CHAPTER 2
History of Borneo
The Pagan tribes of Borneo have no written records of their history and only very vague traditions concerning events in the lives of their ancestors of more than five or six generations ago. But the written records of more cultured peoples of the Far East contain references to Borneo which throw some small rays of light upon the past history and present condition of its population. It has seemed to us worth while to bring together in these pages these few historical notes. The later history of Borneo, which is in the main the story of its occupation by and division between the Dutch and English, and especially the romantic history of the acquisition of the raj of Sarawak by its first English rajah, Sir James Brooke, has often been told,[3] and for this reason may be dismissed by us in a very few words.
The coasts of Borneo have long been occupied by a Mohammedan population of Malay culture; this population is partly descended from Malay and Arab immigrants, and partly from indigenous individuals and communities that have adopted the Malay faith and culture in recent centuries. When Europeans first visited the island, this population, dwelling for the most part, as it still does, in villages and small towns upon the coast and in or near the mouths of the rivers, owed allegiance to several Malay sultans and a number of subordinate rulers, the local rajahs and pangirans. The principal sultans had as their capitals, from which they took their titles, Bruni on the north-west, Sambas in the west, Pontianak at the mouth of the Kapuas river, Banjermasin in the south at the mouth of the river of the same name, Pasir at the south-east corner, Kotei and Balungan on the east at the mouths of the rivers of those names; while the Sultan of Jolo, the capital of the Sulu islands, which lie off the north coast, claimed sovereignty over the northern end of Borneo. But these Malay sultans were not the first representatives in the island of culture and of civilised or semi-civilised rule; for history preserves some faint records of still earlier times, of which some slight confirmation is afforded by surviving traces of the culture then introduced.
In spite of all the work done on the history of the East Indies, most of what occurred before and much that followed the arrival of Europeans remains obscure. There are several Asiatic nations whose records might be expected to contain valuable information, but all are disappointing. The Klings, still the principal Hindu traders in the Far East, visited the Malay Archipelago in the first or at any rate the second century after Christ,[4] and introduced their writing[5] and chronology. But their early histories are meagre and unsatisfactory in the extreme. The Arab culture of the Malays, which took root in Sumatra in the twelfth century, is of course of no assistance in regard to events of earlier date, and does not give trustworthy and detailed accounts until the fifteenth century. The Chinese, on the other hand, always a literary people, carefully preserved in their archives all that could be gathered with regard to the "southern seas." But China was far away, and many local events would possess no interest for her subjects. Under the circumstances, the official historians deserve our gratitude for their geographical descriptions and for the particulars of tribute-bearing missions to the Son of Heaven, though they have little else to tell.
The first account we have been able to find referring to Borneo is a description of the kingdom of Poli from the Chinese annals of the sixth century. Poli was said to be on an island in the sea south-east of Camboja, and two months south-east of Canton. The journey thither was made by way of the Malay Peninsula, a devious route still followed by Chinese junks. Envoys were sent to the Imperial court in A.D. 518, 523, and 616. "The people of this country," our authority says, "are skilled in throwing a discus-knife, and the edge is like a saw; when they throw it at a man, they never fail to hit him. Their other arms are about the same as in China. Their customs resemble those of Camboja, and the productions of the country are the same as of Siam. When one commits a murder or theft they cut off his hands,[6] and when adultery has been committed, the culprit has his legs chained for the period of a year. For their sacrifice they choose the time when there is no moon; they fill a bowl with wine and eatables and let it float away on the surface of the water; in the eleventh month they have a great sacrifice. They get corals from the sea, and they have a bird called s'ari, which can talk." A later reference to the same place says: "They carry the teeth of wild beasts in their ears, and wrap a piece of cotton round their loins; cotton is a plant of which they collect the flowers to make cloth of them; the coarser kind is called KUPA, and the finer cloth T'IEH. They hold their markets at night, and cover their faces…. At the east of this country is situated the land of the Rakshas, which has the same customs as Poli."[7]
This is an interesting account in many ways, and tallies very closely with what other evidence would lead one to suspect. For there is reason to think that Bruni, before it became Mohammedan, was a Bisaya kingdom under Buddhist sovereigns and Hindu influence; and nearly all the particulars given with regard to the people of Borneo are true of one or other of the races allied to Bisayas and living near Bruni to-day. The discus-knife, a wooden weapon, is not now in use, but is known to have been used formerly. The wild Kadayans sacrifice after every new moon, and are forbidden to eat a number of things until they have done so. The Malanaus set laden rafts afloat on the rivers to propitiate the spirits of the sea. The very names of the two kinds of cotton, then evidently a novelty to the Chinese, are found in Borneo: KAPOK is a well-known Malay word; but TAYA is the common name for cotton among the Sea Dayaks, though it is doubtful whether it is found in Sumatra at all, and is not given in Marsden's great Dictionary. The use of teeth as ear-ornaments may refer to Kenyahs. If these identities are sufficient to show that Poli was old Bruni, we have an almost unique illustration here of the antiquity of savage customs. That an experience of fourteen hundred years should have failed to convince people of the futility of feeding salt waves is a striking demonstration of the widespread fallacy, that what is old must needs be good.
