A History of Sarawak under Its Two White Rajahs 1839-1908. Baring-Gould Sabine
hereafter. The wisdom of the white man cannot become a hindrance, and the English ruler must be their friend and guide, or nothing. The citizen of Sarawak has every privilege enjoyed by the citizen of England, and far more personal freedom than is known in a thickly populated country. They are not taught industry by being forced to work. They take a part in the government under which they live; they are consulted upon the taxes they pay; and, in short, they are free men.
"This is the government which has struck its roots into the soil for the last quarter of a century, which has triumphed over every danger and difficulty, and which has inspired its people with confidence."
The revenue of Sarawak was in utter confusion. Over large tracts of country no tax could be enforced, and the Rajah, as he had undertaken, was determined to lighten the load that had weighed so crushingly, and was inflicted so arbitrarily on the loyal Land-Dayaks – loyal hitherto, not in heart, but because powerless to resist. To carry on the government without funds was impossible, and the want of these was now, and for many years to come, the Rajah's greatest trouble. Consequently the antimony ore was made a monopoly of the government, which was a fair and just measure, and to the general advantage of the community, though it was subsequently seized upon as a pretext for accusing the Rajah of having debased his position by engaging in trade. But it was years before the revenue was sufficient to meet the expenditure, and gradually the Rajah sacrificed his entire fortune to pay the expenses of the administration.
In undertaking the government he had three objects in view: —
(1) The relief of the unfortunate Land-Dayaks from oppression.
(2) The suppression of piracy, and the restoration to a peaceable and orderly life, of those tribes of Dayaks who had been converted into marauders by their Malay masters.
(3) The suppression of head-hunting.
But these ends could not be attained all at once. The first was the easiest arrived at, and the news spread through the length and breadth of the island that there was one spot on its surface where the native was not ground to powder, and where justice reigned. The result was that the Land-Dayaks flocked to it. Whole families came over from the Dutch Protectorate, where there was no protection; and others who had fled to the mountains and the jungle returned to the sites of their burnt villages.
How this has worked, on the same undeviating lines of a sound policy, under the rule of the two Rajahs, the following may show. Writing in 1867, on revisiting Sarawak, Admiral the Hon. Sir Henry Keppel said:
It brought back to my mind some four-and-twenty years ago, when I first came up in the Dido with Sir James Brooke on board, and gave the first and nearly the only help he had in securing his position, thereby enabling him to carry out his philanthropic views for the benefit of a strange race. If he had not succeeded to the full extent of his then sanguine hopes, still there is no man living, or to come, who, single-handed, will have benefited his fellow-creatures to the extent Brooke has. In 1842, piracy, slavery, and head-hunting were the order of the day. The sail of a peaceful trader was nowhere to be seen, not even a fisherman, but along the length of this beautiful coast, far into the interior, the Malays and Dayaks warred on one another. Now how different! Huts and fishing stakes are to be seen all along the coast, the town of Kuching, which on the visit of the Dido, had scarcely 800 inhabitants, now has a population of 20,000. The aborigines, who called themselves warriors, are now peaceful traders and cultivators of rice. The jungle is fast being cleared to make way for farms.
Head-hunting, the third aim which Rajah Brooke held before his eyes, was an ingrained custom of the race which could not be eradicated at once. The utmost that he could effect at first was to prevent the taking of heads of any of the subjects under his rule. All the tribes that were in his raj were to be regarded as friends, and were therefore not to be molested. Any breach of the peace, every murder was severely punished. In a short time head-hunting and intertribal feuds amongst the Sarawak Dayaks were extirpated, and the raj ceased to be a hunting-field for the Sekrang and Saribas Dayaks; but they continued to haunt the coast together with the Lanun and Balenini pirates, and the suppression of piracy was the most serious undertaking of the three, and took many years to accomplish.
