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ABSTRACT
The ‘migrated archives’, previously concealed files related to former colonies of the British Empire, were released over the period 2012–13. The first flurry of academic and journalistic interest, focused on possible revelations of the misuse of colonial power, soon subsided. Nevertheless, the archives have been valuable in enlarging knowledge of colonial policy-making. They have also aided exploration of the interstices between the official records of colonial administration and the often unrecorded life of peoples and communities. In this sense the ‘migrated archives’ are a rich resource in prompting a new look at established historical narratives of the British Borneo territories of Brunei, North Borneo and Sarawak. These territories have received scant attention in the historiography of British colonialism. This has been to the detriment of wider scholarship in studying issues such as the expansion of the wartime colonial state; the ‘second colonial occupation’ and the evolution of post-war British colonial governance; the development of anti-colonialism; the formation of Malaysia; counter-terrorism conflicts; and the nature of the colonial legacy. The colonial period may seem a fleeting phase in the age-old cultural and economic formation of the Borneo states, yet it continues to have contemporary relevance in a strategically sensitive part of the world. This article seeks to show that the Borneo territories merit greater attention from historians of British colonialism and that the ‘migrated archives’, used in conjunction with other sources, can make a significant contribution towards the history of colonialism in a previously neglected area.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 See, for example, King, The Peoples of Borneo; Knapen, Forests of Fortune?; Reid, Southeast Asia; Sandin, Sea Dayaks of Borneo; Saunders, A History of Brunei.
2 See Conrad’s stories of the Malay archipelago, especially Lord Jim and Almayer’s Folly; Maugham, The Casuarina Tree; Runciman, The White Rajahs.
3 ‘Last of the Rajahs’, The Economist, 15 Feb. 2014; ‘Rumbles in the Jungle’, The Economist, 7 May 2016.
4 Brown and Louis, Oxford History of the British Empire.
5 ‘The Stabbed Governor of Sarawak’, BBC Radio 4, 12 March 2012.
6 Hack, ‘Theories and Approaches’.
7 A similar situation for Hong Kong is described in Lowe, ‘Hong Kong’s Missing History’.
8 Harper, The End of Empire.
9 It is hardly coincidental that, at a time of shifting relationships between Kuala Lumpur and the East Malaysia states, there is now political impetus for a more balanced representation of East Malaysian history. See ‘History Textbooks Must Reflect Contributions from All Races’, The Borneo Post, 17 Sept. 2015.
10 See Mullen, The Story of Sarawak; Whelan, The Story of Sabah.
11 Walton, Empire of Secrets.
12 In long-established authoritarian states with relatively sophisticated institutional infrastructures academics themselves may come to have a proprietary interest in resisting change to the intellectual ‘status quo’. ‘Why Malaysian University Research Has a Long Way to Go’ by Murray Hunter, Asian Correspondent, 15 Sept. 2015, and the marshalling of historians in current controversy over the origins of Singapore’s ‘security state’ are instructive. See also Carey, ‘Uses and Abuses of History’.
13 Proceedings of the Sabah Society Golden Jubilee, 19 March 2011.
14 For relevant archival scholarship, see particularly Banton, ‘Destroy? “Migrate”? Conceal?’; Karabinos, ‘Role of National Archives’.
15 ‘Britain Planned Poison Gas Tests in Botswana, Records Reveal’, The Guardian, 18 April 2012; ‘The Selling of Malaysia’, New Straits Times, 10–13 Sept. 2014.
16 French, Fighting EOKA; Mawby, Transformation and Decline; Rawlings, ‘Lost Files, Forgotten Papers’.
17 Hunter, Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania; Clarke, Race, Class and the Politics of Decolonization. A useful review of recent academic thought on the value of the ‘migrated archives’ can be found in the proceedings of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies’ conference on ‘The Hidden Histories of Decolonization’ held at London University, 20 Feb. 2015.
18 Hampshire, ‘“Apply the Flame More Searingly”’.
19 ‘Background report on the “migrated archives” for the Borneo territories’, FCO141/19896, ‘migrated archives’ series FCO141, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA).
20 A full description is given in Phillips, ‘The “Migrated Archives”’. The ‘migrated archives’ for the British Borneo territories of Brunei, North Borneo and Sarawak amount to almost 900 files principally relating to the period of direct colonial rule 1946–63.
21 ‘List of Borneo files sent from Kuching to Kuala Lumpur before Malaysia Day’, FCO141/13031, TNA. ‘Friends’ in this context normally refers to the Secret Intelligence Service and allied secret services: it is known that in 1961–62 the CIA with SIS connivance attempted to open up covert contacts with the clandestine communist movement in Sarawak. For the wider context, see Walton, Empire of Secrets, 225; Greene, The Quiet American.
22 Immediate post-war writing in this vein is exemplified by Keith, Three Came Home, and Hall, Kinabalu Guerrillas. The still prolific and evidently popular accounts of wartime suffering now extend to Japanese victims, as in De Matos and Caprio, eds, Japan as the Occupier. The traditional version of the Japanese occupation as an alien interregnum is conveyed in all post-war official literature and textbooks, for example, Ooi, The Japanese Occupation of Borneo 1941-45; and Ooi, Post-War Borneo 1945-50.
