James Brooke and the Bidayuh: Some Ritual Dimensions of Dependency and Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Sarawak
J. H. Walker
University College, University of New South Wales
Modern Asian Studies 32, 1 (1998), pp. 91-115.
The relations between James Brooke and the various peoples of northwest Borneo have attracted considerable scholarly attention. Nineteenth-century Iban experiences have been analysed extensively and continue to provide the basis for a healthy industry in historical anthropology.[2] Daniel Chew and Craig Lockard examined the development of the Sarawak Chinese community.[3] Sabihah Osman explored Malay political activity during the Brooke period.[4] In contrast, although Bidayuh were the subject of a detailed anthropological survey in the 1950s, political relations between Bidayuh and Rajah Brooke's regime have been largely ignored by scholars.[5]
Existing studies of relations between the Brooke state and Bornean peoples have employed broadly structuralist or functionalist methodologies, usually within narrative frameworks. These approaches to the analysis of Sarawak politics have helped to elucidate sources and patterns of conflict. But they have failed to explain the sources of support for James Brooke in Sarawak, or to explore the processes of political change through which opponents became supporters. In focusing on institutional and leadership structures, scholars have tended to ignore the values, perceptions and motivations of Sarawak people. The central issues in modern Sarawak history--the sources of James Brooke's authority, and the nature of the power relationships which underpinned Sarawak's formation--remain unaddressed. To seek to understand why and how some Sarawak people supported James Brooke's claims to rule them is to explore the cultural relativities of power; the key to such enquiry is what Sarawak people imagined they were doing.
That scholars have overlooked the cultural basis of Brooke's power in Sarawak is the more remarkable because James Brooke, himself, quickly developed a detailed awareness of key cultural concepts, recognizing that Sarawak people perceived his actions within their own cognitive frameworks. He not only urged his agent, Henry Wise, to 'be very careful not to apply English rules to Sarawak whether in trade or politics',[6] he adapted his own behaviour to ensure that it was appropriate to the cultural peculiarities of political discourse in Sarawak. Brooke quickly became aware of the theatre of politics in ritual states. In 1844, for example, he contemplated the need to cultivate, when among Sarawak people, 'a kind and gentle manner; for their habitual politeness is such that they are hurt by the ordinary brusquerie of the European'.[7] Nothing could be further from the Eurocentrism of colonialists, or of some modern scholars, than James Brooke's cultural relativism.
In applying culturalist methodologies to Sarawak history, I have recalled Eric Ross's criticism of 'the tendency of cultural analysis to inhibit attention to actual behaviour, in favour of moral and symbolic coherence'.[8] This article examines both the sources of James Brooke's authority among Bidayuh, and the extent, form and effect of Bidayan resistance to his power. I focus, first, on the the cultural context within which Bidayuh perceived and evaluated James Brooke's activities; secondly, on the structures and processes through which both Bidayuh and the Brooke state converted these perceptions into political action and power; and, subsequently, on the ritual meaning of Bidayan political resistance. Finally, I offer some observations on the importance of recognizing the processes of political imagination, through which people transform material levels of existence.
Bidayuh Political Culture
Bidayuh, or Land Dayaks, as they were denoted until recently, have been long settled in the hinterlands of the Lundu, Sarawak, Sadong and Samarahan Rivers in northwest Borneo. Bidayuh maintained broadly egalitarian and decentralized socio-political structures. They cultivated hill rice and collected forest products, which they supplied to downriver Malayo-Moslems. Bidayan relations with Malays were fundamentally unequal. In the period prior to James Brooke's accession to government, elite Malays who wished to overcome Bidayan opposition, to enforce particular decisions or to extract higher levels of goods and services would encourage Iban from the Sarebas and Skrang Rivers to attack the Bidayuh. Such was the threat from Iban that Bidayuh began to see Malays as protectors rather than as predatory consumers of Bidayan economic surpluses. This perception was so internalized that, until recently, some Bidayuh referred to elite Malays as 'our Datus'.[9]
In common with many other southeast Asian people, the roots of Bidayan politics and socio-economics were in the supernatural. In Bidayan political conceptualizations, the material world manifested and was animated by a supernatural world. Bidayuh shared their world with a wide range of spirits (antus) and other supernatural and paranormal forces which could profoundly affect human affairs. For Bidayuh, misfortune in the material world was a consequence of a disturbance in the other world, which either humans or animals could engender, or which antus might themselves cause.[10] Bidayuh maintained what Geddes has described as an 'ethical defence' against the malevolence of antus.[11] Beneficent spirits could be invoked to protect humans against all kinds of malevolent spirits, and Bidayuh maintained elaborate rituals to protect themselves and ensure their prosperity.[12] These rituals, along with a range of constraints on human behaviour, and some compulsions, comprised Bidayuh adat, or customary law, one purpose of which was to maintain a proper balance in human affairs. Thus, although Bidayuh believed that human prosperity had supernatural causes, they also believed in human ability to affect these causes directly. Bidayan political, social and economic structures were concerned to engage the supernatural sources of human prosperity to produce human advantage. For Bidayuh, cosmic attributes underpinned and were realized in social and political formations, with the capacity to influence the world of spirits and the forces of nature to human advantage constituting a central function of Bidayan political leadership.[13]
Of the various conceptual frameworks employed by Bidayuh to integrate the material world into the supernatural, the most significant politically was semangat. The concept of semangat has been observed in a number of southeast Asian political cultures, and variously described. Oliver Wolters characterized it as 'soul-stuff'.[14] Kirk Endicott recognized that it was the 'vital principal' in things.[15] According to Shelley Errington, semangat, as she observed its operations on Sulawesi, 'animates, it protects and encompasses, it imbues with consciousness and fertility. . . . It is neither benevolent nor evil, and it has no intention. It is potency and effectiveness, so it is dangerous as well as desirable.'[16] Semangat is the supernatural power which imbues and animates the natural world. By investing individuals, objects and places, it both integrates them into the supernatural and establishes their particularities.
