 1858. McDougall Papers, f. 89 (typescript). 47 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 17 May 1858. Brooke Family Papers, vol. 1, ff. 23–4. 48 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 16 December 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 601. 49 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 17 July 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 161. 50 See B. Brooke to F.C. Johnson, 20 August 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 84. 51 Notes by C. Grant, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 351. The resentment and distrust between the two men was probably compounded by the Rajah’s deep

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52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81

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love for Charles Johnson. James’s obvious preference for his younger nephew even prompted Brooke to seek reassurances about their relative positions as early as 1857. See Walker, op. cit., pp. 186–8. Earl of Cranbrooke, ‘A Note on the Appearance of Rajah James Brooke at the age of 44’, SMJ, XXIX(50), December 1981, pp. 143–5. J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 15 November 1858. Rutter, op. cit., p. 48. Runciman, op. cit., p. 137. M. Grant to B. Brooke, 14 January 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 11, f. 262. J. Brooke to C. Johnson, 25 March 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 324 [The letter has been incorrectly dated 25 March 1857]; J. Brooke to C. Johnson, 2 April 1859, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 330. Rutter, op. cit., pp. 191–2; Helms, op. cit., p. 218. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, May 1859 [?], Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 116. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, May 1859 [?], Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2B, ff. 328–9. C. Grant to R. Hay, 6 June 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, f. 354. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 21 June 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 128. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 13 July 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 143 (original emphasis). J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 18 July 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2B, f. 438. J. Brooke to C. Johnson, 8 August 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 335. Runciman, op. cit., p. 138. Alfred Russel Wallace, My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions (London, 1905), vol. 2, p. 51. See his ‘Memorandum’, 3 February 1858. FO 12/25/133–135. Jacob, op. cit., II, pp. 266–8. J. Brooke to J. Grant, 21 February 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 460. The Rajah’s letter to Brooke is in vol. 2A at f. 160. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 15 April 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 40. F.O. to J. Brooke, 15 April 1858. FO 12/35/41. They are detailed by Tarling, The Burthen, the Risk, and the Glory, Chs IV, V. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 16 June 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 56. B. Brooke to E. Johnson, 10 October 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 41. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 10 October 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, Box 3, file 12, f. 21 (copy extracted by Charles Grant). A copy of the petition is in vol. 15, ff. 133–5. B. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 17 March 1859. Baroness Burdett-Coutts Papers, vol. X, f. 31. J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 11 March 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2A, f. 277. See J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 7 July 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 2B, ff. 401, 426. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 31 October 1859. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 214. See also his letter of 22 January 1860 at f. 297. J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 21 April 1860, quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 322. The Rajah confirmed this in his memorandum of 26 May 1863. FO 12/31/259.

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82 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 22 May 1860 [?]. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 147. 83 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 18 September 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 360 (original emphasis). 84 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 3 August 1861. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, ff. 201–2. 85 J. Brooke Brooke, A Statement Regarding Sarawak (privately printed, 1863), p. 14. 86 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 27 August 1861. Rutter, op. cit., pp. 125–6. 87 S. St John to C. Grant, 7 October 1873. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 54. Grant annotated this letter ‘it may be true but I don’t remember it’. 88 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 16 September 1861. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 391; J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 18 September 1861. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 234. 89 Quoted by A. Crookshank to B. Brooke [26 February 1863]. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 9, f. 268. 90 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 18 September 1861. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 239. 91 B. Brooke to Lord Grey, 25 April 1863. Rutter, op. cit., p. 191. 92 See C. Grant to B. Brooke, 4 December 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 11, f. 123; J.B. Cruikshank to B. Brooke. 21 February 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 13, f. 134; A. Crookshank to B. Brooke [26 February 1863], Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 9, f. 270. 93 Brooke Brooke’s Memorandum, 26 October 1862. FO 12/30/212. 94 Quoted by Hahn, op. cit., p. 232. 95 See A.F. Porter, Land Administration in Sarawak: An Account of the Development of Land Administration in Sarawak from the Rule of Rajah James Brooke to the Present Time (1841–1967) (Kuching, 1967), Appendix C(3), p. 138. 96 A copy of the grant is at FO 12/29/36. 97 Brooke argued that this confirmed the ‘peculiar rank’ he and the Rajah shared. See J.B. Brooke, A Statement Regarding Sarawak, p. 4. 98 See her letters of 5 January [1862], 19 November [1862] and late 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 14, ff. 54, 56, 58. 99 Zehinder to B. Brooke, 15 December 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15 [–16?], f. 109. 100 See Roche to B. Brooke (nd), Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 14, ff. 297–8; E. Gomes to B. Brooke, 5 February 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, Box 3, file 12, f. 76. 101 Confusion over the meaning of Brooke’s investiture was increased by the ambiguity of the title of Rajah Muda, which could denote an heir apparent; or a junior, joint ruler; or, as in the Riau-Lingga sultanate, the executive, as opposed to the titular, head of government. 102 See J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 8 May 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 294. Brooke had originally attempted to establish a regular military force at Kuching in 1858. B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 4 February 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 16.

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103 B. Brooke to C. Grant, 2 December 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 340. 104 Brooke placed the fort under the command of a Major Rodway. See Chater, op. cit., p. 12. 105 C. Brooke to C. Grant, 7 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 44; 106 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 18 March 1863. Rutter, op. cit., p. 176 (original emphasis). 107 Consul Ricketts’ Report, 25 September 1864. FO 12/32/75. 108 B. Brooke to C. Grant, 1 September 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 336. This was confirmed by Cavenagh, op. cit., p. 327; and by Helms in his letter to Hope Brooke, 17 March 1911. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 14, f. 14. 109 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 219. 110 See his memorandum, 26 October 1862. FO 12/30/197. Therefore I am sceptical of the Rajah’s claim that ‘not a single native knew there was any difference between Mr Brooke and myself’. See J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 10 March 1863, in Rutter, op. cit., p. 170. 111 B. Brooke to R. Hay, 21 October 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 7, f. 97. 112 B. Brooke to R. Hay, 6 November 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 7, f. 100. 113 Brooke’s letters and the replies are in Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 7, ff. 177–82. 114 W. Watson to C. Johnson, 14 November 1862. Brooke Family Papers, vol. 1, f. 140. 115 Brooke’s letters and the replies are in Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 7, ff. 177–82 (original emphasis). 116 H. McDougall to B. Brooke, 26 December 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 14, f. 169. 117 James Brooke’s Journal, 25 February 1863. Baroness Burdett-Coutts Papers, vol. 4, f. 136. 118 C. Brooke to C. Grant, 7 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 42. 119 B. Brooke to R. Hay, 4 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 7, f. 109. 120 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 12 June 1863. Rutter, op. cit., p. 198 (original emphasis). 121 W. Watson to B. Brooke, 29 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15 [–16?], f. 94. 122 C. Brooke to C. Grant, 7 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 42. This was confirmed also by Robert Hay. See his letter to Brooke of 27 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 11, f. 321. 123 C. Brooke to E. Evelyn, 9 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 222. 124 F.T. McDougall to Bullock, 8 March 1863. USPG Archives, Book II (1860–1867), f. 73. 125 C. Brooke to C. Grant, 7 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 43. 126 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 10 March 1860. Rutter, op. cit., p. 171. 127 A. Crookshank to B. Brooke, 9 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 9, f. 274; J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 10 March 1860. Rutter, op. cit., p. 171. 128 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 24 March 1863. Rutter, op. cit., pp. 178–9.

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129 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 19 April 1863. Rutter, op. cit., p. 183. 130 F.T. McDougall to B. Brooke, 8 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 14, f. 97. 131 A. Crookshank to B. Brooke, 9 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 9, f. 276 (original emphasis). 132 See J.H. Walker, ‘A Confusion of Crookshanks [sic]: Personalities and Power in the Lives of the Early Brookes’, Borneo Research Bulletin, 28, 1997, pp. 42–54. 133 Tarling, The Burthen, the Risk, and the Glory, p. 385. 134 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, July 1863. Baroness BurdettCoutts Papers, vol. V, f. 6. 135 F.T. McDougall to USPG, 16 May 1863. USPG Archives, Book II (1860–1867), f. 76. 136 A. Crookshank to B. Brooke (nd), Brooke Family Papers, vol. 2, f. 45 (original emphasis). 137 C. Brooke to C. Grant, 6 July 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 56. 138 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 3 May 1863, Rutter, op. cit., p. 187. 139 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 20 March 1863. ibid., p. 176. 140 J. Brooke to R. Hay, 14 June 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, Box 3, file 12, f. 70 (typescript). 141 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, pp. 227–8. 142 C. Brooke to R. Hay, 10 July 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 105. 143 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, pp. 221–2. In his autobiography, Charles Brooke presented these events as occurring during his March tour. Analysis of the contemporary correspondence revealed that they actually occurred in July. See C. Brooke to E. Evelyn, 28 April 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 226; and C. Brooke to R. Hay, 10 July 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 105. 144 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, pp. 221–6. 145 J. Brooke to R. Hay, 5 August 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, Box 3, file 12, f. 72 (typescript). 146 A. Crookshank to B. Brooke, 28 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 9, f. 282; C. Brooke to B. Brooke, 28 March 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 192. 147 F.T. McDougall to B. Brooke, 20 July 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 14, f. 99. 148 McDougall, Sketches of our life at Sarawak, p. 216. 149 Boyle, op. cit., p. 10. 150 His installation as Tumanggong on 1 May 1873 was reported in Sarawak Gazette, 63, 3 May 1873. 151 F.T. McDougall to B. Brooke, 20 July 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 14, f. 99. 152 Charles claimed to have planned to ‘become a chief of a long house in Dyak fashion’. C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 323.

