A History of Sarawak under Its Two White Rajahs 1839-1908

The Land-Dayaks in Sarawak were governed by local Malay datus called Patinggi, Bandar, and Temanggong. These officers monopolised the trade. When the Dayaks had collected rice, edible birds' nests, wax, etc., the Patinggi claimed the right to buy the produce at a price fixed by himself, and one that barely allowed the seller enough to pay for his own necessaries. And not only did the Patinggi claim the right of pre-emption, but so did all his relatives, and in the end so did every Bornean Malay of any position. If the poor Dayak did not produce sufficient to satisfy the Patinggi, girls and children were taken to make up the deficit and sold into slavery.[73 - This was the serah, or forced trade formerly in force in all Malayan countries; and it appears to be still so, in a modified form, in Sumatra.]

He would sometimes send a bar of iron to a headman of a tribe, whether the latter wanted it or not, and require him to purchase it at an exorbitant price fixed by the sender. The man dared not refuse; then another bar was sent, and again another, till the Dayak chief was reduced to poverty.

If a Malay met a Dayak in his boat, and the boat pleased him, he would cut a notch in the gunwale in token that he appropriated it to his own use. Possibly enough some other Bornean Malay might fancy the same boat and cut another notch. This might occur several times. Then the Dayak was required to hand over his boat to the first who had marked it, and to indemnify the other claimants to the value of the vessel.

Any injury done, or pretended to have been done, however accidentally, by a Dayak to a Malay, had to be paid for by a ruinous fine. There was no court of appeal, no possibility of redress. A Malay could always, and at any time, enter the house of a Dayak, and live there in free quarters as long as he pleased, insult or maltreat the wife and children of his unwilling host with impunity, and on leaving carry away with him any of the Dayak's property to which he had taken a fancy; and, when the novelty of the possession wore off, force his late host to buy it back again at an extravagant price. But this was not all. When antimony was found, the unfortunate Land-Dayaks were driven to mine it at no wage at all, and their hard taskmasters did not even trouble themselves to provide them with food.[74 - The Sarawak Malays were also so forced to mine by Pangiran Makota, and this forced labour was one of the principal causes of the rebellion of 1836-40 against the Sultan's Government.] The consequence was that many of them died, and others fled to the jungle. As one of them pathetically said, "We do not live like men; we are like monkeys; we are hunted from place to place. We have no houses, and when we light a fire we are in fear lest the smoke should betray to our enemies where we are."

Of Dayaks there are, as already stated, two sorts, the Land-Dayak and the Sea-Dayak, the first of Indonesian, the second of proto-Malay stock. The former are a quiet, timid, industrious people, honest, and by no means lacking in intelligence, living on hill-tops to which they have fled from their oppressors; the latter throve on piracy, having been brought to this by the Muhammadan Malays and the half-bred Arabs. But even among the Sea-Dayaks a few tribes had not been thus vitiated, and upon these the late Rajah could always rely for support.

Their Malay masters furnished the Sea-Dayaks, whom they had converted into predatory savages, with ammunition and guns, and sent them either to sea to attack merchant vessels, or up the rivers to fall upon villages of peaceful tribes; then the men were slaughtered, the women and children carried off into slavery. The villages were burnt, and by a refinement of cruelty the fruit trees cut down and standing crops destroyed, from which the principal provision of the natives was gathered, so as to reduce to starvation those who had escaped into the jungle. Land-Dayak tribes that formerly had been numerous and prosperous were reduced to small numbers and to poverty. One that reckoned 230 families dwindled to 50. Three whole tribes were completely exterminated. One of 120 families was brought down to two, that is to say, of 960 persons only 16 were left. The population that had consisted of 1795 families, or, reckoning eight persons to each family, 14,360 souls, in ten years was reduced to 6792 souls showing a decrease in these ten years of 946 families, or of 7568 persons. On Sir James (then Mr.) Brooke's visit to the country in 1840, in converse with the chief of one of the native tribes, the man told him, "The Rajah takes from us whatever he wants, at whatever price he pleases, and the pangirans take whatever they can get for no price at all." "At first," says Mr. Brooke, "the Dayak paid a small stated sum as an acknowledgment of vassalage, by degrees this became an arbitrary and unlimited taxation, and now, to consummate the iniquity, the entire tribes are pronounced slaves and liable to be disposed of."