Political and social structures derived from the fact that semangat, as potency, could be infused to differing degrees, with individuals ranking themselves according to the amount of potency they possessed.[17] In cosmological political systems in southeast Asia, the infusion of semangat or potency into otherwise lifeless matter created the distinctions among individuals which underpin politics. A 'person's spiritual identity and capacity for leadership were established when his fellows could recognize his superior endowment and knew that being close to him was to their advantage'.[18]
The benefits of such association were not just material. By establishing relationships with a more potent figure, lesser figures ensured that 'their own spiritual substance ... would participate in his thereby leading to rapport and personal satisfaction'.[19] Potency could be acquired from other potent individuals. It could, literally, rub off. Thus, potent individuals were the subjects of allegiance by other, less potent beings, who sought to associate themselves with the source of greater potency. Networks of relationships, which had as their purpose the transfer of potency, developed; underpinning, legitimizing and replacing material bases of association. Semangat, itself, was not visible or directly perceivable. But it was indicated by visible factors, like wealth or other sorts of conspicuous success, high rank or influence.[20]
James Brooke in Ritual Perspective
Following his arrival in Sarawak in 1839, James Brooke displayed a wide range of attributes which indicated to Bidayuh and to other Sarawak people the expansiveness and intensity of his semangat. His significant following (of sailors and armed retainers), his six-pounder cannons and other armaments, the deference and courtesy with which he was treated by the head of the Brunei hierarchy in Sarawak, his self-conscious bravery in the small-scale siege warfare of upcountry Borneo, and his ability to make the Brunei authorities bend to his will, all indicated to Sarawak people that James Brooke was a highly potent individual. His accession to the government must have confirmed this impression. As Errington observed, there
is a strong tendency, in court texts throughout Southeast Asia, to assume that whoever succeeded, say, in winning a kingdom ... is the one who ought to have succeeded. This stance towards the past is not simply a rationalising or manipulative rewriting of it by the people who gain power. . . . In sacred politics, the a posteriori judgement makes not a cynical statement but an epistemological one: how can anyone know who should have succeeded except by seeing who in fact did?[21]
Brooke's political supremacy indicated his unequalled potency. Bidayuh sought to participate in his potency to replenish their own spiritual status and ensure their material prosperity. They invoked Brooke's semangat to ensure the success of their rice crops, the birth of male children, and the fecundity of their pigs and fowls. When Brooke visited Bidayan longhouses, those communities tried to absorb as much of his beneficent power as they could. Details of these attempts were recorded by European observers. Hugh Low reported that when Brooke visited Bidayan villages, the people
each bring a portion of the Padi-seed they intend to sow next season, and with the necklaces of the women, which are given to him for that purpose, and which, having been dipped into a mixture previously prepared, are by him shaken over the little basins which contain the seed, by which process he is supposed to render them very productive. Other tribes, whom from their distance he cannot visit, send down to him for a small piece of white cloth, and a little gold or silver ' which they bury in the earth of their farms, to attain the same result. On his entering a village, the women also wash and bathe his feet, first with water, and then with the milk of a young cocoa-nut, and afterwards with water again: all this water, which had touched his person, is preserved for the purpose of being distributed on their farms, being supposed to render an abundant harvest certain.[22]
Endicott's analysis of Malay magic provides a comparative basis for interrogating this account and comprehending in greater detail the ritual meaning of Bidayan actions. Gold and silver were what Endicott termed 'boundary reinforcers'. People believed the presence of the metals could preserve and reinforce the semangat of crops. Water was a 'boundary weakener' and an efficacious medium for drawing out the semangat from matter for transfer to another.[23] The feet and head, as physical extremities, were believed to be parts of the body where semangat was especially concentrated.
