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

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

Язык: Английский
Год издания: 2017
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The Malay governors, now under the influence of the Arab pseudo-sherips, diverted whole tribes of Dayaks from their peaceable avocations, and converted them into sea-robbers. The cultivation of their lands to produce saleable goods, for which there was now no sale, was abandoned, and fertile districts that had grown abundant crops were reduced to unprofitable jungle.

But it was not only on trading vessels in the China seas that they were taught to prey. The Malay princes and nobles sent those tribes whom they had demoralised to ascend the rivers and plunder and exterminate the peaceful tribes in the interior.

Among the tribes thus changed from an agricultural people into pirates were the Sekrang and the Saribas. When the Malay Muhammadan princes wanted slaves they summoned their Dayak nominal subjects to follow them, and led them against other tribes, either to harry the coasts or to penetrate up the rivers ravaging; and then, from this first stage to a second, converted them into pirates who swept the seas, falling on trading vessels, murdering the crews, and appropriating the plunder. According to agreement the Malay princes received two-thirds of the spoil, and their Dayak subjects, whom they had trained to be pirates, were granted one-third of the plunder and all the heads they could take.

About this head-hunting something has been said already, more will be said presently. As a Dayak said to a European, "You like books, we like heads."

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the Sultan of Bruni, Muadin, was constrained to call in the aid of his neighbour, the Sultan of Sulu, to quell an insurrection, and in consideration of this assistance ceded to him the land from the north as far as the Kimanis river.

Sultan Abdul Mubin had murdered his uncle, Sultan Muhammad Ali, and usurped the throne. Pangiran Bongsu, under the title of Sultan Muadin, with the assistance of the Sulus, defeated Abdul Mubin, who was executed. Muhammad Ali was murdered in 1662, and a war ensued that lasted about twelve years.71

The Spaniards attacked Sulu, captured the capital, and carried off the Sultan to Manila. When the English took Manila, under Sir William Draper in 1762, they released the Sultan Mumin, and he ceded the territory that had been granted to his predecessors by the Sultan of Bruni in or about 1674 to the East India Company, by deed signed in 1763, in consideration of an engagement entered into by the Company to protect him from the Spaniards.

Sultan Jemal ul Alam, of Bruni, who died in 1796, married Rajah Nur Alam, daughter of his uncle Sultan Khan Zul Alam, 21st Sultan of Bruni, by his first wife. By her he had one legitimate son, Omar Ali Saif Udin. The wife of Sultan Jemal had a full brother, Sri Banun Muda (usually called Rajah Api), and also half-brothers Hasim and Muhammad, sons of Khan Zul Alam by his second wife, and Bedrudin and two other sons by his third wife, a Lanun lady of rank.

On the death of his grand-uncle, also grandfather, and predecessor, Khan Zul Alam, Omar Ali was but a child, and Rajah Api claimed the throne, under the title of Sultan Muhammad Alam, and there were years of trouble in Bruni. Sir Hugh Low describes him as a madman with the most cruel propensities, whence probably his nickname Api, which signifies "Fire." He treated his nephew with great roughness, and often threatened him with a drawn sword, and Omar ran whimpering to his mother to complain. The prince's mother had long been jealous of the assumption of the sultanate by her brother, and, her son being almost imbecile, she hoped, by getting rid of Api, to exercise great power in the state. Accordingly, about the year 1828, she summoned those of her party and surrounded the residence of the Sultan Muhammad Alam, or Api, who finding himself deserted escaped in a boat. His sister sent after him a pangiran, or noble, with professions of friendship, and this pangiran persuaded him to assume the disguise of a woman to facilitate his escape. Then he got him into a little skiff, and led him into an ambush, where he was ordered to be put to death. He received the intimation with firmness. "Observe," said he, "when you strangle me, on which side my body shall fall – if to the right it prognosticates good for Bruni, if to the left it foretells evil." The bow-string was twisted, and Api sank on his left side. As we shall see that omen proved true.

Api's brother, Rajah Muda Hasim, an amiable, courteous, feeble man, was installed as Regent; and some time later was sent to Sarawak, where a rebellion had broken out, caused by the exactions and cruelty of the Pangiran Makota, who had been appointed governor of Sarawak by the Sultan. Hasim found the whole district a prey to anarchy, and those who should have reduced it to order were incompetent and too cowardly to fight. All he was able to do was to maintain a nominal sovereignty in the capital, Kuching.

The Malays and Arabs being Muhammadans, looked down on the pagan Land-Dayaks, subject to their domination, as mere bondsmen, to be slaughtered, fleeced, or enslaved – to be treated, in a word, as their caprice dictated, without being taken to task for their misdeeds. The limit of their exactions was fixed by necessity. The point beyond which oppression ceased was that where nothing was left to be extorted. But over the Sea-Dayaks of Sekrang, Saribas, and Kanowit they had no power. These tribes were far too independent in character and powerful to submit to oppression. These Sea-Dayaks would follow their so-called masters on a piratical expedition, and would obey them only so far as it pleased themselves to do so. As to the Kayans, they were too greatly feared to be molested. The late Mr. H. B. Low72 in 1879 was refused permission by the Sultan to cross into the Baram by the Limbang, for fear lest this should show the Kayans a way into Bruni. The Malay rulers oppressed their own people and the Melanaus almost as badly as they did the Land-Dayaks, murdering, robbing, and enslaving them.