The natural result of such treatment was that those natives who escaped spoilation and slaughter fled up the country beyond reach of their persecutors. The depopulation from the same cause went on in the neighbourhood of Bruni as well as in Sarawak. Mr. Spenser St. John says in 1858: "It is melancholy to see this fine district (Limbang), once well cultivated, now returning to jungle; formerly where the population extended a hundred miles beyond the last village at present inhabited, the supply of provisions was ample at Bruni. Now that the natives are decreasing, while Bruni is perhaps as numerous as ever, the demands made by the nobles are too great even for the natives' forbearance, and in disgust they are gradually abandoning all garden cultivation. Already brushwood is taking the place of bananas and yams, so that few of either are to be had. The people say it is useless for them to plant for others to eat the whole produce. Then as the natives cannot furnish the supplies exacted of them by the pangirans, these latter take from them their children; the lads are circumcised and made Mahomedans and slaves, and the girls are drafted into the already crowded harems of the rajahs." The same writer gives an instance or two of the manner in which the subject natives were treated. In 1855, the warlike Kayans of the interior descended the Limbang river and threatened a tribe of Muruts. The Pangiran Makota,[75 - This happened after this man had been banished by the late Rajah from Sarawak. See Chap. III. p. 87 (#Page_87), for the fate he met and so richly merited.] virtual governor of Bruni, met them and arranged with the chiefs that for the sum of £700 they should spare these Muruts. Then he set those who were menaced to collect the money. When they had done this and placed the sum in his hands, he pocketed it and returned to Bruni, leaving the Kayans to deal with the tribe after their own sweet will.

Again, in 1857, the same head-hunters threatened another Murut village. Makota had a secret interview with the Kayan chiefs, and then gave out that peace had been concluded. What he had actually done was to deliver over to them to pillage and exterminate the Murut village of Balal Ikan, against which he bore a grudge for having resisted his exactions.

The whole of the north and west of Borneo was in a condition of indescribable wretchedness and hopelessness when Mr. James Brooke appeared on the scene. Oppression the most cruel and grinding, encouragement of piracy and head-hunting by the selfish, unscrupulous pangirans sent from Bruni, were depopulating the fair land. Sarawak, then a very small province, was, as we shall see, in insurrection. Single-handed, with but a comparatively small capital, the whole of which he sank in the country, with no support from the British Government, with no Chartered Company at his back, he devoted his life to transform what had become a hell into what it has become, a peaceful and happy country.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER II

LIST OF THE MAHOMEDAN SULTANS OF BRUNI

Taken from the Selesilah (Book of the Descent), preserved in Bruni, by the late Sir Hugh Low, G.C.M.G. Published in the Journal No. 5 of the Straits Branch R.A.S.

1. Sultan Mahomed, who introduced the religion of Islam.

2. Sultan Akhmed, brother of above, married to the daughter of Ong Sum Ping, Chinese Raja of Kina-batangan. No sons, but one daughter married to —

3. Sultan Berkat, from Taif in Arabia. A descendant of the prophet through his grandson Husin. Berkat, the blessed. His real name was Sherif Ali.

4. Sultan Suleiman, son of above, who was succeeded by his son —

5. Sultan Bulkeiah;[76 - Famous in Malay legends throughout the East as Nakoda Ragam, a renowned sea rover and conqueror.] towards the end of his reign Pigafetta's first visit to Bruni in 1521 probably took place.

6. Sultan Abdul Kahar, son of above. Had forty-two sons, of whom —

7. Saif-ul-Rejal succeeded him. During his reign the Spaniards attacked Bruni in 1576 and 1580, taking it on the second occasion.

8. Sultan Shah Bruni, son of above. Having no children he abdicated in favour of his brother —

9. Sultan Hasan, succeeded by his son.

10. Sultan Abdul-Jalil-ul-Akbar, succeeded by his son.

11. Sultan Abdul-Jalil-ul-Jehar, who was succeeded by his uncle —

12. Sultan Mahomet Ali, son of Sultan Hasan.

13. Sultan Abdul Mubin. Son of Sultan Mahomet Ali's sister. He murdered his uncle and usurped the throne. He was worsted in a revolution that lasted twelve years, and was executed.

14. Sultan Muaddim, fourth son of Sultan Jalil-ul-Akbar, nephew and son-in-law of Sultan Mahomet Ali. Succeeded by his nephew (half-brother's son) —

15. Sultan Nasr Addin, grandson of Sultan Jalil-ul-Akbar.

16. Sultan Kemal-Addin, son of Sultan Mahomet Ali, who abdicated in favour of his son-in-law —

17. Sultan Mahomet Ali-Udin – on his father's side grandson of Sultan Muaddin, on his mother's side great-great-grandson of Sultan Jalil-ul-Akbar. He died before his father-in-law and great uncle, Sultan Kemal-Addin, who again ascended the throne and was succeeded by his son —

