Sulu Sultan’s claims on territory doubtful
Published on: Saturday, April 01, 1922
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Such descriptions and impressions may have their use, up to a point; and if the circumstances and conditions under which a book has been written are borne in mind, certain defects and deficiencies can be ignored if only it provides bright and interesting reading. It is the fault of many portentous volumes written by authors with a long and profound knowledge of the peoples and places on which they purport to treat that the writers have not the happy knack of selecting and presenting salient facts and apt comments in a way which provides both instruction and pleasure to the reader.
Such a charge cannot be laid against Mr. Ivor H. N. Evans, B. A., a copy of whose book, entitled “ Among primitive peoples in Borneo “ published by Seeley Service and Co., Ltd., at 21/s nett, has just been received.
A subtitle states it to be description of lives, habits and customs of the piratical head hunters of North Borneo, with an account of interesting objects of prehistoric antiquity discovered in the island.” The book is illustrated with half tones from photographs taken by the author and contains a map of Borneo, the second largest island in the world. It deals with the territory of the British North Borneo Co., and in particular of the adjacent districts of the Tuaran and Tempassuk where Mr. Evans served in an official capacity.
We gather from the tone of candid criticism which he adopts in reference to the Chartered Company that he now occupies a position of more freedom and lesser responsibility. There are incidental references to his being at Taiping in 1914 and in Borneo itself in 1915 which go to show that his book is thoroughly up to date and that early notes and impressions have been modified and corrected by later experiences.
While Borneo has a total area of about 290,000 square miles with a population of about 1,820,000 British North Borneo has. an area of 31,000 square miles and a population 208,000.
In his opening chapter Mr. Evans gives a brief history of how the Chartered Company obtained concessions from the Sultans of Sulu and Brunei in consideration of stipulated annual payments. The negotiations with these Sultans for the transfer of territories to a Provisional Company were concluded by the late Sir Alfred Dent and Baron Overbeck in 1877. The latter had taken over some concessions granted to an American Trading Company.
Despite Dutch and Spanish opposition, a Royal Charter was granted to the Provisional Coy. In 1881 which had been formed to acquire the rights over territory that had been transferred by the Sultans. The actual cash with which the Coy. started its existence was only about £384,000. The beginnings of the new Coy. consisted of “a few European officers holding insecure positions with the aid of small companies of police, a certain amount of cash and absolute rights over a large territory leased to the Coy. by two Sultans who were practically without power to enforce their Will in the portions of it claimed respectively by each.”
Luckily for the Coy., Mr. Evans says, the natives of British North Borneo are neither so warlike nor so well organised as those of Sarawak consequently there have been fewer wars. There have been difficulties with the troublesome tribes of Bajaus and Illanuns of the West Coast, by nature and education undisciplined robbers, searovers and freebooters; and from the latter tribe arose one leader to withstand the rising power of the Chartered Company, Mat Saleh, who for a number of years gave the Directors many uneasy moments.
Mr. Evans draws a pen picture of the rebel loader who well represented, he says, prevailing Bajau feeling in both disliking and fearing the new government, since it threatened to put bounds to the Bajaus immemorial right of doing exactly as they chose and to their equally venerable custom of oppressing and cheating the natives of the interior.
On the other hand he asserts that it cannot be said that the Chartered Company had morally – even supposing that its legal rights wore above suspicion – any right to possess itself of its present territories. Mr. Evans points out that the Sultans’ claims to most of the territory were of a very shadowy description and that they were only too glad to transfer their doubtful claims in exchange for what was to them a liberal yearly payment.
On the other hand the Directors of the Company were anxious to have some sort of a legal document “to flourish in the faces of those who were rude enough to say that they were little better than the pirates and freebooters whose excesses they professed themselves so wishful to stop.”
How the Coy. put down the rebellion and brought about the death on the 31st January, 1900, of Mat Saleh is recorded and Mr. Evans passes on to deal with various aspects of the country and its peoples. Of the latter he says, that those of the littoral and on the more navigable rivers are generally speaking lax Mohammedans, those of the interior and the intermediate regions pagans.
The author takes little pains to hide the fact that his sympathies lie on the side of the pagans. The coastal natives are described as being “usually boastful, lazy, tyranical over those weaker than themselves, lawless, gamblers, borrowers and spendthrifts, their only merit being their fondness for sport in all its forms.”
On the other hand the “the up-country man is hard working, thrifty and usually honest. He has moreover a manner which appeals singularly to most Englishmen since he has no trace of the cringing and fawning style of many of the people of India, which, should there be any opportunity, quickly developes into very slightly veiled insolence. He meets the white man with a kind of man-to-man manner, which at the same time is perfectly respectful. The best type of native both respects himself and respects you, and if you are of a friendly disposition, the respect will rapidly develops into liking on both sides.”
Mr. Evans is careful to inform his readers that be does not want them to think his pagan native faultless. “He has his little failings as most of us have, and among them must be mentioned, a weakness for ‘lifting’ human heads from their owners’ shoulders – purely as a matter of sport and prowess, partly of religion – and a penchant for stealing buffaloes which also is considered almost a sport.”
On these matters Mr. Evans enlarges in a separate chapter. He admits his inability to settle quite definitely in his own mind whether such difference in character is due to fundamental difference in race, between the coastal tribes and those of the interior, or whether the reason for the essential badness of the natives of the seaboard must be sought in some obscure influence of the teachings of Islam on the peculiar Malayan temperament.
Mr. Evans has many trite and suggestive things to say of the natives. He makes a point of the saving sense of humour and keen sportsmanship of the Malays of Borneo. He says, “They will, I think, certainly manage to keep their place in the modern struggle for existence, just beginning to be felt in Borneo; they may not be highly successful, but they will continue to exist.”
The pagan tribes he fears will suffer both in numbers and vitality from the encroachments of civilization. “This to many primitive people is a deadly poison and destroys them body and soul, bringing, as it does, in its train new diseases, intoxicating liquors, clothes unsuited to the savage and which he does not change when they are soaked with rain, new food, new restrictions, new customs and the destruction of old habits.”
After a period of decrease Mr. Evans has hopes that the tribesmen will become inured to the new destructive agencies and will then be able to hold their own and increase fairly rapidly. We find we have little space left for allusion to the bulk of Mr. Evans’ book which contains chapters on dress and adornment, agriculture, fishing, hunting and trapping, courtship, marriage and divorce, burial and puberty customs, religion and superstitions, legends, warfare, head-hunting and weapons, dress, domestic affairs and Government, cock fighting, gambling and other amusements, antiquities, the Chinese in Borneo &c.
The mere recapitulation of these titles indicate what a wealth of interesting information Mr. Ivor Evans has collected and we have not the least doubt that the book will find a wide and appreciative circle of readers. – The Pinang Gazette.
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