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153 F.T. McDougall to W. Bullock, 5 October 1866. USPG Archives, Book II (1860–67), f. 176 (typescript). 154 O. St John to C. Grant, 30 December 1875. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 20. 155 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 277. 156 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 25 November 1860. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 377. 157 A copy is at FO 12/31/330. 158 Cuthbert Collingwood, Rambles of a Naturalist on the Shores of the China Sea (London, 1868), pp. 227–35. 159 O. St John to C. Grant, 20 June 1874. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 9. 160 N. Denison to C. Grant, 30 December 1874. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 13, f. 197. 161 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 12 June 1863. Rutter, op. cit., p. 199. 162 Proceedings of the Supreme Council, 6 August 1863. FO 12/35/306. 163 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 7 August 1863. Rutter, op. cit., p. 207 (original emphasis). The Rajah’s letter to Brooke, disinheriting him, is reproduced at p. 208. 164 Brooke Family Papers, Box 1 (vol. 25), item 5. 165 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 22 August 1863. Baroness Burdett-Coutts Papers, vol. V, f. 33. The Rajah’s antipathy to Alan Grant derived from the fact that his sister, Annie, had been Brooke’s first wife. 166 F.T. McDougall to C. Bunyon, 7 August 1863. McDougall Papers, f. 183 (typescript). 167 H. McDougall to B. Brooke, September 1863. FO 12/31/296–297. 168 Saunders, Bishops and Brookes, p. 144. 169 C. Brooke to C. Grant, 27 April 1863, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 49. By Sarawak, Charles referred to the Sarawak River area, Lundu and the Samarahan. 170 F.T. McDougall to B. Brooke, 22 September 1863, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 14, f. 103. 171 This division of responsibility was maintained till the Rajah’s death. For the situation in 1865, see M.B.B. (ed.), A Few Months in Borneo, Being a few short sketches from the Journal of a Naval Officer (London, nd [1867]), p. 91. 172 B. Brooke to J. Brooke, 11 July 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 5, f. 461+. 173 Jensen suggested that two or three successive poor harvests would be sufficient for a tuai burong (augur) to lose his influence and be replaced. Jensen, op. cit., p. 60. The connection understood between agricultural prosperity and rulers was widespread in the archipelago. For Brunei see D. Brown, ‘Hiranyagarbha — The Hindu Cosmic Egg — and Brunei’s Royal Line’, pp. 32–3. For examples from Sumatra and the Malay peninsula see Jane Drakard, A Kingdom of Words: Minangkabau Sovereignty in Sumatran History. Australian National University: PhD, 1993, pp. 231–2, 237. 174 King Mongkut of Siam to Borneo Company, 1862. Borneo Company Papers, MS 27278.

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175 S. St John to C. Grant, 30 June 1851. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 15, f. 34. 176 Mundy, Iris, II, pp. 117–21. 177 J. Brooke to J. Abel Smith, 19 January 1863. Layard Papers, vol. CLXXVI, f. 309. 178 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 21 March 1863. Rutter, op. cit., p. 177. 179 See J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 9 April 1863. ibid., p. 181. 180 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts, 30 April 1862. Rutter, op. cit., p. 141; C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 231. 181 Reece, ‘Introduction’, p. xi. 182 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 286. 183 ibid., pp. 281–2. 184 Crisswell, Rajah Charles Brooke, p. 95. 185 Tuton Kaboy, ‘The Murder of Steele and Fox: Two Versions’ SMJ, 12(25–26) July–December 1965, pp. 207–14. 186 Baring-Gould & Bampfylde, op. cit., p. 32. 187 Pringle, Rajahs and Rebels, pp. 128, 133. 188 See J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 19 April 1863. Rutter, op. cit., p. 183. 189 A.J. Richards, quoted by Wagner, op. cit., p. 66. 190 Pringle, Rajahs and Rebels, p. 132; Crisswell, Rajah Charles Brooke, p. 89. 191 C. Brooke, op. cit., II, p. 235. 192 C. Brooke to B. Brooke, 24 July 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 170. 193 See B. Andaya, ‘The Nature of the State in Eighteenth Century Perak’, pp. 22–35 at p. 23. 194 J. Brooke to Jolly, 28 June 1857. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 1, f. 111. 195 As Anderson noted of the Javanese, the ability to contain opposites and ‘to absorb his adversaries’ were important signs of the power of a ruler. Anderson, op. cit., p. 31. 196 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 18 July 1862. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 315. 197 Borneo Company, ‘Board of Directors’ Minute Books’, GL Ms 27178 (2). See minutes of the meetings of 8 April 1863 and 5 May 1863. 198 B. Brooke to A.H. Layard, 22 June 1863. Layard Papers, vol. CLXXVI, f. 235. 199 J.B. Brooke, A Statement Regarding Sarawak. 200 B. Brooke to F.C. Johnson, 3 June 1863. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 189. 201 See his letters of May 1863, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, ff. 176, 180, 181, 182. 202 A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown to J. Brooke, 4 December 1863. Rutter, op. cit., p. 218. 203 J. Brooke to A. Burdett Coutts & H. Brown, 29 November 1864. Baroness Burdett Coutts Papers, vol. VI, f. 51. 204 B. Brooke to M. Savage, 23 January 1865. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 241 (contemporary copy). 205 J. Brooke to M. Savage, 26 January 1865. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, f. 242.

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206 J. Brooke to C. Brooke, 12 January 1864. Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 352. Although Cotter suggested that the Rajah considered nominating as his heir William Brooke, the son of his half-brother, Charles William, I have found no evidence for this. C.P. Cotter, Some Aspects of the Administrative Development of Sarawak. Cornell University: MPA, 1955, p. 111. 207 B. Brooke to R. Hay, 2 March [1864?], Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 7, f. 122. 208 B. Brooke to F.C. & E. Johnson [1865?]. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 6, ff. 261–4. 209 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 373. 210 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 14 February 1866. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 414. 211 C. Brooke to R. Hay, 25 December 1865, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, ff. 121–2. Hay rejected the offer, unable to see how ‘the circumstances under which I was compelled to leave have altered at all’. R. Hay to C. Brooke, 26 February 1866, Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 11, f. 336. 212 Ricketts to Lord Clarendon, 6 January 1866. FO 12/35/314; and 15 February 1866. FO 12/33A/46. Ricketts believed, erroneously, that Charles was concerned about an attack from Malays. 213 J. Brooke to Lord Stanley, 3 November 1866. FO 12/35/340. 214 Ricketts to Earl Russell. FO 12/35/301–302. 215 S. St John to A. Burdett Coutts, 26 December 1866. Rutter, op. cit., pp. 285–6. 216 Rutter, op. cit., p. 297. 217 Tarling, The Burthen, the Risk, and the Glory, p. 430. 218 A. Crookshank to C. Brooke, 16 June 1868, Brooke Family Papers, vol. 2, f. 46. 219 W.H. Read to C. Brooke, 12 June 1868, Brooke Family Papers, vol. 2, ff. 41–2. For the extent of his precautions see also his letter at ff. 52–4. 220 Martin to Lord Stanley, 4 August 1868. FO 12/34A/187. Charles maintained, even to his family, that the official notification in July was the first he had heard of James’s death. See for example his letter to his sister, Emma Evelyn, 2 August 1868. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 245. 221 A copy of the will is at Brooke Family Papers, vol. 15, section A, f. 10. 222 Pybus, op. cit., pp. 128–9. For Charles’s relationship with Mastiah see pp. 131–4. Charles eventually sent his and Mastiah’s son, Esca, into exile. 223 ibid., pp. 51–2. 224 S. St John to C. Brooke, 10 March 1868. Brooke Family Papers, vol. 2, f. 21. 225 C. Grant to J. Grant, 1 December 1868. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 10, ff. 233–4. 226 J. Brooke to B. Brooke, 19 November 1858. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 3, f. 228. 227 Runciman, op. cit., p. 156. 228 St John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 371. 229 C. Brooke to R. Butt, 10 December 1869. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 8, f. 63. 230 C. Brooke to H. Brooke, 18 October 1879. ‘Second Rajah’s Letters, June–December 1880’, vol. 2, f. 67.

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231 H. Brooke to C. Brooke, 21 September 1894. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 9, ff. 344–5. Although in this letter Hope emphasised his loyalty to the second Rajah, in 1909 he sought legal advice on his position relative to Sarawak’s sovereignty. [Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 13, ff. 6–8, 12.] His various unsuccessful attempts to find a role in Sarawak throughout the second Rajah’s reign are beyond the scope of this study. 232 Gullick, Rulers and Residents, p. 296. Chapter 9 — ‘Doing honour to the Rajah’ 1 O.W. Wolters, ‘Khmer ‘Hinduism’ in the Seventh Century’, in R.B. Smith, & W. Watson (eds), Early South East Asia: Essays in Archaeology, History and Historical Geography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 427–42 at pp. 429–30. 2 Low, Sarawak, pp. 255–7. 3 C. Brooke, op. cit., I, p. 146. 4 ibid., p. 176. 5 Rev. Horsburgh, quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 80. 6 Wolters, ‘Khmer “Hinduism” in the Seventh Century’, p. 429. 7 J. Brooke to C. Grant, 17 July 1854. Basil Brooke Papers, vol. 4, f. 193. 8 F.T. McDougall to C. Brereton, 18 September 1848. USPG Archives, Box 1, 1848–1852, f. 14 (typescript). 9 J. Brooke to H. Wise, 10 December 1845. FO 12/19/129. 10 Keppel, Dido, II, p. 78 (original emphasis). 11 James Brooke, quoted by Jacob, op. cit., II, p. 260. 12 J. Brooke to J.C. Templer, 22 July 1853. Letters, III, p. 264 (emphasis added). 13 Robert L. Winzeler, ‘Shaman, Priest and Spirit Medium: Religious Specialists, Tradition and Innovation in Borneo’, in Robert L. Winzeler (ed.), op. cit., pp. xi–xxxiii at p. xiii. 14 Bendix, op. cit., p. 286. 15 ‘Introduction’, Eric B. Ross (ed.), Beyond the Myths of Culture: Essays in Cultural Materialism (New York, 1980), pp. xix–xxix at p. xxiii.

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I Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES Manuscript collections British Library, London Baroness Burdett-Coutts Papers. Includes an extensive collection of letters from James Brooke to Angela Burdett Coutts and Helen Brown, and related papers. A selection was published by Owen Rutter (ed.), Rajah Brooke and Baroness Burdett Coutts: Consisting of the Letters from Sir James Brooke, first White Rajah of Sarawak, to Miss Angela (afterwards Baroness) Burdett Coutts. London: Hutchinson, 1935. C.W. Brooke, letters from India, Add 45906. Letters from James Brooke’s brother, Charles William, to his father and other members of his family. Correspondence of Thomas Brooke at Benares with Major M. Shaw, Secretary to Lord Wellesley, 1803-1805, Wellesley Papers, Series III, vol. VIII, Add 37281. Crawford Papers. Letters from James Brooke to Harvey, BL Add 50848 E. Layard Papers. Peel Papers. Alfred Russel Wallace Papers.

Guildhall Library, London Papers of the Borneo Company Ltd. Extensive contemporary records, including financial statements, directors’ minutes, legal documents and personal records.

Public Record Office, London Colonial Office Series 144 (CO 144), Labuan (Microform copy held by National Library of Australia).

270

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271

Foreign Office Series 12 (FO 12), Borneo (Microform copy held by National Library of Australia). Home Office Series 80 (HO 80), Peerages, Baronetcies, claims to titles, etc.

University of Durham, Durham Earl Grey Papers, 3rd edn. Correspondence with Sir James Brooke, GRE/B78/14. Earl Grey Papers, 3rd edn. Correspondence with John Brooke Brooke, GRE/B78/15. Earl Grey Papers, 3rd edn. Correspondence of Maria, 3rd Countess Grey, with Sir James Brooke, GRE/c/32.

