breezes. Kuching, the capital of Malaysian Borneo’s largest state, lies only 11 degrees from the equator, yet somehow there is little indolence in the air. It is not merely the absence of coral strand (here the coastline is mainly mud and mangrove) or the hyperthyroid energy of the Chinese small farmers and shopkeepers who dominate many of the more thickly settled areas near the coast. Even more in the interior, there is something hard and vital in the air.
In northwest Borneo rivers were traditionally the primary determinants of social loyalties and the main arteries of trade and travel. Everywhere in Sarawak there is still an obvious if not always exact social demarcation between the downriver areas, where Moslem Malay and Chinese population predominates, and the upriver regions of the interior, where the inhabitants are mostly “Dayaks”, pagan tribal people who live in longhouses and cultivate hill rice. This tribal population is divided into many groups, which vary greatly in language and political culture, but one group, the Ibans, or Sea Dayaks, predominates over much of the State and comprises almost one-third of the total Sarawak population.1
In the upriver Iban areas, perhaps more than anywhere else, the usual Western stereotypes of tropical Asia are inappropriate. Most people live by growing hill rice, an energetic occupation if ever there was one. The very countryside is evocative more of Glencoe or America’s Appalachian highlands than of Gauguin’s Tahiti. Typically, the countryside is a tangled welters of forest-covered hills, rising in few areas to heights of more than 3,000 feet, but sufficiently rugged to preclude any easy adoption of irrigated farming. The rivers, until recently the only highways, are a far cry from the sluggish brown waterways which wind among the peat and mangrove swamps nearer the coast. In their upper reaches, streams like the Batang Lupar, Katibas and Kanowit are narrow enough to be completely roofed over by arching, moss-hung branches. Kingfishers swoop beneath the foliage over swift-running waters, which are normally sparkling clear, but cluttered with dangerous rapids and snags. Frequent rains bring sudden floods equally hazardous to the travelers, for whom the water level seems always to be either too high or too low. Even today, with the advantage of modern outboard motors, navigating such streams requires much time and skill. Until very recently, every mile of distance toward the interior bestowed an added measure of independence from whoever claimed to rule all Sarawak.
The Brooke “White Rajahs,” who were the nominal overlords of these rivers until World War II, left a historical legend which has long captivated Western imaginations and which still flourishes among people of all races in Sarawak itself. In this lively tradition they are remembered as benevolent despots who presided over a 48,000 square-mile estate (only 5,000 square miles smaller than all Malaya) in the style of the English squirearchy. By cleansing the coast of pirates and the interior of headhunters, the Brookes first established a degree of rough law and order. Then, by rigorously excluding large plantation agriculture, they protected their people from exploitative European capitalism, at the same time sheltering them from the erosive effects of Western education. According to the legend, this state of affairs endured until after World War II, when the last Brooke Rajah relinquished his patrimony to a British colonial regime more concerned with progress, development, and the like.
There is much evidence to indicate that this view of the past, like most historical myths, contains some truth, but more over simplification. The ancient Chinese ceramics and glass beads of possible Middle Eastern origin, which are still prized by many upriver people, are proof enough that interior Borneo was never wholly isolated from the outside world. At a much more recent time level, it is clear that developments after World War I, particularly the spread of smallholder rubber cultivation, brought a number of new challenges and problems to the interior people and the Brooke regime. The problems were made manifest by an outbreak of political unrest and outlawry which commenced in the Iban country in 1929 and smoldered along until the end of Brooke rule. It was a period which repays study not only for the light it sheds on the character of later Brooke rule, but also for the insight it provides into Iban political behavior, which remains a factor of great importance in Sarawak affairs. Never more than a semi-insurgency, Asun’s “Rebellion” was named for the Iban warrior who was the most famous anti-Government ringleader, and who died only in 1958.2
The Asun affair must be studied as part of a long era of limited contact between the Brookes and the Ibans, which began as soon as the First White Rajah, James Brooke, established his initial political foothold on the Borneo coast in 1841.3 The founding of the Brooke state at Kuching and its subsequent expansion along the coast at the expense of Brunei coincided with a momentous process of Iban expansion and migration. The first Ibans may have migrated northwards from the great Kapuas River valley in Indonesian Borneo during the sixteenth century. Settling in what is now Sarawak’s Second Division, mainly along the Batang Lupar and Saribas River systems, they displaced or absorbed pockets of jungle nomads, peoples who had not yet learned to cultivate hill rice. By the time Brooke arrived on the scene the Ibans were beginning to spread from the Second Division overland into the Rejang River system of the Third Division as well.4
The phenomenon of Iban expansion created problems for the new British rulers even before they comprehended with any clarity exactly what it was. James Brooke, who ruled from 1841 to 1868, was most concerned with the activities of certain downriver Iban communities whose restless addiction to travel, warfare, and headhunting resulted in what the Brookes called “piracy.” Beginning about 1800, these pagan rice farmers living relatively near the sea had developed the unpleasant habit of raiding along the coast in league with local Moslem Malay chiefs. In his effort to halt this activity, which for a time threatened the existence of his fledgling state, Brooke called in the Royal Navy. But the White Rajah’s “anti-piracy” campaigns eventually generated a humanitarian hue and cry in England, which led to the withdrawal of British naval support after 1854.5
For the next six years the survival of Brooke Sarawak hung in the balance. Serious rebellions, one led by Chinese of the Kuching hinterland and the other by Moslem chiefs scattered throughout the State, took place in 1857 and 1859-60 respectively. The First Rajah’s nephew and eventual successor, Charles Brooke, who was to rule until 1917, stabilized the situation by relying on levies of Iban warriors, who discovered that fighting and headhunting under Brooke leadership was quite as satisfying as any other kind of warfare.
By the time Charles Brooke became Rajah in 1868 he had converted most of the Iban “pirates” into an unpaid, informal army, well suited both to the Borneo terrain and to the financial capabilities of a penniless dependency bereft of European support. But although Iban turmoil along the coast was thus eliminated, Iban migration and expansion remained a problem in the interior. The upriver Ibans, unlike the coastal sub-groups, were still remote from any contact with the Government. They continued to migrate into the Rejang, and were constantly involved in raids and counter-raids against various peoples, both Ibans and others, who lived in the Kapuas drainage south of the Second Division, in what was then Dutch territory. Charles and his officers knew full well that they could not attempt systematic administration of the more remote upriver areas, but they were unwilling simply to condone migration and headhunting at the expense of weaker tribes, especially when such activities resulted in official notes of protest from the Dutch. To impose his authority, the Rajah employed the only weapon he had, massive levies of downriver Iban warriors, who in times of “rebellion” were dispatched into the interior to burn the longhouses and destroy the padi fields of their only slightly wilder brethren.
Nothing was ever really settled by the Rajah’s punitive expeditions, which over the course of long decades became a tradition in the Iban country. The expeditions appealed to the Iban love of war and nourished the headhunting ethic, which as a result survived un-diminished well into the twentieth century. They engendered some bitterness against Brooke officials among the upriver people, as well as producing an inclination to regard the Government as an enemy first and foremost, but real hostility was always directed primarily against the Rajah’s Iban levies, who could be and were viewed within a traditional framework of inter-Iban rivalry. A particularly protracted and bloody period of Iban in fighting known as Bantin’s “Rebellion”, which involved the same general area as the later Asun turbulence, lasted from 1895 to 1910.6 That contest eventually exhausted even the most strenuous upriver “rebels” however, and increasingly severe Government counter measures brought widespread peace to the Iban country by the period of World War I.
The Asun troubles cannot be isolated from this long preceding history of conflict. The Iban love of warfare and the official compulsion to control the movements of an aggressive, semi-nomadic population were among the elements of continuity. Yet, as we shall see, there were certain new factors motivating Asun and his fellow dissidents as well, and the Brookes oversimplified when they pictured the unrest simply as a recrudescence of headhunting.
