Sabah (North Borneo) Historical
Background
By
Datuk James P.Ongkili
The history of Sabah from the
beginning until the nineteenth century remains unclear and little recorded.
Sabah was a land of freedom until the middle of the nineteenth century in the sense
that there was no organised form of government and a state did not exist until
1881. Before that, geographically Sabah had existed since time immemorial. But
there was no community, no overall administration, no state economy, no state
government; only mountains, jungles, rivers, the surrounding seas, and isolated
villages scattered over more than 29,000 square miles of tropical and warm
equatorial land.
It was in this vacuum of steamy
jungles and tempestuous seas of Sabah that an organised society slowly but
surely emerged and grew. The numerous villages in the interior plains and the
fertile hinterlands, at the river mouths and the coastal areas had existed for
a long time before the Western powers and Europeans came to the shores of
Sabah. The villagers were the original inhabitants of Sabah; and they
pioneered, in conditions more atrocious and difficult than anyone of us could
boast about today, the human settlement of Sabah.
The Sultans of Brunei and Sulu
claimed suzerainty over the area; and although their respective claims were
nominal because they had no effective control over Sabah, the Sultan of Brunei
relinquished his rights to Sabah by Treaty of 29 December 1877 and the Sultan
of Sulu likewise ceded his rights to Sabah by the Treaty of 22 January 1878.
In both cases the Treaties were
signed with Baron Von Overback who represents Alfred Dent of London. Dent
subsequently transferred his rights and powers to a Provisional Association
which obtained a Royal Charter from the British Government and become the North
Borneo Charted Company in 1881.
Other Asians, Easterners, Middle
Easterners and Westerners had all visited or passed through the area before the
establishment of a formal state in Sabah. But the one who eventually managed to
tame the forests, the rivers, the seas and above all, the villagers of Sabah
were the British. By degrees, through the business acumen of English Merchants
such as the Dent bothers, adventurers such as William Cowie, the Foreign Office
and the Colonial Office in London, the British Government eventually approved
the setting up of an administration under the North Borneo Charted Company in
Sabah in 1881. From that year on no other power, Eastern, Middle Eastern or
Western, was allowed to gain a foothold in Sabah.
The British determined our way of
life in Sabah from 1881 until we achieved our independence by joining Malaysia
in 1963. During that long period of 82 years Sabah gradually grew as a state
governed by one administration. The bigger villages like Jesselton, Kudat,
Sandakan, Lahad Datu, Tawau, Labuan, Beaufort, Papar, Tuaran, Kota Belud and
Keningau became towns, while the smaller villages were connected more and more
by bridle-paths, roads and sea or river communications. By the 1960s we had
become an organised society willing, though not entirely able, to govern
ourselves and determine our own destiny.
At a time when joint-stock
companies were already considered anachronistic institutions, the granting of
the Royal Charter to the North Borneo Company by the British Government in 1881
was a demonstration of the backwardness of the territory. (1) Nevertheless, the
charter laid down the political and administrative bases upon which the company
Court of Directors in London and their Governor and officers in Sabah should
manage an area of over 29,000 square miles. The Charter, which was closely
adhered to by the Company until the Japanese invasion 1942, required inter alia
that the Company should by degrees abolish slavery, refrain from interfering
with the religion of any class or people of the territory, develop the area,
make and maintain public works, promote immigration, grant lands to investors,
afford free access to British shipping, and impose no monopoly of trade in the
territory.(2)
The Charted Company was preoccupied
with the establishment of a bureaucracy in Sabah. In this respect, the most
significant provision of the Charter, in so far as the peoples of the territory
were involved, was Article 9 which required that:
In the administration of justice by the Company to the people of
Borneo, or to any of the inhabitants thereof, careful regard shall always be
had to the customs and laws of the class or tribe or nation to which the parties
respectively belong, especially with respect to the holding possession transfer
and disposition of lands and goods, and testate or intestate succession thereto,
and marriage, divorce, and legitimacy, and other rights of property and
personal rights.(3)
Here at least is evidence that
the territory was constituted into a political entity, separate from the Brunei
Sultanate, at a period in British history when some regard for the well-being
of the subject peoples, albeit paternalistic, was manifest. As the Rajahs of
Sarawak were imbued with Victorian humanitarianism, so the promoters of the
Charted Company were enjoined to protect the welfare of the indigenous and
other communities of Sabah from 1881 onwards.(4) Not-withstanding that, it must be pointed out
that a stable government was of paramount importance to the Company itself in
its overriding effort to open up the territory and thereby attract investors,
planters and speculators to Sabah. The chief aim was to establish good
government in order to ensure the success of a business concern which had been
launched with the blessing of the British Government. It was principally due to
this economic preoccupation that the Company Governor and his officers paid far
less attention to the promotion of political education among the inhabitants of
Sabah.(5)
An Advisory Council was set up in
1883 with the aim of providing the Governor and his officers a channel of
communication with the various communities in the territory. But in practice,
this Council hardly promoted political understanding among the people. Its
members composed of the higher officers of the Company, representatives of the
European planters and Chinese merchant groups.(6) Not only were all the members
nominated by the Governor, but it is also significant to note that the indigenous
peoples of the territory were not represented on this Council. Despite the Charter
provision vis-a-vis the welfare of the indigenous communities, their non-representation
on the Advisory Council clearly demonstrates the fact that the Company was far
more interested in the economic rather than the political advancement of the
territory.
