Since the Company was formed over £200,000 has been paid to the Government for mining royalties, and during the same period £2,000,000 has been paid out in wages, which has tended to the prosperity and advantage of the country.
Until 1898, no balance of profit had been made by the Company from Sarawak; indeed, there was a very considerable deficit, which had been met from the profits of their other operations.[[355]] This persistence in the original policy of the founders of the Company for forty years without return has, however, been rewarded by considerable success in the last decade. The enterprise that brought this success, the extraction of gold from poor grade ores by the cyanide process, is noticed further on, and we will conclude this notice of the Company by a quotation from a speech by the Rajah given thirty years after the foundation of the raj.
The Company has held fast and stuck to its work through the perils and dangers and the adversity which Sarawak has experienced and encountered. It has shown a solid and stolid example to other merchants, and has formed a basis for mercantile operations; and the importance of the presence in a new State of such a large and influential body as the Borneo Company cannot be overrated.
Owing to the absolute lack of security to life and property, both within and without, before the accession of Sir James Brooke to the raj, Sarawak had no trade. After 1842 a small trade began to spring up, but the Lanun and Balenini pirates and the Sea-Dayaks rendered the pursuit of trade very difficult and dangerous. The lessons administered to the latter by the Rajah and Sir Henry Keppel caused these to confine themselves for some time to their homes, and the Foreign exports rose to $60,000 in 1847. Then the coast again became insecure, and it was not until after the battle of Beting Maru, in 1849, that trade made any considerable advance, and it continued to increase until the Chinese insurrection brought the country to the verge of ruin. A brief respite followed, and then came the internal political troubles, and renewed activity on the part of the Lanun and Balenini pirates. But in 1862, the authority of the Rajah was paramount from Cape Datu to Kedurong Point, and the defeat of the pirates off Bintulu in the middle of this year freed the Sarawak coast for ever from these pests. So in 1862 the increase in the value of the trade was over fifty per cent. In 1860, the Foreign imports and exports amounted to $574,097; in 1880 to $2,284,495; in 1900 to $9,065,715; and in 1905 to $13,422,267. Since 1905, in common with all countries, the State has been suffering from commercial depression, and in 1907 the decrease in the imports was $709,162, and in the exports $823,682, compared with 1905, though only $2276 and $166,285 as compared with 1906. But though the exports have fallen off in value, there has been an increase in the quantities of the products exported. As prices fluctuate, the industrial progress of a country is, therefore, better gauged by the quantity rather than by the value of its products, and in 1907, 7000 tons more sago flour, 800 tons more pepper, 7000 oz. more gold, and 150 tons more gutta and india-rubber were exported than in 1905.
Practically Singapore has the benefit of the whole of the Sarawak trade, which is borne in two steamers of 900 tons each under the Sarawak flag, owned by the Sarawak and Singapore S.S. Company, and these maintain a weekly communication between Kuching and Singapore. The coasting trade is carried in three smaller steamers owned by the same Company. There is a small trade in timber with Hong Kong; and a few junks come yearly from Siam and Cochin China.
Agriculture is the foremost industry, and as it is a permanent one, only requiring wise and liberal measures to foster and encourage it, Sarawak is in this respect fortunate, for the natural products of a country, such as minerals and jungle produce, must in time be worked out; and the future of a country is therefore more dependent upon its industries than on its natural products.
In 1907, the value of the cultivated products exported was $3,133,565. Of these sago may be said to be the staple product, and the markets of the world are mainly supplied by Sarawak with this commodity. From it Borneo derives its Eastern name, Pulo-Ka-lamanta-an (the island of raw sago).[[356]] The palm, the pith of which is the raw or crude sago, is indigenous, and there are many varieties growing wild all over the island that yield excellent sago. On the low, marshy banks of the rivers, lying between Kalaka and Kedurong Point, are miles upon miles of what might be termed jungles of the cultivated palm, where fifty years ago there were but patchy plantations. The raw sago as extracted by the Melanaus is purchased by the Chinese and shipped to the sago factories in Kuching, where it is converted into sago flour, in which form it is exported to Singapore. How the cultivation of the sago palm is increasing, the following figures will show:—
| 1870 exported | [[357]]tons, value | $128,025 | |
| 1887 exported | 8,734 | tons, value | 314,536 |
| 1897 exported | 14,330 | tons, value | 689,702 |
| 1907 exported | 20,388 | tons, value | 964,266 |
In 1847-48, only 2,000 tons were imported into Singapore, practically all from Borneo.
In times immemorial pepper was very extensively cultivated in Borneo. In the middle ages this cultivation attracted particular attention to the island; and to obtain a control over the pepper trade by depriving the Turks of their control over the trade in spices was one of the main incentives to the discovery of a route to the East by the Cape. By many the introduction of pepper into Borneo is attributed to the Chinese, and from them the natives are supposed to have learnt its cultivation, but this is doubtful, as pepper is not a product of China, and was probably introduced by the Hindus; but that the Chinese, finding the industry a profitable one, improved and extended the cultivation of pepper, there can be no doubt. What the export of pepper was in the days when the Malayan Sultanates were at their prime it is impossible to determine, but that it must have been very considerable is indicated by the fact that as late as 1809 Hunt estimated the export from Bruni at 3500 tons, and at that time the country had been brought to the verge of ruin by misrule and oppression, which led to the gradual extinction of the Chinese colony, and to the deprival of all incentive to the Muruts and Bisayas to carry on an industry for which they had once been famous—indeed, Hunt notices that he saw numbers of abandoned gardens, and his observations were restricted to a very limited area. In spite of the harmful restrictions of the Dutch, in the south at Banjermasin, two hundred years ago, the export was still from 2000 to 3000 tons.[[358]] Had different conditions prevailed, had native industry been encouraged instead of having been suppressed, then truly might Borneo have become the "Insula Bonæ Fortunæ" of Ptolemy.