Rhodes House Library, Oxford Basil Brooke Papers. MSS Pac. s. 90. For a full description of this collection see Report on the Correspondence and Papers of the Brooke Family of Sarawak including the Papers of Charles T.C. Grant (1831–91) Laird of Kilgraston c. 1831–1977. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 1978. Brooke Family Papers. MSS Pac. s. 83. For a full description of this collection see Papers of the Brookes of Sarawak, MSS Pac. s. 83. Rhodes House Library, Oxford. McDougall Papers. MSS Pac. s. 101, Group H. Original letters from Francis and Harriette McDougall. MSS Pac. s. 104. Typescripts of letters from Francis and Harriette McDougall. Morris Papers. Fieldnotes and other scholarly records of H.S. Morris (not yet indexed). John Pope-Hennessy Papers. MSS Brit. Emp. s. 409, Box 5/1, item 1. Diary of Hugh Low, 1844–46 (typescript). Turner Papers MSS Ind Ocn s. 292 1/1, Letterbook, 1853–55. MSS Ind Ocn s. 292 1/2, Typescripts of letters in MSS Ind Ocn s. 292 1/1. MSS Ind Ocn s. 292 1/3, Family letters of Francis and Harriette McDougall. MSS Ind Ocn s. 292 1/4, Typescripts of letters in MSS Ind Ocn s. 292 1/3. MSS Ind Ocn s. 292 2/1, Miscellaneous correspondence, McDougall — Colenso, 1861–1883. MSS Ind Ocn s. 292 2/2, Miscellaneous letters and notes, 1811–1881. Archives of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. USPG Archives, Box 1, 1848–1852. Typescripts, mostly of Francis McDougall’s letters in MSS Pac. s. 104 (2). Contemporary transcripts of most of these letters were made by the USPG, and are in CLR 72, Borneo, ff. 1–261. Box I includes the texts of some letters not in CLR 72. USPG Archives, Book I, 1860–1867. Typescripts of letters from Francis McDougall to the USPG, in MSS Pac. s. 104 (4). USPG Archives, Book II, 1850–1859. Typescripts of letters from Francis McDougall to the USPG, in MSS Pac. s. 104 (3).

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USPG, CLR 72, Borneo July 1848–June 1859. Contemporary transcripts of letters received by the USPG. Where different texts of the same letter appear in these collections I have used the text in CLR 72. USPG, CLR 73, Borneo Letters Received. USPG, D 23 B, Original Letters, Labuan and Sarawak. USPG, E Series, Missionary Reports, 1856–1869. USPG, X 1086, Mrs McDougall’s Diary. USPG, X 1273, 1862. USPG, X 82, Borneo Colonial Mission, Committee Minutes, 1846–1852. Papers of the Borneo Mission, C/ASI/SIN 1. Miscellaneous papers, 1846–1902.

National Register of Archives, Edinburgh Haddington Papers (Microform copy of the Borneo Dispatch Box held by Reid Library, University of Western Australia).

National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh Cochrane Papers (Microform copy of selections from the Cochrane Papers relating to Borneo held by Reid Library, University of Western Australia).

Sarawak Muzium, Kuching Cash Book, 1842–1853. J 1. Cash Book, 1854–1864. L 1. Court Cases, Betong/Saribas, 1866–1891. General Council Minutes, 1867–1927, C/A/d1, Box CC. Roll Book No 1: European Officers on Permanent Service. C/E/d4, 2. Second Rajah’s Letters, June–December 1880. C/F/d1, vol. 2. Miscellaneous documents, including a small number of letters from James Brooke to various correspondents.

Unit Salasilah, Brunei History Centre, Bandar Seri Begawan Salasilah Dato Petinggi Abang Haji Abd. Ghafor. Genealogy showing the descent and descendants of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur.

Published contemporary accounts A.C. [Arthur Crookshank], ‘Sir James Brooke’s Expedition Against the Sarebas Pirates’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 3(5), May 1849, pp. 276–7. ‘An Exploit in Borneo’, The Times, 9 November 1854, p. 8. An old resident, see Reade, W.H. Beccari, Odoardo, Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989 (1904). Belcher, Edward, Narrative of the Voyage of HMS Samarang, during the Years 1843–46; employed surveying the islands of the Eastern Archipelago. London: Reeve, Benham & Reeve, 1848.

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Belcher, Edward, China Pilot, Appendix No 2. General Observations on the Coast of Borneo, the Sulu and Mindoro Seas. London: Hydrographic Office, Admiralty, 1859. Bethune, C.D., ‘Notes on Part of the West Coast of Borneo . . .’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London; 16(17), 1846, pp. 294–304. ‘Borneo Proper’ [1821], in Moor, J.H. (ed.), Notices of the Indian Archipelago and Adjacent Countries. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1968 (1837), p. 3. The Borneo Question, or The Evidence Produced at Singapore before the Commission charged with the Enquiry into the Facts relating to Sir James Brooke, KCB etc. Singapore: Alfred Simondes, 1854. Boyle, Federick, Adventures among the Dyaks of Borneo. Kuala Lumpur: Antara, 1984 (1865). Brooke, Charles, Ten Years in Sarawak . . . . Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990 (1866). Brooke, Charles, ‘Journal of Charles Brooke, September 1866–July 1868’, in Brooke, Charles, Ten Years in Sarawak . . . . Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990 (1866), p. 345. Brooke, J.B.J., ‘Borneo’, Colonial Church Chronicle and Missionary Journal, 5, 1852, pp. 249–351. Brooke, J. Brooke, A Statement Regarding Sarawak (privately printed), 1863. Brooke, James, ‘Sketch of the Island and Gulf of Symi, on the South-western Coast of Anatolia, in February, 1837’, Journal, Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. 8, 1838, pp. 129–34. Brooke, James, ‘Proposed Exploring Expedition to the Asiatic Archipelago’, Journal, Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. 8, 1838, pp. 443–8. Brooke, James, A Letter to Borneo; with Notices of the Country and its Inhabitants; Addressed to James Gardner, Esq., London: L. & G. Seeley, 1842. Brooke, James, ‘Mr Brooke’s Expedition to Borneo’, republished in Templer, J.C. (ed.), The Private Letters of Sir James Brooke, K.C.B. Rajah of Sarawak, vol. 1. London: Richard Bentley, 1853. [Brooke, James] St John, Spenser, The Bishop of Labuan: A Vindication of the Statements respecting the Bornean Mission, contained in the last chapter of ‘Life in the Forests of the Far East’. London: Ridgway, 1862. (Though published under St John’s name, this was probably written by James Brooke.) Brooke, James, ‘Introductory Remarks’, in Brooke, Charles, Ten Years in Sarawak . . . . Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990 (1866). Brooke, James, see also Keppel, Mundy, Templer & Rutter. Brown, C.C. (trans.), ‘Sejarah Melayu or “Malay Annals”’, JMBRAS, XXV(2, 3), October 1952. Bunyon, C.J., Memoirs of Francis Thomas McDougall, DCL, FRCS, Sometimes Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak and of Harriet his Wife. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1889. Burns, Robert, ‘The Kayans of the North-West of Borneo’, JIA, 3(1), 1849, pp. 138–52. Cavenagh, Orfeur, Reminiscences of an Indian Official. London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1884.

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I Index

Page references in italics refer to illustrations. Abdul Gapur, Datu Patinggi, of Sarawak, 12, 43, 50, 54, 58–9, 70, 76, 79, 86, 102–4, 106–7, 109–15, 120, 149, 153–4, 156, 161–2, 164–7, 195, 227n, 228n, 243n, 245n accused by Sarawak datus of plotting overthrow of Brooke state, 163 alleged role in Malay Plot, 155–6 becomes pre-eminent Malay chief under James Brooke, 53 claims to pre-eminence, 24 created Datu Haji by James Brooke, 155 Abdul Kadir, Pengiran, 51 Abdul Kassim, nakhoda, 234n Abdul Rahman, Datu Patinggi, of Sarikei, 146–7, 153, 253n, 254n conflict with Sherif Masahor, 147–8 Abdul Rahman, Syed, Sultan of Pontianak, xix, 8, 22, 213n; see also Pontianak Abé, Rev., 115 Abel Smith, John, 198 Abi, Henry Steele’s killer, 150 Aboo, appointed kapitan China in Kuching, 135 Abu Bakar, Sherif, of Skrang, 79, 235n probable relationship to Sherifs Sahib and Mullah, 234n adat, 20, 21 Bidayuh, 120 Iban, 75 Malay, and treason, 113 violated by Rentap, 92 agriculture, 1–3, 57 and Christianity, 96 success at as a function of Malay kingship, 266n Iban, and spiritual status, 75, 95 Ahmat, Datu Abang, of Paku, 76 Aing, Abang, of Skrang, 203 supports Brereton at Skrang, 85–6 Aji, Saribas leader, 96, 241n Akam Nipa, Kayan chieftain, 146, 149, 161

Alam, Tengku, of Singapore, 171 Albatross, HMS, 83 Ali, Abang, of Sarikei, 154, 156, 160–1, 166, 257n implicated in conspiracy against Sherif Masahor, 167 recognised as ‘chief of the Malays’ in the Rejang, 168 Ali, Datu Patinggi, of Sarawak, 41, 43, 50, 54, 102–3, 106, 227n, 228n, 242n, 254n area of authority, 53 claims to pre-eminence, 24 sends son to offer James Brooke the rulership of Sarawak, 44 Ali, Raja Muda, of Riau, xvii, 8, 22 Ali, Sultan, of Singapore, 171 Amir, Datu Laksamana, of Paku, 76–9 Ampu Jakmata, founder of Banjarmassin, xix, 8, 22 Andaya, Barbara Watson, 61 Anderson, Benedict, xv, 22, 48, 267n Anglo-Burmese War of 1824, 33 anomy, among Iban, 75–6, 95 antimony, 25–6, 48, 59, 95, 119, 134, 137 anti-piracy legislation, enacted by British in 1825, 70 antique jars, 2 antus, 20–1 Apai Bakir, Iban leader on lower Layar river, 97, 240n; see also Bunyau Apai Dendang, 239n, attacked by Sarawak forces in 1854, 91 Aparkarang, sultanate of, 22 Arabs, 104, 166 Atib, Abang, of Sarikei, 167 Atiow, appointed as kapitan China, 132 autonomy, Chinese, development of, 140–1 Ayu, Datu Imam, of Paku, 76 Bakir, Panglima, Iban leader on lower Layar river, 77, 94

