Brooke Colonial Thinking in Sarawak
European powers were competing to take over lands in Asia that they saw as “empty” or “unclaimed.” They called these places terra nullius — meaning “nobody’s land” — and said that made them free to claim and rule. They didn’t care that people were already living there.
Europeans thought of the native people as less than human — like “savages” or even animals — so they believed the natives did not have the right to own or rule their own land. In 19th-century Britain, people used racist ideas about different “civilizations” to divide the world into categories — such as “civilized” and “uncivilized.” These categories helped justify and guide Britain’s imperial expansion.
Accounts of Sarawak’s history under the Brooke Rule painted a positive picture of the colonizer, a ‘paternal’ White Rajah, bringing much-needed peace to an otherwise chaotic land of savage head-hunters.
When James Brooke landed with his vessel on Borneo Island, he must have seen himself taking an adventure on the Planet of the Apes, ensuring that he would first tame these one-step-removed-from-the-apes savages to overpower them to establish kingship. The Dayaks of Borneo were viewed as savages, only one step removed from the great apes.
This was the most likely image of the unknown head-hunting savages in Borneo to the British, who claimed responsibility for civilizing these barely humans. James Brooke was a hopeful sailor-adventurer and that racist image of the East constructed by the British must have brought him far away from Britain to travel to the so-called wild island of savage head-hunters, akin to the Planet of the Apes. James Brooke saw the Ibans as noble savages.
Many war expeditions were launched by the Rajah enlisting the submissive ‘tamed’ Dayak warriors to kill the ‘untamed’ ones whilst the Rajah gloriously claimed victory and ownership of the Dayak land. The tamed Dayaks were employed to exterminate other groups of rebellious fellow Dayak tribes, thus incurring casualties only among the savages. The Rajah capitalized on the head-hunting tradition, which was motivated by intertribal warfare. After establishing himself as Rajah of Sarawak, James Brooke continued his exploitation of the Iban.
James Brooke, a supposedly superior chosen race from the First World, armed with modern weaponry, could not defeat Rentap, a mere ‘savage’ with parang ilang and sangkuh, and neither could Charles, who only managed to dislodge Rentap from his fort at Bukit Sadok after three war expeditions, forcing Rentap to retreat further into Entabai interior. However, Rentap never did succumb to defeat and surrender.
Harnessing Iban warfare for his own purposes, Charles Brooke, the second white rajah, pitted the Iban against one another by providing arms for expeditions to his Iban supporters that needed no encouragement with their promise of enemy heads.
Charles realized that there was no role for Europeans. Although he was always in the thick of the fighting, using his rifle to fearful effect during the expeditions against Rentap, he did not see himself as playing a leading part: ‘I simply went singly on these expeditions to act as an adviser, and be protected as a queen ant among thousands of workers’.
When the Brookes wrote about Sarawak’s history, they included the local people, but only as “uncivilized savages.” The natives were placed at the edges of the story, often shown as the villains or troublemakers, while the Brookes were portrayed as the heroes and the main characters.
This belief in being superior was shown in their writings and followed the same old idea of opposites — white against black, civilized against savage, and superior against inferior.
There was a racist way of writing history about the East created by Europe especially the British, to strengthen their sense of being superior.
This racist form of imperialism likely inspired a British commoner, James Brooke, to sail to the island of Borneo — a place romanticized in the West as a beautiful tropical paradise, but also home to what they called wild and mysterious headhunting tribes.
The British really did come, saw what they wanted, and conquered the natives, robbing them of their rights and their chance to develop their own land. They did not only defeat and kill the local people to establish their rule, but they also renamed places to leave behind their mark and claim what was never theirs.
Why must roads be named after them — like McDougall Road and Crookshank Road — and forts as well? Fort Margherita, Fort Alice, Fort Brooke, Fort Charles, Fort Sylvia, Fort Lily, Fort Arundel, and Fort Emma all stand as reminders of colonial domination. We, the colonized, have even helped to preserve their legacy — in monuments, sacred sites, and even in nature. A butterfly species in Borneo was named after James Brooke, and a minister has even promised to build a museum to honor the Brookes’ legacy.
From:
Dr. Bromeley Philip and Nelson Martin ” Western Historicization of Sarawak: Brooke’s Imperialistic-Hegemonic Manipulation and Exploitation of the Dayaks” in THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES & SOCIAL STUDIES, December 2022
Many thanks to Veronica Chang Schmid