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

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 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 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 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 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 seaWhere Nature rises to Fame's highest round.78

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 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.

He left Singapore on July 27, 1839, full of hope and confidence that something was to be done, and reaching the West Coast of Borneo surveyed some seventy miles of that coast before entering the Sarawak river, which was not then marked on the charts; for of Borneo at that time very little was known; its interior was a blank upon the maps, and its coast was set down by guess work on the Admiralty charts; so much so, that Mr. Brooke found Cape Datu placed some seventy to eighty miles too far to the east and north, and he was "obliged to clip some hundreds of miles of habitable land off the charts."

Kuching,80 the capital of Sarawak, is so called from a small stream that runs through the town into the main river, that a few miles below expands and forms a delta of many channels and mouths. The town, which is seated some twenty miles from the open sea, was founded by Pangiran Makota, when Bruni rule was established in Sarawak, and he was sent down as the Sultan's representative a few years previously to the arrival of Mr. Brooke. At this time the population, with the exception of a few Chinese traders and other eastern foreigners, consisted entirely of Bruni Malays to the number of about 800. The Sarawak Malays lived at Katupong,81 a little higher up, and farther up again at Leda Tanah, under their head chief, the brave Datu Patinggi Ali.

A distinction must be made, which it will be as well to again note here, between the Malays of Bruni and those of Sarawak, in other works described – the former as Borneans, and the latter as Siniawans. They are very different in appearance, manners, and even in language. There are not many Brunis in Sarawak now. Most returned to their own country with Rajah Muda Hasim when he retired there in 1844, and others drifted thither later. All the Malays in Kuching, except a sprinkling of foreigners, are Sarawak Malays, the descendants of the so-called Siniawans.

The bay that lies between Capes Datu and Sipang is indeed a lovely one. To the right lies the splendid range of Poé, over-topping the lower, but equally beautiful, Gading hills; then the fantastic-shaped mountains of the interior; while to the left the range of Santubong end-on towards you looks like a solitary peak, rising as an island from the sea, as Teneriffe once appeared to me sailing by in the Mæander. From these hills flow many streams which add to the beauty of the view. But the gems of the scene are the little emerald isles that are scattered over the surface of the bay, presenting their pretty beaches of glittering sand, or their lovely foliage drooping to kiss the rippling waves. There is no prettier spot (than the mouth of the Sarawak river); on the right bank rises the splendid peak of Santubong, over 2000 feet in height,82 clothed from its summit to its base with noble vegetation, its magnificent buttresses covered with lofty trees, showing over a hundred feet of stem without a branch, and at its base a broad beach of white sand fringed by graceful casuarinas, waving and trembling under the influence of the faintest breeze, and at that time thronged by wild hogs.83

On August 15, the Royalist cast anchor off the capital, and Mr. Brooke had an interview with the Rajah Muda, presented the letters and gifts, and was very graciously received. He was allowed to make excursions to Lundu, Samarahan, and Sadong, large rivers hitherto unknown to Europeans, and he added some seventy miles to his survey of the coast; but as the Malays and most of the Dayak tribes were in insurrection in the interior, travelling there was unsafe.

The Rajah Muda Hasim, the Bandahara of Bruni and the heir-presumptive to the throne, was a plain, middle-aged man, with gracious and courtly manners, amiable and well disposed, but weak and indolent. He was placed in a difficult position, which he had not the energy or the ability to fill. The Sultan of Bruni had confided the district of Sarawak some years previously to the Pangiran Makota as governor, a man utterly unprincipled, grasping, selfish, cruel, and cowardly, but "the most mild, the most gentlemanly rascal you can conceive";84 and by his exactions and by forced labour at the antimony mines, he had driven the Sarawak Malays, as well as the Land-Dayaks, into open revolt. They proclaimed their independence of Bruni, and asserted that submission to the Sultan had been voluntary on their part, and on stipulated conditions that had not been carried out. For three years they had carried on their struggle against the Bruni tyrants, but, though far from being reduced, it became evident to them that unaided they could not attain their freedom. Surrender meant death to the chiefs and abject slavery to the people, and to their womankind something far worse than either, so in their extremity they appealed to the Dutch. A year before Mr. Brooke's arrival they had invited the Dutch to plant the Netherlands flag in their camp, and afterwards had sent an emissary to Batavia to beg the assistance of the Governor-General, but open assistance was refused, though the Sultan of Sambas appears to have constantly supplied the rebels with ammunition and provisions. As Mr. Brooke had warned the Pangiran Makota, who had reason to fear Dutch aggression, the danger was not an open violation of their independence, but their coming on friendly terms – they might make war after having first gained a footing, not before. The Dutch had made great efforts to establish trade with Sarawak, in other words, to monopolise it, and through their vassal, the Sultan of Sambas, had offered assistance to open the antimony mines.

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