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The War

BBooks — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 06:52:22 +0000

Explores aspects of the World War II experience of Sabah (then British North Borneo), from the eve of the Japanese invasion to the arrival of Allied forces. These 5 years were a watershed for the people of Sabah who, after progressing steadily towards modernity for 60 years, suffered one of the greatest calamities one can imagine. The magnitude of destruction went beyond material losses; many also lost their lives, and the Chinese business elite was, basically, wiped out. It is only right that the effect of the war on Sabah be written for the sake of later generations.

Danny Wong is an eminent local historian and Professor at the University of Malaya. This book is a compilation of articles previously published elsewhere, in 24 chapters. Each one has been diligently researched and is lucidly written. The detail in the accounts is a key feature. Some of the chapters are about individual guerilla fighters, others about particular events or periods during the war. A moving and very readable book.

Governors of British North Borneo and Heads of State of Sabah

BBooks — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:47:01 +0000

“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time, it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity”, this famous quote of Marcus Cicero was so aptly put history into perspective.

This is a very important reference book to researchers, historians, students, libraries and it is a great interests for the families of the Governors involved.

Flora & Plant Formations of Mount Kinabalu & the Highlands of British North Borneo; A Contribution to the

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Kinabalu; The Haunted Mountain of Borneo

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Enriquez’s short account, ‘Kinabalu-The Haunted Mountain Of Borneo’ requires only a brief introduction in that it is a succinctly composed record of an expedition to Borneo in 1925, made principally to collect zoological specimens. This was when Borneo was a far-away land of orang-utan and headhunters, savagery and piracy and when (under the British North Borneo Company) “the question of communications remains… in the air.” It is still a far-away land of orang-utan for many Europeans, but the headhunting and the savagery has gone, remaining only in the annals of the past. The reader can finish the book in one or two days at the most, but the admirer of Kinabaiu and keen collector of Borneo literature will notice that some of the most beautifully written passages on Kinabalu that portray its starkness and many wonderful moods exist in Enriquez’s book. Even in those days, at a time when it was thought there had been only 25 documented visits and sacrificial rites were an essential condition to climb the mountain, he notes that “Kinabalu is a sort of Mecca for naturalists.” Enriquez was a military man and a sort of naturalist, knowledgeable about butterflies and birds and, although not a resident of North Borneo, makes some rather sharp observations on natural history aspects of the mountain. He comes across as a curious visitor enchanted with Kinabalu, and in such a state prone to forgetting himself, although understandably so. He declares his book seeks to “avoid… the deplorable terminology beloved of scientists” but (even as he refers to spiders as those “unpleasant insects”) engages in mentioning suites of latin names of butterflies and birds, which otherwise are charmingly described. Some of his observations on the races and customs of North Borneo may appear coloured and unacceptable, as can understandably be made by a member of any administrating party over their colonial charges (and, indeed, some of the most unusual stories could be uncritical repetition of what has been related to the apprehensive traveller), but Enriquez displays his fondness for the gentle aspects of local communities in the Far East, not least by dedicating his book to his Kachin companion from Burma, Sau Nan, an associate from the British Indian army, and by declaring, in connection with his North Borneo experience, that “superstitions… denote a sense of humiliation in the presence of great forces where perhaps more arrogant people betray a profounder ignorance by ridiculing them.” This is a wonderful mixture of attempts at accurate natural history observations and calm expressions of what has been today called culture shock. [BBooks comment: this blurb, taken from cover of the book, is almost as interesting and perceptive as the book itself!]

Land Below the Wind (reprint)

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Agnes Keith Trilogy: Land Below the Wind; Three Came Home & White Man Returns.Three books written by an American journalist married to an English government officer in British North Borneo. The first book is an idyll covering the late 1930′s. The second covers internment and brutality by the Japanese during the Second World War. The third covers the return to a war-devastated colony. Three totally different situations, all illuminated by Agnes K’s engaging, perceptive, objective style of highly detailed observation of the people around her. The Agnes Keith Trilogy: -Land Below the Wind; Three Came Home & White Man Returns. All reprinted by Natural History Publications (Borneo) between 1998 & 2001. All 150 x 200mm (6 x 8″), softcover. White Man Returns has a valuable six page introduction and perspective to all three volumes by Patricia Regis (formerly Director of the Sabah State Museum). LBTW, pp371, first published November 1939, Borneo Books book #320; TCH, pp260, first published 1946, book #691; White Man Returns, pp310, first published 1951. [see BBooks review]