Asun was born in a longhouse on the Entabai branch of the Kanowit River in about 1880. This region, one where aspects of the traditional Iban way of life are to this day maintained with conservative tenacity, had been settled by immigrants from nearby rivers of the Second Division, particularly the Skrang and the Paku branch of the Saribas, not long before James Brooke first came to Sarawak. Asun’s own immediate forbears were of Skrang origin, although his more remote ancestors included some upper Saribas people as well. He and his four brothers (Seribu, Nyambong, Meling, and Megong) had all made reputations as formidable warriors in the days of Bantin’s “Rebellion.” At that time they had been technically on the side of the Rajah, defending their home area against frequent raids led by Bantin, Kana, and other “rebels” whose longhouses were on the upper reaches of the Batang Lupar river system, across the watershed in the Second Division.6
Like many another famous Iban firebrand, Asun was for part of his life an official representative of the Brooke regime. The same qualities of leadership that distinguished him as a warrior soon drew the attention of a Government, which usually preferred to exert its influence indirectly, and he was named penghulu of the Entabai sometime before 1915. The office of penghulu, which might be translated “district headman,” was an invention of the Brooke regime. It had no equivalent in the democratic, almost anarchic traditional structure of Iban leadership, within which the longhouse headman (tuai rumah), chosen by his own people, was the highest recognized authority. Asun was also a tuai rumah, primarily charged with the customary task of settling disputes among the people of his own longhouse. By making him a penghulu, the Government hoped that he would represent Brooke authority throughout the entire Entabai, among dozens of longhouses. His specific duties, like those of all similarly created Iban penghulus, were to collect the yearly “door tax” of one dollar per family, to convey the wishes of the British Resident to his people, and to organize them for unpaid expedition service in time of war. There is every reason to believe that Asun did his job well. The Sarawak Gazette records that in 1915 he led the Entabai portion of the force on a Government expedition against Iban “rebels” in the Mujong River, an area of the upper Rejang where official efforts to block migration into the interior had not yet achieved success. At one point the Entabai penghulu narrowly escaped injury when his warboat was crushed by a falling tree, one of several which the enemy Ibans were able to drop across the narrow stream in their efforts to discomfit the Rajah’s advancing flotilla.9
The name of Asun does not appear again in any written source until 1926, when he became involved in a dispute with the Resident of the Third Division, or one of his subordinates. The details of the controversy are anything but clear from surviving administrative reports, which indicate merely that Asun was required to pay a fine of two pikuls of brassware, or the equivalent $56.4010 He resigned as penghulu, handing in the uniform shirt which served as the Brooke badge of office, but the Resident reported that the man named to succeed him was too frightened to take up his appointment.11 Although there was nothing approaching overt rebellion for another three years, something was plainly wrong upriver.
Like Ibans everywhere, the people of the Entabai and other regions which were involved in the spreading troubles still retain a deep interest in their own past, and today as always they are willing to expound their own interpretation of past events to any visitor. There is no question in their minds that the underlying cause of Asun’s resignation and the subsequent “rebellion” was a series of unwarranted taxes which the Rajah had recently imposed. According to the modern Iban view, no one objected to the “door tax” of one dollar per family per year, which had been collected from the earliest days of Brooke rule and which, at least in some areas, had vague antecedents in even older Brunei practice. But the Government transgressed what the people had come to regard as a traditional arrangement by attempting to systematize this tax, imposing it even on longhouse family rooms (“doors”) occupied only by widows and indigents, who in earlier times would have been informally exempted from payment.
There is no doubt that the Government did attempt to systematize door tax collection, beginning in about 1930.12 Nor is there any reason to dispute modern Iban memories of a new tax on shotguns (actually a gun registration fee inaugurated in 1922) and another new levy of $5.00 per longhouse ladder (tangga) or $10.00 for an entire structure. But as resentment gained momentum, completely fictitious rumors telling of additional previously unheard of taxes began to flash through the upriver country. According to one story, still repeated and believed by the more gullible, the Government wanted to tax each man fifty cents for every time that he slept with his wife (The money was allegedly to be deposited in an official box kept on the longhouse verandah.).13 No people on earth are more fascinated by the power of words or more intrigued by a good story than are the Ibans, and such reports could be regarded as fantastic, frightening, funny, and yet credible all at once. As the rumors spread, a sense of grievance smoldered.
This renewed Iban unrest, after a decade of peace, was part of a broader pattern of change that was overtaking Brooke Sarawak. The death of the Second Rajah, Charles Brooke, in 1917, had ended an era of vigorous leadership in Sarawak. His son and successor, Vyner Brooke, never displayed the same enthusiasm for the details of government, which had contributed so much to his father’s intensely personal system of rule. Under Vyner, the Rajah of Sarawak remained in theory an absolute monarch, but more and more the country was governed by his subordinates, British Residents of Divisions and District Officers, Malay Native Officers (who were often figures of great authority), and Chinese clerks.
Beginning in about 1910, smallholder rubber came to the downriver areas of Sarawak. Although both Charles and his successor discouraged European plantation agriculture, they welcomed an influx of Chinese farmers, which was stimulated largely by the booming world rubber market. This immigration reached a peak in the mid-1920′s. Sarawak’s revenues shot upwards, but the size of the Government did not keep pace with the administrative demands, which inevitably resulted from the rapid development of some downriver areas. Nowhere was this development more significant or obvious than in the lower Rejang area, above and below the Third Division headquarters at Sibu. Here the demands of a bustling Chinese colony created more and more paperwork for the harassed Resident, who with only three European subordinates was charged with ruling a province 22,000 square miles in size.14
Inevitably, the upriver Ibans were of relatively less concern to the Government than in an earlier era. Yet although the principal British officers could spare less time for travel in the more remote areas, they were more than ever before inclined to impose new controls and restrictions on the Iban population. Slowly but surely, the Government veered away from the Second Rajah’s laissez-faire methods, which must have appeared outrageous to anyone conditioned by familiarity with systematic modern techniques of colonial administration.
A variety of administrative changes affecting the upriver people were instituted between 1920 and 1930. For the first time, upstream limits beyond which no Ibans were allowed to farm or settle were enforced with some degree of rigor in both the Batang Lupar (Second Division) and the Rejang (Third Division), river systems where until the previous decade Iban raiding and migration had been an endless source of disturbance.15 From 1926 onwards, Residents of the Third Division (where the migration problem was most acute) decreed that no Iban longhouse could be less than ten family rooms in length, a rule intended to make illegal movement easier to control.16
Throughout the State, regulations had long required any Iban traveling outside his Division to obtain a pass from the Resident, but in 1929 the Rajah told a gathering at Kapit that henceforth young men should not wander about so much. Passes would issued only to those who had definite offers of employment elsewhere.17
Penghulus began to receive regular salaries in place of the former commissions on door taxes and fines levied for minor offenses.18 The Administration gradually began to establish uniform rates for the various capitation taxes levied on the Ibans and Malays, where previously each Division had maintained its own tax system.19 Gun licenses and fees were introduced in 1922,20 and in the same year the Government ordered that even the most distant tribal headmen would in future act as registrars of births and deaths among their people.21 In 1920 a newly created Forest Department began to mark off Forest Reserves within which no one was allowed to destroy the timber for hill rice farming, gather jungle produce, or even hunt wild animals.22
These changes, many of them extremely irritating to the Ibans, were only part of a broad trend toward bureaucratization, but they were the aspects most apart to the upriver people. By 1929 the Ibans were beginning to complain vociferously about the “new regulations”. In May of that year the Resident of the Third Division reported:
“The Assistant District Officer, Kapit, informs me that the Dyaks are complaining about what they call the new regulations. These are really the same as before namely (1) Registration of births and deaths (2) Tax $1 for every door irrespective of occupants (3) Felling engkabang and langgai etc. (4) Death duties (5) Retaining fruit, etc., on moving. In fact they wish apparently to adhere to nothing and are hoping that His Highness the Rajah will have compassion on them. They are all trying to move to the headwaters of the Stream they inhabit, and in my opinion it is useless to argue with them but allow this in certain rivers.”23
Resentment over the “new regulations” was compounded by two developments over which the Brookes had no control: widespread disagreement among the Ibans themselves concerning their own customary law, and the onset of world depression. Each of these factors, the first so purely a Sarawak phenomenon, the second so disastrously universal in its ill effects, requires explanation.
Iban life is governed by a complex code of unwritten customary law (adat) which is broadly similar among all the Iban people. Nevertheless, in many areas of the Second Division, which as mentioned earlier was the original Iban homeland in Sarawak, minor variations in penalties and procedures had, over time, come to distinguish the various river systems one from another. When migration to the Third Division occurred, people from different Second Division homes often settled in the same general area. The Brooke regime recognized Iban customary law in all but the most serious criminal cases, but an English magistrate could not fairly be faulted when the contending litigants did not agree on their own adat. Yet in the unsettled period of the early Thirties, cases began to recur in which Ibans blamed the Government when such disputes took place. Aggrieved individuals whose own particular interpretation of the adat had not been followed insisted that the Government was heedlessly flouting the customs of the people.24
It may at first be hard to understand why the onset of world depression, particularly of low rubber prices, should have made any difference to people who were primarily engaged in subsistence farming, specifically the cultivation of hill rice. The explanation lies in the fact that for the Ibans, traveling in search of jungle produce or casual employment was a cherished custom with important economic side effects.25 Over the years, expeditions to distant lands in search of wild rubber had become an acceptable substitute for headhunting. The young warriors who fared forth to Sabah or Malaya acquired prestige necessary for Iban self-respect, but they also brought home cash, which could be essential in seasons when the notoriously fickle hill rice crops were poor. As early as 1928, a steady decline in the market for jungle produce began to cause distress among the upriver people. As the universal trade slowdown grew worse during the next few years, it further reduced alternative opportunities available to tattooed job-hunters from the remoter areas of Sarawak. As usual, the Ibans were not slow in letting the Government knows just how they felt.