There can be no doubt that Brooke was aware of Bidayan conceptualizations of politics and cosmology. He explained of one ceremony:
The opening is a sort of invocation, beginning with the phrase, 'Samungut, Simungi.' Samungut is a Malay word, Simungi signifying the same in Dyak: the exact meaning it is difficult to comprehend; but it is here understood as some principle, spirit, or fortune, which is in men and things. Thus the Dyaks, in stowing their rice at harvest, do it with great care, from a superstitious feeling that the Simungi of the padi will escape. They now call on this principle to be present--that of men, of pigs (their favourite animal), of padi and of fruits. They particularly named my Simungi, that of my ancestors, and of the Pangeran from Borneo, of the Datus and of their ancestors, and of the ancestors of their own tribe. They call them--that is, their Simungi--to be present.[24]
Brooke detailed another Bidayan ceremony in 1845:
When I seat myself on the mat, one by one they come forward, and tie little bells on my arm; a young cocoa-nut is brought, into which I am requested to spit. The white fowl is presented. I rise and wave it, and say--'May good luck attend the Dyaks; may their crops be plentiful; may their fruits ripen in due season; may male children be born; may rice be stored in their houses; may wild hogs be killed in the jungle; may they have Sijok Dingin or cold weather.'
After Brooke finished his oration, the people, both men and women, 'take my hand, [and] stroke their own faces'. After this,
they wash my hands and my feet, and afterwards with the water sprinkle their houses and gardens. Then the gold dust, with the white cloth which accompanies it, both of which have been presented by me, is placed in the field.[25]
European officers in Brooke's service were also regarded, because of their close association with him, as sources of Brooke's own semangat, and they also commonly participated in potency ceremonies. In one Bidayan village, Hugh Low was seated on the platform used for drying rice. The headman
held in his left hand a small saucer, filled with rice, which had been made yellow by a mixture with Kunyit, or Turneric, and other herbs. He then uttered a prayer in Malay, which he had previously requested me to repeat after him. It was addressed to Tuppa [a Dayak divinity] the sun and moon, and the Rajah of Sarawak, to request that the next Padi harvest might be abundant, that their families might be increased with male children, and that their pigs and fowls might be very prolific: it was, in fact, a prayer for general prosperity to the country and tribe. During its continuance, we threw towards heaven small portions of the rice from the saucer at frequent intervals, and at the commencement of every fresh paragraph of the supplicatory address. After this had been finished, the chief repeated the prayer in the Dyak language by himself, throwing the rice towards the sky as before....
As in the ceremony described by Brooke, Low was weighed down with the 'inconveniently numerous' bells which the Bidayuh tied around his wrists. The prayers were repeated later during the ceremony, once as the headman waved a live cockerel over the heads of the people, and again after the cockerel had been decapitated.[26] At yet another ceremony, Low, in a second example of Bidayuh seeking to transfer potency from feet, had to walk 'on gongs and other musical instruments of brass placed for the purpose'.[27]
The intensity and expansiveness of Rajah Brooke's semangat attracted Bidayuh to associate with him throughout the remainder of his life, with rituals to transfer his potency to his followers and their farms remaining a central feature of his regime. In the 1850s, the botanist, Alfred Russel Wallace, recorded that 'Many of the distant tribes think that the Rajah cannot be a man. They ask all sorts of curious questions about him, whether or not he is as old as the mountains, whether he cannot bring the dead to life...'.[28] In 1852, when Brooke and Bishop McDougall of Sarawak visited the Suntah Bidayuh, they were received in the village by elderly women, who
made yells of welcome, and stroked their visitors' arms and legs; for they fancy there is some goodness or virtue to be rubbed out of white people. They then washed their feet in cocoa-nut water, and set aside this water to steep their seed paddy in, imagining it would help it grow ... They brought portions of cooked rice on leaves, and begged the Englishmen to spit into them, after which they ate them up, thinking they should be the better for it.[29]