Ornithological Monographs no 52; Ornithology of Sabah History, Gazetteer, Annotated Checklist & Bibliography

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Sabah is the Malaysian State representing former British North Borneo. It is well known for its rich forests, impressive mountains (including Mt. Kinabalu), and diverse avifauna. Ornithologists have explored and published on the birds of Sabah since the 1850s. This monograph reviews the work of these ornithologists by providing an historical overview of their explorations and studies; a gazetteer describing the sites at which they worked; an annotated checklist summarizing what they learned about birds, particularly in regard to distribution, habitat preferences, and breeding; and a bibliography of ornithological and related publications. The purpose of this report is to set the stage for future research on the birds of Sabah. This goal is accomplished in two ways. First, by reviewing what has been done, the history and gazetteer serve as a guide for expedition planners, wildlife managers, conservationists, and other scientists as they seek information on study sites. Certain parts of Sabah have been well studied (e.g., the East and West coasts), but other areas are poorly explored (e.g., the north-central mountains and the south-central uplands). Second, by summarizing what is known about the birds of Sabah, the annotated checklist and bibliography provide a guide to research needs. Although a great deal is known about the distribution of birds in Sabah, remarkably little work has been done on bird ecology and evolution. Only a handful of modern, quantitative studies have been conducted on the population genetics, phylogeny, biogeography, migration, community ecology, or autecology of Sabah’s birds. This dearth of ornithological information is a burden for conservationists, as they struggle to preserve the last bits of forest in Sabah, but it presents a great opportunity for bird researchers.

Pagans of North Borneo; The ( Reprint)