In 1912 a Legislative Council was
established to replace the Advisory Council. All nominated, the members of the
new Council comprised official members, representatives of the European
economic interests, and a representatives of the Chinese community. While the
Chinese representation was later increased to two members, the council again
included no representative of the indigenous people of the territory. (7) In
any event, despite the change in its name, the new Legislative Council largely advisory
in practice. It functioned as a source of information on the economic temperament
and development of the territory for the Governor and the Court of Directors
rather than training ground for local leaders towards the eventual
self-government of Sabah. The Legislative Council existed uneventfully and
apolitically until the Japanese invasion in 1942.
An interesting experiment in
local government was attempted in 1936. A local authority was formed by
combining villagers in the Bingkor area of the Interior Residency for
administrative purposes. The committee form to run day to day affairs of the authority
led by O.K.K. Sedomon Bun Gunsanad. Initially the authority functioned
promisingly; but lack of financial support and experience beset its native
leaders who were expected to rely entirely upon the meagre revenue of the poor
Bingkor area for the Implementation of their projects and local authority services.
(8) Ultimately the experiment failed, thereby demonstrating the impossibility of
initiating even grass-root political education successfully without the
long-term assistance of governing Company disposed towards the granting of
eventual self-government for Sabah.
Whereas the Brooke Rajahs of
Sarawak at least repeatedly stated that it was their intention to lead the
people of Sarawak to self-rule and attempted to substantiate their pledge by
granting the 1941 Constitution to their subjects on a silver platter. (8A) The Charted Company never in their sixty-year
rule indicate such a wish for the people of Sabah. Undisturbed by other
imperial powers, thanks to the British Protectorate of 1888, the company portrayed
itself by 1941 as a management concern to all intents and purpose was happy to
continue to husband Sabah as its economic domain well into an indeterminate
future.
Unlike Malaya which experienced
the unfolding of the immediate post-war years with keenly-received and widely
debated constitutional and political developments, Sabah emerged the Second
World War rather uneventfully and remained an apolitical dependency for long
years after 1946. In a significant manner, the lack of political response in
post-war Sabah was the logical consequence of pre-war policies in the
territory. The commercial considerations of the British North Borneo Charted
Company had left the area effectively insulated from the spread of nationalist
ideas in Southeast Asia. It was principally due to this apolitical historical
background that the Sabah was easily acquired and turn into a Crown Colony by
Britain in July 1946.
Britain’s motives for acquiring
Sabah after the Second World War were not very dissimilar from those which
prompted her to regain her pre-war hegemony over Malaya and Singapore in 1946.
As discussed earlier, Britain had indirectly but effectively established her imperial
influence during the Charted Company administration which lasted until the
Japanese Invasion in 1942. As in Malaya, Britain worked for the establishment
of post-war position of dominance in Sabah. For economic and strategic reasons,
Britain was prepared to add new acquisition to her remaining dependencies. (9) In the course of rearranging British
priorities in Southeast Asia, Sabah became one of His Majesty’s new Crown
Colonies in 1946.
Sabah received its status of
Crown Colony with hardly any dissenting voice. Relative isolation from the
outside world and lack of educational facilities during the pre-war period
accounted for the inability of most people in Sabah to comprehend the change in
their status from the inhabitants of a mere British Protectorate to that a
directly-governed Crown Colony in 1946: ‘The British North Borneo Company’s
servant may rarely have lacked devotion to the lands and its peoples, but they
seldom had sufficient resources at their disposal to educate the people of the
country to the full. (10) In addition to illiteracy among the majority of the
people. In addition illiteracy among the majority of the people, the aversion
of the Charted Company to any political development in Sabah which might upset
the unbroken tranquillity (11) of its business-minded administration ensured
that the most part Sabah was politically untutored in 1946. It is in this light the following comments must be understood : ’Politics
had never appealed in North Borneo....