Mrs McDougall's description of the Bidayuh stroking the Europeans to draw out the goodness, to rub off their semangat, echoes comments by Brooke already quoted, and is confirmed by other observers. At a ceremony attended by Captain Bethune, a dancer 'advanced to the head guest, and took his hand in both hers, and then conveyed the virtue to her face and bosom.... Occasionally, as the dancers passed us, they screamed and drew more virtue.[30] Spenser St John described a ceremony in 1852 in which the elders of the Bidayan village
walked up to us in succession, passed their hands over our arms, pressed our palms, and then uttering a yell or prolonged screech went off into a slow measured tread, moving their arms and hands in unison with their feet until they reached the end of the house, and came back to where we sat; then another pressure of the palm, a few more passes to draw virtue out of us; at one time there were a hundred dancing.[31]
The Rajah's presence in a village, or that of his high ranking associates, enabled Bidayuh to replenish their semangat, directing potent energies into the community and ensuring its spiritual and material welfare. But beyond these more generalized benefits, Bidayuh believed that the Rajah could overcome specific misfortunes. When the wife of a Bidayan headman was sick, she 'came to Brooke that he might rub her side'.[32] Bidayuh whose crops had failed would try to induce Brooke to visit their village, 'to remove the causes which had rendered their crop a small one'.[33] Visits by the Rajah to Bidayan villages were therefore keenly sought. In 1850 Bidayuh 'of various tribes' begged the Rajah to visit them.[34] In 1853 delegations from all the Bidayan communities of the western branch of the Sarawak River 'came and pressed us to go among them'. When the Rajah's poor health precluded such excursions, the Bidayan leaders insisted that Brooke at least attend a series of 'great festivals' at a number of longhouses.[35] Communities that the Rajah failed to visit sent their leaders to him to secure items permeated with his semangat. Brooke recorded that the orang kaya or headman of the Suntah Bidayuh 'brought a young cocoa-nut for me to spit into, as usual; and after receiving a little gold dust and white cloth, returned home to cultivate his rice-fields'.[36] The Rajah found Bidayan belief in his supernatural powers 'highly gratifying'.[37]
The Political Dimensions of Ritual Status
Bidayuh's recognition of, and their desire to engage, the Rajah's semangat underpinned the establishment of his political authority among them. Individuals who participated extensively in the Rajah's potency derived spiritual status from their association with him. They were appropriate leaders for their communities, because they facilitated their communities' association with the Rajah. Thus, individuals ambitious for political power were strengthened by the Rajah's support, and they were keen to lay claim to it. For example, an aspirant to the leadership of the Senna Bidayuh returned from a short trip away from his village claiming that the Rajah had ordered him to kill the headman and take his place.[38] The importance Bidayuh placed on maintaining close ritual relations with James Brooke gave Brooke a capacity to remove leaders who incurred his displeasure which he would otherwise have lacked. Bidayan leaders who opposed Brooke's measures found that he was all too ready to depose them, and that their own communities would endorse such arbitrary behaviour.[39]
It is important not to overstate the Rajah's capacity to impose political decisions on Bidayuh, however. Occasionally, Bidayuh were not prepared to choose as their leaders the candidates preferred by the Rajah or his officers, though there are very few examples of their electing leaders who did not have the Rajah's support.[40] More significant were the physical limitations on the projection of power. When Brooke sent a messenger to apprehend a murderer in 1856, the messenger 'cut down the young Orang Kaya who I had appointed recently instead of the man he was in wait for'.[41] Distance, and the limits of nineteenth-century communications, rendered the Rajah's power unpredictable, adding to the uncertainty of Bidayan existence, and to the dangerous potency of power, itself.