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

There is an old saying, ” Good wine needs no bush ” ; if this is true then assuredly Mr. Owen Rutter’s book needs no introduction. Nor if it did could I claim any special competence, for it is now more than a quarter of a century since I spent six months in the lovely island of which he writes, and even then I saw no Dusun or Murut, the tribes with which the author is almost wholly concerned. Both peoples constitute solid inland groups stretching across the breadth of British North Borneo, both held off from the sea by a continuous coastal fringe of Islamized immigrants who have extended for considerable distances up such large rivers as the Labuk and Kinabatangan. The boundary between Dusun and Murut is irregular, the Dustin of the central area of British North Borneo coming rather further south than the mass of their tribesmen nearer the coasts ; ignoring such slight irregularities and the coastal fringe of Mohammedan peoples, the line between Dustin and Murut may be taken to run roughly from Cowie Harbour on the south-east coast to Beaufort in the north-west. The Dustin, then, are limited to British North Borneo, but this does not hold for the Murut, who extend southward both into Sarawak and Dutch territory. Mr. Rutter spent five years in North Borneo as a District Officer in the Civil Service, during which time he served in each of the five Residencies of the State and so was in close touch with natives of varying types and groups ; and he has also spent eighteen months in the country as a private investigator, when he again travelled extensively. Although he tells us a great deal about the Murut and Dusun he does not say much about their physical characters, and their affinities to the natives of other lands, and it is here, as it seems, that the intervention of an ethnologist finds its justification. It has long been recognized that throughout the Malay Archipelago there exists a relatively early long-headed (dolichocephalic) non-Malay element, to which is applied the term Indonesian, in opposition to the round-headed (brachycephalic) race of Indonesia distinguished as proto-Malay (of which the true Malays are a particular group). There seems little doubt that the natives of Borneo are everywhere a mixture of these two peoples, just as their culture everywhere betrays a dual origin, and the immediate matter is to determine the position of Dusun and Murut. The material on which comparisons must be based will be found in the memoir by Dr. A. C. Haddon, A Sketch of the Ethnography of Sarawak (Archivio per I’ Antropologia e I’ Etnologia, Vol. XXXI, 1901) and his Appendix on the physical characters of the peoples of Borneo in Hose and McDougall’s important work, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo. First with regard to the relationship of Dusun and Murut. Ivor Evans (Among Primitive Peoples in Borneo) records the cephalic index of 19 Dusun, with an average-neglecting decimals of 76 and a maximum of 80. These figures roughly correspond to 74 and 78 on the skull, and with this correction such figures become comparable with the twenty-seven Murut crania measured by Haddon. Now Haddon’s figures give an average Of 73-5 and a maximum Of 79, which, considering the small number of subjects in each series, can scarcely mean other than the substantial identity of the two peoples. There is, of course, the possibility of the two series not being fair samples, but there seems no reason to suspect this, and provisionally, at any rate, the two tribes may be accepted as constituting an ethnic unit, in spite of their cultural dissimilarities, which no doubt are largely related to differences in environment. And since the Murut are the most long-headed of the tribesmen measured by Haddon we may assume that the Murut-Dusun group carry more Indonesian blood than any other tribe in British North Borneo and Sarawak, and in fact probably represent this element in -as pure a form as it occurs in Borneo. In any case both tribes differ markedly from such important peoples as Kenyah, Kayan and Iban, with their indices of from ,80 upwards, who as it would seem more nearly represent the roto-Malays. This was, perhaps, to be anticipated; it is, however, unexpected to find that the Murut-Dusun have approximately the same cephalic index as the Punan, culturally the most primitive of the Borneo jungle tribes, who live in small groups in jungle, do not cultivate, and whose arts and crafts are almost limited to the preparation of rough shelters, mats, and their implements of the chase, to wit blow-guns, and poisoned darts. As to origins, there is so much evidence for the colonization of North Borneo from the Philippines (e.g. the Tagal and Bisaya of Borneo are probably offshoots of the Tagal and Visaya of the Philippines), that there is no objection to believing that the Murut type of culture has been brought into Borneo from the Philippines where, e.g. a system of agriculture similar to that of the Murut is widely practised. Behind this we perceive more vaguely a culture of mixed origin, many elements of which are to be found in Assam, which has spread throughout Indonesia as the result of the clash and fusion of wave upon wave of Indonesian and proto-Malay peoples, giving Borneo a series of tribes presenting physically and culturally so much general resemblance that only prolonged intensive and comparative studies of each area can be expected to add materially to the imperfect knowledge we at present possess. Of the matters treated by Mr. Rutter no doubt the most important is the codification-for it is no less-of pagan law in Chapter IX, and this should be of the greatest practical assistance to administrators. Of peculiar interest is the untranslatable sagit, something between a fine and a customary due (with psychological analogies to a consolation prize and a ‘luck-penny’) which has now come into force in place of the taking of heads, e.g. on marriage. Such a modification as this must be of the greatest interest to Government officials nor, it is encouraging to think, is it without parallel elsewhere. Another interesting matter is the relative frequency of suicide, its prevalence, especially among young girls, as the result of disappointment in love, and the absence in this mixed Indonesian-proto-Malay population of such violent methods of self-destruction (for that is what it came to in the old days) as the Malayan amok. In Chapter VIII Mr. Rutter pays a well-merited tribute to the part played by the Chinese in the economic development and so in the ‘ pacification of the country, but his words must not be taken to imply that until the advent of the Chartered Company the Chinese had little to do with the country. This is scarcely the case. The importance of old jars of Chinese origin thoughout. the interior of Borneo bespeaks at the least a considerable coastwise trade and coastal markets; moreover Legaspi, the Spanish conqueror of the Philippines and founder of Manila, writes of his capture of a junk whose crew were ‘Moors’ of Borneo and which had a cargo of silk, cotton, porcelain, and the like. This was late in the sixteenth century, but progress during the last twenty years in our knowledge of the earlier wares of China, especially of Sung earthenwares and porcelains, enables us to date many of the specimens from the Philippines to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and there does not seem any reason why some of the Borneo wares should not be of equal date. Such jars as Ningka (for the most valuable of these jars have names) figured by Hose and McDougall (Plate XLVI) is certainly in Sung (960-1280) style, and there is at least a presumption that it is of Sung or Yuan (128o-I368) age. Moreover, we have an actual account of Chinese trade with P’o-ni (Borneo) and Pa-lau-yu (Palawan) in the Chui-fan-chi, a work written in the thirteenth century by Chau-ju-Kua, Inspector of Foreign Trade in Fukien, wherein it is recorded that Borneo produces four kinds of camphor, laka wood, yellow wax, and tortoise-shell, which were exchanged inter alia for lacquered bowls and plates and green porcelain (celadon). Palawan is attached to and confused with the Philippines (San-su), from which it is actually no further than it is from Borneo, for here live the Hai-Tan, who are no other than the pygmy Aeta of the Philippines: ” They are small in stature and their eyes are round and yellow (brown), they have curly hair and their teeth show (between their lips). They nest in treetops. Sometimes parties of three or five lurk in the jungle, from whence they shoot arrows on passers-by without being seen, and many have fallen victims to them. If thrown a porcelain bowl, they will stoop and pick it up and go away leaping and shouting for joy.” It is obvious, then, that Chinese pottery and porcelain have been valued on the Indonesian islands for many hundred years, and an interesting line of research would be to compare this eastern trade, thoughout its extent in the hands of Chinese and their congeners, with the western trade, largely Arab, which carried Sung and Ming wares to Mesopotamia and East Africa. One difference is at once apparent: notwithstanding the reference to the importation of celadon into Borneo, and in spite of the durability of the heavy celadons of the first half of the Ming dynasty, this class does not constitute the great majority of Borneo and Philippine ceramics of Chinese origin, the contrary holding true for India and the West. This almost suggests that the Indonesian taste in Chinese ware was formed at an earlier date, i.e. in Sung times before fabrics so eminently suited for export were in existence. Nor is the evidence of this ancient trade with Borneo of mere antiquarian interest, for it gives a hint of the extent of Chinese cultural influence and affords, e.g. an explanation of the similarity of the Borneo tattoo pattern, commonly called asu (at least in Sarawak) to various degraded dragon designs found on Sung and Ming bronzes and porcelains. These, then, are a few of the points of special interest raised by Mr. Rutter’s book, which is full of valuable material.

