Raffles, Borneo and Alexander Hare
In August 1809, a Dutch representative set sail from Batavia to a small village near Banjarmasin to hand over the fort to the Sultan. The sole remaining Dutch settlement in Borneo was being broken up.
The orders were received from Napoleon, who at that time was occupying the Netherlands. It was hoped Java would be a springboard for the invasion of India. However, British forces formed a blockade around the island. The Dutch colonial navy had been swept from the archipelago in 1806 and 1807.
The settlement at Banjarmasin might have it been retained if it had been prosperous and added to the government coffers. As it was, it could not even pay its own way. Losses at Fort Tata could not be afforded in a time of war.
The Sultan of Banjarmasin could not hold on to his territory without the Dutch. He sent emissaries to Penang and Malacca requesting British assistance. The representatives were lucky to be seen by Thomas Stanford Raffles.
Raffles was in Malacca to prepare for an invasion of Java after Napoleon seized Holland. He looked at naval convoys, the best route to Java, the defences of Java and the strengths of the Dutch army. He also made contact with the Sultans throughout the archipelago to help facilitate the British takeover of the Dutch East Indies.
Mr. Alexander Hare, a leading merchant of the Malacca community, had been watching events in Borneo and felt the island was a golden opportunity. He introduced the emissary’s to Raffles.
Raffles became enamoured with Borneo because of its fine wax, birds nests, deer horns, “The island of Borneo”, he wrote enthusiastically to the Governor-General of Bengal, the Earl of Minto, “is not only one of the most fertile countries in the world, but the most productive in gold and diamonds”.
When Lord Minto himself arrived at Malacca at the head of the Java expedition, further envoys from the Sultan of Banjarmasin were presented to him. After the capture of Java, Borneo was next on the list for protection.
When Raffles was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Java, he set about reorganizing its administration with the possibility of an indefinite British occupation. As for Borneo, on April 7th, 1812 Raffles instructed Alexander Hare (who had moved by this time to Java) to found a British settlement at Banjarmasin.
Hare took with him an Assistant-Resident (Mr. van de Wahl), a Chief of Armed Police, two surgeons, a bookkeeper, a ‘Malay writer’, a few coolies, policemen, and artificers, and a boatswain for the wharf. There was no military force whatever.
Raffles secretly had hoped he was founding a settlement from which the British could not be dislodged even if Java were handed back to the Dutch. Hare knew that the only chance of securing a permanent British foothold in Borneo lay in making the new settlement pay for itself, and pay for itself quickly.
The Sultan was persuaded to sign an agreement. By this ‘Treaty of 1812’, as it became known, the Sultan and Pëngerans of Banjarmasin ceded to the East India Company the former Dutch forts (Tatas and Tabanio), the Dayak provinces of southern Borneo, and most of the districts and petty kingdoms on the South and East Coasts which were either practically or theoretically subject to them.
In exchange, Raffles guaranteed to maintain the Sultan in his title and hereditaments, and to defend him against all enemies “as well European as Asiatie”. For this purpose, “an adequate force of light armed vessels” would be stationed off Banjarmasin.
The Sultan had been induced to part with sovereign rights to a vast territory, and had received only vague promises of protection in exchange. In reality, however, the Treaty of 1812 meant very little. Most of the territories he ‘ceded’ so generously had only the haziest connections with him, and he had not exercised control over them for many years. He was therefore quite satisfied with his side of the bargain and, for the moment at any rate, the British were satisfied with theirs.
Alexander Hare, meanwhile, was to found a kingdom of his own where he could luxuriate in oriental splendour surrounded by slaves and ladies of the harem. Why he picked on Banjarmasin as a suitable place for the realization of such dreams is not known. He obtained from the Sultan of Banjarmasin a tract of land south of the capital, 1,400 square miles in extent, to be held by himself and his assigns “in full sovereignty and forever”.
Raffles made only one stipulation: Hare could hold his land only “assuming he would always be ready to transfer his rights to Government, on a fair remuneration for improvements, should they at any time require it”. The truth was, as the Government of Java well knew, that had it not been for Alexander Hare, a British settlement at Banjarmasin might never have been possible.
Having acquired his private empire in Borneo, Hare set to work to make it pay. He seems to have had plenty of money, both his own and the Government’s, and he never worried greatly about distinguishing between the two. He intended to grow export crops, mainly rice and pepper, on his own land, and to exploit the Company’s territory by mining and collecting jungle produce. Furthermore, he also wanted to make Banjarmasin independent of Java salt by constructing a proper salt works at Tabanio. He only had one problem: people to work his various enterprises for him.
This was because a surplus male working population simply did not exist in the Sultanate – nor, for that matter, in any other part of Borneo. Hare soon realized that if the required labour force was to he obtained, it must come from overseas.
After consultation with the British Resident in Java and after several attempts of recruitment, Banjarmasin was declared a penal settlement for convicts guilty of minor offences, and the population was to be swelled still further by the granting of permission for the wives and children of offenders to accompany their husbands or fathers.
By the end of 1815 there were three classes of people. First were the convicted felons. Second, there were vagrants, vagabonds, and general undesirables, most of whom were under a technical ‘sentence’ of banishment. And finally, there was an oddly assorted collection of more or less bona free emigrants, who ranged from those who took the advice of a propaganda leaflet written by Hare. In the end, 3200 people were transported to Banjarmasin at a cost of 25 Rupees per head.
A settlement composed chiefly of the least desirable elements in Javanese society could not be said to have made a promising beginning. Rare organizing powers would be needed at the top if Banjarmasin was to flourish and, although Hare certainly had a marked talent for getting his own way with his superiors, he had no experience of planting and Iittle administrative ability. Within a short time, the condition of his settlers was pitiable. Food and clothing were inadequate; no more than a start had been made in laying out the pepper gardens when most of the labour available was absorbed in erecting buildings for the Resident’s personal use; and attempts at gold and diamond mining collapsed before any profits had been made. The Sultan complained that the rowdier members of the community at the pepper gardens had become so “afflicted by God” that their excesses had driven out the original inhabitants of the area.
By the time Stamford Raffles was relieved of his appointment as Lieutenant-Governor of Java in 1815, a moribund and unproductive settlement at Banjarmasin was all that remained of his Bornean ‘grand design’.
From
Irwin, Graham Nineteenth Century Borneo: A Study in Diplomatic Rivalry ‘ S.GRAVENHAGE – MARTINUS NIJHOFF, 1955
BorneoHistory.net