Poli had already attained a certain measure of civilisation, and even of luxury. The kingly dignity was hereditary, and the Buddhist monarch was served with much ceremony. He was clad in flowered silk or cotton, adorned with pearls, and sat on a golden throne attended by servants with white dusters and fans of peacock feathers. When he went out of his palace, his chariot, canopied with feathers and embroidered curtains, was drawn by elephants, whilst gongs, drums, and conches made inspiriting music. As Hindu ornaments have been found at Santubong together with Chinese coins of great antiquity, as the names of many offices of state in Bruni are derived from Sanskrit, and the people of Sarawak have only lately ceased to speak of "the days of the Hindus,"[8] there is nothing startling in the statement that the kings of Poli were Buddhist.
Whatever Poli may or may not have been, there is little question that Puni, 45 days from Java, 40 from Palembang, 30 from Champa, in each case taking the wind to be fair, was Bruni. The Chinese, who have neither B nor double consonants in their impoverished language, still call the Bornean capital Puni. Groeneveldt says that the Chinese consider Puni to have been on the west coast of Borneo. This state is mentioned several times in the annals of the Sung dynasty, which, though only ruling over Southern China, had a complete monopoly[9] of the ocean trade for three centuries (960 to 1279 A.D.). Puni was at that time a town of some 10,000 inhabitants, protected by a stockade of timber. The king's palace, like the houses of modern Bruni, was thatched with palm leaves, the cottages of the people with grass. Warriors carried spears and protected themselves with copper armour. When any native died, his corpse was exposed in the jungle, and once a year for seven years sacrifices were made to the departed spirit. Bamboos and palm leaves, thrown away after every meal, sufficed for crockery. The products of the country, or at least such as were sent as tribute, were camphor, tortoiseshell, and ivory.[10]
In the year 977, we are told, Hianzta, king of Puni, sent envoys to China, who presented tribute with the following words: "May the emperor live thousands and tens of thousands of years, and may he not disapprove of the poor civilities of my little country." The envoys presented a letter from the king. This was written on' what looked like the very thin bark of a tree; it was glossy, slightly green, several feet long, and somewhat broader than one inch; the characters in which it was written were small, and had to be read horizontally. In all these particulars the letter resembled the books of magic which are still written by the Battas of inland Sumatra.[11] The message ran: "The king of Puni, called Hianzta, prostrates himself before the most august emperor, and hopes that the emperor may live ten thousands of years. I have now sent envoys to carry tribute; I knew before that there was an emperor, but I had no means of communication. Recently there was a merchant called Pu Lu, whose ship arrived at the mouth of my river; I sent a man to invite him to my place, and he told me that he came from China. The people of my country were much delighted at this, and preparing a ship, asked this stranger to guide them to the court. The envoys I have sent only wish to see Your Majesty in peace, and I intend to send people with tribute every year. But when I do so I fear that my ships may occasionally be blown to Champa, and I therefore hope Your Majesty will send an edict to that country with orders that, if a ship of Hianzta arrives there, it must not be detained. My country has no other articles,[12] and I pray Your Majesty not to be angry with me." The envoys were entertained and sent home with presents. In 1082 A.D., a hundred years later, Sri Maja, king of Puni, sent tribute again, but the promise of yearly homage was not kept. Gradually the Sung dynasty declined in power, and East Indian potentates became less humble.
