The timeline basics are clear enough (and lots more detail is available via an Ohio University Web site):
James Brooke and his two successors extended Sarawak from its beginnings in a single river system to a territory that surrounded Brunei, by expanding northeastward and adding one river system and then another to the core of the original territory. Many of these additions were on pretexts (suppression of "piracy" or headhunting being the most common), but all relied upon the fading power of Brunei's sultans, and upon the responsibility the Brookes felt toward their subjects... and toward Victorian ideals of "good government" and "free trade".
A letter of Alfred Russel Wallace gives a glimpse into life in Sarawak in 1854.
In the name of "enlightened stewardship", James Brooke and his successors intervened in the politics of Bornean societies, imposed a European administration on a complex geography of ethnicities, and built a state with apparatus for taxation and law and police control. They weathered a number of rebellions and pretty much constant intrigues, and managed to build a polity which succeeded in protecting the peoples of Sarawak from exploitation by outsiders. There aren't many examples of this sort of state-building anywhere else in the world. Sarawak was not a colonial enterprise undertaken for the benefit of European shareholders, or even an enrichment scheme for the Rajahs (indeed, Sarawak didn't produce much profit for anyone: plantations were not permitted, enterprises were pretty closely controlled by the Rajah's government). The state's finances seem to have rested on a foundation of sin taxes --on gambling, alcohol and opium especially-- but I have yet to find any detailed analysis of budgets or revenues.
Here's what James Brooke said himself, describing his refusal to engage in economic projects suggested to him by another:
He talks of making me one of the richest men in England, provided only I shut my eyes, open my mouth, and see what God will send me. I do not approve of this procedure... [no financial prospects] ought to induce me to risk the happiness of the many thousand people here --and risked it would be, were a large capital thrown suddenly into this country, under the superintendence of a number of Europeans... (Tarling 1982:105)
Each river system had a Resident and a number of District Officers (Englishmen, of course, and personally selected by the Rajah), whose responsibility it was to ensure that disputes were settled and that laws were obeyed. It was assumed that the native peoples should be free to go about their lives with minimal interference, and that orderly trade (almost completely in Chinese hands) should continue with minimal interference. Each ethnic entity (Malay, Chinese, Dayak) had its own organizational structure, vetted by the Brooke government. Missionary activity was closely controlled (and competition for Dayak souls was minimized by dealing out separate territories to various Christian sects). Something of the flavor of the life of te British part of this civil society is available in Somerset Maugham's two stories set in Sarawak (and based on a visit he made in 1924), "The Yellow Streak" and "The Outstation", both of which retain their interest.
The produce of Sarawak originally included gold and antimony (mined by Chinese companies (kongsi), but was dominated by "jungle products" of many sorts, including some pretty exotic commodities (bezoar stones, bear gall bladders, rhinoceros horn, leopard teeth, hornbill ivory, jelutong, gutta percha, dammar, gambier, birds' nests) as well as more mundane material like rotan (rattan) and indigo and pepper and copra and illipe nuts.
The image one might have of commerce in Sarawak in the 19th century involves (1) inland peoples gathering jungle products, which they then trade to (2) Chinese merchants who then bulk and ship commodities to (3) distant markets (Singapore, Hong Kong and other Chinese destinations, etc.). Most of the activities of those inland peoples were oriented toward subsistence: growing rice and other non-commercial crops, hunting, etc. The Brooke raj interfered minimally in these commercial and productive activities, though they did tax various parts of commerce, and they retained monopoly rights to (among other things) opium distribution --which means that there was also some level of smuggling activity.
The point is that such minimal intervention in commerce doesn't generate a large government revenue, and for the most part Sarawak didn't "develop" much during the 100-year Brooke raj. Schools and hospitals, such as they were, were missionary activities; roads and bridges were few and far between; life was allowed to go on much as it had done for many hundreds of years, except that headhunting was banned, slavery was discouraged, disputes were handled by the Rajah's courts, and such 'exploitation' as occurred was in traditional modes --for instance, nomadic jungle folk like the Penan were "owned" by their Kayan and Kenyah patrons, and Chinese ran their own communities according to their own customary methods, until those came into conflict with Brooke law.