In August, 1928, the Resident of the Third Division reported:
“Owing to the low prices of jungle produce a large number of upriver Dayaks have been coming down clamoring for passes to other countries. Some have been engaged by the Colonial Surveys in Johore, and others have taken on contract work in that state. Mssrs. Sarawak Oilfields Ltd., of Miri, do not at present require any more Dayaks and it is most difficult to know what to do with these men, as they flatly refuse to take any work locally whatever pay is offered.”26
A little over a year later the Kapit District Officer observed that “The price of jungle produce has fallen so low that the Fort is always full of Dayaks still hoping to be allowed to look for work outside the Division”.27 When the Rajah’s brother, Tuan Muda Bertram Brooke, visited Kapit in July, 1930, he was quickly made aware of the situation: “Various matters were brought to His Highness’ notice, the general tone being one of complaint against trade depression and poverty.”28
Malaise stimulated by the growing complexity of Sarawak administration and the shadow of depression was not restricted to the Ibans; it was to some extent a statewide phenomenon. The Brookes were concerned about what they regarded as a dangerous wavering of confidence, as the Rajah made clear in a speech to the triennial Council Negri in December, 1930:
“. . . it has recently been represented to me that there is an idea current in the minds of the people of this country that there is about to be a change in the existing system of Government. I desire here to affirm that such an assertion is completely without foundation. Whatever policy I may deem necessary to adopt with regard to the external relations of my Government . . . you may rest assured that the administration of Sarawak will always be conducted in strict accordance with the precepts of the First Rajah, which were carried on by my late Father. … I desire that you will not misunderstand any progressive measures which have been or may be introduced, for such measures are sometimes deemed by me to be necessary in the interests of the people and for their great and ultimate benefit and are rendered inevitable by pressure of modern advancement.”29
Other groups in the population, including Malays and Chinese, lived closer to centers of administrative power and were far more directly affected by the precipitous decline in rubber prices after 1929. But if the upriver Ibans had the least at stake, they were also the least able to understand just what was going on, and the quickest by temperament and tradition to resort to violence in a time of mounting political frustration.
Course of the “Rebellion”:
By the end of 1930, the Iban mood of mingled anger and irritation was strong enough to create a potential following for any would-be rebel. It was at this time that the name of Asun, deprived of his penghuluship and still feuding with the Resident of the Third Division, C. D. Adams, reappeared in the pages of the Sarawak Gazette. Adams’ report for November amounted to a reluctant official admission that Iban dissidence had become a matter for real concern:
“All was quiet amongst the up-river Dayaks, but trouble is being caused in the Kanowit by an ex-Penghulu Asoon who refuses to come down to Sibu and is visiting other rivers preaching sedition. The majority of Dayaks take no notice of him and consider him mad but he gets a certain amount of support from the youngsters.”30
In the months that followed, Adams sent a series of subordinates to visit Asun and persuade him to drop his defiant attitude and come down to Sibu as ordered, but none of them met with the slightest success. In the early months of 1931, alarmed officials learned that Asun had been sending war spears to Iban leaders in both the Second and Third’ Divisions, thereby signalling that hostilities were in the offing and that he wasted their help.
In June, a group of,Kanowit Iban headmen travelled to Kuching, where the Rajah assured them that he was ready to meet most of their demands, and advised them that further defiance was unnecessary.32
At almost the same time, however, Asun, who was not a member of the delegation, was circulating threats against the life of the British officer stationed at Binatang, a Rejang River town near the troubled region. Rumors of impending Iban attacks were causing panic at Binatang, Sarikei, and elsewhere.33 The Resident decided that sterner measures were called for.
In July, 1931, a force of about a hundred trained Sarawak Rangers, accompanied by four hundred Iban volunteers, proceeded to the mouth of the Julau, below the point where Asun’s Entabai stream enters the Kanowit River. Word spread that Asun had cleared the trees from a point of land near his own longhouse, boasting to his neighbors that this was the place where he would fight the Rajah. But on this occasion, he and his followers offered no resistance. A lighthearted official account of the expedition in the Sarawak Gazette dismissed the unrest as “nothing more than an escape of Dayak gas,” and observed that “There are some people who cannot live without a grievance; they emanate chiefly from Southern Ireland, Russia and the Labour back benches. Asun, Nuri and various other Dayak tuai (leaders) appear to be such men as these.”34 Yet the same report reveals that the British officer in charge of the expedition hesitated to enforce the collection of all firearms held by the Ibans, as a recent emergency regulation required.35 He prudently decided not to venture into the unfriendliest territory above Julau, and after what amounted to an inconclusive display of force the expedition returned downriver.
Although Asun’s “Rebellion” had not yet resulted in a single casualty, it was the cause of increasing anxiety among Brooke officials. Toward the end of 1931, the Rajah’s younger brother, Bertram Brooke, traveled to the disaffected area in an effort to find out for himself just exactly what was going on. Bertram, who held the title Tuan Muda, was an austere and self-effacing man who often reminded people of his father, Charles. Like his father, he took more interest in the details of Government than did his brother Vyner, with whom he willingly shared much of the burden of administration during the period between the two World Wars. His reports, printed in the Sarawak Gazette, contain some of the most perceptive contemporary analysis of Iban affairs of that period.
Bertram proceeded first to Sibu, where he presided over the closing session of a gathering of Iban penghulus from throughout the Third Division. The Government had summoned them to work out among themselves a uniform code of customary law. Such a code, it was hoped, would eliminate for all time the problem of disputed cases, which ended with the losers blaming the Rajah. After days of interminable discussion the leaders did reach agreement, and a uniform
Compilation of Iban adat valid throughout the entire Third Division was soon published for the use of administrators and headmen.36
Satisfied that one major cause of the troubles had been eliminated, the Tuan Muda went up the Kanowit tributary into Asun’s home territory. He was accompanied by the newly appointed Third Division “Travelling District Officer,”37 H. E. Cutfield, whose main duty it was to keep in contact with upriver Ibans, and by a handful of native officers and police. Asun had already indicated a wary willingness to meet the Rajah’s representatives, so long as the meeting took place on his own home ground, but the Brooke officials were understandably nervous as they proceeded deeper into the hostile interior. On the evening of January 9, 1932, Asun and his four brothers met the Tuan Muda’s party at Nanga Munus, Entabai, in the longhouse of Penghulu Endu, the man whom the Government had appointed to replace Asun as its representative in the area. After the evening meal, there was a dramatic exchange of opinions on the longhouse verandah. The Tuan Muda described Asun, who had at first refused to talk, pleading illness:
“It was no sick man who spoke. He had seated himself in the shadow of a pillar, so that his voice came out of the darkness, beginning in a loud and truculent tone, an exposition of the matters wherein Government was, in his opinion, at fault in the enforcement of penalties for breach of custom. He was then informed by Mr. Cutfield (that this was no aum (conference) on customs: he was there to give an explanation of his own attitude during the past two years, if he cared to do so, and to fore told that he must now, in any case, give himself up at Sibu on trial for sedition, or stand the consequences of refusal.
Asoon replied with a torrent of invective directed at Mr. Cutfield, amidst which it emerged that he would stand his trial if I would guarantee his being let off with a fine, however heavy, but otherwise matters were as before, and he would resist any action by Government with whatever force he could muster: he was not there to talk to Mr. Cutfield, but to me, as the Rajah’s representative.”38
After a further exchange of unpleasantries, Cutfield told Asun that since he had not killed anyone, he could expect to receive no more than a light prison sentence. Bertram observed that the Iban leader kept a gun and two daggers handy throughout the meeting, and would probably have used them to resist any attempt at arrest. At dawn the next day, Asun departed, still defiant.
The Tuan Muda reported that most of the people of Kanowit were pro-Government, but that the “rebel” leader and his constant threats scared many. At one point Bertram asserted that Asun’s only active following consisted of hotheads who wished to impress girls. (The Rajah’s brother did not speculate as to how large a percentage of Iban youth might fall into this category.) Elsewhere in his report, however, the Tuan Muda recognized that Asun was in fact symptomatic of a wider alienation:
Asoon is a relic of olden time, who would welcome a return of the unsettled conditions, which preceded the organized suppression of headhunting. Few of his kidney are still extant, but it must be realized that such as there are constitute a nucleus of disaffection for any up-country Dayak who may labour under some imaginary grievance against Government, which perhaps he may be unable to air before an administrative officer for several months – except at the trouble and expense of a journey of many days duration.39
The Tuan Muda was convinced that the growing complexity and impersonality of Government was the root cause of the troubles:
“Small pin-pricks, such as the court order of a substation clerk that a fine is due for non-payment of tax by a certain only dimly comprehended calendar date, become serious wounds when discussed and debated in the absence of a European officer, who by a little good-natured banter on lack of energy in paddling would cause the trifling sum to be handed over amidst general hilarity, and would have the power, which the clerk has not, of remitting the fine if he were satisfied that a genuine effort had been made, but that delay was due to floods or other adverse circumstance. . .”