23 H. T. Bourdillon to J. J. Paskin, 24 July 1944, CO825/43/22, TNA.
24 Among other sources this account draws particularly on the ‘migrated archives’, ‘Kuching Jikeidan Vundan No. 24, FCO141/12423; Japanese occupation and cession, FCO141/12425; Conditions in the Borneo territories, CO531/31/30; Japanese policy in ‘Southern Area’ WO203/6310; Japanese administration in occupied North Borneo, WO203/6317, all TNA; Sarawak Gazette issues 21–28, 1937–41 and 1946–48; Ahmad, Malay Muslims; Akashi and Yoshimura, New Perspectives; Hussainmiya, ‘Resuscitating Nationalism’; Kratoska, Southeast Asian Minorities; Lockard, From Kampung to City; Lim Pui Huen and Wong, War and Memory; Reece, Masa Jepun. Throughout the article references to published material are supplemented by personal recollections recorded in local blogs such as ‘Sarawakiana’ and the ‘North Borneo Historical Society’ or communicated to the author.
25 Particular reference has been made to Darwin, The Empire Project; Frey, Preussen and Tan, Transformation of Southeast Asia; Lee, Britain and the Sino-Japanese War; Reece, The Name of Brooke; Sato, ‘Indonesia 1939–1942’ in addition to ‘migrated archives’, Reports of escapees, FCO141/12402; Native affairs 1938, FCO141/12414, TNA. There are also rich anthropological and sociological sources as Chew, Chinese Pioneers; Cramb, Land and Longhouse; Cramb and Reece, Development in Sarawak; Dove, ‘Rice-eating Rubber’; Dove, The Banana Tree; Evans, Religion of the Tempasuk Dusuns; Ishikawa, Between Frontiers, Nation and Identity.
26 The Tanjong Bijat ‘colonisation’ scheme in Sarawak exemplifies this continuity. Initiated by the Rajah’s administration in 1941 under pressure from the Singapore colonial authorities to enhance strategic self-sufficiency in food supplies, it was expanded under Japanese military occupation and revived by Sarawak’s new colonial government until finally abandoned with the failure of other over-ambitious colonial development projects such as the Tanganyikan ‘groundnuts scheme’. See particularly ‘migrated archives’, FCO141/12428, 12434A, TNA.
27 In particular ‘migrated archives’ FCO141/12342, 12409, 12422; WO203/5893, TNA; Military administration in Borneo, MP742 274/1/246, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA); Heidhuis, Golddiggers, Farmers and Traders.
28 In particular CAB98/41, 119/187, 131/2; CO825/35/6, 825/42/3, 967/84; DO46/47; FO371/6030; WO203/3973, TNA; Bell, The Sterling Area; Davenport and Jones, British Business in Asia; Remme, Britain and Regional Cooperation; Sutton, Political Economy of Imperial Relations; Singh, ‘British Proposals for a Dominion’.
29 See ‘migrated archives’, FCO141/12318, 12348, 12420, 12438A, 12950; CO852/559/1, 852/664/10, 943/1/2; WO32/11166, 203/5983, TNA; Sarawak Gazette issues 27–28, 1946/47–48; Report of UNESCO Mission to North Borneo 1948.
30 ‘The white man is running away’.
31 In particular ‘migrated archives’, FCO141/12316, 12335, 12348, 12396–12399, 12516; CO825/42, 1022/201, TNA; Sarawak Gazette issues 28–32, 1948–52; Darwin, Unfinished Empire; Digby, Lawyer in the Wilderness; Howes, In a Fair Ground; MacDonald, Borneo People; Njoh, Planning Power; Parsons, Race, Resistance and the Boy Scout Movement; Strobel, European Women.
32 Beccari, Wanderings in the Great Forests.
33 In particular, FCO141/12593–12598, 12609–12612; CO537/2658, CO537/4306, TNA; DOK/28, DOKQ/4/1, Pustaka Negeri Sarawak Archives (hereafter PNSA); Sarawak Gazette issues 30–40, 1950–60; North Borneo and Sarawak Annual Reports 1947–63; Hansard House of Lords debate on Sarawak, 15 Nov. 1956; White Paper on Subversion in Sarawak; Bandeira Jerónimo and Costa Pinto, The Ends of European Colonial Empires; Blackburn and Ting, Women in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements; Chua, Nuhai yangfan; Elson, End of the Peasantry; Goulart, River of the White Lily; Hansen, Where Hornbills Fly; Ross, Timber Booms; Sinclair, At the End of the Line; Zhang, Sabah’s Hakka Story.
34 Sarawak Secretary for Native Affairs to Chief Secretary, 11 May 1951, FCO 141/12330, TNA.
35 In the ‘migrated archives’, FCO141/13031, a listed file now ‘missing’ suggests that the Sarawak administration considered the forced romanisation of Chinese character signboards in the name of ‘assimilation’. If implemented, this would have come close to the vicious discrimination of Japanese and Indonesian military governments.
36 In particular ‘migrated archives’, FCO141/12294–12296, 12300–12302, 12308–12311, 12555, 12723; CAB134/1556; CO1030/1540; DEFE5/172; WO29/2407 TNA; A1838 3032/2/1&9 NAA; F/46E/1, G/29F/1, PNSA; Sarawak Gazette issues 40–43, 1960–63; Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation; Han Suyin, … And the Rain my Drink; Hussainmiya and Asbol, ‘No Federation, Please’; Hyam, Understanding the British Empire; Jong, The Red Rings; Louis, Ends of British Imperialism; Masters, Thunder at Sunset; Peluso and Vandergeest, ‘Political Ecologies’; Raffaele, Harris Salleh of Sabah.
37 Where the ‘migrated archives’, for example, FCO141/13060, demonstrate an unexciting absence of external conspiracy, as in the Brunei revolt, they have been ignored by historians committed to more dramatic or ideologically driven narratives.
38 Most accounts of the Brunei revolt, konfrontasi and Sarawak’s communist insurgency have been either superficially populist or a pedestrian recycling of official propaganda. John Masters’ Thunder at Sunset and Han Suyin’s … And the Rain my Drink (albeit set in Malaya) contain far more historical insight.
39 See Phillips, Borneo History.