The Rajah converted his high ritual status into political power by staging ceremonies in which he dispensed gifts of clothes and weapons. In Sarawak, as in other parts of southeast Asia, cloth was regarded as being especially permeable by semangat. It was, therefore, an ideal material by the exchange of which potency could be transferred. When Brooke appointed the Bidayan headman, Bibit, the ceremony included presenting Bibit with a turban, jacket, 'cloth for the loins', and kris.[42]
Such ceremonies were held among Bidayan communities throughout Sarawak as Brooke extended his control. According to Charles Grant, the investiture of Bidayan leaders by Brooke always involved the presentation of 'a turban and jacket to each of the chiefs, sometimes accompanied by a spear of state'.[43] Following his accession to the government in 1841, therefore, Brooke needed a large supply of cloth and garments to give away. This need occasioned considerable correspondence between Brooke and his mother. In March 1842, Brooke wrote to her that
everything is useful here, old carpets, hangings, bell-ropes, all and everything--the carpets the Dyaks like much, as war-jackets. I wish you would become the lady patroness of a fancy fair, and send all the articles to me; the young ladies can make housewives and female articles of adornment, purses, pieces of velvet of any size embroidered, etc etc, all of which my friends would be delighted to receive, and which would attach them greatly; small beads worked on cloth would throw the Dyaks into ecstasy.[44]
The following August, he asked his mother to send him
a quantity of cloths from fifteen to eighteen feet long, and from nine to fourteen inches wide. The material to be course Russian duck, such as seamen wear, each end to be worked about a foot and a half, in different fashions according to the ladies taste, either in gold or red threads, spangles, beads, shells, or the like, and some may be fringed with red, or gold, or blue, in worsted or silk.[45]
These are the dimensions of a Bornean loincloth (chawat or sirat).[46] Brooke's demand for embroidery on the cloths was significant, because multi-coloured cloth or thread was believed to be particularly efficacious in transferring spiritual essences between matter.[47] The multi-coloured ends would increase the loincloths' capacity to transfer semangat from Brooke to his followers. In October Brooke again wrote to his mother to urge her to continue the sewing, and teasing that she and her ladies 'will all be immortalized among the Dyaks'.[48] Meanwhile, he had to make do with large quantities of nankeen cloth he imported from Singapore.[49] Nankeen is always yellow, and yellow coloured cloth was also widely believed to be particularly permeable by semangat.[50]
These ritual transfers of cloth and investitures with titles were profoundly important to Bidayuh because they integrated political and spiritual hierarchies and power, prevented anomy and maintained cosmic harmony. Like the rice ceremonies already described, these cloth ceremonies became a central feature of James Brooke's regime. His European officers made a point of carrying batik handkerchiefs to give to Bidayuh who wanted pieces of potency-imbued cloth. Bidayuh hung the pieces of cloth in their house 'to preserve the village from evil influence'.[51] Batik, like embroidery, was multicoloured and, therefore, intensely permeable to semangat.
Although Brooke's Bidayan followers conceived of him in cosmological terms, as a vital link through which the supernatural forces which shape the destinies of human communities could be mobilized to ensure their prosperity, Brooke accumulated and applied political power in Sarawak through networks of patron-client relationships, which provided the central integrating structure of the Sarawak polity. James Scott defined patron-client relations as:
a special case of dyadic (two-person) ties involving a large instrumental friendship in which an individual of higher socio-economic status (patron) uses his own influences and resources to provide protection and/or benefits for a person of lower status (client) who, for his part, reciprocates by offering general support and assistance, including personal services to the patron.
Scott argued that, although the relationship between patron and client was unequal, the client had sufficient resources under his or her control for a degree of reciprocity to exist. Therefore patronclient relations are not characterized by command. Inequality is essential to the relationship, though, since the patron seeks to bind the client by 'a debt of obligation'.[52] Patron-client relations are recognized as endemic to southeast Asian polities.
Material benefits accrued to Bidayuh from their association with James Brooke in two ways. First, Brooke stopped Sarawak and Brunei Malays from arbitrarily exacting economic surpluses and labour from Bidayuh. 'The beginning of all good government', Brooke considered 'is to acquaint the people of the amount to be paid to one prince, who, when this amount of taxation is settled, must protect his subjects from the demands and exactions of all intruders'.[53] Secondly, in the early days of his rule, Brooke was generous in supplying Dayak communities with supplies when their own resources were exhausted. Swidden agriculture provided uncertain harvests, and communities often fell short of rice towards the end of the growing season, in the months preceding their next harvest.[54] Brooke recorded that Bidayuh were facing food shortages by the end of 1841, and that he provided material relief to those Bidayuh who came to him in Kuching to seek help.[55] Brooke deliberately cultivated multiple relationships of dependency. He established the custom of receiving petitioners and other people after dinner.
The house was thrown open to all-rich or poor, Malay, Dyak, or Chinese, any were welcome. Often a very poor man would creep in, take up his position in the most obscure corner, and there remain silent but attentive to all that passed. There he would wait till every other native had left, neither addressing Mr Brooke nor being addressed by him, but when the coast was clear the Governor would call him to his side and gently worm his story from him. Generally it was some tale of oppression, some request for aid. None of these stories were forgotten: in the morning careful but cautious inquiries were made as to their truth, and rarely was it found that the suppliant had attempted to deceive willingly. Redress or aid followed; ...[56]
Moreover, during the early years of his rule, Brooke travelled extensively among the Bidayuh 'to see that they are not injured or aggrieved'.[57] According to one witness, Brooke was received on these trips, whether in Malay, Chinese or Bidayan houses, with 'evident satisfaction'.[58] Brooke's generosity did not stop at emergency supplies of rice. He importuned from his mother 'scissors of all sorts, a dozen or two; [and] knives, from pen-knives to pruning knives', which he also appears to have given away.[59] From 1841 until the end of 1844, Brooke supplied Bidayuh with iron and salt at subsidized and unprofitable prices in a deliberate and conscious attempt to establish his power among them.[60] As one Bidayan leader explained to Edward Belcher, in Sarawak under Rajah Brooke, Bidayuh could cultivate their farms in peace, and 'supply their wants from his stores'.[61] The material benefits that accrued to Bidayuh who associated withJames Brooke and accepted his authority encouraged substantial numbers of other Dayaks to move into Sarawak from neighbouring areas. The Serang people, for example, sought permission to settle in March 1842,[62] and, in June, the Suntah people placed themselves under his protection.[63]
The spiritual hierarchies which were established by Brooke's ceremonial gifts of ritual clothes underpinned and legitimized political relationships binding Bidayuh to Brooke as clients. Conversely, instrumental relations based on material inequality were expressed and perceived as spiritual hierarchies. Bidayan conceptualizations about the relationship between this world and other levels of existence provided a framework through which the Rajah was able to convert authority derived from cosmological perceptions of politics into political power, and vice versa.