Land and lend tenure was an important issue for the Brooke raj, which recognized "customary tenure" under adat (loosely, 'custom' or 'customary law') and forbid the sale of land by indigenous people to Chinese or Europeans --but also limited Dayak peoples' expansion to fresh land.
It sounds idyllic, in some respects... and so it was, though there were problems like malaria (very widespread) and other tropical diseases, and "native peoples" had no part in Brooke decision-making or governing, except within their own communities. Brooke rule was paternalistic and protective.
Example, ca. 1908:
The Sea-Dayak [Iban] has all he wants. He is well off, contented and happy. He is a sober man, and indulges in but few luxuries. He is hard working and he is honest, but he lacks strength of mind, and is easily led astray. Therefore, the longer he is kept from the influences of civilization, the better off it will be for him, for the good cannot be introduced without the bad. (Baring-Gould and Bampfylde, quoted in Pringle 1970:325-326)
Government outstations certainly imposed a new order on the countryside, as Malay kampongs and Chinese shophouses grew around the Resident's or District Officer's headquarters. Each 'community' was controlled according to its own custom, but quarrels that crossed ethnic lines had to be settled by government officials.
Gradually commercial activities became more monetized, and cash crops developed --first in the hands of Chinese, though their access to land was very limited. Rubber was probably the first real breach in traditional Dayak land use, and it's worth a brief digression.
Before so-called 'Para' rubber was introduced into the East Indies (after 1880), natural forest latex products gutta percha and jelutong were collected.A question we enventually get to is that of sustainability of any economic/ecological system. The Brooke paternalism was not sustainable after the Japanese occupation 1941-1945, and (to make a long story a good deal shorter) Sarawak passed out of Brooke family control in 1946, and into Crown Colony status. The British colonial administration kept many of the Brooke structures and quite a few personnel --so Sarawak continued to be managed in the interests of but with minimal governmental participation by most of its peoples. Education and road-building and other "development" activities began to be matters of government policy, and some timber concessions were awarded, though the great expansion of Sarawak's timber "industry" came after the formation of Malaysia in 1963.The Rubber Tree (Hevea brasiliensis) By Keith E. Morgan
Elastica (U. S. P.)—India-Rubber from King's American Dispensatory. by Harvey Wickes Felter, M.D., and John Uri Lloyd, Phr. M., Ph. D., 1898.
from James A. Duke. 1983. Handbook of Energy Crops
Henry Wickham from IRRDB
The Threat of South American Leaf Blight to Rubber in Malaysia
Much of the world's rubber is produced on large commercial estates (as in Malaya, where Indian labor was brought in to tap rubber), but Sarawak's rubber production was almost entirely smallholder-based: individuals planted small numbers of trees and tended them in often-desultory fashion (sensitive to market fluctuations), to produce a few sheets for trade, and as a source of the cash required for market purchases. In the 1960s there were efforts to develop communities ("Land Development Schemes") whose main economic activity would be tending of high-yielding clones of rubber --essentially, an effort to create a peasantry who would tap rubber and buy rice.
Perhaps the question comes down to who is/are the actor/s... Brooke administration identified ethnic and regional categories (e.g., Skrang Ibans, or Malays, or the Chinese residents of Saratok district) and often acted or made policy with such large units as the elements, leaving it to local and internal power-holders to handle the internal affairs of the units thus defined. In the early years of Malaysia it seemed that government decisions were made with more locally-defined units as the objects --groups of longhouses, for example. Thus, the Land Development Schemes were supposed to resettle the people of a locality so that services (education, health, water, electricity, etc.) could be better provided and so that they would be drawn into the cash economy more fully, so that they would experience pemansang ["development" or "progress"].
So what do you do if you are the Government of a territory? How do you decide what to maximize, what to invest public $$s in, what to encourage and support? We have several specific cases to look at, in timber concessions, in oil palm plantations, and in dam-building. Each is deeply connected to controversies, and to disagreements between those who benefit and those whose lives and livelihoods are damaged, and each of the cases has large-scale environmental consequences. The same kind of messiness can be seen pretty much anywhere you look around the world: decisions get made that change people's lives, often without any sort of consultation or anticipation of consequences. Eggs are broken to make omelettes, and somebody gets to eat the result.