In the thirteenth and the early part of the fourteenth centuries Bruni owed allegiance alternately to two powers much younger than herself, Majapahit in Java, and Malacca on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. Both these states were founded in the thirteenth century.[13] Majapahit, originally only one of several Javan kingdoms, rapidly acquired strength and subjugated her neighbours and the nearest portions of the islands around. Malacca, formed when the Malay colony of Singapore was overwhelmed by Javanese, became the great commercial depot of the Straits and the chief centre of Mohammedanism in the Archipelago. The two powers therefore stood for two faiths and two cultures: Majapahit for Brahminism and Hindu influence, Malacca for Islam and the more practical civilisation of Arabia.
In the earliest years of the fourteenth century Bruni was a dependency of Majapahit, but seems to have recovered its independence during the minority of the Javan king. It is to this time that the tradition of the Kapuas Malays ascribes the arrival of the Kayans in Borneo.[14] Then Angka Wijaya extended the power of Majapahit over Palembang in Sumatra, Timor, Ternate, Luzon, and the coasts of Borneo. Over Banjermasin he set his natural son. In 1368 Javanese soldiers drove from Bruni the Sulu marauders who had sacked the town. A few years later the ungrateful king transferred his allegiance to China, and not long afterwards, with calculating humility, paid tribute[15] to Mansur Shah, who had succeeded to the throne of Malacca in 1374 A.D.
An extraordinary incident occurred at the beginning of the fifteenth century, which again — and for the last time — draws our attention to the Chinese court. The great Mongol conquerors, Genghis and Kublai Khan, had little to do with the Malay Archipelago, though the latter sent an unsuccessful expedition against Java in 1292. But the Ming emperors, who were of Chinese blood, came to power in 1368 and soon developed the maritime influence of the empire. For a few years there was a continual stream of East Indian embassies. During the last twenty years of the century, however, these became more rare, and in 1405 the Chinese emperor found it necessary to send a trusted eunuch, by name Cheng Ho, to visit the vassal states in the south. This man made several journeys, travelling as far as the shores of Africa, and his mission bore immediate fruit. Among others, Maraja Kali, king of Puni, although Cheng Ho does not appear to have called on him in person, sent tribute in 1405; and so pleased was he with the embroidered silk presented to him and his wife in return, that he visited the Son of Heaven three years later. Landing in Fukien, he was escorted by a eunuch to the Chinese capital amid scenes of great rejoicing. The emperor received him in audience, allowing him the honours of a noble of the first rank, and loaded him with gifts. The same year, having accomplished his one great ambition of "seeing the face of the Son of Heaven," this humbled monarch died in the imperial city, leaving his son Hiawang to succeed to the throne of Puni. Having induced the emperor to stop the yearly tribute of forty katties of camphor paid by Puni to Java, and having agreed to send tribute to China every three years, Hiawang returned home to take up the reins of government. Between 1410 and 1425 he paid tribute six times, besides revisiting the Chinese Court; but afterwards little Puni seems to have again ignored her powerful suzerain.
It is probable that the Chinese colony in North Borneo which gave its name to the lofty mountain Kina Balu (Chinese widow) and to the Kina Batangan, the chief river which flows from it, was founded about this time. Several old writers seem to refer to this event, and local traditions of the settlement still survive. The Brunis and Idaans (a people in the north not unlike the Bisayas) have legends differing in detail to the effect that the Chinese came to seize the great jewel of the Kina Balu dragon, but afterwards quarrelled about the booty and separated, some remaining behind. The Idaans consider themselves the descendants of these settlers, but that can only be true in a very limited sense. Both country and people, however, show traces of Chinese influence.
There is good evidence that the Chinese influence and immigration were not confined to Bruni and the northern end of the island. In south-west Borneo there are traces of very extensive washings of alluvial gravels for gold and diamonds. These operations were being conducted by Chinese when Europeans first came to the country; and the extent of the old workings implies that they had been continued through many centuries. Hindu-Javan influence also was not confined to the court of Bruni, for in many parts of the southern half of Borneo traces of it survive in the custom of burning the dead, in low relief carvings of bulls on stone, and in various gold ornaments of Hindu character.