Political Resistance
Patron-client relations provide a structural basis for conflict as well as for integration, however. Both Wertheim and Hanks have outlined how patron-client structures give rise to factional politics among equals and near equals in the entourage of a patron.[64] But there are further ways in which patron- client systems structure conflict. Patron-client systems comprise and institutionalize fundamentally unequal relations in which both parties seek to maximize the advantages they derive from the relationship. Notwithstanding the ideological constructs which underpin and legitimize clientage, resistance is endemic in patron-client systems. Although such systems institutionalize the patron's power, they also institutionalize the value of the client to the patron. In addition to the dyadic conflict which this implies, patron-client systems provide a structure within which numbers of clients can jointly resist the exactions of their patrons in an attempt to maximize their economic and political autonomy. This capacity for joint action by clients against their patron has previously been overlooked by analysts.
The development of joint actions by clients to resist patrons' exactions is limited by the propensity of the clients' need to secure the patrons' favour to foster conflict and competition among them. Therefore, clients will unite to resist the exactions of patrons only when they have already formed bonds stronger than the pressure to compete with one another. Notwithstanding the capacity for patronclient ties to cross ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural boundaries, the extractive force of the relationship will be diminished where it transcends boundaries of social identity and loyalty. In fragmented and fissiparous societies, in which communications are primitive and difficult, and political and social identities local, these bonds are likely to be at village level.
Moreover, community resistance to exactions in patron-client systems are more likely to occur at the lower levels of the system, where the instrumental need for clients to preserve the material bases of their existence is greatest. At higher levels in the system, material existence is less uncertain and political struggle focuses on maximizing individual benefits. The maximization of benefits is less amenable to cooperative joint action, than is the minimization of exactions. It is socially aggressive rather than defensive, and individual action will be more effective than communal action.
Patron-client systems of politics do not comprise a command structure in which patrons simply coerce powerless clients. Rather, they provide a framework within which people at all levels pursue their interests. At lower levels, where economic surpluses are produced, individuals resist patrons as far as they are able without breaking the bonds of patronage.
Brooke's ritual importance in Bidayan culture did not preclude Bidayan resistance to his Government's exactions. For too long, scholars have accepted descriptions of Bidayuh as meek and compliant, and have ignored evidence of their resistance to oppression and imposition.[65] In his study of peasant resistance, James Scott found that, although violent protest by peasants is rare, writers focus on it because it is easily discernible in written historical sources.[66] The same is true of resistance in nineteenth-century Sarawak. Historians have focused on Rentap and other Iban warriors, and overlooked the quotidian struggles by Bidayuh to maintain economic autonomy.
Scott identified the weapons of peasant resistance as 'footdragging, dissimulation, false-compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage'. He also noted that non-payment of taxes was a classic constraint on southeast Asian government.[67] These tactics by the weak in society avoid open breaches or conflicts. They are deniable: individuals defer and delay rather than refuse; they pretend to cooperate and evade as far as they can without provoking retribution. Although details are often scarce, some of these tactics are identifiable in historical accounts of Sarawak. AsJames Brooke observed of a group of Bidayuh even before his assumption of government, they 'showed all the characteristics of a wild people; never openly resisting their masters, but so obstinate that they nearly always got their own way in everything; to all threats and entreaties opposing a determined and immovable silence'.[68]
On his assumption of government, Brooke imposed a rice tax on each Bidayan family. In addition, each family was required to provide unspecified amounts of unremunerated labour for the Government.[69] Bidayan resistance to Government exactions can be most clearly discerned in contemporary sources in three ways--reducing liability for taxes by concealing the number of families in a longhouse, delay in paying taxes due, and reluctance to meet labour imposts.