288

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INDEX balai, 62 Bampfylde, C.A., xiv; see also Baring-Gould, S., and C.A. Bampfylde Bandar family, of Sarawak, 154, 161, 163, 167, 195 Banjarmassin, 22, 163 Banting, Iban at, 200; see also Lingga Iban Baring-Gould, S., and C.A. Bampfylde, xiv, xx, 24, 44, 253n Bassett, David, xx, 165 on unreliability of European sources for Southeast Asian history, xvii–xviii rejects conventional accounts of Malay ‘Plot’, 156–7 bastardy, taint of in Victorian society, 178; see also illegitimacy Batang Lupar basin, expanded Iban farming in, 95 Batavia, 174 Bath, 34 Bau Chinese, 123; see also Chinese goldminers conflict with Brooke state, causes of, 129–34 Bau kongsi, 127 Bau, 53, 123, 126, 131–2, 137–8 Bau-Siniawan, 251n Bayang, Lundu Dyak, 243n Beccari, Odoardo, 3, 129 bejalai (Iban expeditions), 12, 20, 76, 94–5; see also bekuli bekuli, 95 Belcher, Captain Edward, 52, 130, 147 Belcher, Edward, at Berau, xvi Belgium, James Brooke proposes to cede Sarawak to, 184–7 Belidah fort Charles Grant builds, 4, 137, 138 James Brooke builds, 132 Sarawak Malay fort at, 39 surrenders to James Brooke, 43 Bengal Army, 33 berkat, to visit a kramat in order to enhance spiritual status, 19 Berthelot, 6 Bethune, C.D., 57, 130 Beting Marau, battle at, 14, 74, 83–5, 95, 97, 148, 242n Bibit, 63; see also Stia Rajah Bidayuh, 21, 39, 57, 59, 103, 107–11, 113–14, 117–20, 126–8, 133, 162, 196; see also Sampro, Sentah, Serang, Sigo, Simpoke, Singe, Sow accept James Brooke’s authority, 53 cosmology, 19 passim James Brooke in, 64–6, 115–16, 120–2 engage James Brooke’s semangat, 64–6, 115–16, 121 esteem James Brooke as source of fertility and fecundity, 207 ethnography of, 14–17 differences from Iban, 14, 218n paradoxical relationship with James Brooke, 101 resistance to Brooke imposts, 115, 117–20 rituals to enhance semangat, 20–2, 64–6, 115–16, 121

289

Bidi, 137 bileks, in Iban social organisation, 10 Bintulu, 3, 41, 139, 259n binua, in Bidayuh social organisation, 15 Bit, Abang, Saribas Malay noble, 78 Black, Ian, xviii Bodhisattva, echoed in Malay kingship, 64 Bonham, Governor, of Singapore, 35 Borneo Company, 126, 133–4, 152, 168–70, 180, 186, 201 Borneo ‘lobby’, 201 Boyle, Federick, 12, 139, 259n Brereton, William, 85–90 East India Company (English), 31–3 British Government, 201 James Brooke’s alienation from, 102 relations with Sarawak, 174 British, commercial and political activities, 24–5, 38 British, commission into James Brooke’s activities, 107, 134, 242n Abdul Gapur testifies at as Datu Patinggi of Sarawak, 113 British, persuaded by James Brooke to attack Brunei in 1846, 81 Brooke family, 30, 201, 223n Brooke state and patron–client systems, 100 Bidayuh resistance as a catalyst for the development of, 114 Chinese credit networks and, 139 economic resources of, 115 failure to integrate Iban by 1849, 84–5 passim financial crisis of, 168–9, 183 histories of, xiv military interests in Rejang basin, 147 nature of, 206–10 patronage, economic and military structures of, 191–2, 199, 210 resistance to by Bidayuh, 117–19 by Brunei, 81–2 by Chinese, 129–34, 138 by Iban, 70–4, 76, 82–4, 89–93 by Sherif Abu Bakar, 79 resists establishment of Chinese secret societies, 135 ritual basis of, 207–9 passim threatened by Pengiran Dipa and Sherif Masahor, 169–70 use of terror by, 161 Brooke, Agnes, 197 Brooke, Annie, 266n Brooke, Basil, 176 Brooke, Brooke, 86, 90, 92, 95, 102, 109–12, 118–9, 135, 140, 152–5, 157, 159, 162, 169–70, 172–3, 179–80, 181, 183, 189, 190–4, 196, 199, 200–2, 205, 237n, 247n, 251n, 262n, 266n; see also Johnson, John Brooke appointed to Supreme Council, 114 banished by Supreme Council, 197 death of, 203 entitled Tuan Besar, 185, 261n

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installed as Rajah Muda, 186–7 opposed to cession of Sarawak, 184–5, 187 Brooke, Charles William, 30–2 Brooke, Charles, 95, 147, 173–4, 182, 188–9, 192, 195–6, 199–201, 203–5, 252n, 259n passim, 268n; see also Johnson, Charles Arthur Crookshank refuses to serve under, 191, 197 nominated as heir to James Brooke, 202 succeeds as ruler, 203 Brooke, Esca, 268n Brooke, George, 176–80, 183, 185, 189, 203; see also Walker, Reuben Brooke, Henry, 32 Brooke, Hope, 204, 269n Brooke, Mrs, 3, 63; see also Stuart, Anna Maria Brooke, Ruth Pattle, 30–1 Brooke, Thomas, 30–4, 224n Brooke, William, 32 Brown, Donald, 5, 128 Brown, Helen, 201, 259n Bruce, Lady Augusta, 201 Bruit, sago town, 3, 152 Brunei court traditions, 179 Brunei Malays, 51, 55 Brunei town, 153 Brunei, 155, 158–60, 169, 170, 186 and sago trade, 144, 150 attempts to regain control of Sadong and Lingga rivers in 1848, 82 confronts James Brooke’s claims over Iban areas in 1846–7, 81–2 political developments at following Mahkota’s death, 165–6 Brunei, Sultan of, 152–3, 158, 160, 165, 169, 170–1, 174, 207 Brunei, sultanate of, 5–6, 8, 22, 25, 27, 145, 221n, 222n administration of Sarawak, 24 Buah Raya, Panglima, Skrang Iban leader on Entabai River, 148 Buassan, Datu Bandar, of Sarawak, 164, 190, 196, 231n; see also Buassan, Datu Imam avoids repudiating Brooke Brooke, 195 appointed Datu Bandar in 1860, 163 Buassan, Datu Imam, of Sarawak, 154, 161–2 created Datu Imam, 112 appointed to Supreme Council, 114 implicated in conspiracy against Sherif Masahor, 167 succeeds Molana as Datu Bandar in 1860, 163 Buda, Saribas leader, 96–7 budi, 60 Budrudeen, Pengiran, 40–1, 72 romantic attachment to James Brooke, 51 Bujang Timpang Brang, cannon captured in Sambas in 1724, 5 passim Bujang, Sherif, 104, 106, 153, 166–8 Bukit Rabong, 89, 238n Bukit Sadok see Sadok Bulan Patan, Iban leader on Layar river, 77 Bulan, Skrang Iban leader, 79–81, 85 Bunyau, Iban leader on lower Layar river, 77; see also Apai Bakir

Burdett Coutts family, 33, 223n Burdett Coutts, Angela, 169, 180, 201, 206–7, 223n, 259n James Brooke appoints as heir to Sarawak, 173 Burns, Robert, 4 Burrator, 202 Butterworth, Governor, of Singapore, 8 Cambodia, 207 cannons, cosmological significance of, 36 Canton, governor of, 133 Castle Huntley, 33–4 Cavenagh, Orfeur, Governor of Singapore, 172, 187–8 cession opposed by Brooke Brooke, 172, 184–5, 188 opposed by Sarawak Malays, 184–5, 202 proposed, of Sarawak to Belgium, 184–7 to Britain, 174, 183–4, 202 to France, 184 to Holland, 125, 184 Chambers, Rev., 96 Chan Ah Koh, 139 charisma, 36, 61, 219n and James Brooke, 125 and semangat, 18 and state formation, 21 destabilising and unpredictable operations of, 22 chawat (loincloth), 63–4 Chew, Daniel, 127, 131, 133 Chin, John, 137 China, 3, 6, 197 China, Emperor of, as son of heaven, 141, 143 Chinese goldminers, 55, 59, 114 Chinese ‘revolt’, 123–34, 163, 183 financial consequences of for Sarawak, 168, 170, 183 weakens Sarawak government, 152 Chinese, collaboration with Brooke state, 134–8 Chinese, community at Kuching, 134 devastated during Chinese ‘revolt’, 137 pro-government during Chinese ‘revolt’, 135–6 remain loyal to Brooke state, 124 Chinese, community at Lundu, 136–7 Chinese compradors, 134–8 Chinese, cosmology, 141–3 Chinese, from Sambas, 39, 130 Chinese, labour employed by James Brooke, 59 employed by Borneo Company, 137 Chinese leadership in Kuching, 135, 139 Christianity and rice harvests, 96 as spiritual re-validation among Iban, 95–7 ‘circle’, in patron–client systems, 100 clothes, and ritual status, 63–4, 208 coal mines, Iban working in by 1855, 95 Cobden, William, 83 Colonial Office, 158 colonisation of Sarawak, Malays opposed to, 183, 188, 202 Commerce, 6

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common sense, cultural construction of, xvi, 212n communications in Borneo, 3–4 compradors, Chinese, 134–8 consulate, British in Sarawak, 187 Consul-General, Edwardes’s powers as, 170 cosmology and James Brooke’s power, 47 Bidayan, 19 passim James Brooke aware of, 65 Chinese, 141–3 Iban, 19 passim, 95 implications of James Brooke’s 1843 and 1844 campaigns for, 75–7 in political culture, 17, 20–1 passim materialisation of, 22 of power, 204 Cotter, C.P., 268n Court (law), 56 Coutts, Angela Burdett see Burdett Coutts, Angela Coutts, Thomas, 259n Crawford, John, 22 credit dependence see dependency, credit, also patron–client relations credit advanced by Borneo Company to Sarawak government, 168–9 advanced by Sarawak nakhodas to Mukah sago producers, 170 Angela Burdett Coutts extends to Sarawak, 259n extended by James Brooke to his followers, 58 Cresswell, Captain, 159 Crisswell, Colin, 127, 157, 200 Crookshank, Arthur, 124, 135, 179, 186, 188–9, 203 appointed Resident of Sarawak, 191, 197 repudiates Brooke Brooke, 192 Crookshank, Bertha, 124, 133, 135 Cruikshank, Fitz (James Brooke), 186, 188–9 appointed Resident of the Rejang, 191 Cruikshank, John, surgeon, romantic involvement with James Brooke, 34 Cruikshank, John (son of the above), 197 passim cultural analysis, xv and economic and social structures, xvi, 210 of Bidayuh resistance, 120–2 of Bidayuh support for James Brooke, 64–6, 115–16 of Iban–Brooke relations, 74–6, 87–9, 93–7 of James Brooke’s role as raja, 207–9 of Malay competition, 119–20 tendency of to overlook dissent, pluralism and the material bases of existence, 210 culture, Iban, Charles Brooke’s admiration of, 196