The faith of Islam and the arrival of Europeans have profoundly affected the manners and politics of the East Indies, and now it is difficult to picture the state of affairs when King Hiawang revisited China to pay homage to the Emperor. In 1521, within a hundred years of that event, Pigafetta, the chronicler of Magellan's great exploit, was calling on the "Moorish" king of Bruni, in the course of the first voyage round the world. The change had come. Of the two new influences, so potent for good and evil, Mohammedanism made its appearance first. The struggle for religious supremacy ended in the complete victory of the Prophet's followers in 1478, when Majapahit was utterly destroyed, thirty years before the capture of Malacca by the Portuguese.
How early the Arab doctrines were taught in Bruni is impossible to state with any precision. Local tradition ascribes their introduction to the renowned Alak ber Tata, afterwards known as Sultan Mohammed. Like most of his subjects this warrior was a Bisaya, and in early life he was not a Mohammedan, not indeed a civilised potentate at all, to judge by conventional standards; for the chief mark of his royal dignity was an immense chawat, or loin-cloth, carried as he walked by eighty men, forty in front and forty behind. He is the earliest monarch of whom the present Brunis have any knowledge, a fact to be accounted for partly by the brilliance of his exploits, partly by the introduction about that time of Arabic writing. After much fighting he subdued the people of Igan,[16] Kalaka, Seribas, Sadong, Semarahan, and Sarawak,[17] and compelled them to pay tribute. He stopped the annual payment to Majapahit of one jar of pinang juice, a useless commodity though troublesome to collect. During his reign the Muruts were brought under Bruni rule by peaceful measures,[18] and the Chinese colony was kept in good humour by the marriage of the Bruni king's brother and successor to the daughter of one of the principal Chinamen.
Alak ber Tata is said to have gone to Johore,[19] where he was converted[20] to Islam, given[21] the daughter of Sultan Bakhei and the title of Sultan, and was confirmed in his claim to rule over Sarawak and his other conquests.[22]
Sultan Mohammed was succeeded by his brother Akhmad, son-in-law of the Chinese chief, and he was in turn succeeded by an Arab from Taif who had married his daughter. Thus the present royal house of Bruni is derived from three sources — Arab, Bisaya, and Chinese. The coronation ceremony as still maintained affords an interesting confirmation of this account. On that occasion the principal minister wears a turban and Haji outfit, the two next in rank are dressed in Chinese and Hindu fashion, while the fourth wears a chawat over his trousers to represent the Bisayas; and each of these ministers declares the Sultan to be divinely appointed. Then after the demonstration of loyalty the two gongs — one from Menangkabau, the other from Johore — are beaten, and the Moslem high priest proclaims the Sultan and preaches a sermon, declaring him to be a descendant of Sri Turi Buana, the Palembang chief who founded the early kingdom of Singapore in 1160 A.D., who reigned in that island for forty-eight years, and whose descendants became the royal family of Malacca.
The Arab Sultan who succeeded Akhmed assumed the name Berkat and ruled the country with vigour. He built a mosque and converted many of his subjects, so that from his reign Bruni may be considered a Mohammedan town. To defend the capital he sank forty junks filled with stone in the river, and thus formed the breakwater which still bars the entrance to large ships. This work rose above the water level, and in former times bristled with cannon. Sultan Berkat was succeeded by his son Suleiman, whose reign was of little consequence.
Neglecting Suleiman, we come now to the most heroic figure in Bruni history, Sultan Bulkiah, better known by his earlier name, Nakoda Ragam. The prowess of this prince has been celebrated in prose and verse. He journeyed to distant lands, and conquered the Sulu islands and eastern Borneo. Over the throne of Sambas he set a weak-minded brother of his own. He even sent an expedition to Manila, and on the second attempt seized that place. Tribute poured into his coffers from all sides. His wife was a Javanese princess, who brought many people to Bruni. These intermarried with the Bisayas, and from them it is said are sprung the Kadayans, a quiet agricultural folk, skilled in various arts, but rendered timid by continual oppression. Some have settled recently in the British colony of Labuan, and others in Sarawak round the river Sibuti, where they have become loyal subjects of the Rajah of Sarawak.
