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

by S. Baring-Gould; C. A. Bampfylde

Upon the death of the Sultana, a commissioner was sent to Baram by the Sultan to demand the customary aid towards the obsequies. A meeting of all the chiefs was summoned by the commissioner, a haji, and, as it happened, the late Mr. H. Brooke Low, who was then travelling in the Baram, was present. The Sultan's mandate, requiring so much from each man, was read and left with the chiefs, the haji not for a moment suspecting that any one present could read it. Mr. Low, however, was able to do so, and when it was shown to him he was shocked, though not surprised, to discover that the haji had read into the mandate a requirement for amounts more than double that demanded.

But the rebellion of the Kayans and the expulsion of the Brunis from Baram ensued in the middle of 1874; the river was freed of its oppressors, and the victorious Kayans menaced every settlement along the coast from the Baram to Bintulu. The villages were deserted and the Sultan was in despair, unable to reduce the Kayans, unable even to protect the Malays. Not only could he draw no revenue thence, but he dare not even ask for it. This prepared the way for the transfer of the whole stretch of coast to Sarawak. So far as the Sultan was concerned he was glad to commute the sovereignty of a district, from which little before the revolt, and nothing after, could be squeezed by himself out of the inhabitants, for a certain sum guaranteed to be paid to himself annually.

To escape Bruni oppression, people were constantly migrating to Sarawak, principally from the Semalajau, Niah, and Miri rivers, and in 1876 over 2000 came in. These poor people had to effect their escape by stealth, and consequently had to abandon all their property. Shortly after this upwards of 500 families of Kenyahs moved over into the Bintulu.

In accordance with the treaty with Great Britain of 1847 the Sultan was debarred from ceding any territory to any foreign power without the sanction of her Majesty's Government. This gave the British Government the right, or rather the power, to prevent Sarawak acquiring the Baram, and this it was prepared to do. As usual it proved obstructive, and refused to sanction the transfer; it went so far as to express its unwillingness to allow any territorial change to be made on the coast of Bruni. This was insisted on again in 1876, though the Rajah wrote to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs (March 20) "I may candidly state that a most pernicious system of robbery and oppression is pursued by the hirelings of the Bruni Government. It surely can scarcely be conceived by her Majesty's Government that upholding the authority of the Bruni Government is tantamount to supporting the cause of oppression and misrule."

Her Majesty's Government had refused to interfere in any way with that of Bruni for the amelioration of the condition of the people, and the maintenance of open ports and free trade; had stood aloof as not disposed to interfere in the internal affairs of the Sultanate, and yet now, most inconsistently, it stepped in to forbid the cession to Sarawak of a portion of that miserably misgoverned and depopulated State.

The fact seems to have been that the Foreign Office had been persistently misinformed as to the position and prospects of Sarawak, and as to the conduct of the Rajah towards the Sultan. The latter had agreed to the cession of Baram to Sarawak; he desired it for monetary reasons, the only reasons that appealed to or swayed him. But when Sir Edward Hertslet informed Mr. H. T. Ussher, C.M.G., who was Governor of Labuan from 1875 to 1879, and who appreciated the motives which guided the Rajah, that he "in common with others at the Foreign Office had fancied that the acquisition of the Baram by Sarawak would lead to the loss of its sago trade with Labuan," the cat was out of the bag. Incidently we may remark that Baram exported no sago, and that there could then have been little or no trade between that river and Labuan, for during the first six months of Sarawak rule the exports amounted in value to $9000 only. It was a dog-in-the-manger policy, what Labuan could not have, that it was resolved Sarawak should not have, and the interests of the people were left out of the question. It is possible enough that this was inspired by jealousy. No man likes to see his own field sterile and that of his neighbour producing luxurious crops. Conceive the feelings of a small mercer in the same street as a Whiteley or Harrod, who finds his own business dwindling, and is oppressed by the extension and success of the great firm a few doors off. Such may have been the feeling of a Governor of Labuan.

The Rajah visited England in 1874, and on July 16 handed in a memorandum to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, pointing out that the appropriation by foreign powers of north-west and north-east Borneo and the Sulu Archipelago[^[310]] should be guarded against, and recommended to ensure this, and for the benefit of trade and of the native communities, that Great Britain should assume the sovereign power over those territories that remained to the Sultanate of Bruni, that the Sultan and his heirs should be pensioned, as well as the five principal Bruni Rajahs; and that a town should be built at the mouth of the Bruni river, which should become the headquarters of her Majesty's Representative, in place of Labuan. All that the Rajah asked for Sarawak was that Baram should be incorporated with that State, owing to the fact that the inland population of that river and that of the Rejang were greatly intermixed, and should therefore be under one head and government.

A policy somewhat similar to that above indicated was, a year after, inaugurated with great success in the Malay Peninsula, and it would doubtless have met with equal success in Borneo had it found favour with her Majesty's Ministers then, though thirty years afterwards they saw reason to adopt it, but only after Bruni had become a bankrupt State, stripped of most of its territories, and with its small remaining revenue pawned. At the time when the Rajah made his proposal, the whole of what is now the British North Borneo Company's territory, together with Lawas, Trusan, Limbang, and Bruni, might have been acquired, and the Sultan would then have become as powerless to do harm as one of the native princes of the Federated Malay States, thus relieving the people of the intolerable oppression of a government which had reduced the population to a small remnant of what it had been formerly.

The policy adopted in regard to the native States of the Malay Peninsula in 1875, referred to above, is generally known as that of Sir Andrew Clarke, who was Governor of the Straits Settlements from 1873 to 1875. It was the policy, however, that the late Rajah, many years before, had advocated as one which should be introduced into all native States, and he then wrote: "The experiment of developing a country through the residence of a few Europeans and by the assistance of its own native rulers has never been fully tried, and it appears to me, in some respects more desirable than the actual possession of a foreign nation; for if successful, the native prince finds greater advantages, and if a failure, the European government is not committed. Above all it insures the independence of the native princes, and may advance the inhabitants further in the scale of civilisation by means of this very independence, than can be done when the government is a foreign one, and their freedom sacrificed."

Compare this with the remark made by Sir Andrew Clarke in his speech before the Legislative Council of Singapore on the government of the native States: "We should continue a policy not of aggression upon our neighbours, but of exercising our own influence, and by giving them officers to help them."