Whatever else can be said about the details, it does seem incontrovertibly clear that the primary jungles of the island of Borneo have been substantially removed in the last 3 decades. Sarawak has been logged to an astonishing degree:
Malaysian Raw Wood Export BanMalaysia is the largest exporter of tropical wood in the world, accounting for 70 percent of the world's supply of raw-logs. Sabah and Sarawak, the two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, occupy some of the oldest and the most diverse rain forest in the world. This forest provides most of Malaysia's exports of tropical logs. The increase in large-scale exploitation of Sarawak's rain forest was largely due to the entry of Japanese buyers. A 1990 report by the Yokohama-based International Timber Trade Organization (ITTO) predicted that the majority of Sarawak's forests would be gone by 1995 and therefore would be a major wood importer by 2001.'Sustainability' isn't even a theoretical part of this assault. And who benefits? Who are the holders of the timber concessions granted by the government? See History, Background and Update on Sarawak Land Rights Struggle from forests.org...In 1990, Japanese imports of Sarawak's logs jumped by 20 percent and represented 53 percent of Japan's total tropical-log import volume. The Japanese, the leading importers of raw-logs, use the wood mainly in the construction industries. Over 75 percent of the tropical hardwood coming into Japan ends up as plywood, primarily as disposable forms for molding concrete.
...In 1993, only 20 percent of Sabah and Sarawak's virgin forest remained.
Virtually every state assemblyman in the state legislature and many of their relatives have become millionaires through timber concessions.andWhy Governments Fail to Capture Economic Rent: The Unofficial Appropriation of Rain Forest Rent by Rulers in Insular Southeast Asia Between 1970 and 1999 (David W. Brown) dissertation June 2001
The study argues that government agencies fail to collect timber rent at optimum levels because they are prevented from doing so by rulers who use their positions to build and maintain hidden ties to the timber industry through which they appropriate vast amounts of timber rent.Proving that rulers are appropriating timber rent is accomplished through archival research, primary documents, and five years of fieldwork to identify all forest areas licensed to the largest timber conglomerates in Indonesia, Sarawak and Sabah. This research is corroborated and supplemented through structured interviews to find out whether rulers, their families, proxies, business partners, and political supporters and financiers run or own these timber concessions.
The study concludes that in Indonesia, Sarawak, and Sabah each head of state has multiple ties to timber concessions. The dissertation estimates that the three governments failed to collect 40 billion dollars in timber revenues over thirty years.
and
The Global Fight to Save Sarawak Tropical Rainforests
The Chief Minister of Sarawak is also the Minister of Forests. He personally decides who is granted timber concessions. The current Chief Minister and his uncle, the former Chief Minister, currently control over 50% of the timber concessions in the state. The Chief Minister, since he came to office in 1978, has amassed a personal fortune (primarily from timber concessions) of an estimated $4 billion US. (1995)Being well connected goes a long way in Malaysia
... Consider these two abstracts:
Contradictions in land development schemes: the case of joint ventures in Sarawak, Malaysiaand
Asia Pacific Viewpoint, August 2002, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 157-180(24)
Ngidang D. [1]
[1] Universiti Malaysia Sarawak email: dimbab@fss.unimas.my
Abstract:
Landowners and the private investors often have contradictory interests in joint ventures. Although development planners sometimes believe that government can harmonise these contradictions, state interests in development often lead them to support the interests of private capital. While joint ventures may be useful ways of pooling human, material and financial resources, this article draws on a case study of two pilot joint venture oil palm schemes in Sarawak, Malaysia, to show that the legal construction and administration of native customary land rights generate lower results for landowners than they do for the private sector. Information and power asymmetries constrain the ability of affected natives to realise fair benefits under a joint venture arrangement. When institutional constraints that give a measure of protection to native rights and interests are dismantled in the rush to establish commercial plantations for example, an unregulated market can be detrimental to landowners’ rights and long–term interests.Keywords: joint venture; land bank; land development; native customary rights; Sarawak; Malaysia; oil palm plantations
Language: English Document Type: Research article ISSN: 1360-7456and
Vulnerability, Control and Oil Palm in Sarawak: Globalization and a New Era?