I submit, with diffidence, the impression that Sarawak has perhaps gone too quickly in superseding the old rule-of-thumb methods by modern machinery, in a laudable effort to come into line with its more civilized neighbors, and that this policy is liable to cause a line of cleavage between Europeans and native adjacent to Government stations on the one hand, and the really rural population on the other. This should be avoided even at the cost of some loss in apparent administrative efficiency. It is only by traveling and living amongst the people that officers of this Government can acquire such sympathy with their character and requirements as has hitherto succeeded in gaining and holding their loyalty and affection.”40
A month after his meeting with Asun, Bertram made another journey, this one to the upper branches of the Batang Lupar River system, Second Division. His trip was purposely timed to coincide with the advance of a punitive expedition up the Entabai and Kanowit Rivers in the adjacent Rejang drainage. It was hoped that the Tuan Muda and his well-armed force of police and retired Sarawak Rangers41 would deter the Batang Lupar Ibans from crossing the watershed to help Asun and his friends. Certainly in many areas their reception of the Rajah’s brother and his following was anything but friendly. The women and children of some longhouses fled into the jungle, and people hid their old Chinese jars and other valuables. At the home of Penghulu Ramba, perhaps the most important leader of the upper Batang Lupar Ibans, it was obvious that spears and shields were being readied for war. Bertram reported an angry conversation with Ramba himself:
“I had alluded to Asoon as a madman: it is not he who is mad, but Tuans so and so and so and so who pay no heed to the grievances of ulu Dayaks when put forward in a legitimate manner; Asoon had merely tried to voice these grievances on their behalf, and so was now in trouble.”42
Meanwhile, across a range of rugged hills, Government forces were meting out punishment to Asun and his neighbors. The Kanowit-Entabai expedition of early 1932 was considerably more serious than the effort of the preceding July. According to the Sarawak Gazette, the object of the operation was to arrest Asun and his followers, or, failing that, “to lay waste their crops and property in order to demonstrate that Government would stand no more nonsense from those who had rebelled against its authority.”43 Still defiant, Asun burned his own longhouse before the arrival of the Government force. In a few days of scattered fighting, the “rebels” staged two ambushes, wounding five men and losing one killed themselves. Afterwards, Asun and a handful of followers escaped into the rugged hill country bordering the Second and Third Divisions, toward Bukit Lanjak.44 Traveling District Officer Cutfield led a second expedition to the Kanowit and upper Entabai a few months later, in July, with no more conclusive results.45
By the middle of 1932, the pattern of the “rebellion” was clearly established. Serious dissidence was almost entirely confined to those rivers, which drain the high ground between the Second and Third Divisions. This territory was by and large an area already long settled by Ibans, and consequently one where virgin land most suitable for hill rice farming was in short supply. Under such conditions, the system of shifting cultivation produces increasingly inadequate returns.
Significantly, the inhabitants of the Balleh, a major Iban-inhabited tributary farther up the Rejang, were not actively involved in the troubles. This was partly because the Balleh Ibans had themselves only recently lost a long and bitter conflict with the Government, the result of their persistent and aggressive efforts to migrate into forbidden areas during the period 1870-1915. The defeat which finally cowed them did not take place until their expansion had encompassed enough land to cushion the effects of economic depression, which created such misunderstanding and distress among the people of less prosperous districts.46
Even within the most seriously affected region, only a few young hotheads were willing to take up arms against the Rajah. Certainly the warrior urge and the headhunting ethic both remained strong in a society still largely untouched by the direct effects of Western civilization. If large numbers of people did not join the few activists, the population generally sympathized with any anti-Government activity, besides which many people were fearful of “rebel” retaliation. On the other hand, even passive support of insurrection exacted a heavy toll from a far from wealthy population, for the Government, relying as it always had on Iban volunteers, was willing and able to destroy the homes and crops of those who offered the outlaws aid and comfort.
Toward the end of 1932 Asun decided to give himself up, under circumstances which are anything but clear.47 Most probably he was already weary of a fugitive existence which brought some degree of fame but also a great deal of discomfort. According to a Dutch report of 1934, unconfirmed by any Sarawak source, he refused to submit until the Rajah sent a young District Officer, J.C.H. Barcroft, to remain in his longhouse as a pledge that he would not be summarily executed in Kuching.48 Sarawak participants agree that Asun crossed the watershed and surrendered at Lubok Antu (Second Division) rather than submit to the man whom he considered his real enemy, C. D. Adams, Resident of the Third Division. He was subsequently detained in Kuching before being sent to a relatively pleasant exile at Lundu in the extreme western corner of Sarawak. Here he remained until after World War II, safely isolated from potential followers.49
Asun’s detention did not put an end to the period of Iban unrest identified with his name. Other “rebels” and “outlaws” remained at large, usually after murdering completely peaceful, ordinary people. In addition to capturing and detaining such individuals whenever possible, the Administration imposed increasingly stringent controls on Iban settlement and movement. From 1932 onwards, a system of blockhouses linked by police patrols was established in an effort to cordon off the disaffected area.50 The new strategy was something of an innovation. In earlier periods of “rebellion,” most notably during the Bantin troubles of 1895-1910, the Second Rajah, Charles Brooke, had steadfastly refused to consider establishing any formal military presence in the interior. He had preferred to rely entirely on the practice of sending levies of downriver Ibans to burn, plunder, and engage in officially sanctioned headhunting among the upriver “rebels”. It was a technique which he himself had perfected in an earlier age of extreme insecurity; he was proud of his ability to launch Iban levies, and reluctant to authorize the increased expenditure which any more formal military establishment might have entailed. The Government of his son and successor did not entirely abandon the earlier strategy until 1935. In February of that year the Resident of the Third Division reported what proved to be the last punitive expedition in the old style.
All relations of the rebels in the Kanowit, Julau, Poi and ulu Rejang areas are being turned out and compelled to live below Sibu. Many of the Kanowits came down also, but stated that they preferred to give up or kill the rebels, who are their relations, rather than evacuate their country. Their offer was considered worth a trial, so they were gathered together and divided into two forces under the supervision of Native Officers, Constabulary and Dayak levies, and set off on an expedition from Nanga Julau at the end of the month.51
This effort, like so many of its predecessors, resulted only in the destruction of a few longhouses and the death of one or two “rebels”, whose smoked heads were proudly carried back downriver by those Iban warriors on the Government side who had been lucky enough to obtain them.52
As the report quoted above makes clear, sporadic military measures went hand in hand with attempts at “rebel” resettlement. For years, the Government had tried, not always successfully, to hold the more turbulent Iban communities within certain geographic limits. It had long been an article of Brooke administrative faith that Ibans who were too far removed from the nearest whitewashed Government fort (really more a symbol of the Rajah’s presence than a military facility) would sooner or later indulge in illegal migration, headhunting, and other forms of overt defiance. “Rebellion” had become synonymous with physical movement away from the Government, and when the Rajah had his way, defeated Ibans were customarily required to resettle “below the fort”, on the downriver side of Brooke authority.
The resettlement efforts of the Asun era were more comprehensive than those of previous decades. In a period of increasing administrative formality, the Government was less tolerant of Iban disobedience, and the growth of better communications53 enabled the Resident to enforce his writ more effectively than ever before. At the height of the Asun unrest, the populations of entire rivers were forced to move to downstream areas, partly as punishment and partly to prevent them from giving further aid and comfort to “rebels.” Once relocated, they sometimes formed new longhouses and sometimes went to live with friends or relatives in existing communities.
The first official acknowledgment of resettlement came in the Sarawak Administration Report for 1933, which stated, “During 1933 all that remained of Asoon’s following surrendered and were settled in the Igan River,”54 a broad mouth of the Rejang which meanders through the swampy delta between Sibu and the South China Sea. Most Brooke records for this period have perished and published references are discreet, to say the least, but living participants remember how thorough some of these measures were. In 1934 or early 1935 (the exact date is not certain), the Resident of the Third Division enforced the wholesale evacuation of several important streams in what is now Kanowit District, including the entire Poi River, the Ngemah River above Nanga Laka’h, all of the upper Kanowit above Nanga Mujok and the entire Entabai tributary, Asun’s home stream. In the Poi alone, where perhaps 1,000 Ibans were affected, the Malay Native Officer who supervised the evacuation remembers personally setting fire to about thirty abandoned longhouses. Resettlement was so common an occurrence that in the administrative jargon, orang batak (from the Iban verb, batak, meaning to pull or drag) became a standard phrase for one who had been resettled, and British officers habitually wrote of Ibans being “batak’d.”
If Brooke rule was not so sweetly paternalistic as some accounts have implied, its officers certainly did not lack a strong sense of social justice. As the 1930′s wore on, they indulged in a good deal of soul searching about the problem of upriver dissidence, and attempts were made to devise administrative solutions practical within the limits imposed by the modest resources of an “independent” Sarawak. As early as 1932, the Rajah’s brother concluded that the troubles had resulted from the too-rapid growth of formal, centralized administration, and the consequent alienation of the more remote Ibans. Another Brooke official, C. D. Le Gros Clark, elaborated on the same theme in a unique examination of the entire administrative system. In his report, Clark sketched the outlines of a new “Dayak Policy,” designed to soften what he regarded as the inevitable disruptive effect of increased contact between the Ibans and “European” civilization. Instead of playing the role of broker, the Government had gotten completely out of touch with the upriver people, Clark argued. He observed that even from a purely military point of view, the continuing resort to punitive expeditions was futile.