Molana, Datu Bandar; Rancha, Datu Bandar; Sumsu, Datu Bandar. Datu Haji, title created for Abdul Gapur, 162 Datu Imam, title, 112; see also Ayu, Datu Imam; Buassan, Datu Imam Datu Laksamana, title, 77; see also Amir, Datu Laksamana; Omar, Datu Laksamana; Minudeen, Datu Laksamana Datu Patinggi, title, 24, 50, 77, 102, 114, 120; see also Abdul Gapur, Datu Patinggi; Ali, Datu Patinggi; Abdul Rahman, Datu Patinggi; Udin, Datu Patinggi; Mir, Abang datu titles, competition for a source of conflict, 50, 159 Datu Tumanggong, title, 24, 50, 77, 195; see also Mersal, Datu Tumanggong; Mohammad Hassan, Abang datus, Sarawak Malay, 49–51 as chiefs, 109 at bureaucrats, 107 in the administration of justice, 55–6 nature of authority under James Brooke, 58 ideas about justice, 56 trade with Bidayuh constrained, 59 urge Brooke Brooke to maintain Sherif Masahor’s exclusion from Sarikei, 155 Daud, Bandari, of Talang Talang, 51 daulat, immutable power of Malay rulers, 19, 141, 198 De Sande, Spanish Captain–General in Manila, 5 debt, see credit, dependency Denison, Noel, 196 on ritual relations between Malays and Bidayuh, 21 dependency, 208, see also patron–client relations and gift-giving, 37 and the structure of trade, 7–9 passim, 60 credit, within Chinese community, 138–9 Derby, Lord, 184 derhaka, repugnance of Malay rulers for, 113; see also treason Diana, 45–6, 52 Dido, HMS, 61–2, 63, 72 Dipa, Pengiran, of Mukah, 151–4, 156, 168–9, 171, 259n dissent, and cultural analysis, 210 Doering, Otto, xvi Douglas, F.W., British Resident in Brunei, 51 Durop, Abang, 85, 153, 109 passim, 149 Dutch, 24–5, 39, 129–32, 134, 164 James Brooke proposes to cede Sarawak to, 125, 184; see also Holland Sarawak Malays seek support of, 174 seek to annex Lundu, Sematan, Sarawak and Sadong to Sambas, 26

dagang sera (forced trade), 9 Dalton, John, 25 Dana, Orang Kaya Pamancha, Iban leader on Padeh river and Layar river, 12, 77–8, 96, 170 Datu Bandar, title, 24, 50, 76–7, 102; see also, Ali, Datu Bandar; Buassan, Datu Bandar; Hamid, Datu Bandar; Kassim, Datu Bandar;

Earl, George Windsor, 25, 34, 35, 13–14, 221n economic resources, 210 James Brooke’s extraction of, 99, 109, 162–3 of Abdul Gapur, 109 of Brooke state, 115, 137, 150 of James Brooke, 48 of Rejang river, 146 of upper Sarawak, contest over, 123

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education, 96, 103–6 and Malay kingship, 64 Edwardes, George, 158–9, 169–71 Egremont, Earl of, 176 Elgin, Lord, Governor-General of India, 187–8 Endicott, Kirt, 18, 65 entourages (in patron–client systems), 7–8, 50–1, 59–60, 65, 67, 80, 99–101, 151–3, 155, 162–3, 190, 199, 209 Errington, Shelly, xv, 17, 29, 36, 61, 100, 119, 128, 218n ethnicity, and power, xvii, 66–7 ethnography, 6, 17–21 passim of Bidayuh, 14–17 passim of Iban, 9–14 passim of Malays, 6–9 passim Eurocentrism, 208 European archives, use of in understanding Southeast Asian history, xvii–xix European elite (of Sarawak), 179 expenditure, Sarawak Government, exceeds revenues, 168

Great Britain; see also British James Brooke proposes to cede Sarawak to, 174, 183, 202 relations with Sarawak, 188 Gullick, J.M., 204 guns, cosmological significance of, 36

Hahn, Emily, xiv, 6, 30, 33, 64, 173 Hakka, Chinese dialect, 248n halus, 47–8 passim, 208 Hamid, Datu Bandar, of Rimbas, 76–8, 234n, 236n Hanks, Lucien, 100 Hare, Alexander, xvi Harrisson, Tom, xviii, 103 Harrow, 176 Hashima, Pengiran anak, 51 Hassim, Raja Muda, of Brunei, 9, 12, 26, 35–8, 40–1, 44–6, 48–52, 59, 61–2, 67, 130, 145, 153 equivocates about installing James Brooke in the government of Sarawak, 43 installs James Brooke as ruler of Sarawak, 46 killed by opponents at Brunei, 81 Fairbairn, Sir Thomas, 179–80 offers James Brooke rulership of Siniawan and Farquhar, William, 25, 74, 83 Sarawak, 40 Fatima, Dayang, 104, 109, 113, 153 religio-magical potency of, 28–9 Fatimah, Pengiran, possible marriage to James role in Sarawak, 26–7 Brooke, 51 seeks James Brooke’s military assistance, 39 fecundity, James Brooke as a source of, 207 Hassim, Datu Pen, of Paku, 76 fertility, James Brooke as a source of, 207 Hastings, Warren, 174 Fidler, Richard, 141–3 Hay, Robert, 118, 188–9, 194, 195, 197, 202, finances, James Brooke’s, 59–60 268n financial crisis, of Sarawak government, 168–9, headhunting, 20 183 authorised by Brooke state, 87, 90 passim Findley, 34 Bidayuh, 15–16 forced trade see dagang sera Iban, 12; see also ngayau Foreign Office, 170 outlawed in Sarawak territory, 68 forest products, 3, 7, 48, 146 Healey, Christopher, 3–4 fortifications, Sarawak’s enhanced, 68, 71–2 Heaven and Earth Society, in Sarawak, 133 fortman, 160, 170, 202, forts, Sarawak government, 4, 85–7, 86, 132, 137, Helms, Ludvig Verner, 95, 124, 126, 134–5 hierarchies 138, 148, 161, 187, 191, 192, 237n invisible or imagined, and material realities, 22 Fox, Charles, 155–60, 163, 166, 200, 251n conceptions of in Southeast Asia, xvii inadequacies of, 150, Hikayat Banjar, xvii, 8, 22–3, 48 France, James Brooke proposes to cede Sarawak Hikayat Deli, 67 to, 184 historiography, of Sarawak, xiv–xviii Freeman, Derek, 18, 75 Holland, threat of annexation by, 184; see also Dutch Gardner, William, 30–1 Gassing, Orang Kaya, Skrang Iban leader, 79, 81, Horsburgh, A., 36 hostages, taken by James Brooke, 85, 236n 85–6, 88, 90–1, 95, 96 houses, ritual and cosmological significance of, describes James Brooke as a perabong, 89 106 Geddes, William, 15, 17, 120–2 Huntington, Samuel, 83, 85 Geertz, Clifford, xv Hussain, Sultan, of Singapore, 113 gift-giving, by James Brooke, 44, 48, 85 and potency, 37 Iban, 2, 9–14, 70–98, 129, 160, 200, 206, 218n; Gila Berani, Skrang Iban leader, 80 see also Kanowit, Lingga, Lundu, Saribas Gladstone, William, 14 and Skrang, Sibuyau gold deposits, worked by non-kongsi miners, 137 concerned to increase nama, 77 Gomes, Edwin, 187, 218n cosmology of, 19 passim Grant, Alan, 197, 266n cultural adaptation and innovation, 93–8 Grant, Charles, 9, 56, 107, 115, 118–9, 127, esteem James Brooke as source of fertility, 207 136–7, 141, 161, 163, 179–80, 185–6, 197, ethnography of, 9–14 207, 218n, 251n

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INDEX Iban on Emparan river, on James Brooke’s ritual status, 88 inequality and egalitarianism, 12 integration into Brooke state, 84–7 James Brooke’s attacks on, implications of in cultural terms, 74–7 representations of James Brooke’s authority, 88–9 ritual status diminished by James Brooke, 92 Igan, sago town, 147, 151–2, 154, 156, 165, 167 Illanun, 12, 201 illegitimacy, barriers in society of, 179; see also bastardy Indah, Dayang, 107 India, Governor-General of, 32, 187–8 Indian mutiny, 163 Indra Lela, 217n Ingleson, John, 158 insurgency, Sarawak Malay, 26, 29–30 Islam, organisation of, 103 basis for Molana’s power, 104 stimulated by Christian missionaries, 231n proselytising at Lundu, 107–9 Istanbul, 64 Jacob, Gertrude, xiv, xx, 33, 113 38, 173 passim Jaffar, Sherif, of Lingga, 41, 71–2 Jaffir, Pengiran, 52 Jensen, Eric, 95 Jenudin, Abang, of Sarikei, 167 Johnson, Charles, 87–8, 91–3, 125–7, 129, 133, 149, 155, 157, 160–1, 163–4, 166–7, 170, 179, 183, 185–6, 188, 238n, 240n, 247n, 257n; see also Brooke, Charles appointed to Supreme Council, 114 assumes Brooke name, 172–3 close to nervous breakdown, 163 impressed with Datu Haji Abdul Gapur’s loyalty, 162 James Brooke’s love for, 262n temporarily in charge of Sarawak government, 152–3 Johnson, Charles, Rev., 175–8 Johnson, Emma, 33, 201–2, 237n Johnson, John Brooke, 34, 175; see also Brooke, Brooke Juga, Orang Kaya Tumanggong, Iban leader from Lundu, 12, 51, 88, 95, 238n Julau river, attacked by Sarawak, 92–4 Kabah, attacked by Charles Johnson, 160–1 Kajaman, Dyak tribe, 200 Kalaka, 12, 139, 146–8 Kalaka basin, Christian proselytising in, 97 Kalaka fort, 237n Kalaka river, 82 Kanowit Abang Ali settles at, 167 colonised by Lingga Malays, 161 peace conferences at, 86 Kanowit fort, 85, 148–9, 153, 161 Kanowit river, 147–8, 160, 198 attacked by Sarawak forces, 84–5, 91–2 Kanowits, Dyak tribe, 147, 149–50, 160, 253n