Development and Change, April 2002, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 189-211(23)
Majid Cooke F. [1]
[1] Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
Abstract:
In the post logging era, Sarawak is being restructured to make way for large-scale oil palm plantations. In this restructuring, the vulnerabilities of particular areas are being used in a wider battle to control production, particularly for export. Native customary lands, considered ‘unproductive’ or ‘idle’ by officials, are the target of oil palm plantation development under a new land development programme called Konsep Baru (New Concept). This article looks at the contradictions generated by the complex process of laying claims to ‘idle’ native customary land and focuses on Dayak organizing initiatives in northern Sarawak, Malaysia.Language: English Document Type: Research article ISSN: 0012-155X
AUTHOR Scott, James C.
TITLE Seeing like a state : how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed / James C. Scott.
IMPRINT New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, c1998.
CALL NO. HD87.5 .S365 1998.
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Extinguishing Native Land Rights
December, 1999
From Utusan Consumer Magazine
FROM the very beginning, the Sarawak State Government's ventures into any land-involving projects have been met with a mixture of cool responses and, at times, indignant resistance from the Sarawak pribumi (indigenuous people). There is a simple reason for this. It is because they know that their customary land rights will be infringed upon.
Under the Sarawak Land Code, Native Customary Land (NCL) can be categorised as,
1. land in which native customary rights (NCR) whether communal or otherwise have lawfully been created prior to 1st January 1958.
2. any area of State land that has been declared Native Communal Reserve land by the Chief Minister; and
3. Interior Area Land upon which NCR have been lawfully created by obtaining a permit.
NCR over these plots of land are sometimes owned by individuals, by tribal groups, or by a longhouse consisting of several families. Ownership is known but not necessarily recorded.
In effect as of 1958, when the Sarawak Land Code came into force, NCL became a part of State land, and NCL could be disposed of. As of then, the pribumi lost lawful ownership of their land.
It must stated here that most of the NCL in Sarawak falls under the first category, whereby the pribumi have occupied the land for generations, and thus have NCR created before 1958.
According to Section 5(3) of the Land Code, "any native customary rights may be extinguished by direction issued by the Minister" for "public purposes" or to facilitate alienation of land, which under Section 15A must be for the purpose of development or of any undertaking that would, in the opinion of the Minister, be for the benefit of the State or the public.
In essence, the Minister obtained the authority to dispose of NCL for reasons that he deemed necessary by ordering extinguishment of the pribumi's NCR over the land. Note the apparent subjectivity of this authority.
The Land Code requires that the order to extinguish NCR must be accompanied by the payment of compensation to any person who can establish NCR on the land. Hence, any order for extinguishment would be published or notified in the government Gazette, or be exhibited at the notice of the District Office for the area.
However, any claims for compensation following the extinguishment of the NCR over these lands must made within 60 days of the notice, after which "native customary rights shall cease and be extinguished and the land held under such rights shall revert to the Government".
Obviously, 60 days is not enough for pribumi who live in the interiors and who have limited access to legal assistance. Previously, before it was amended in 1996, the Land Code demanded that direction of extinguishment be brought to the notice of the pribumi. This is not required any more. This means, that should the pribumi not have access to the District Office during the sixty-day period, they may lose their land without even knowing it.
Clearly, the Land Code as it is now has made it so much easier for the State Government to take over NCL from the pribumi who have occupied and served the land for generations.
To make matters worse for the pribumi, while they are aware of the boundaries, which delineate the NCL for each community, more often than not, they do not know the exact acreage of the land surrounding their longhouses. The exact measurement of the land has never been necessary, because according to the tradition, each and everyone in the longhouse is entitled to work on the land. However, in the case of NCR extinguishment, exact acreage has to be obtained to ensure that proper compensation is given out. This means that the pribumi have to get their land surveyed and measured, and the only way they can do this is by seeking the help of the Land & Survey Department.
They are cornered. Because the same authority that wants to get them off the land would survey their land.
And the burden of proving NCR over the land lies on the pribumi who have put in claims for compensation. In fact, if the State Government has leased out the land to a private company, the lease would continue even if there are NCR claims made by the pribumi. And until the pribumi can prove their NCR over the land, the company would be able to enter on and use the land that they have lived on for generations.