The efficacy of expeditions, the purpose of which is to round up a handful of rebels, is seriously to be questioned. The cost of these expeditions is no small sum. They are certainly welcomed by the ulu tribes [i.e. by those Ibans who were called out to fight for the Rajah] but they seldom have any result and can only bring Government into contempt by their continuous failures. It is suggested that, if we open stations in the interior, further expeditions on a large scale will be unnecessary, and the work of rounding up small and insignificant bodies of rebels can be as effectively done by patrols.55
The more basic political problem could be solved only by greater personal contact between the District Officer and the people, Clark concluded.
“There is no doubt but that we should move in amongst the ulu tribes and administer them from the interior instead of, as we are now doing, from the coast. True administration consists of uninterrupted contact of the administrative officer with the people under him. If he is to carry out his duty conscientiously the District Officer should keep in closest personal touch with people. . . . It is necessary that we avoid bureaucracy in a country like Sarawak, whether we are dealing with Chinese, Malays or Dayaks.” 56
He recommended the immediate opening of new, permanent administrative stations at upriver locations in both the Second and Third Divisions. Eventually the Ibans would have to be weaned away from their system of shifting cultivation, Clark believed. If future agricultural surveys revealed that the interior could support a larger population practicing a more advanced type of farming, then a separate “interior residency” should be created, perhaps in ten years time. It would cover the upriver areas of the Third Division where Asun and other “rebels” had been most active. On the other hand, “If . . .the expert reports are unfavourable, then we should not hesitate to move the Dayaks into areas downriver where the soil is suitable, and where they can live in more settled conditions of agriculture.”57
At the time of the report, the Sarawak native administrative service was restricted exclusively to Malays and Moslem Melanaus, as was the limited number of Sarawak Government schools. Mission schools did accept Ibans and members of other tribal groups, but they could accommodate only a tiny fraction of the school-age “Dayak” population. Clark urged the Government to create a system of longhouse primary schools with instruction in the Iban or other local language, and he proposed that in future every effort should be made to recruit qualified Ibans as administrative officers.58
The Government quickly accepted the main thrust of Clark’s recommendations in the Blue Report, as Sarawak’s annual report for 1935 made clear:
“Although the unrest among the Dayaks was undoubtedly due in large measure to economic conditions over which Government had no control, experience has shown that the system of administering the Dayaks by means of regular visits to the Ulu from stations on the coast or at the mouths of rivers, is not always as successful now as it was in the past. It is necessary for Government to maintain constant contact with these people, and for this reason “the policy of administering them from the interior has now been adopted. A fort is in the process of construction at Nanga Meluan, a locality which can be reached in one day by outboard from Kanowit. A hospital, dispensary, wireless station and school will follow in due course, and a network of bridle-paths is being constructed which will link the headwaters of all neighbouring rivers with the headquarters. An experienced administrative officer will be posted permanently to the new station as soon as the fort is completed. . .” 59
The fort at Meluan on the Kanowit River was duly completed, and although it never became the seat of a separate “interior residency” as Clark had envisaged, it was the headquarters of a District within the Third Division from 1936 until the Japanese occupation.60
In December, 1935, the Rajah had met with local Iban leaders and told them that once the Meluan post was open, they would be allowed to move back upriver into some of the areas from which all inhabitants had been forced to move.61 Nevertheless, although many of the batak’d Kanowit, Poi, and Ngemah Ibans did return to their old homes during the next few years, the Government was still anxious to maintain tighter controls on settlement than had existed in the pre-Asun era. One result was the creation of the 450,000 acre Lanjak-Entimau Protected Forest, which covered the more inaccessible headwaters of all the streams in the new Meluan District, including some territory formely inhabited by resettled “rebels,” as well as adjacent areas of the Second Division. In any such reservation all habitation was automatically outlawed,62 in theory to prevent shifting cultivation and the attendant destruction of forest, but this one covered an area where there was little timber worth saving. It soon became known as the “Lanjak-Entimau Political Forest”.
During the Japanese occupation, some Ibans took advantage of the British absence to move back to their old longhouse sites within the preserve. They were naturally resentful when in 1947 the new Colonial Administration contemplated making them move out once again, this time on the grounds that a disastrous precedent would be set if any settlement were to be countenanced within any Protected Forest, no matter how political its origins. Eventually good sense prevailed, however, and the borders of Lanjak-Entimau were adjusted to exclude the homes of the returnees.63
The new theory of Iban administration, which first found expression in the 1935 Blue Report, recognized that the Government would eventually have to do more than merely control the Ibans; it would have to offer them services as well. No more than a start was made toward implementing this idea in the few years, which remained before the onset of World War II, but the Government did admit some Ibans to minor administrative posts, and it also began to think about a system of schools which would include the various “Dayak” groups as well as the Moslem people. In the vicinity of Kanowit, an experiment in agricultural education began in co-operation with the Roman Catholic Mission. Water buffaloes and Kedazan instructors were recruited from North Borneo, and the Government provided a trained agricultural specialist, Ong Kee Hui of Kuching,64 in an effort to teach at least some Ibans an alternative to shifting cultivation.
More than anything else, perhaps, the return of relative prosperity to the Sarawak economy in the late 1930′s dampened the lingering embers of upriver unrest. As early as February 1937, the Resident of the Third Division could report, “There is a general atmosphere of content and well being throughout the Meluan District, attributable to the price of rubber and the prospects of a good harvest.”65
Nevertheless, some turbulent souls remained at large in the interior, now more frequently termed “outlaws” than “rebels” by the Government, yet in all cases motivated by much the same spirit which had moved Asun. Perhaps the most famous of these last-ditch malcontents was Kendawang, a Kanowit Iban whose “outlawry” dated from 1932. As in the case of Asun, his quarrel with the Government was in part a personal feud with an official of the Third Division. Kendawang had been on unusually close terms with a number of European officials in the course of employment with the Forest Department, helping to demarcate reserves in the extreme headwaters of the Third Division. From his earnings he had saved enough money to purchase a gun, of which he was intensely proud, regarding it as a reward for loyal service. When the Asun troubles began he was slow to obey the emergency order requiring that all firearms be turned in to the Government, and when he wandered into Sibu on an innocent errand he was arrested and jailed. Later he escaped from jail and, together with another “rebel”, Ijau, murdered a retired Sikh constable at his home not far from Kanowit.66 The particular victim was apparently of no great interest to the “rebels”; any murder was both an act of political defiance and the prerequisite to success as a warrior and headhunter.
Kendawang was eventually joined by his half-brother Banyang,67 and together the pair remained at large for years, hunted from one remote upriver area to another across wide areas of the Second and Third Divisions. Within the Administration, however, certain officers with long experience in the Iban country argued that Kendawang would never have become an outlaw had he not been unjustly treated at the time of his original arrest. They were certain that if the Rajah gave his personal guarantee of clemency, Kendawang and his brother Banyang would give themselves up, and a major remaining source of rumored “rebellion” and unrest would be removed.
In 1940 Kendawang and Banyang were living at the headwaters of the Balingian River, Fourth Division, in an area settled by migrants from the Kanowit to whom they were in all probability related. In April, the Rajah summoned a delegation of Kanowit and Julau Ibans to the Royal Astana in Kuching and told them that Kendawang’s life would be spared, if he would accept some punishment for his crimes. He should meet with the Rajah in October, and if he refused the terms of his sentence, he would be free to return to his jungle-hiding place. The Iban leaders promised to send emissaries to Kendawang with this offer.68
But in the meantime, a young District Officer, D. C. White, thought of a more dramatic plan. He remembered an old than story, in which the First Rajah, James Brooke, had offered his sword to rebels as a pledge of clemency. He proposed attempting this tactic to reassure the suspicious fugitives, and Vyner Brooke agreed. An ordinary sword was embellished to look suitably royal, and White, accompanied by Temenggong Koh and Penghulu Jugah, journeyed to the Balingian and met with the outlaws. After some hesitation, Kendawang exempted the royal pledge.69 He was initially exiled to Malaya, where the Brcokes arranged a job for him as a collector of specimens for the Federated Malayan States Museum. Later, when war seemed imminent, he was returned to Sarawak, where he joined Asun in exile at Lundu, and reportedly occupied himself by looking after certain rubber gardens belonging to the Rajah. After World War II, he returned to his old home near Julau. His half-brother Banyang, for years his companion in “outlawry,” is at present a capable Iban politician, a representative of Julau in the Sarawak Council Negri (state assembly) and of Sarawak in the Malaysian Federal Parliament.
Asun in Retrospect:
Asun’s “Rebellion” had sputtered to a complete halt by the beginning of the Japanese occupation in 1941. In retrospect, it would not seem to rank high on anyone’s scale of insurrection. Only a handful of people, none of them Brooke officials, perished on either side. Certainly the burning of longhouses and the resettlement of Ibans whose loyalty was suspect worked hardships on the upriver population, but the degree of suffering may easily be exaggerated unless it is remembered that a traditional Iban longhouse is a highly impermanent structure, and that the Ibans glorified migration and were conditioned to moving frequently. It was typical of Brooke rule that the principal “rebels” were treated almost more like errant schoolboys than serious political enemies.