Nakoda Ragam's capital at Buang Tawa was on dry land, but when he died, killed accidentally by his wife's bodkin, the nobles quarrelled among themselves, and some of them founded the present pile-built town of Bruni. It was to this Malay capital and court that Pigafetta paid his visit in 1521 with the surviving companions of Magellan. His is the first good account from European sources of the place which he called Bornei, and whose latitude he estimated with an error of less than ten miles.[23]
It is easy to see from Pigafetta's narrative[24] that at the date of his visit the effects of Nakoda Ragam's exploits had not evaporated. The splendour of the Court and the large population the city is said to have contained were presumably the result of the conquests he had made in neighbouring islands. The king, like the princes of Malacca before the conquest, had his elephants, and he and his courtiers were clothed in Chinese satins and Indian brocades. He was in possession of artillery, and the appearance and ceremonial of his court was imposing.
From this time onwards the power of Bruni has continuously declined. Recurrent civil wars invited the occasional interventions of the Portuguese and of the Spanish governors of the Philippines, which, although they did not result in the subjugation of the Malay power, nevertheless sapped its strength.
The interest of the later history of Borneo lies in the successive attempts,[25] many of them fruitless, made by Dutch and English to gain a footing on the island. The Dutch arrived off Bruni in the year 1600, and ten days afterwards were glad to leave with what pepper they had obtained in the interval, the commander judging the place nothing better than a nest of rogues. The Dutch did not press the acquaintance, but started factories at Sambas, where they monopolised the trade. In 1685 an English captain named Cowley arrived in Bruni; but the English showed as little inclination as the Dutch to take up the commerce which the Portuguese had abandoned.
At Banjermasin, on the southern coast, more progress was made. The Dutch arrived there before their English rivals, but were soon compelled by intrigues to withdraw. In 1704[26] the English factors on the Chinese island of Chusan, expelled by the imperial authorities and subsequently driven from Pulo Condar off the Cochin China coast by a mutiny, arrived at Banjermasin. They had every reason to be gratified with the prospects at that port; for they could sell the native pepper to the Chinese at three times the cost price. But their bitter experiences in the China seas had not taught them wisdom; they soon fell out with the Javanese Sultan, whose hospitality they were enjoying, and after some bloody struggles were obliged to withdraw from this part of the island.
In 1747 the Dutch East India Company, which in 1705 had obtained a firm footing in Java, and in 1745 had established its authority over all the north-eastern coast of that island, extorted a monopoly of trade at Banjermasin and set up a factory. Nearly forty years later[27] (1785), the reigning prince having rendered himself odious to his subjects, the country was invaded by 3000 natives of Celebes. These were expelled by the Dutch, who dethroned the Sultan, placing his younger brother on the throne; and he, in reward for their services, ceded to them his entire dominions, consenting to hold them as a vassal. This is the treaty under which the Dutch claim the sovereignty of Banjermasin and whatever was once dependent on it. In this way the Dutch got a hold on the country which they have never relaxed; and, after the interval during which their possessions in the East Indies were administered by England,[28] they strengthened that hold gradually, year by year, till now two-thirds or more of the island is under their flag and feels the benefits of their rule. If there are still any districts of this large area where Dutch influence has even now barely made itself felt, they will not long remain in their isolation; for the Controleurs are extending their influence even into the most remote corners of the territory.
To turn again to the north-western coast and the doings of Englishmen, in 1763 the Sultan of Sulu ceded to the East India Company the territory in Borneo which had been given him when he killed the usurper Abdul Mubin in Bruni. In 1773 a small settlement was formed on the island of Balambangan, north of Bruni; and in the following year the Sultan of Bruni agreed to give this settlement a monopoly of the pepper trade in return for protection from piracy. In the next year, however, Balambangan was surprised and captured by the Sulus. It was reoccupied for a few months in 1803, and then finally forsaken.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Malays of Bruni, Sulu, and Mindanao, with native followers and allies, inspired we may suppose by the example of their European visitors, took to piracy — not that they had not engaged in such business before, but that they now prosecuted an old trade with renewed vigour. English traders still tried to pay occasional visits, but after the loss of the MAY in 1788, the SUSANNA in 1803, and the COMMERCE in 1806, with the murder of the crews, the Admiralty warned merchants that it was CERTAIN DESTRUCTION to go up river to Bruni. For forty years this intimation was left on British charts, and British seamen followed the humiliating counsel. Not until the early forties was peace restored, after an event of the most romantic and improbable kind, the accession of an English gentleman to the throne of Sarawak.