Because of the nature of compensation claims, land that belonged to a community and was considered communal could now become private, because each pribumi would begin to put it in claims for individual ownership of the land. Unequal opportunity among pribumi individuals, caused by illiteracy and other factors, to make such claims would result in some of them ending up being completely landless.
The resulting conflicts that would arise because of this could break up the community.
The Sarawak State Government set up the Land Custody and Development Authority (LCDA) in 1981 to sort out the inevitable legal entanglements and snitches once they began working on the pribumi's customary land.
The LCDA was given a very wide mandate and can undertake the development of all categories of land for agriculture, commercial, industrial and residential purposes irrespective of location, once the location of the land is declared a Development Area. It has the power to undertake the compulsory acquisition of any land in the state, with the Minister's approval of course.
It also functions as a land bank, identifying rural land and making it available for development. The LCDA would be the matchmaker between the owners of the land and investors who are interested in developing it. It will then coordinate and supervise the joint venture.
For all intents and purposes, the LCDA would handle any problems with compensation and as such that the pribumi would bring up in relation to the extinguishment of their NCR, make sure the pribumi eventually leave the land, choose a new location for their resettlement, and manage the development of their resettlement area.
Once the land has been developed, LCDA has the authority to dispose the land in any manner it so desires. It can sell the land for a profit, it can sell it on behalf of the owners or it can transfer the land back to the owners after all incurred development costs have been paid up by the latter.
So, the LCDA was essentially set up to facilitate the acquisition of NCL from the pribumi. Over the years, however, more and more of the pribumi have become aware of the whole process that follows the extinguishment order and are increasingly able to contest and claim compensation for their NCL.
In response, the LCDA and their private ventures have taken to bypassing the whole process. Recent reports show that both have been encroaching on NCL in, what appears to be, defiance of the proper procedures.
This has brought about a more evident resistance from the pribumi in the forms of blockades and physical fights with the contractors sent in by the private companies. This spirit of resistance has remained true over the years and has withstood police arrests and being jailed.
Pushing them off their land and placing them in social situations alien to their traditions and culture is tantamount to pushing them off their rightful place as the original people of Sarawak.
(see also this cache)
DECLARATION OF GAWAI KELINGKANG : NERABAI MENOA 1999
Land rights and policy from High Stakes: the need to control transnational logging companies: a Malaysian case study (forestmonitor.org)
Dayaks take on Malaysia's palm oil giants By Roshan Lal Asia Times 19 August 1999
BORNEO NATIVE GROUP SCORES LAND CLAIM VICTORY by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski © 2002 (Published in Borneo Project Website April 17, 2002)
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The speed of land clearing and of the provision of new settlements has been so fast that there appears to be a shortage of potential settlers to fill them. Sarawak still depends on its own settlement programmes, begun in the early 1960s with the permanent settlements of Dayak shifting cultivators on land near their traditional settlements. The author remembers a scene that vividly expresses the dramatic changes resulting from this modernization: In 1966 during a visit to an Iban longhouse at a distance of only some 500 m from the Melugu Settlement Scheme (second division of Sarawak) the elderly village chief appeared to become somewhat irritated when we saw a net filled with old skulls from former head-hunting ceremonies still hanging on the verandah of the longhouse. He quickly explained that these heads had been taken during his grandfather's generation, whilst nowadays his own grandchildren were attending the modern secondary school attached to the new settlement scheme, which their parents had recently joined (Uhlig 1966, 1970). In 1970 this Melugu land development scheme had achieved 782 ha planted with rubber and divided into 236 settlers' lots. The total of seven land development schemes (so-called type B. for former tribal shifting cultivators) of Sarawak had established 5,548 ha of rubber in 1,313 lots; no further rubber planting followed after 1970 (Lien 1980, table 3.5).(from Agricultural Expansion and Pioneer Settlements in the Humid Tropics)
CROP ZONES FOR FOOD PRODUCTION IN SARAWAK
Melugu fruit zone map Melugu in the news
Soon, settlers in the now defunct rubber schemes in Skrang and Melugu will get a new lease of life following the Government's decision to plant the areas with oil palm.
