John Crawfurd
John Crawfurd wrote a three-volume text during the 1820s about the Indian Archipelago. Most historians, including myself, are quite familiar and indebted to him and the text. I did not know he had a later life which included being a colonial administrator for the East India Company in Uttar Pradesh, Yogyakarta, Singapore, Siam, Burma and Cochin China before retiring in 1827. Later he wrote an anonymous column in the Examiner, the newspaper of the New Radicals. It was the custom of the time to write anonymously. He was also an influencer who visited the clubs of London where people of high government society visited. One of the groups he affected was the “New Radicals” which was a loose confederation of individuals who lobbied for reform. He was the man behind the scenes of the New Radicals. Crawfurd was a strong anti-colonist as were members of the New Radicals.
In Crawfurd’s viewpoint, James Brooke usurped native rule in Sarawak and used the British Navy to terrorize and murder his opponents. Brooke did this to advance his own career. Crawfurd was the exact opposite of Sir Stanford Raffles and James Brooke who believed in colonizing the Dutch East Indies and Borneo.
Crawfurd believed one of the key problems of the world was: “differences of colour and language are the great obstacles to the happiness, improvement, and civilization of mankind”. He believed in democracy in the colonies. He felt everyone should be treated equally, regardless of race or skin colour.
Throughout the 1830s and 1840, Crawfurd testified before Parliamentary Committees on Asian and Indian Affairs. Crawfurd stated the less England interfered in the internal affairs of the natives the better. He argued against colonizing Borneo citing it as an island with an unproductive jungle and poor soil.
In October 1846 Crawfurd wrote anonymously a column for the Examiner in which he rejected the colonizing of Borneo. He stated the only form of colonization would be the British as masters and the people as slaves.
In letters to the Radical parliamentarian Richard Cobden in the late1840s, he stated he was very concerned about Brooke’s aggressiveness about colonizing Sarawak for his own personal gain and that he was extremely apprehensive about Brooke’s character and conduct. Despite his efforts, supporters of colonialism seemed to gain force in Britain. Crawfurd’s appeals seemed to fall on deaf ears.
The Massacre at Beting Maru
In 1825 the British government passed the Piracy Act which encouraged the capture of pirate ships and pirates. They paid 20 pounds for each pirate captured or killed. Captain Belcher claimed 11,900 pounds for killing 350 pirates from Ternate when in reality there were only 16. The Captain grossly inflated the numbers to earn a huge profit.
Brooke attacked the Ibans in 1844 and in 1846. On 31 July 1849, James Brooke along with forces of the British Navy launched a campaign to destroy the capacity of the Skrang and Saribas people to commit piracy.
British Commander Farquhar along with the naval sloop HMS Albatross and the paddle steamer HMS Nemesis together with Brookes 2,500 Iban warriors, 70 war prahaus and his personal steamer the Royalist lay in wait for a Saribas force. The Saribis and Skrang “war force” made its way up the coast into the trap laid by Brooke and Farquhar. The result was a slaughter.
Farquhar claimed 20,700 pounds (equal to 2,766,000 pounds in 2025 money )claiming 300 pirates were killed, 88 prahus destroyed while 500 Saribis and Skrang wounded fled into the jungle who would have died anyway.
The Radicals, always on the lookout for public waste, used the huge sums of head money paid to Farquhar to criticize Brooke. The debate about head money was brought to the public’s attention by the Radicals something Cawfurd failed to do during the 1840’s.
The Campaign Against Brooke
There were two stages of criticism against Brooke. The first was the exorbitant amount of money paid out to the Naval officers in head money. The second was a public campaign against James Brooke led by Joseph Hume. Hume used parliament to establish a Commission of Inquiry into abuses of power by Brooke during his tenure as honorary Consul to Brunei.
In late November 1849, the London newspapers published a comprehensive account of the Battle of Beting Marau. The account made clear the disparity between those who had rockets and cannons on one side and spears and swords on the other.
On 6 December, Radical Richard Cobden wrote a letter to Radical John Bright over Brookes’s escapades in Borneo. Cobdens focus was the British public.