Sandakan: A Conspiracy of Silence (4th Edition 2007)

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

It is August 1945 and World War 2 is over. Japan has surrendered. As the Western world rejoices, deep in the jungle of British North Borneo the small number of remaining Austrlian and British prisoners of war are massacred. Of the 2434 prisoners incarcerated by the Japanese in the Sandakan POW camp, only six, all escapees, have survived. The POWs, sent from Singapore in 1942-43 to work on airfield construction, endured frequent beatings and were subjected to other, more diabolical punisment. Sustained only by an inadequate and ever-diminishing rice-ration and with little medical attention, many died of malnutrition, maltreatment and disease. In 1945, in response to an order from the Japanese High Command that no prisoners were to survive the war, those still able to walk were sent on a series of death marches into the interior. Anyone unable to keep up was ruthlessly murdered. Those left behind were systematically starved to death, or massacred. In late 1944 the Allies, aware that POWs were being ‘eliminated’, had evolved a plan for their rescue – a rescue which,after months of bungling, was finally cancelled in April 1945, in the erroneous belief that the camp had been evecuated. Gross incompetence and faulty intelligence were to blame for the failed rescue attempt. When it was realised that mistakes and stupidity were responsible for the deaths of hundred of men, those at the highest level shifted the blame to others, before embarking upon a policy of wilful and deliberate suppression. Desperate to obtain information, grieving relatives wrote to newspapers, begging for information and asking the reason for the secrecy. ‘The story of the greatest tragedy in Australian military history remains to be written’, wrote one, in 1946.’ Who will undertake the task?’ Lynette Ramsay Silver, through painstaking research and interviews with survivors, as well as a study of Japanese records, has pieced together a detailed and highly readable account of the lives and ultimate fate of Sandakan’s POWs. She tells a totally gripping and horrifying tale, not only of the prisoners, but the reasons why they, and their dtory, become World War 2′s most deadly secret.

Three Came Home (reprint: 1st publ 1946)

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

White Man Returns

System — Wed, 31 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000

Agnes Keith Trilogy: Land Below the Wind; Three Came Home & White Man Returns.Three books written by an American journalist married to an English government officer in British North Borneo. The first book is an idyll covering the late 1930′s. The second covers internment and brutality by the Japanese during the Second World War. The third covers the return to a war-devastated colony. Three totally different situations, all illuminated by Agnes K’s engaging, perceptive, objective style of highly detailed observation of the people around her. The Agnes Keith Trilogy: -Land Below the Wind; Three Came Home & White Man Returns. All reprinted by Natural History Publications (Borneo) between 1998 & 2001. All 150 x 200mm (6 x 8″), softcover. White Man Returns has a valuable six page introduction and perspective to all three volumes by Patricia Regis (formerly Director of the Sabah State Museum). LBTW, pp371, first published November 1939, Borneo Books book #320; TCH, pp260, first published 1946, Borneo Books #691; White Man Returns, pp310, Borneo Books #1350, first published 1951. [see BBooks review]