Tax Avoidance and Evasion
Bidayan attempts to reduce their taxation liabilities by concealing the real numbers of families in their communities are well documented in contemporary sources. In 1845, Hugh Low found one Bidayan village was three to four times larger than he 'was at first told'.[70] In 1852, Bidayuh on the Samarahan River avoided taxes by crowding two or three families into one apartment. St John estimated that, in this way, Bidayuh reduced their liability for taxes by 25%, and he recorded that 'measures have been taken to ensure a proper enumeration'.[71] Although there are no details of these measures, continued under-payment of taxes induced the Rajah's Government to conduct a full census of the Bidayan population in 1855. The census found that Bidayuh were evading up to half the taxes that the Government claimed. The Singe Dayaks, for example, had a taxable population of 195 families rather than 100. Another Bidayan community consisted of 65 taxable families, instead of 30. This pattern appeared throughout the Bidayan areas. The Rajah believed that his revenues would nearly double once new levels of tax liability were established. Not all Bidayuh cooperated in the census, however. The Singes directly opposed its conduct, causing the Government to replace the Singe headman with a more compliant figure.[72]
The Rajah expected further Bidayan resistance to the increased levels of taxation, noting that there would be 'trouble and expense in collection at first'.[73] The resistance, when it emerged, was overt and determined. Pa Gosting and Pajaging, the leaders of two other Bidayan communities, protested against the new taxes by withholding other amounts claimed by the Government. They 'talked boldly and insolently behind our backs' and tried to organize resistance on a wider scale by urging the Singes to join a tax strike. Their campaign of resistance culminated in their leading a large group of Bidayuh to Kuching to protest about the taxes to the Rajah. Brooke, however, 'read them a lecture--clapped them in the fort, and ordered the revenue to be paid immediately'. And he deposed both men from their positions.[74]
Although the Government census of 1855 determined taxable populations, subsequent cholera outbreaks provided Bidayuh with new opportunities to undermine the census' authority, and Bidayuh exaggerated fatalities to reduce their tax liabilities. One community reported in 1858 that it had lost 70 families.[75] The Sentah Bidayuh claimed that cholera reduced their community from 100 families to 63. The Government did not believe them and in 1859 Charles Grant reported that he was 'looking at the size of the Sentah village'.[76] A new census to resolve disputes with Bidayan communities about tax liabilities was conducted in 1859.[77] By 1862, tax avoidance was again so widespread that the Government considered a third census.[78]
In 1854 the Rajah rescinded tax farms which he had previously allocated to Malay nobles associated with his regime, and introduced his own, direct tax administration over Bidayan communities. Mrs McDougall reported that when the Bidayuh were under Malay authority their leaders brought the rice taxes to Kuching to pay them directly to the Rajah.[79] Following the introduction of a centalized administration, however, Bidayuh habitually delayed paying the amounts due, and the Government had to send officers into the Bidayan villages after the rice harvest in order to enforce compliance. March and April were harvesting and threshing months for Bidayuh.[80] Charles Grant returned from an excursion upcountry on 12 April 1858.[81] By the beginning of May he was already at another Bidayan community 'arranging about the revenues'.[82] Grant's colleague, Robert Hay, was similarly engaged amongst the Bidayuh of the Sadong River.[83] These tours were not isolated events, but annual systematic attempts to extract revenue. Thus, in May 1859, the Rajah's nephew, Brooke Brooke, wrote to Hay that he was 'glad to hear that your visit to the Dyaks was satisfactory. I suppose the revenues will be coming in shortly...'.[84] Bidayan communities developed considerable skill at deferring the delivery of their taxes. In one year, the taxes from the Sadong basin were still being collected in September.[85]
The Government's tussle with the Bidayan population for taxes was expensive, involving regular and extensive censuses and annual tours of upriver areas. Bidayan resistance to taxation reduced the levels of revenue raised as well as increasing administrative costs. And it forced the Government to have regard for the net revenue affects of introducing new taxes. These constraints on Government actions by Bidayan opposition or resistance were increased by the Rajah's recognition that a 'contented population is better than a full purse', and his concern to 'avoid defeats or chance of collision'.[86] As early as 1853, for example, the Government decided against introducing a tax on the use of timber because it 'could not collect it with any profit'.[87] By 1864, the difficulties associated with implementing taxation among the Bidayuh were recognized as being so great that revenue could only be increased by expanding indirect taxes.[88] The effectiveness of Bidayan resistance had become a recognized factor in the development of fiscal policies in Sarawak.