Like earlier periods of Iban dissidence, Asun’s “Rebellion” was never a conscious effort to overthrow Brooke rule. The focus of Iban resentment remained personal and localized. Individual “rebels” like Asun and Kendawang took to the jungle after violent quarrels with specific British officers. Asun found it possible to surrender to another Resident at a time when he would still probably have refused to meet his original adversary, and, as we have seen, Kendawang was ready to accept the Rajah’s personal pledge of good faith although he remained unwilling to trust his subordinates. Nothing even remotely resembling nationalism was astir in pre-World War II Sarawak. (The same cannot be said of Dutch Borneo, where as early as the 1930′s a degree of wider political consciousness was already developing among the “Dayaks” of certain areas.70 The fact that the Dutch East Indies were, in effect if not in theory, under a single administration, may have facilitated the spread of ideas originating in Java and elsewhere, whereas Brooke autonomy and Borneo geography ensured that Sarawak’s political isolation, even from British Malaya and North Borneo, remained almost total.)
If Asun and the other dissidents were not nationalists, neither were they the product of a nativistic or revivalist movement similar to the “cargo cults” of postwar New Guinea. This point needs to be stressed, if only because many students are conditioned to believe that disturbances among a primitive population in a time of increasing European pressures are often, if not always, symptomatic of such movements, which may be characterized as attempts to revive or restore a pre-European world order by supernatural means.
Both the antecedents and the events of the Asun unrest were completely secular in character.71 To put it as simply as possible, the Ibans resented increasing restraints and requirements imposed upon them by a Government which was not equipped to offer them anything which they could regard as benefits in return. Earlier decades of hostility resulting from the Second Rajah’s long efforts to suppress headhunting and to control migration had created a tradition of hostility, and this heritage made violent resistance altogether respectable when the onset of economic depression unhappily coincided with the proliferation of incomprehensible Government demands.
Poor economic conditions aggravated the problem, but even prosperity and lavish Government spending could not have eliminated it entirely. When all is said and done the Ibans were bound to resent the steady expansion of an alien political presence in their midst. They were in fact gradually losing their freedom, and would have been unhappy at first even had the Brooke been willing and able to sugar coat the pill with a full-scale program of roads, schools, and medical services. To the extent that the intrusion of central authority was inevitable (regardless of the nationality of the rulers) Asun’s “Rebellion” may be regarded as a kind of political growing pain, an inevitable interlude on the road to modernity.
The reaction of the Brooke regime to the entire episode was symptomatic of a conflict on its part between a desire to continue the tradition of personal, minimal Government, and a dawning awareness that fundamental changes in administrative technique were increasingly inescapable. The Third Rajah, Vyner, was probably not very interested in such matters. It is no exaggeration to say that disinterest was a hallmark of his administration, and a considerable cause of the political stagnation, which overtook Sarawak in the final years of Brooke rule. His younger brother, Tuan Muda Bertram, who was a more serious and capable administrator, saw the problem as one of too much government rather than too little. He proposed a return to the simpler days of his father, when the British officer, unencumbered by excessive paperwork and the demands of a European wife, was free to travel among his people and apply simple, common-sense justice to their problems.
This reaction was echoed in the Blue Report of 1935, with its plan for administration from the interior, where the District Officer could more easily make contact with the upriver Ibans on their own home ground. Yet the Blue Report also proposed giving the Ibans schools and a share in the Government. It called for scientific land surveys of the interior, perhaps to be followed by community development schemes. In short, it recognized that the Government must inevitably involve itself more and more with the people, but it failed to face the fact that such an involvement would surely lead to the growth of bureaucracy, and that it would eventually be incompatible with any return to personal rule.
This contradiction between unwillingness to abandon an idealized benevolent despotism and awareness that necessary welfare measures required new and more complicated administrative techniques permeated the final years of Brooke rule. The more intelligent men in the Government were aware of the conflict and there was a surprising amount of public debate on the subject. In practice, Sarawak continued to move slowly but surely toward a more comprehensive and hence more impersonal political system in the years before World War II.
Since that time, the Japanese occupation, eighteen years of British colonial rule, and the advent of Malaysia have served to accelerate the pace of change in Sarawak. From 1946 onwards, Governments have trumpeted the necessity of education and economic development for all, and the long arm of bureaucracy had indeed reached to the headwaters of the longest rivers. As might have been predicted, this process has aroused occasional opposition among the same upriver Ibans who were unhappiest in the days of Asun. At first many of them were opposed to the postwar program of education. For a number of years, certain communities regarded schools primarily as an excuse for new and higher taxes, and secondarily as an obnoxious effort to teach the younger generation how not to be real Ibans. There have been occasions in quite recent times when the Sarawak Constabulary field force has had to be dispatched upriver before rates were sullenly paid. On the whole, such incidents have been infrequent, however. Gradually, even the most conservative Ibans have been persuaded that education, rubber trees, and other formerly repugnant symptoms of progress are necessary and desirable – even if taxes per se remain, as in certain other societies, highly objectionable.
Indeed, it is apparent that the major problem in the Government-Iban relationship is fast becoming just the opposite of what it was in the Asun era. Since World War II, administrators have offered increasingly tangible benefits in return for their demands. As a result, the Government, far from remaining a source of annoyance, is increasingly regarded as the source of all wealth, favors, and privileges. From the upriver Iban point of view, the question is no longer how to avoid central authority; rather, it is how to obtain a greater share of the resources which only central authority can command.
This is no more than to say that even in the most remote areas the Ibans have made much progress toward meeting the twentieth century on its own terms. They have discovered not only education, but also the joys of local politics and the ethic of the welfare state. But it is also worth remembering that the Iban political disposition retains many of the characteristics, which were so apparent throughout the period of Brooke rule, and not least in its final stages. Headhunting might not attract many of today’s youth, if any, but the Ibans remain a highly volatile people, quick to anger, easily divided against themselves, always ready to react violently against political injustices, real or imagined. While it is true that they have done well by the Government since World War II, it is even more apparent that upriver expectations have been rising at an ever quickening pace. The Ibans are increasingly aware that in contrast to other ethnic groups, particularly the Chinese, their own standard of living leaves much to be desired. The problem intensifies as Iban populations grow, migration opportunities diminished, and the crop returns from overburdened hill rice land continue to dwindle.
The spread of smallholder rubber, actively promoted by postwar regimes, has done much to generate income in Iban areas. And yet this fact, more than any other, calls to mind the specter of Asun. For if economic depression should recur, or if rubber prices alone should plummet, the Asun phenomenon could well be repeated in far more serious form. As in 1931, any widespread decline in the general level of prosperity would be resented and misunderstood by the upriver people. Having acquired a much greater stake in the rubber market, the Ibans would suffer much more directly from the effects of depression than was the case in Brooke days. But it is probable that they would comprehend what was happening only slightly better than before. Resulting resentment might be directed against the Government, but it would be far more likely to find an outlet in anti-Chinese sentiment, which might well be fanned by opportunistic politicians. Certainly communal tension, already an increasingly serious problem in Sarawak, would be greatly increased. Whatever the outcome, it would be even less realistic than in 1931 to blame any unfortunate consequences on a supposed lingering taste for headhunting.
If the Asun “Rebellion” holds any lesson for the present, it is that until the Malaysian economy is less dependent on rubber, any precipitous decline in the price of that commodity is likely to spell disaster, even in so remote an area as the upriver Iban country of Sarawak.
FOOTNOTES
1. Recent statistics on Sarawak population are as follows: Ibans, 247,000 (30.2% of total State population); Chinese, 263,000 (32.2%); Malays. 145,000 (17.7%); Land Dayaks, 65,000 (7.9%); Melanaus, 48,000 (5.9%); “other races” (defined as Bisayas, Kedayans, Kayans, Kenyahs, Kelabits, etc.), 48,000 (5.9%): State of Sarawak, Annual Bulletin of Statistics (Kuching, 1964), p.3.
Three quarters of the Ibans in Sarawak are concentrated in the Second and Third Divisions, the upriver areas of which are the main setting for the events described in this paper. Because they are, relatively speaking, a culturally homogeneous group, there is general agreement in Sarawak today about who is “Iban” and who is not. The same is not necessarily true of other groups, and there is particular controversy over the term “Malay.” As I have employed “Malay” in this paper, in accordance with the most common Sarawak usage, it simply means Moslem of predominantly Southeast Asian ancestry. There has long been confusion over the status of the Moslem Melanaus, some, but not all, of whom regard themselves as “Malays.”
2. Parts of this paper, particularly in the introductory section, are based on my unpublished Cornell University doctoral thesis, “The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke Rule, 1841-1941,” (Ithaca, New York, 1967). I have not duplicated the more complete footnotes and acknowledgments which may be found in that work.
3. The only easily ayailable account of Asun’s “Rebellion” is a brief passage in Steven Runciman, The White Rajahs (Cambridge, 1960), pp.239-240. My own account is based almost entirely on administrative reports in the semi-official Sarawak Gazette (hereafter cited as SG) and on travel and interviewing in Sarawak and England during 1965-66 in the course of graduate research in history for Cornell University. That research was sponsored by the London-Cornell Project and undertaken in cooperation with the Sarawak Museum. For the date of Asun’s death see Joan Rawlins, Sarawak, 1839-1963 (London, 1965), p. 125.