Politically North Borneo progresses through its allotted [first] forty-one
years of the Twentieth century very quietly.(12)
Sabah was freed from the Japanese
by a brigade of the Australian Ninth Division which was assisted by the United
States Seventh Fleet. (13) The President of the Court of Directors in London,
Sir Neil Malcolm, felt that the resources of the Charted Company would be
inadequate for the needs of rehabilitation and reconstruction of post-war Sabah
which was severely devastated by Japanese denial and Allied occupation
bombings. (14) The Company made informal approaches to His Majesty’s Government
of the possibility of Sabah being transferred to the British Crown. For reasons
already stated above, Whitehall was in fact no less interested in acquiring Sabah
as part of the territories encompassed in the framework of British policy for
post-war Southeast Asia. Formal proposition and negotiations led to concrete
results, and in June 1946 the Secretary of State for the Colonies announced ‘that
an agreement had been reached between the Government and the Charted Company
for the transfer of the latter’s territory to the Crown. Compensation was to be
determined by arbitration on the basis of the net maintainable revenue and the
number of years purchase which, in the opinion of the arbitrator, should be
applied thereto.(15)
From the point on, without much
ado, Sabah slipped into the control of His Majesty’s Government. On the 10 July 1946 British passed the North Borneo
Cession Order in Council which provided that an agreement had been made between
the Secretary of State for the Colonies, on behalf of His Majesty, and the
British North Borneo Company, where by the Company had transferred and ceded
all its rights, powers, and interest in the territory with effect 15 July, 1946, and that it was therefore
ordered that the State of North Borneo be annexed to and form part of His
Majesty Dominions, and should be called, together with the Settlement of Labuan, the Colony of North Borneo. (16) On
15 July 1946 in the presence of, among others, Malcolm MacDonald who was
Governor-General of the Malayan Union and Singapore, the new Colony of North
Borneo was proclaimed in Jesselton.(17)
It is to be noted that the
Charted Company, as a well established commercial concern for over half a
century, did not fold up for nothing. The shareholders did received something,
notwithstanding the fact that ‘the sale of North Borneo to the Crown was
achieved (18) at a rate lower the price
of issued share capital, namely payment of about ten shillings per share. The
overall financial settlement of the Sabah transfer to the British Government
was summed up in the following:
A very satisfactory financial settlement has been negotiated with his
Majesty’s Government. Put briefly, His Majesty’s Government has agreed firstly
to pay to the Charted Company for the sovereign rights and assets of North Borneo
the sum of £1,400,00; secondly, to provide
grants-in-aid totalling £1,750,000
for the period 1948-1951; thirdly, to provide £1,215,000
towards the Colony’s Development Programme estimated to cost £3,300,000; fourthly, to provide over £500,000 to redeem Charted Company
Currency; fifthly, to waive the cost of the British Military Administration;
and sixthly, to provide a free grant of $5,000,000 and interest-free loan of
approximately $6,400,000 to meet damage claims.(19)
The transfer of Sabah to the
jurisdiction of the Colonial Office was followed by years of gradual social
welfare and economic development. As Sabah passed on to the 1950s, the tenor of
life was characterized by the preoccupation with ‘the peace, order and good
government of the Colony’. By 1956 the administration took pride in the fact
that ‘the colony maintained its enviable record of freedom from political
strife and violence’. (20) Yet, the irony of history had also ensured that such
‘freedom’ meant that Sabah was far away from Colonial rule. The transfer to the
Colonial Office had help to stem post-war social, economic and administrative
dislocation in Sabah; but beyond that, the territory had little political
character, inasmuch as the meticulous application of ‘peace, order and good
government of the Colony’ rendered the growth of political awareness
excruciatingly slow among the people of Sabah.