Crawfurd developed three arguments: the first was the massacre was the result of the corruption in the Royal Navy. Secondly, the corruption was a threat to the peoples of Southeast Asia and thirdly the tribes of Sarawak were not practising piracy but were involved in inter-tribal warfare and not of concern to Britain.
Crawfurd felt the Navy had placed too much power in the hands of Naval officers. He blamed the massacre not on Brooke but on the Navy.
In January 1850, the Aboriginal Protection Society met at Cobden’s urging. The Society urged a repeal of the British Navy’s head money policy stating the practice was “barbarous and unjust in principle” and presented “a direct temptation to the shedding of innocent blood”.
The Radicals presented a bill in Parliament in February of 1850 for the total repeal of head money payments. The bill failed. However, a new bill placed the power of head money in the hands of Admiralty Courts who determined the merits of each payment effectively ending the head money payments.
Piracy or Tribal War
Cobden first raised the question of whether the Ibans were in piracy or merely tribal warfare in February 1850. Brooke’s supporters all claimed that Borneo and Southeast Asia were riddled with pirates and argued for extensive military campaigns to destroy all coastal communities.
Crawfurd led the campaign to reject the idea that Borneo was plagued by a pirate problem. He portrayed the people of Borneo as a” tribal with very limited technologies and not capable of threatening ocean-going vessels.”
On 22 July 1850 Cobden used Crawfurds arguments in the committees that Sarawak was not riddled with pirates. Brooke supporter James St John’s used the argument that Crawfurd’s” authority is not worth one farthing”
Crawfurd continued to write his columns anonymously. He was afraid the Brook supporters would attack him personally instead of focusing on the pirate issue. He was also afraid that they would challenge he had no expertise in Southeast Asian affairs.
In May 1851 Brooke returned to London to challenge Cobden and the New Radicals. Crawfurd continued writing his columns against Brooke as a behind-the-scenes supporter of the New Radicals. Crawfurd and the New Radicals both called for a Commission of Inquiry into Brooke.
A new government was formed in 1852 which relied on the New Radicals for support. A Commission of Inquiry into James Brooke was formed.
The Commission of Inquiry into James Brooke
The commission did not focus on just piracy as Cobden had hoped but also zeroed in on the legitimacy of James Brooke as Raja of Sarawak, Governor of Labuan and Counsel to Brunei.
The first Senior Commissioner, Charles Prinsep of the inquiry was certified as insane. The second Commissioner was Humphrey Devereux, a long-standing officer in the Bengal Civil Service.
Many of the questions tried to determine the differences between pirate activities, peaceful trade and internal conflict ie between the villagers (Bidayuh?) and the Ibans. The Commission did question European and Asian Traders as well as villagers (Bidayuh?) who were victims of Iban raiding. No Ibans were present.
When the Europeans were questioned they were asked if they could tell the difference between the different tribes, (Iban and Bidayuh?) or the difference between war and trading prahus. The Asians were asked if they could tell the difference between the villagers (Bidayuh) and the Ibans. The Asians answered yes!
The next question is what difference was there between war among the Ibans and villagers (Bidayu’s) and piracy?
The commission concluded that Brooke could not tell the difference between which groups were pirates. They stated he did not use his office of Counsel to Brunei to further his Sarawak empire. The Commissioners could not agree on whether Brooke was the sovereign ruler of Sarawak.
A major point of the commission was Brooke could no longer call on the Royal Navy to assist him. This provided a major victory for Crawfurd and the New Radicals in that Britain could not expand into Borneo.
In 1858, James Brooke toured Britain trying to raise funds to sell Sarawak to Britain. Cobden encouraged Crawfurd to write about the Brooke effort but Crawfurd was sick and tired of the whole Sarawak experience. He wrote in his column “…the House of Commons should thank him(Brooke) for his services worthy of a reward …a handsome sum and get rid of him and his Bornean tropical morass”.
From:
Knapman, Gareth John Crawfurd and Anti Colonialism in Sarawak in New Naratif https://newnaratif.com/john-crawfurd-and-anti-colonialism-in-sarawak/
Condensed with permission from the author
Tom McLaughlin for BorneoHistory.net