4. For a general historical introduction to Brooke rule, the most valuable work remains S. Baring-Gould and C. A. Bampfylde. A History of Sarawak under its Two White Rajahs 1838-1908 (London, 1909). More recent events are covered in Runciman, The White Rajahs, and in Rawlins, Sarawak; the latter is a compact, competent history designed for secondary-school use.
5. On this subject see Benedict Sandin, The Sea Dayaks of Borneo before White Rajah Rule (London, 1968).
6. The literature relating to Second Division Iban “piracy” is extensive but the best single account is Graham Irwin’s “The Pirate Controversy” in Nineteenth Century Borneo (Singapore, 1965), pp.127-150.See Robert Pringle, “Bantin’s Revolt: Charles Brooke and the Upriver Ibans,” in “The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke Rule.”
7. Asun’s praise name (ensumbar) was Bah Tunggal (“Rushing Flood”). Biographic details are from various interviews in the Entabai and upper Batang Lupar. Mr. J. K. Wilson, formerly of Nanga Entabai, whose experience of the Kanowit and of upriver Ibans in general is unexcelled by any other European, helped to put me in touch with the right people when I visited the area in 1965, and has since been kind enough to confirm my own research by interviewing Asun’s son, Tuai Rumah Nyawai, who lives near the site of Asun’s old house and is today the headman of some of his father’s people.
8. Julian Baring-Gould, Resident of Third Division, reported in August, 1911, that subject to the Rajah’s approval, “I have appointed one [Assun] to take charge of the district between Nanga M«rurun and N. Entabai. P.[enghulu] Gramong has been in charge of this district since the ex-rebels [i.e. followers of Bantin] surrendered which has led to considerable friction.” SG 587, September, 1911. This is the first reference to Asun in the Gazette. The area referred to is a section of the main Kanowit below Nanga Entabai, and it is not clear whether Asun was already by. this date penghulu of his home river (Entabai) or whether this is a reference to his first official appointment of any kind.
9. “Expedition Against the Balleh Dayaks,” SG 672, March 16, 1915. This account identifies Asun specifically as penghulu of Entabai. It states that he, Gani, Merdan of Bintulu, and Bedindang were the most valuable Iban leaders of the Rajah’s force.
10. Under the Brookes, fines levied on the Ibans (and some others) for various offenses were most often expressed in weights of brassware (usually either Brunei-made vessels or swivel cannon) which had specific cash equivalents. See A. J. N. Richards, Dayak Adat in the Second Division (Kuching, 1963), esp. p.35.
11. Third Division reports for November 1926, SG 880, January 3, 1927; March, 1927, SG 884, June 1, 1927; and June 1927., SG 887, August 1, 1927.
12. Bertram Brooke acknowledged that attempts to collect tax from Iban indigents (umang) created great resentment: “Extracts from a report by His Highness the Tuan Muda on a visit to the ulus Entabai and Batang Lupar, and Delok District, Third Division [sic],” SG 943, April 1, 1932.
13. I heard this tale from Ibans in both the upper Batang Lupar and Entabai districts in 1965-66.
14. For Third Division development in the 1920′s, see Robert Pringle, “The Ibans and Others: Communal Relations under Charles Brooke,” in “The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke Rule.”
15. Second Division December report, SG 379, February 16. 1918; J.D. Freeman, Iban Agriculture (London, 1955), p.19.
16. Third Division annual report for 1926, Sarawak Government Gazette (hereafter cited as SGG), September 1, 1927; Freeman, Iban Agriculture, pp.35 n., 140.
17. “His Highness ordered that in future no Dayaks would be allowed to leave their districts except those who had been promised definite work by responsible people.” Third Division October report, SG 915, December 2. 1915; see also Sarawak Administration Report, 1929 (Kuching, 1930), p.58. The Administration later recognized that such arrogant attempts to restrict Iban freedom of movement had been a major factor contributing to unrest among the “younger generation.” C. D. Le Gros Clark, The Blue Report, 1935 (Kuching, 1935), p.48.
18. Second Division August report, SG 803, October 16, 1920; Third Division January report, SG 870, March 1, 1926.
19. Under the Third Rajah’s semi-standardized system all Malays paid $2 per adult male per year, while each pagan “Dayak” community owed the Rajah $1 per longhouse family room or “door.” The Second Rajah’s tax structure was more complex, and varied greatly from district to district: Robert Pringle, “How the Second Rajah Ruled: Theory and Practice at the Outstation Level” in “The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke Rule.” In 1924, Vyner went so far as to suggest that all Sarawak subjects should pay at the rate of S2 per adult male, but this proposal was never implemented: Vyner Brooke to Council Negri, October 21, 1924, in SGG, November 3, 1924.
20. Order XVII of 1922, SGG, July 1, 1922. For reference to the immediate unhappiness this measure created among the Ibans, who had already learned to rely heavily on firearms for hunting and pest control, see Third Division December report, SG 834, March 1, 1923; Second Division February report, SG 838, June 1, 1923.
21. Order XVII of 1923, “Registration of Births and Deaths,” SGG, December 17, 1923.
22. Sarawak’s first forest legislation was too closely modelled on Malayan precedent to make any sense in Borneo, where there are few areas of completely unused, unfrequented jungle similar to those of central Malaya. Under a “trespass clause,” all natives were completely excluded from the original Sarawak Forest Reserves. The unpopularity of this measure clearly contributed to the Asun unrest, and as a result no more Forest Reserves were gazetted after 1932. Subsequent reservations known as Protected Forests, first created in 1934, were closed only to farming (hence to settlement) and commercial logging, but natives were free to enter them and gather anything they required for their own personal needs. B. J. C. Spurway, “Shifting Cultivation in Sarawak,” SG 1003, April 1, 1937; B. E. Smythies, “History of Forestry in Sarawak,” SG 1243, September 30, 1961.
23. Third Division May report, SG 911, August 1, 1929. Engkabang (illipe nuts) and langpai (a misprint for langgir) are jungle trees whose fruits are extremely valuable to the Ibans; the regulation against felling them was apparently a local (Divisional) order. “Retaining fruit etc.” refers to an 1899 Charles Brooke order which specified that Ibans could not claim as private property (hence sell) junsle fruit trees when they migrated away from their old homes: Order XVIII, SG 404, September 1, 1899.
24. For a typical case of conflict and confusion arising from local variations in adat. see the story of Antas and Bangkang in Third Division (Kapit) April report, SG 945, June 1, 1932. Bertram Brooke noted “. . . it is extremely difficult to deal with people who say that Government is continually transgressing Dayak adat when tribal customs vary so widely in different districts, and each tribe considers that its own is the only right one.” Here “tribe” indicates a primarily geographic, not ethnographic, distinction between Iban sub-groups. “A visit to the Ulus Entabai and Batang Lupar,” SG 943, April 1, 1932.
25. For the Iban custom of travel (bejalai), see Freeman, Iban Agriculture, pp.74-75.
26. Third Division August report, SG 902, November 1, 1928.
27. Third Division (Kapit) January report, SG 918, March 1, 1930.
28. Third Division July report, SG 924, September 1, 1930.
29. Vyner Brooke to Council Negri, Supplement to SGG, January 2, 1931.
30. Third Division November report, SG 928, January, 1931.
31. “On the 28th Abang Enjah, Native Officer, left for the ulu Kanowit to deliver the Government ultimatum to ex-Penghulu Asoon, who now refuses to have anything whatever to do with the Government, and is causing unrest in the Kanowit and Entabai,” Adams reported in January: SG 930, March 2, 1931. News that Asun was sending war spears to the Second Division prompted the Resident there to label him a “rebel” for the first time: “. . . it is feared that many credulous and restless men from the Krian and Layar have been visiting the Third Division. If any of these Dayaks become entangled with rebels it will be their own fault, as all the Penghulus except two [not named] have refused to have anything to do with Asoon or any of his following.” Second Division May report, SG 934, July 1, 1931.
32. Report of the Secretary for Native Affairs, SG 935, August 1. 1931.
33. Third Division June report,’ SG 936, September 1, 1931.
34. “Hot Air in the Hinterland,” SG 936, September 1, 1931. Nuri was obviously a colleague of Asun, but I have no more information about him. This expedition to Julau of July 12-21 had been preceded by the dispatch of Sarawak Rangers to the upper Nyelong and Binatang River.
35. The order requiring all Ibans to turn in their guns was, like many local regulations, never published. It is well remembered today, however, and was obliquely referred to in a Third Division report for April, 1931: SG 933, June 1, 1933. Running afoul of this order motivated the noted “rebel” Kendawang to turn against the Government: see below.