293

Kanowit Iban, 149 Kapi, Abang, Skrang Malay, 58, 79, 85, 234n Kapit, colonised by Lingga Malays, 161 kapitan China, 132, 135–7 kapitan Inglis, 132 Kapuas basin, overland communications with Sarawak, 4 Kapuas river, 22, 164 Karangan Pris, Skrang town, 72 Kassim, Datu Bandar, of Sadong, 103, 109, 165, 167, 242n Katibas river, settled by Batang Lupar Iban, 93 Katibas Iban, Charles Brooke attacks, 203 Katupong, Sarawak Malay town, 24, 26 Kautsky, John, 7 Kayan, 4, 146–7, 149, 160, 252n Charles Brooke’s expedition against, 199–200 conflict with Iban, 200 Kegan, Charles, 31 Keling, James Brooke as his son, 88 Kennedy, Captain, commanded James Brooke’s schooner, Findley, 34 Kenyah Badeng, trade routes, 4 Keppel, Henry, 57, 61–2, 67, 70, 74, 82–3, 146, 209 Keppel, Mrs, 70 kingship, Malay concepts of, 64 Koch, Rosina, 187 kongsi, at Bau, 135–7, 168 kongsis see Chinese revolt conflict with Dutch, 129–32 development in Borneo, 129 growth in Sarawak, 129–3 war between Ta-Tang and San-tiao-kuo, 131 kramat, sacred place or person, 19, 219n at Santubong, associated with James Brooke, 204 James Brooke believes his grave will become, 203 Kubu, Al-Aidarusi Tuan of, xvii Kuching, 26, 111, 190 Kuching Chinese, 138 Kuching fort, strengthened, 163 Kuching Malays, 202; see also Sarawak Malays Kumang, James Brooke as her son or lover, 88 Kutai, 5, Erskine Murray at, xvi Kwan Yin, Chinese goddess of mercy, 142–3 Labuan Brooke Brooke seeks governorship of, 202 James Brooke appointed governor of, 82, 175 James Brooke’s uniform as governor of, 253n Laderman, Carol, 18–19 Laksa, Panglima, Iban leader from the Undup river, 79 Land Dyaks see Bidayuh law, administration of, 54–6 law courts see law, administration of Law Kian Huat, 139 leadership, and semangat, 18 Leconfield, Baron, 176 Leda Tanah, 24, 26, 53, 126 Lee, Alan, 87, 90, 237n legitimacy, James Brooke’s as raja, 52

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Matahari, or Sumbang, Paku Iban leader, 231n Matahari, Skrang Iban leader, 67 Matali, Pengiran, of Oya, early supporter of James Brooke, 145, 151–2, 254n Matan, Sultan of, 19 Mato, sago town, 3, 151–2 Matusin, Pengiran, of Mukah, 150–2, 154–5, 165, 195 McDougall, Francis T., Bishop of Sarawak, 48, 83, 109, 115, 124, 136, 163, 175, 187, 189, 192, 195–6, 208 assumes leadership of Kuching during Chinese ‘revolt’, 125 on James Brooke’s mental state, 111 on the nature of Brooke rule, xvii McDougall, (Harriette) Mrs, 24, 110, 118, 124, 127, 139, 150, 188, 197 reassures her mother there is no Malay plot, 156–7 Meander, HMS, 82 Mecca, 112–14 Melaka see Malacca Melanaus, 144, 147, 150, 252n melancholia, of Brooke Brooke, 173 Mempawa, 8, 25, 129 Menabun, Opu Daeng, xvii, 22 mental health of Brooke Brooke, 173, 203 of Charles Johnson, 163 of James Brooke, 114, 197 passim Mahkota, Pengiran, 28, 35, 38–41, 43–6, 48, 50, Merkus, Deputy Governor-General of East Indies, 51–5, 59, 61, 103, 160, 165, 210 221n administration of Sarawak, 26, 29 Mersal, Datu Tumanggong, of Sarawak, 43, 50, dispatched to Mukah, 151 53, 68, 91, 103, 112, 114, 128, 152, 154, unexpected death of, 166 162–3, 174, 195 Malacca, 5, 114–15, 126 appointed to Supreme Council, 114 Malay courtly traditions, 35; see also political believed to be a kramat, 19 culture offers James Brooke the rulership of the Malay culture, James Brooke and, 48 country, 44 Malay plot, of 1853–4, 102–15 metaphysics, and concepts of power, xvi Malay plot, of 1859–61, 150, 155–68 Middleton, Chief Constable, 123 Kayan expedition as aftermath of, 200 Middleton, Mrs, 123, 135 Malay society, stratified nature of, 7 Middleton, Nathaniel, 31 Malays, 6–7, 39; see also Sarawak Malays military interests, of Brooke state, in Rejang ethnography of, 17–21 passim basin, 147 malu (shame), 89, 91 military power, 97, 207 manang, 10–12 Brooke Brooke enhances, 168, 187 Maraxa de Raxa see Pengiran Maharaja de Raja Charles Brooke enhances, 202 Maritime Code, 8 demonstrated by Kayan campaign, 199 Marryat, Frank, 33, 72, 134 James Brooke’s, 70–4, 76, 80, 126 Marudu Bay, 35 boosted by Nemesis, 82–3 Masahor, Sherif, 104, 147, 149, 151, 153–5, cultural construction of, 209 160–1, 164–6, 168–9, 253n, 259n demonstrated to Bau Chinese, 134 able to mobilise Skrang and Saribas Iban demonstrated by 1849 campaigns, 83–4 against Datu Patinggi Abdul Rahman, 148 enhanced by construction of forts, 4, 85–7, alleged role in Malay Plot, 155–6 86, 138 believed to be a kramat, 19 of Sherif Masahor, 147 cleared by Edwardes of implication in deaths of plans to enhance Sarawak’s, 151–2 Steels and Fox, 159 military prowess, supernatural inspiration of, denies involvement in Malay plot, 157 233n retires to Singapore, 171 set up by Sarawak Malays for Charles Johnson Milner, Anthony, xv, xviii–xix, 48, 119 Mina, Dayang, 58, 106 to attack, 167 Minto, Lord, 6 Mastiah, Dayang, 203, 268n Minudeen, Datu Laksamana, of Skrang, 85 masuk Melayu, 7 Leman, Abang (Datu Bandar Kassim’s brother), 103 letters, ritual importance of to Malays, 228n Leys, Peter, 7–8 Lingga, 73, 125–6 Brunei attempts to regain control of in 1848, 82 Lingga fort, 85 Lingga Iban, 10, 71, 79, 90, 96, 149 Lingga Malays, 156, 161 Lingga mission, 97 Linggir, Iban leader on Paku river, 77–9 at Beting Marau, 83 Lingi, Skrang Iban leader, 79, 80, 81, 85, 89 Lo Choon Chang, 134–5 Lockard, Craig, xiv, xvi, xvii, 24, 26, 29, 57, 66, 123, 130, 134–5, 159, 227n Long, Sherif, 235n Low, Hugh, 14–15, 21, 56, 58, 60, 65–6, 68, 102, 117, 137, 147, 159 Lubok Antu fort, 237n Lundu, 38, 68, 112, 136–7, 156 in Sarawak Malay leadership rivalries, 107, 111, 163 Lundu Iban, 12, 39, 68, 96, 136, 156 and Islam, 107–9, 108 on James Brooke’s ritual status, 88, 238n Lundu river, 12, 14, 103, 232n Luyoh, Saribas leader, 96–7, 170, 241n, 259n

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INDEX Mir, Abang, Datu Patinggi under Mahkota, 49, 51 Miri, 41 missionaries Anglican establish Malay schools, 104–6 stimulate Moslem observance, 104, 231n Moslem, at Lundu, 107 Mohammad, Abang, of Sarikei, 154 Mohammad, Pengiran, 35 Mohammad Alam, Pengiran Muda of Brunei, 25 Mohammad Hassan, Abang, 50 succession as Datu Tumanggong, 195 Mohdzhar, possible identification with Sherif Mullah, 147–8 Moksain, Sherif, 85, 111, 114, 120, 152, 167 Molana, Datu Bandar, of Sarawak, 50, 53, 58, 103–4, 106–7, 109, 112, 114, 120, 123–4, 126, 128, 153–4, 161, 163, 196 benefits from Abdul Gapur’s exile, 112 contests control of Sadong, 103 illness and death of, 162 prosecutes Abdul Gapur, 163 succeeds uncle, 102 Mongkut, King of Siam, 198 Montrado, 134 mosque, construction of in Kuching, 104–6 motivation-organisation vacuum, 83, 85 Muhammad, Sherif, 167–8 Mukah, sago town, 3, 41, 145, 148, 151–2, 155–6, 167–9, 171, 185–6, 194–5, 208, 259n Mullah, Sherif, 67–8, 79, 88 defeated by Sarawak and English forces in 1844, 72 probable relationship to Sherif Abu Bakar, 234n related to Sherif Masahor, 147–8 possible identification with Mohdzhar, 147–8 Mumin, Pengiran, 9 Mundy, Rodney, 209 Murray, Erskine, at Kutai, xvi naik pangkat, 18 nakhoda class, stimulated by foundation of Singapore, 25 nakhodas, 152, 170, 195 nama, 19, 53 passim, 62–3 passim, 119–20, 153, 166, 198–9, 204, 206–7, 209 demonstrations of James Brooke’s, 198–201 diminished by malu (shame), 91 effect of Chinese ‘revolt’ on James Brooke’s, 128 James Brooke’s enhanced by his attack on Saribas in 1843, 71 Nanang, Saribas leader, 96–7, 239n, 241n, 259n narrative realism, in Southeast Asian history, xvii Nemesis, 82–3 ngayau, 12, 76 Nicholetts, Harry, 123 Nicholl, Robert, 5–6 Norwich Grammar School, 32 Ochterlony, David, Sir, 30 Ogilvie, Dr, 51 Omar, Datu Laksamana, of Rimbas, 76–8 Omar Ali, Sultan, of Brunei, 26, 27, 28, 81

295

endorses James Brooke’s appointment as raja, 52 recognises James Brooke’s rank, 61 Ong Ewe Hai, 139, 140 Ongkili, James, xviii, 103 Ooi Keat Gin, xiv opium, 131, 133, 137 oral histories Chinese, 126, 130, 133 Iban, 239n, 240n Kanowit, 157 meaning of, 74 Melanau, 150 Orang Kaya di Gadong, 38–40 Oudh, Begum of, 31 Overbeck, Baron von, xvi overlordship, Malay, 21 Owen, Chinese schoolmaster, 135 Oya, sago town, 3, 145, 152, 169, 233n, 254n Pa Gosting, 118–19 Pa Jaging, 118–19 Pa Rimbam, Orang Kaya, of Singe Bidayuh, 53–4, 61, 113 Pa Tumma, 113 Padeh, Saribas town, 71 padi pun, 75 Paku, Saribas town, 71 Paku river, 83–5 Iban leadership on, 77 Sarawak traders visiting, 95 Palmerston, Lord, 183 pangah, 15 Parembam see Pa Rimbam Pasai, 231n Patah, Abang, 50, 112, 114, 120, 128–9, 154 benefits from Abdul Gapur’s exile, 112 raising revenues at Lundu, 107 uneasy relationship with his father, 162 warns St John of Abdul Gapur’s plot, 111 patronage, by James Brooke, 50, 54, 57, 59, 99 patron–client relations, 116–17, 209 operations of, 99–101 within Chinese community, 138–9; see also credit dependency Patusan, Skrang town, 72, 79 Payne, Robert, xiv peace conferences, organised by Brereton, 86 Pelagus rapids, 199 Penang, 25, 115 Pengiran Indera Mahkota see Mahkota, Pengiran Pengiran Maharaja de Raja, 5 Pengiran Tumanggong, of Brunei, 155, 163, 165–6 Penguilan Maraxa de Raxa see Pengiran Maharaja de Raja Penty, James Brooke’s servant, 124 perabangan, 24, 49; see also Sarawak Malays Kuching, 161, 165, 203 Lingga, 161, 164 rivalries among, 107 Sarawak, 153–4, 159 Saribas, 164