British colonial rule lasted from
July 1946 to September 1963 in Sabah. This period of seventeen years witnessed
an era of benevolent administration in the territory. To a considerable extent
because of the lack of political development in the territory until the Second
World War, progress along nationalist lines after 1946 was a slow process. The
colonial Government of Sabah, above all else, wish to rehabilitate and
reconstruct the economy of the territory which was ravaged by the War. It was
clearly recognised that the social and stable and expanding economy; and, accordingly,
such services were given emphasis at the same time as the principal products of
Sabah, such as rubber, copra, timber, sago and tobacco, were speedily
rehabilitated. (21) In many ways, Sabah under the colonial rule for seventeen
years underwent the execution of British policies not unlike those which were
carried out in the Peninsula under the British in pre-war Malaya.
As in pre-war Malaya, the people
of Sabah tended to live in plural societies for long after 1946. It was not the
intention of Whitehall to foster political awareness or nationalistic ideas
among the people of Sabah throughout the 1950s, notwithstanding the fact that
Britain was aware that she would have to relinquish her sovereignty over the
territory in the foreseeable future. The nationalist movements and successful demands
for political independence in Southeast Asia made it plain that, at best,
Britain could only hope to delay the rise of nationalist sentiment among the
people of Sabah. At all events, Britain reasoned, as she did with respect to
Malaya and Singapore, that if the parting of the ways must come with the Borneo
territory it was in the best interest of the British Government and people that
such a break should eventuate in an amicable manner. Thus the subsequent
formation of Malaysia from 1961 to 1963 turned out to be a diplomatic, amicable
and evolutionary effort in nation building.
Source : Commemorative History of
Sabah 1881-1981
- K.G. Tregonning, ‘Steps in the Aquisition of North Borneo,’Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand, vol 5, no 19, 1952
- For the test of the Royal Charter, see the Company’s Handbook of British North Borneo, 1886, William Clowers & Sons, Ltd., London, 1886, pp.113-28
- Ibid., p.123
- The population of Sabah comprised the indigenous communities (Kadazans, Bajau and Bisayas, Rungus, Murut and pockets of kindred races), the Chinese and a small number of Europeans and others. In 1960, the percentage were: indigenous, 68; Chinese 23; Europeans and others, 9. See L.W. Jones, The Population of Borneo, University of London, 1966, Appendix A.
- K.G. Tregonning in his Under Charted Company Rule, University of Malaya Press, Singapore, 1958 (2nd ed., 1965, as A History of Modern Sabah, 1881-1963) gives the impression that the Chartered Company was a very humane institution which husbanded Sabah faithfully and brought it to stability and progress. There is lots of truth in such an assertion, and admittedly the company brought relative peace to a once-wild country. Yet, such an impression is one-sided unless one also points out that the Company had an overriding economic wish to do well for the sakes of its shareholders. Indeed, the company made little effort to hide this paramount objective. One has only to scan the pages of the reports of the Company to find major spaces perennially to trade and products, timber and other forest products, geology and minerals, commercial agriculture, careful reproduction of documents of trade returns, ;opening for capitalist and settlers’ the prospect for European life in the territory. See Handbook of British North Borneo for 1886,1890 and 1934
- The Advisory Council was so much a creature of the Company Government, and so little a body representing the people of the territory, that Rutter saw no distinction between it and the Company administration. See O.Rutter, British North Borneo, Constable and Company, London, 1922, ch VI.
- The locus of power and extent of political participation by the people were summed up by the company Handbook in 1934: ‘The Government is assisted by a Legaslative Council consisting of nine official and five unofficial members, the unofficial members being nominated by the different communities and appointed by the Governor subject to the approval of the Court of Directors. Ordinances are enacted by the Governor, with the advice of the council, but the court of directors reserve the right to disallow any such ordinances in the same way as the Crown retains a power of veto in the case of Crown Colonies.’(p.44) The position remained so until the Japanese occupation.
- The local authority received some financial assistance from the Education and Medical Department, but this made no difference to the increasing budgetary need of the authority. Tregonning, A History of Modern Sabah, pp 127-8.
- 8A. The communities of Sarawak made no demand for constitution at the time thereby manifesting that they were not politically prepared or nationalistically aware. Neither was there any significant reaction to that constitution.
- See C.N. Parkinson, Britain in the Far East: The Singapore Naval Base, Eastern Universities Press, Singapore, 1955; S.Rose, Britain and Southeast Asia, Chatto & Windus, London, 1962
- M.H. Baker, Sabah : The First Ten Years as a Colony, 1946-1956, Malaysia Publishing House, new ed., Singapore, 1965, p.iv, Sabah was “North Borneo” until the inauguration of Malaysia on 16th September 1963.
- British North Borneo (Chartered) Company, Handbook of the State of North Borneo, London, 1934, p. 31.