36. “Christmas and New Year at Sibu, A Dayak Invasion,” SG 941, February 1, 1932; “Extract from report by His Highness the Tuan Muda on the Sibu ‘Aum’ concerning Dayak Customs and visit to the upper Kanowit and Entabai districts,” SG 941, February 1, 1932. The Sibu Aum resulted in Sarawak’s first written code of Iban adat, entitled Tusun Tunggu Daya (Iban) di Third Division di Baroh Pegai Prentah Sibu (Kuching, 1932), published in both Romanized Iban and Malay in jawi script. In the Second Division, where the problems created ‘by a mixed population originating in various river systems did not exist, Iban customary law was not codified until 1963: Richards, Dayak Adat Law in the Second Division.
37. At this time no European officer was permanently stationed nearer to the center of the disaffected area (the upper Kanowit) than Sibu, the Third Division headquarters, many miles downriver. The institution of “Travelling District Officer,” an effort to overcome this obvious deficiency, was created in the early days of the Asun unrest. The first reference to it that I have been able to find is in the Third Division May report, SG 934, July 1, 1931.
38. “Visit to the upper Kanowit and Entabai Districts,” SG 941, February 1, 1932.
41. Largely as an economy measure, the Government merged the old Sarawak Rangers with the police force at the end of 1931, thereby abolishing the only reliable military force suitable for work in the interior, just at a time when there was a renewed need .for it. To meet the problem, a separate field force (“Force B”) of the Constabulary was eventually created, a virtually all-Iban unit modelled on the lines of the old Rangers. In the meantime, however, the Government manned its operations against Asun by recruiting retired Rangers on an ad hoc basis. Such men were known as “reserves,” a term which was quickly Ibanized into “rejap.” On big expeditions the reserves were assisted by larger followings of Iban volunteers, in the tradition of Charles Brooke. For the abolition of the Sarawak Rangers, see “The Sarawak Rangers 1862-1932,” SG 942, March 1, 1932; Sarawak Administration Report, 1932 Kuching,1933), p.10.
42. “Visit to the ulus Entabai and Batang Lupar,” SG 943, April 1, 1932. Ramba was the brother of Tabor, who had been killed fighting Government forces at Nanga Pila on the upper Rejang in 1916. Despite his harsh words to the Tuan Muda on this occasion he never actively joined Asun. On the same trip Bertram also visited Kana of Engkari, a noted Iban warrior who had been a rebel in the days of Bantin. In contrast to Ramba, Kana received the Rajah’s brother cordially, but he was later judged guilty of collusion with the “rebels” and was sent into exile with Asun and Kendawang at Lundu. For his detention, see Second Division February report, SG 955, April 1, 1933.
43. “Entabai Expedition,” SG 943, April 1, 1932. The expedition was in the field from February 12 to March 4.
Ibid.
45. Third Division July report, SG 947, September 1, 1932.
46. For the story of Balleh migrations, see Freeman, Iban Agriculture, pp.15-21; Pringle, “Iban Migrations and the Rajah’s Response,” in “The Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke Rule.”
47. Strangely enough, Asun’s surrender was not mentioned in the Divisional reports in the Sarawak Gazette, but only in the annual Sarawak Administration Report, 1932 {Kuching, 1933), p.14.
48. J. E. L. Burgemeestre, “Onze verhouding tot Sarawak en de Batang Loepar bevolking” [Our Relations with Sarawak and the Batang Lupar People], Typescript, 1934, Memories van Overgave Series, Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, p.34. In this valuable history of Dutch-Bropke relations along the frequently troubed Iban frontier, Burgemeestre gives the wrong date (1933) for Asun’s final detention.
49. Asun died in 1958; see n.2 above. Hedda Morrison, whose husband, Alastair, was Kanowit District Officer, visited Asun at his longhouse on the Entabai in July, 1952, when she made one of the photographs which illustrates this article.
50. For the location of the blockhouses, see the accompanying map.
51. Third Division February report, SG 979, April 1, 1935.
52. Ibid. I assume that this expedition is the one described in George Jamuh’s vivid account, “The Kanowit Punitive Expedition, 1934,” Sarawak Museum Journal, VII, 8 (ns) (December, 1956), pp.463-469, although the date he gives is June, 1934. No expedition is mentioned in the Gazette or other written sources for the latter date, although this does not completely rule out the possibility that there may have been two expeditions in rapid succession. A. J. N. Richards’ notes following Jamuh’s article are particularly valuable.
53. The Brookes first began to use outboard motors in the late 1920′s; the first written reference I can find is in a Third Division report for February, 1927, SG 883, April 1, 1927. By the mid-1930′s, Government outboards were commonplace. Although the early motors were puny and undependable in comparison with postwar models, they were nonetheless an innovation of tremendous significance, as anyone who has travelled in interior Sarawak will appreciate.
54. Sarawak Administration Report, 1933 (Kuching, 1934), p.15.
55. C. D. Le Gros Clark, The Blue Report, 1935 (Kuching, 1935), p.46. Clark, who was Chief Secretary when World War II began, was subsequently executed by the Japanese.
56. Ibid., pp.44, 48.
57. Ibid., p.50.
58. Ibid., pp.45, 49. Both of these recommendations were later supported by R. W. Hammond’s “Report on Education in Sarawak,” Typescript, 1937, a Government-sponsored survey second in value only to the Blue Report as an appraisal of later Brooke rule.
59. Sarawak Administration Report, 1935 (Kuching, 1936), pp.30-31.
60. After World War II, Kanowit became the District Headquarters for the entire area. The fort at Meluan, built of heavy ironwood planks pierced with gunports in a style which originated in the days of Iban “piracy,” today serves as a more than usually picturesque primary school. There is now a Government post upriver at Julau, which is linked by road to Binatang.
61. Memorandum entitled “Dayaks,” December, 30, 1935, Lanjak-Entimau file, Forest Department, Kuching.
62. For the distinction between the earlier and more restrictive Forest Reserves and the later Protected Forests, see n. 22 above.
63. The preceding two paragraphs are based on unpublished material in the Lanjak-Entimau file, Forest Department, Kuching.
64. Mr. Ong is, of course, far better known for his more recent career as Mayor of Kuching and leader of Party SUPP. For a contemporary report on his activity as a Brooke agricultural extension expert (trained at Serdang College, Malaya), see Third Division January report, SG 1002, March 1, 1937.
65. Third Division February news, SC 1003, April 1, 1937.
66. The murder of the Sikh constable, Gokal Singh, is mentioned in Third Division March-April report, SG 945, June, 1932.
Most of this information is drawn from Radio Sarawak’s tape-recorded interview with Kendawang himself, and from my own interviews with Alastair Morrison, D. R. Lascelles, D. C. White, and Dato Pengarah Banyang. Kendawang’s version of events is suspect on one major point. He claims that he became a “rebel” partly because of the ban on all new rubber planting imposed when Sarawak joined the International Rubber Regulation agreement. Kendawang argues that he was anxious to have his people begin planting rubber, and became angry when the Government prevented them from doing so. But in fact the ban on planting did not go into effect until 1934, two years after he had become an outlaw. (Banyang, who joined Kendawang more out of family loyalty than for any other reason, does not support this part of his brother’s narrative). There is, however, little doubt that after 1934 the far-reaching prohibition did create resentment among some Ibans who were beginning to see that rubber might be a key to wealth. There are frequent reports in the Gazette of District Officers destroying illegally planted rubber trees in Iban areas: e.g., Second Division March report, SG 980. May 1, 1935; Fourth Division December report, SG 1049, February 1, 1949.
67. Now (as mentioned below), a well-known Iban politician. Banyang and Kendawang were sons by different mothers of Janting, who himself had been a famous Iban warrior and “rebel” in the days of Charles Brooke.
68. Third Division April report, SG 1041, June 1, 1940.
69. SG 1045, October 1, 1940; Third Division September report, SG 1046, November 1, 1940; interview with D. C. White (perhaps better known for his postwar service as British High Commissioner in Brunei) in London, October, 1966. Penghulu Jugah is now Tan Sri Temenggong Jugah, one of Sarawak’s foremost Iban leaders and a member of the Malaysian Federal Parliament.
70. Mallinckrodt, writing as early as 1928, noted the existence of a primarily political “Sarikat Dayak” as well as a “Dayak” cooperative movement in Dutch Borneo. Such movements were uniquely strong at an, early stage in the Banjermassin area, where a large and intensely Moslem coastal population was already in political conflict with a relatively advanced interior population (predominantly Ngaju) much affected by years of Christian mission activity. J.M. Mallinckrodt, Het adatrecht van Borneo (Leiden, 1928), I, 10.
71. Among traditional Ibans, success in war was often linked to a concept of personal spiritual power, manifested in a special capacity for leadership, which was revealed to an individual through dreams and was usually widely recognized thereafter. One who had such capacity was said to be tau serang (able to attack) and could usually count on a following in any endeavour. According to Benedict Sandin and other Iban authorities, however, Asun was not tau serang. Furthermore, Iban accounts do not stress the fact that he was a recognized manang (shaman). Rather, they reinforce the impression conveyed by contemporary British reports of unrest linked to political and economic grievances. However, a Dutch document relates that among Ibans just across the border in what is now Indonesia, fanciful stories were circulated crediting Asun with magical powers: Burgemeestre, “Onze verhouding,” pp.30-31.
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