18. Sultan Omar Ali Saif-udin. Died 1795. Succeeded by his son —

19. Sultan Tej-Walden. Died 1807. He abdicated in favour of his son —

20. Sultan Jemal-ul-Alam, who reigned for a few months only, and died in 1796, when his father reascended the throne and was succeeded in 1809 by his half-brother —

21. Sultan Khan Zul-Alam, succeeded by his great-nephew and grandson —

22. Sultan Omar Ali Saif-udin, second son of Sultan Mahomed Jemal-ul-Alam. Died 1852. He left the throne, by will and general consent of the people, to

23. Sultan Abdul Mumin, who was descended from Sultan Kemal-Addin. Died 1885, succeeded by

24. Sultan Hasim-Jalilal Alam Akamaddin, son of Sultan Omar Ali Saif-udin. Died 1906.

25. Sultan Mahomet Jemal-ul-Alam, son of above.

The above are abridged extracts. The last two sultans were not included in Low's list, which was made in 1893. Low's spelling of the names is followed.

Forrest, op. cit., who obtained his information from Mindanau records, states that about 1475 a Sherip Ali and his two brothers came from Mecca. Ali became the first Muhammadan prince in Mindanau; one brother became King of Borneo (Bruni) and the other King of the Moluccas. As regards the date this agrees with the Bruni records, and the brothers might have borne the same name. (See Mahomet Ali, Omar Ali above.)

According to Chinese records, a Chinese is said to have been King of Bruni in the beginning of the 15th century.[77 - W. P. Groeneveldt, Essays relating to Indo-China, 1887.] This would have been in Ong Sum Ping's time, and it probably refers to him.

CHAPTER III

THE MAKING OF SARAWAK

James Brooke was born at Benares on April 29, 1803, and was the son of Thomas Brooke of the East India Company's Civil Service. He entered the Company's army in 1819, and took part in the first Burmese war, in which he was severely wounded, and from which he was invalided home in 1825. He had been honourably mentioned in despatches for conspicuous services rendered in having raised a much needed body of horse, and for bravery. Then he resigned his commission, and visited China, Penang, Malacca, and Singapore. There he heard much of the beauty and the wonders of the fairy group of islands forming the Eastern Archipelago, and of the dangers to be encountered there from Malay pirates; islands rich in all that nature could lavish in flower and fruit, in bird and gorgeous butterfly, in diamond and pearl, but "the trail of the serpent was over them all." Very little was known of these islands, few English vessels visited them, the trade was monopolised by the Dutch, who sought to exclude all European nations from obtaining a foothold. They claimed thousands of islands from Sumatra to Papua as within their exclusive sphere of influence, islands abounding in natural products which they exploited imperfectly, and did nothing to develop. This was a dog-in-the-manger policy to which Great Britain submitted.

The young man's ambition was fired; he longed to explore these seas, to study the natural history, the ethnology, to discover gaps in the Dutch imaginary line through which English commerce might penetrate and then expand.

Mr. Brooke made a second voyage to the East in a brig which, in partnership with another, he had purchased and freighted for China; but this venture proved a failure, and the brig and cargo were sold in China at a loss.

In 1835, Mr. Thomas Brooke died, leaving to his son the sum of £30,000. James now saw that a chance was open to him of realising his youthful dream, and he bought a yacht, the Royalist, a schooner of 142 tons burden, armed with six-pounders and several swivels, and, after a preliminary cruise in the Mediterranean to train his crew, he sailed in December 1838, flying the flag of the Royal Yacht Squadron, for that enchanted group of islands —

Those islands of the sea
Where Nature rises to Fame's highest round.[78 - Camoen's Lusiad (Sir Richard Burton's translation.) Camoen here refers to the islands of the Malayan Archipelago, which he visited in his exile some 350 years ago.]

And as he wrote, to cast himself on the waters, like Southey's little book; but whether the world would know him after many days, was a question which, hoping the best, he could not answer with any degree of assurance.

He arrived in Singapore in May, 1839. The Rajah Muda Hasim of Sarawak had recently shown kind treatment to some English shipwrecked sailors, and Mr. Brooke was commissioned by the Governor and the Singapore Chamber of Commerce to convey letters of thanks and presents to the Rajah Muda in acknowledgment of his humanity, exceptional in those days, and a marked contrast to the treatment afforded to the crew and passengers of the Sultana a little later by his sovereign, the Sultan of Bruni, which is recorded further on.[79 - St. John tells us that a few years before this an English ship that had put into the Sarawak river to water was treacherously seized; the Englishmen were murdered, and the Lascars sold into slavery.] This chance diverted Mr. Brooke from his original project of going to Marudu Bay, the place he had indicated as being the best adapted for the establishment of a British settlement, and took him to the field of his life-long labours.