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POWER AND PROWESS

Sarikei, 154–5, 156, 161, 166, 168 Skrang, 164 perabong hari, 89 perabong, James Brooke described as, 89, 207 Perak, 47 Perham, Rev., 96 Pfeiffer, Ida, 135 Phlegethon, 72, 81, 147, 198 pindah, 12, 20, 76 as an Iban response to Brooke attacks, 93–4 piracy, 50 pirates, 70, 232n plunder, 71, 74, 83 passim, 84, 199 pluralism, and cultural analysis, 210 political culture, 60–7 passim, 92 passim, 252n Chinese, 141–3 Iban adaptation and innovation in, 93–8 Iban, 74–7 Malay, and James Brooke, 47–8 Thomas Brooke and Indian, 32 political economy, of fragmentation, 24–30 passim political sociology, 210 polygamy, 204 Po-ni, 5 Pontianak, xvii, 4, 8, 156, 163–6, 213n growth and decline of, 25 Sultan of, 166, see also Abdul Rahman, Syed population census, conducted by Brooke state, 117–18, 200 potency, 206 and Saribas Malay leadership, 78 and semangat, 18 and power, 198 embodied in Iban property, 75 European medicine as, 96 Iban, diminished by James Brooke’s 1843 and 1844 campaigns, 75–6 indications of, 62, 198 James Brooke and, 47, 62, 88, 101, 121, 153 manifested in houses, 106 Raja Muda Hassim’s, 28, 40 reflected by rulers’ sovereign power, 204 transferred through feet, 66 power and control of salt, 4, 147 and ethnicity, xvii and halus-ness, 48 and Iban, 12 and Malay possession of firearms, 14 and metaphysics, xvi and potency, 198 and semangat, 18 and trade, 12, 147 as cosmic energy, 17 characterised in Borneo by instability and change, 22 Chinese and trade, 139 increasingly autonomous, 141 conceptions of in Southeast Asia, xv contested and transient nature in Borneo, xvii cosmological conceptions of, 101, 204 economic, 59–60

of Chinese kongsis, 137 expressed through allocation and acceptance of titles, 12 forms and meaning of important to Thomas Brooke, 32 foundations of James Brooke’s, 47 ideological sources of in Sarawak, 207–9 in Sarawak, sources of, 202 James Brooke, 56 alert to indigenous conceptualisations of, 198 based on Sarawak Malay support, 48 Brooke Brooke and Charles Johnson the support of, 176 Brooke Brooke determined to overthrow, 172 Brooke Brooke shares, 186 enhanced by his trade, 57 enhanced by immigration, 54 extended through Saribas and Skrang, 87 extension of into Rejang, 144–71 passim his cession of Sarawak beyond, 184 in Iban culture, 87–9 in the Rejang, 168 increasingly challenged by Bau Chinese, 132 reassertion of, 189–97 recruits followers to enhance, 44 resolved to sustain his in Iban areas, 85 resumption of opposed, 174 Malay, 17, 145 conceptions of, 18–19 structural features of, 7–8, 102–5 material sources of James Brooke’s, 207, 209 material, social and cultural dimensions of, xvi meaning of James Brooke’s, 60–7 passim mechanics of, 210; see also patron–client relations military, 67–9, 74 nature of James Brooke’s in Sarawak, 206–10 of Brooke state, in Rejang river, 144–71 passim of sherifs, broken in 1843 and 1844, 76 ritual meaning of, 208 saliva in the transmission of, 231n signs of, 267n structures of highly permeable, 22 symbolism of in Southeast Asia, 231n systems of, in Rejang, 144–6 transcendental dimensions of, 210; see also nama, potency, prowess, semangat underpinned by spiritual status, 199 Pringle, Robert, xv–xvii, 12, 21, 127, 157–8, 200, 213n protection, James Brooke authorised to seek for Sarawak, 197 prowess and Malay power, 21–3 and semangat, 20 Charles Brooke’s, 203 James Brooke as man of, 60–7 passim, 84, 89, 128, 153, 199, 207 military, 201 Rentap as man of, 91 spiritual rank as, 60 the state as a territorial measurement of, 207 Punan Ba, trade routes, 4 Pybus, Cassandra, 203

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INDEX Raffles, Stamford, 6, 113, 174 Rainbow, 203 raja berani, in Iban leadership tradition, 10 Rajah Muda, title, 185–6, 263n ambiguity of, 186–7, 263n Brooke Brooke awarded, 186 Brooke Brooke stripped of, 173 Rancha, Datu Bandar, of Sarawak, 50, 227n rank and power, 7 Brooke and James Brooke in conflict over, 173 heritability of among Malays, 7 Read, W.H., 203 Reece, Bob, 5; see also Reece, R.H.W. Reece, R.H.W., 31, 173, 199; see also Reece, Bob Reid, Anthony, 18 Rejang basin, 159–60 settled by Iban, 93 Rejang river, 6, 104, 144–71, 191, 199–200 Abang Ali’s difficulties in controlling, 167–8 Rentap, Iban leader from upper Skrang, 5, 80, 96, 117, 241n attacks Skrang fort in 1853, 90 known as raja ulu, 91 leads opposition to James Brooke in Skrang, 89–93 religio-magical potency of, 91 seeks terms for surrender, 92–3 resistance James Scott on peasant, 116–17 to Brooke state by Bidayuh, 117–20 by Brunei, 81–2 by Chinese, 129–34, 138 by Iban, 70–4, 76, 82–4, 89–93 by Sherif Abu Bakar, 79 revenue, of Sarawak and opium, 131, 137 Chinese immigration and, 131 Chinese valued for, 141 collapses following Chinese revolt, 168 James Brooke’s attempts to develop sources of, 59 Riau-Lingga, sultanate of, 263n rice failure of Iban crops, 198, 200 in Iban culture, 75 shortages of in Brunei, 166 Richards, Anthony, 200 Rimbas, Saribas town, 71 Rimbas river, 82 ritual, and houses, 106 ritual association, tax avoidance as a form of, 121, 122 ritual existence, Malay, threatened by Chinese attack on Kuching, 128 ritual hierarchy James Brooke integrates Iban supporters into, 80 James Brooke irrelevant to Chinese, 141 ritual relationships, James Brooke’s, 99, 207 ritual status asserted by Raja Muda Hassim, 36 Iban, 92 confronted by crop failures, 200

297

re–asserted through Christianisation, 97 indicators of, 61 James Brooke’s among Bidayuh, 115–16 among Iban, 88 confirmed by outcome of Chinese ‘revolt’, 128 of Raja Muda Hassim, diminished by James Brooke, 45 of royal cities in Malay political culture, 128 of Sarawak Malays enhanced through association with James Brooke, 48 rulers as source of, 62 transferred through gifts of clothes, 63 Roche, Miss, 187 Ross, John Dill, xvi, 33 Royal Geographical Society, 34 Royal Navy, 153, 171, 199 Royalist, 34, 36–7, 39, 45–6, 209 rulership of Palawan, Sultan of Brunei offers to John Dill Ross, xvi of Sarawak, 205 Brooke Brooke’s participation in, 186–7 Raja Muda Hassim offers to James Brooke, 40 Sarawak Malays offer James Brooke, 44 Runciman, Steven, xiv, 102 Ruppell, 124 Rutter, Owen, 33 Sabihah bt. Osman, 27 Sadok, 5, 91–3, 241n Sadong river, 14, 70, 72, 103–4, 106, 118, 134, 156, 163–4, 167–8, 220n Brunei tries to regain control of, 166 Datu Bandar Kassim’s mismanagement of, 109 nature of Tunjang’s progress up, 165–6 sago, 3, 144, 252n sago areas, 171; see also Bruit, Igan, Mato, Mukah, Oya sago coast, 195, 210, sago towns, 147, 160, 169; see also Bruit, Igan, Mato, Mukah, Oya sago trade, closure of causing difficulties for Sarawak government, 170 Sahapudin, possible identification with Sherif Sahib, 147–8 Sahib, Sherif, 9, 67–8, 70–2, 79, 88, 103, 113, 134, 166 probable relationship to Sherif Abu Bakar, 234n related to Sherif Masahor, 147–8 Saif ul-Rijal, Sultan, of Brunei, 5 Saint, Max, 173 salt, 4, 144, 146–7 Samarahan river, 5, 14, 38, 54, 109, 117, 232n Samarang, HMS, 53 Sambas, 4, 6, 13–14, 25, 41, 55, 126, 131–2, 135, 166 relations with Sarawak, 26–9 Sambas, Sultan of, 27, 29, 46–7 Sampro Bidayuh, 15, 67 Sandin, Benedict, xvii, xx, 12, 74, 89, 93, 216n, 239n, 240n, 259n