Early in 1843, the Rajah visited Singapore to further the interests of his raj, and for a change. His main wish, which he had repeatedly expressed, was to transfer Sarawak to the Crown, and he likewise impressed upon the Government the policy of establishing a settlement at Labuan, and of obtaining a monopoly of the coal in the Bruni Sultanate. He was able to interest the Chinese merchants in the trade of Sarawak. But the most important matter was the immediate suppression of the ravages committed by the pirates, both Dayak and Malay; and here Providence threw across his path, in the person of Captain the Hon. Henry Keppel,107 the very assistance he required. Between the white Rajah and the Rajah Laut (Sea King), the title by which Keppel became known, and was ever afterwards remembered in Sarawak, a sincere attachment arose. Keppel was attracted by the Rajah's lovable personality, and sympathised with his objects; and, being chivalrous and always ready to act upon his own responsibility, he at once decided to lend all the support in his power, which any other naval officer might have hesitated to have done. The aid he so nobly rendered came at an opportune time, for it not only administered to the pirates a severe lesson, but also taught those inimical to his rule that the white Rajah was not held aloof by his own countrymen, and thus consolidated his power by reassuring the waverers and encouraging the loyal. The kindly and gallant Keppel stands foremost amongst the friends of Sarawak, to which State he rendered not only the splendid services to be recorded in our next chapter, but ever evinced a keen and kindly interest in its welfare, and in its Rajahs, to whom he was ever ready to lend his able support and influence, and of whom the Rajah wrote, "He is my friend and the benefactor of Sarawak."
CHAPTER IV
THE PIRATES
As we have already mentioned, the second, and by far the most difficult, task that Rajah Brooke had set before him, and was determined to accomplish, was the suppression of piracy, which he rightly described as an evil almost as disgraceful to the European nations who permitted it as to the native States engaged in it.
The principal piratical peoples at the time were the Illanun, or Lanun, the Balenini, the Bajaus, and the Sulus, all living to the north or north-east of Bruni, and consequently far beyond the jurisdiction of the Rajah. To these must be added the Sea-Dayaks of the Saribas and Sekrang, who, led by their Malay allies, though less formidable to trade, were far more destructive of human life.
The Sambas Malays had also been pirates, but at this period had ceased to be such. Earl, who visited Sambas in 1834, says, that "before the arrival of the Dutch Sambas was a nest of pirates. In 1812, having attacked an English vessel, several British men-of-war were sent from Batavia to attack the town. The inhabitants resisted, but were defeated, the fort was razed to the ground, and the guns tumbled into the river." The reoccupation by the Dutch shortly afterwards of this place, Pontianak, and Banjermasin, put some check upon the piratical habits of the Malays in the western and southern States,108 but the Malays of the eastern shores of Borneo, especially those of Koti, to the north and north-west, were all pirates; and even the people of Bruni were imbued with piratical habits, which were generally inherent in the Malay character, though they were not enterprising enough to be openly piratical, or to do more than encourage their bolder neighbours, from whom they could obtain plunder and slaves cheaply; and near Bruni, within the territory of the Sultan, were several piratical strongholds. All these were under the control of half-bred Arab sherips, as also were the Saribas and the Sekrangs.
The Lanuns are natives of the large island of Mindanau, or Magindanau, the southernmost of the Philippine group. They were known to the Spaniards as "Los Illanos de la laguna," and, in common with all Muhammadans, were classed by them as Moros or Moors. On the lagoon, or bay, of Lanun they live. They were the boldest and most courageous of the pirates, and the most dangerous to Europeans, whom they never hesitated to attack, not even the Dutch gunboats, and to whom, unlike the Balenini pirates, they would never give quarter, owing to a hatred, born of former injustice and inhumanity, received at the hands of those whom they could only have regarded as white barbarians. They became incorrigible and cruel pirates, looking upon piracy
Afterwards Admiral of the Fleet. He died, January 1904.
The Governor-General of Netherlands East Indies in a rescript, dated January 23, 1846, acknowledged that the exertions during the past twenty-five years effectually to suppress piracy on the coasts of Borneo had not been successful for want of combination, and for having been limited to the western coast.