Of this incident, so fateful for the future of the western side of Borneo, it must suffice to say here that James Brooke, a young Englishman, having resigned his commission in the army of the British East India Company, invested his fortune in a yacht of 140 tons, with which he set sail in 1838 for the eastern Archipelago. His bold but vague design was to establish peace, prosperity, and just government in some part of that troubled area, whose beauties he had admired and whose misfortunes he had deplored on the occasion of an earlier voyage to the China seas. When at Singapore, he heard that the Malays of Sarawak, a district forming the southern extremity of the Sultanate of Bruni, had rebelled against the Bruni nobles, and had in vain appealed to the Dutch Governor-general at Batavia for deliverance from their oppressors. Under the nominal authority of the Sultan, these Bruni nobles, many of whom were of Arab descent, had brought all the north-western part of Borneo to a state of chronic rebellion. They had taught the Sea Dayaks of the Batang Lupar and neighbouring rivers to join them in their piratical excursions, and, being to some extent dependent upon their aid, were compelled to treat them with some consideration; but all other communities were treated by them with a rapacity and cruelty which was causing a rapid depopulation and the return to jungle of much cultivated land.
Brooke sailed for Sarawak in August 1839, and found the country torn by internal conflicts. The Sultan had recently sent Muda Hasim, his uncle and heir-presumptive to the throne of Bruni, to restore order; but this weak though amiable noble had found himself quite incapable of coping with the situation. Brooke spent some time surveying the coast and studying the people and country, and gained the confidence of Muda Hasim. After an excursion to Celebes, Brooke sailed for a second visit to Sarawak just a year after the first, and found the state of the country going from bad to worse. Muda Hasim besought him to take command of his forces and to suppress the rebellion. Brooke consented, and soon secured the submission of the rebel leaders on the condition that he (Brooke), and not any Bruni noble, should be the governor and Rajah of Sarawak. Muda Hasim had offered to secure his appointment to this office as an inducement to him to undertake the operations against the rebels; Brooke therefore felt himself justified in granting these terms. And when later Muda Hasim, no longer threatened with disgrace and failure, showed himself disinclined to carry out this arrangement, Brooke, feeling himself bound by his agreement with the rebel leaders, whose lives he had with difficulty preserved from the vengeance of the Bruni nobles, insisted upon it with some show of force; and on September 24, 1841, he was proclaimed Rajah and governor of Sarawak amid the rejoicings of the populace. Muda Hasim, as representative of the Sultan, signed the document which conferred this title and authority; but since he was not in any proper sense Rajah of Sarawak, which in fact was not a raj, but a district hitherto ruled or misruled by Bruni governors not bearing the title of Rajah, this transaction cannot properly be described as an abdication by Muda Hasim in favour of Brooke. Brooke accordingly felt that it was desirable to secure from the Sultan himself a formal recognition of his authority and title. To this end he visited the Sultan in the year 1842, and obtained from him the desired confirmation of the action of his agent Muda Hasim. The way in which the raj of Sarawak has since been extended, until it now comprises a territory of nearly 60,000 square miles (approximately equal to the area of England and Wales), will be briefly described in a later chapter (XXII.).
The northern end of Borneo had long been a hunting-ground for slaves for the nobles of Bruni and Sulu, whose Sultans claimed but did not exercise the right to rule over it. In 1877 Mr. Alfred Dent, a Shanghai merchant, induced the two Sultans to resign to him their sovereign rights over this territory in return for a money payment. The British North Borneo Company, which was formed for the commercial development of it, necessarily undertook the task of pacification and administration. In 1881 the company was granted a royal charter by the British Government; and it now administers with success and a fair prospect of continued commercial profit a territory which, with the exception of a small area about the town of Bruni, includes all of the island that had not been brought under the Dutch or Sarawak flag. In 1888 Sarawak and British North Borneo were formally brought under the protection of the British Government; but the territories remained under the rule of the Rajah and of the company respectively, except in regard to their foreign relations. In the year 1906 the Sultan of Bruni placed himself and his capital, together with the small territory over which he still retained undivided authority, under the protection of the British Government; and thus was completed the passing of the island of Borneo under European control.