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POWER AND PROWESS

Sanib Said, 102, 157 San-tiao-kuo kongsi, 130, 131–4 Santubong, 5 James Brooke’s semangat believed to inhabit, 204 Sarawak datus, source of accusations against Sherif Masahor, 167 Sarawak Malay elite, and Sarawak’s independence, 204 Sarawak Malay leadership, 111, 193, 195 establish right to determine Sarawak’s international status, 197 divided over support for James Brooke, 46 rivalries among, 99, 102, 107, 159 Sarawak Malays, 39, 41, 46, 49–50, 59–60, 145, 156, 174–5, 206; see also Kuching Malays leadership of contested, 24 offer James Brooke the rulership of the country, 44 offer to cede Sarawak to the Dutch, 29 opposed to cession of Sarawak, 184, 202 plot against Sherif Masahor, 167 re-establish ritual status through association with James Brooke, 48 revolt against Brunei, 26, 29–30 role in resisting Chinese, 124–8 Sarawak Rifles, formed by Brooke Brooke, 152 Sarawak river, 14, 126, 166 Sarawak, 3–5, 25, 38 historiography of, xv–xviii independence of, 204–5 James Brooke arrives at, 35 political geography of, 3–5 rulership of offered to James Brooke, 40, 44 viability of its independence, 174, 183 Sarawak, Raja of, admonished for piracy by British, 6 Saribas and Skrang Iban, 4, 10, 17 develop long range coastal raiding in collaboration with Malays, 13–14 reactions to James Brooke’s 1843 and 1844 campaigns, 76–82 support for Sherif Masahor, 148 Saribas basin, and Christian proselytising, 97 Saribas fort, 237n Saribas Iban, 67–8, 81, 126, 147, 200, 206 at Beting Marau, 83–4 conversion to Christianity as spiritual re-validation, 95–7 James Brooke attacks in 1843, 71 leadership fragmented, 77 relations with Malays, 12 support for Sherif Masahor, 170 Saribas leadership, 77–8 submit to James Brooke in Kuching following Beting Marau, 85 Saribas Malays, 77–8, 156 Saribas river, 12 attacked by Sarawak forces 91–2 failure of rice crops, 198, 200 fortified by Iban supporting Sherif Masahor, 170 opened to Chinese traders, 95, 134 power fragmented in, 77–8 Sarikei, 134, 147–8, 151, 154, 160, 165, 242n

Abang Ali at, 167 Charles Johnson orders Masahor to return to, 166 James Brooke builds fort at, 154 Malay chieftaincy at, 144, 146 Malays want to re-locate to Kuching, 153 Sherif Masahor driven from by Charles Johnson, 156 Sarikei fort, 154 Sarikei Malays, 153–4 Sather, Clifford, 12, 74, 75, 89 Saunders, Graham, xiv, xvi, 90, 173, 197 Savage, Margaret, 201–2 Sawing, 199–200 Scaddan, Sultan of, 19 Scott, James, 99, 116–17 Scout, HMS, 199 Sea Dyaks see Iban secret societies, Chinese, activities in Sarawak, 133, 135–6 Sekalai, 199–200 Sekapan dyaks, 200 Sekundis, fort constructed by Raja Muda Hassim’s forces, 41 semangat, viii, 19, 119–22, 198–200, 206–7, 209, 218n, 253n; see also semengat, simungi and charisma, 18 and clothes, 63–4 and gift-giving, 37 and James Brooke, 60–7 passim, 125 and misfortune, 21 and potency, 18 and power, 18 Bidayuh, 21 Bidayuh participation in James Brooke’s, 102 Iban, 21, 75 James Brooke as a source of, 153 James Brooke as a source of for Saribas Malays, 78 James Brooke’s, 99, 123, 143 and Bidayuh, 115–16 and Iban, 84–5 apparently diminished by Chinese ‘revolt’, 128 believed to have returned to Sarawak, 204 early indications of, 36 enhanced by defeat of Chinese, 129 enhanced by his attack on Saribas in 1843, 71 failure of, among Chinese, 141 opportunities to engage, 40 understanding of, 92 need to strengthen and keep embodied, 20 Sematan, 112, 135, 166 semengat, viii, 238n; see also semangat Sentah Bidayuh, 118 sepoys, recruited by Charles Brooke, 202 Serang Bidayuh, 54 Sibu, Kanowits settle at, 149 Sibuyau Iban, 10 Sigo Bidayuh, 54 Simpoke Bidayuh, 53 simungi, viii, 122; see also semangat

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INDEX Singapore, 35, 38, 61, 70, 133, 144, 162, 171, 173, 189, 197, 203 effect of on Malay trade, 25, 47 Singapore, Governor of, 133, 172, 197; see also Bonham; Cavenagh, Orfeur Singapore Chamber of Commerce, 35 Singe Bidayuh, 15, 44–5, 61, 228n and resistance to Brooke state, 53–4, 117 Siniawan, 39–41, 126, 130–1 Sir James Brooke, 126–7 sirat (loincloth), 63–4 Skinner, James, 30–1 Skrang, peace conferences at, 86 Skrang fort, 85–7, 86 Skrang Iban, 44, 67, 81, 85, 126, 147, 200, 202, 206, 209; see also Saribas and Skrang Iban on James Brooke’s ritual status, 88 Skrang Malays, 203 Skrang river, 58, 92, 107, 134, 197 attacked by James Brooke in 1844, 72 failure of rice crops, 198, 200 used to centralised leadership under Sherifs Sahib and Mullah, 79 slash-and-burn farming, 1–3; see also swidden agriculture smallpox, James Brooke almost dies of, 111 social anthropology, Robert Pringle’s analysis informed by, xvii soul, importance of in Chinese folk religion, 143; see also semangat sovereignty see rulership Sow Bidayuh, 67–8 spiritual re-validation, and Christianity among Iban, 95–7 spiritual status, 199, 206 and Malay competition for resources, 101 Iban and agriculture, 75, 95 asserted through opposition to James Brooke, 89–93 diminished by James Brooke’s 1843 and 1844 campaigns, 75–6 enhanced through cultural adaptation and innovation, 93–8 revalidated through association with James Brooke, 80 James Brooke’s high, 116 St John, James, 158 St John, James Augustus, on the nature of Brooke rule, xix St John, Oliver, 143, 192, 196 St John, Spenser, xvi, xxii, 12, 14, 9, 32, 33, 40–1, 48, 53, 55–6, 64, 93, 95, 109–13, 117, 124, 127, 130, 132–4, 151–2, 158, 169, 172, 185–6, 188, 192, 196, 202, 204 disgusted by Charles Brooke’s expeditions, 92 maintains Tani’s innocence, 160, persuades Foreign Office to recall him to duty, 170–1 sceptical about claims of a Malay plot, 157 succeeds James Brooke as British ConsulGeneral in Borneo, 255n St John family, 158 state formation, 3, 21, 48, 207–8

299

status structures, in Sarawak, 198 status; see also spiritual status Brooke Brooke determined to protect his own, 183 claims to, 207 importance of to Sarawak people, 191 ritual James Brooke’s forts as sites of, 87 of James Brooke, 201 Steele, Henry, 91, 123, 155–60, 163, 166, 200 appointed as kapitan Inglis, 132 given command of Kanowit fort, 149 Steinmeyer, Otto, 88 Stia Rajah, conflict with Pa Rimbam, 53–4; see also Bibit Stonhouse, romantic involvement with James Brooke, 34 Stuart, Anna Maria, James Brooke’s mother, 30; see also Brooke, Mrs succession, to Sarawak and William Brooke, 268n Angela Burdett Coutts nominated to, 173 Charles Brooke’s, 203 Hope Brooke excluded from, 204, 269n promised to Brooke Brooke, 175 promised to Charles Brooke, 202 Reuben Walker (George Brooke) threatens Brooke Brooke’s, 176–9 Sukadana sultanate, 8, 22, 25 Sullivan, Patrick, xx Sultana, 45 Sulu, sultanate of, 9 Sumbang, or Matahari, Paku leader, 231n Sumsu, Datu Bandar, of Lundu, 51 Sungei Lang, 91 Suntah Bidayuh, 54, 115 supernatural powers, James Brooke believed to exercise, 80, 120 Supreme Council, 114, 173, 190, 192–5, 197, 202 Sutlive, Vinson, xvii, 19, 93 swidden agriculture, 57; see also slash-and-burn farming Swift, 43 Talang Talang islands, 50, 112, 162 Talip, Henry Steele’s killer, 150, 199–200 Tamawan, Kayan chieftain, 198 Tani, Kanowit chieftain, 149 executed by Charles Johnson, 160 Tarling, Nicholas, xvi, 30–1, 158, 191 Ta-tang kongsi, 131–4 tax avoidance, 117–19, 131, 138 ritual association and, 121–2, 121 taxes, indirect, 119 Templer, John, xviii, 29, 45, 68, 70, 213n Testimonial fund, raised for James Brooke, 180, 183 Tidman, Paul, 125–8 T’ien Kung, (King of Heaven), 142–3 titles allocation of by Malays to Iban leaders, 12 Brooke and James Brooke in conflict over, 173 James Brooke as source of, 207 Torrey, Joseph, xvi

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towkays, 139 trade and development of entourages, 7 passim, 59–60 and patron–client links, 7 as perquisite of sovereignty, 8–9 as the source of Malay wealth and power, 7–9 passim Chinese, and power, 139 Iban levels of increase after Sarawak attacks, 94–5 importance of control of to domination and state formation, 3 James Brooke engages in, 57 Malay attempts to monopolise, 3 Trafalgar, battle of, 83 treason, Abdul Gapur’s alleged, lack of evidence for, 112–13; see also derhaka Ts’ai Shen, Chinese wealth god, 142–3 T’u Ti Kong, Chinese wealth god, 141, 143 Tua Pek Kong, Chinese wealth god, 142, 143 tua kampong, 111–13 tuai rumah, 10, 20 Tuan Besar, title, 185, 247n, 261n Tuan Imam, 196 Tuan Katib, 196, 114, 163 Tuan Muda, title, 247n Tufhat al-Nafis, 8 Tumanggong family, 50, 162, 195 Tunjang, 156, 163–4 problems with Charles Johnson’s account of, 164–5 possible explanations of his actions, 165–6 Tuppa, Bidayuh divinity, 66 Tuton Kaboy, 199

Ursat, Pengiran, of Mukah, 145, 150–1, 154 Usop, Abang, of Sarikei, 154 Usop, Pengiran, 9, 26–7, 19

Udin, Datu Patinggi, of Layar, 77–8, 234n Undang Undang Melaka, 128 Undup, Skrang town, 72 Undup Iban, 78 unity, in Malay polities, 28, 200

Yong, Paul, 126

Victoria, Queen, 82, 169, 201–2, 253n Vijayapura, relationship with Po-ni uncertain, 5 Wadley, Reed, 12 wage labour, attractions for Iban, 95 Wagner, Ulla, xviii, 14, 92, 200 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 222n Walker, Reuben, 33, 125, 175–80, 224n; see also Brooke, George Wallace, Alfred Russel, 115, 119, 183, 220n Walter, Eugene, 161 war tactics, James and Charles Brooke on, 92 Watson, Walter, 12, 188–9 Weber, Max, 210, 219n Wee, Vivienne, 61 Weiner, Margaret, xvii Wellesley, Lord, 32 Westermann, James Brooke’s surgeon, 35 Western, George, 32 Williams, Raymond, 231n Williamson, James Brooke’s Malay interpreter, 35, 57–9, 76, 79–80, 229n Winzeler, Robert, 210 Wise, Henry, 174, 208 Wolters, O.W., xvii, 18 passim, 207, 231n women, as exchange items in traditional Malay society, 9, 51, 67 effect on hereditary status, 150, 179 Woolf, Virginia, 222n Wright, Leigh, xviii

Zainal Kling, 60 Zaleha, Sharifah, 51 Zehinder, 187