Labour Avoidance
The Rajah's initial imposts on Bidayuh had included unspecified labour for the Government. Demands for Bidayan labour were mostly limited to transporting antimony ore from mine sites to where it could be loaded on to boats, and to providing porters for Government officers and other Europeans travelling upcountry. Notwithstanding their eagerness to associate with the Rajah and other Europeans, Bidayuh resisted both sorts of demands. In 1858, for example, Charles Grant was unable to overcome Bidayan reluctance to carry down antimony ore, so that the Rajah's nephew, Brooke Brooke, had to go up to persuade them.[89] The Rajah was even prepared to reinstate Pa Gosting and Pa Jaging to their positions if they were able to marshall the necessary workers.[90]
Nor were Bidayuh happy to act as porters for travellers. Alfred Russel Wallace recorded his frustration in 1855 in trying to get some Bidayuh to help him to the next village. 'The orang kaya said that if I insisted on having men, of course he would get them, but when I took him at his word and said I must have them, there came some fresh remonstrance.' Wallace's own remonstrances failed to impress the orang kaya and Wallace was obliged to stay the night in the village.[91] At yet another village, the leading men left the house to avoid having to provide him with a guide and porters and Wallace obtained the help he needed only 'by dint of threats and promises'.[92] Wallace told the men in the village
that the chiefs had behaved very badly, and I should acquaint the Rajah with their conduct, and that I insisted on going on at once. Every man present made some excuse, but after much trouble and two hours delay, we succeeded in getting off.[93]
The Ritual Meaning of Resistance
Bidayan belief that the Rajah's participation in Bidayan life was essential to their prosperity did not preclude their determined resistance to his imposts and exactions. Bidayuh's primary concern was to maintain cosmic harmony through the ritual activity of rice farming, and by the observation of other adat. The Rajah's potency and his purported supernatural powers assisted in this process. Bidayuh sought to associate with the Rajah in order to ensure successful harvests and adequate agricultural surpluses. How, then, could they try to cheat him out of his taxes, and stall paying them? Why did they refuse the opportunities to associate with him and his officers which the Government's need for porters and guides offered? In cosmological systems of politics, political resistance, like political support, will be conceived of and legitimized in cosmological terms. Geddes' experiences in the 1950s provide an insight into how Bidayuh might have achieved this.
Bidayuh believed that rice is 'a living thing with its own soul',[94] and Geddes found that they were terrified should the souls of rice be frightened or threatened. Rice growing in the fields or being threshed could be approached safely. Rice stores, however, where Bidayuh stored their harvests after the rice grain had been dried, were inviolable. Indeed, Geddes found that for 'a European to get into a Land Dayak's padi store is far harder than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle'. The sudden intrusion by strangers, especially Europeans unaware of the vulnerability of rice souls, might frighten the semangat into leaving the rice. At the very least, it would weaken the semangat, cause illness or impair its vitality. Although Geddes' Bidayan friends agreed that he could measure their rice stores, they had no intention that he should do so. 'There was no lack of goodwill, but ideology firmly barred the door of the padi store.' Bidayuh were prevented from cooperating with Geddes by a fear of the supernatural.[95]
Geddes' experiences parallel the Rajah's efforts to enforce the rice tax. Bidayuh could justify resisting the Rajah's demands for a share of their rice by reference to the needs of rice itself. Bidayuh obviously made the Rajah aware of their cosmological concerns to protect the semangat of rice in their stores, since Brooke noted that 'the Dyaks in stowing their rice at harvest, do it with great care, from a superstitious feeling that the simungi of the Padi will escape'.[96] Moreover, rice can only be accurately measured, whether by weight or volume, when it is properly dried. Bidayan ritual concerns therefore specifically denied the Rajah's officers access to rice which could be accurately measured for tax purposes in favour of heavier, larger, undried grains, measurement of which would reduce the real levels of tax paid.
The Bidayan objective of retaining their rice and controlling their own labour was integrated into a cosmological political ideology in a more direct way. Bidayuh seeking to maximize their participation in the Rajah's semangat needed to attract him, or his high ranking associates, to their villages. Historical sources are replete with their (usually unmet) requests that the Rajah visit them. Prior to the Rajah's replacement of Malays in the administration of Bidayan areas, Bidayuh used the payment of taxes as occasions to associate directly with the Rajah, bringing their rice personally to him in Kuching.[97] The Rajah's withdrawal of Malays from the administration of Bidayan areas resulted in his employment of European associates who, Bidayuh believed, shared more extensively than Malays, the Rajah's potency. Bidayan resistance to tax and labour imposts ensured that the Rajah's European officers visited villages. The longer payment could be delayed, the more visits from Charles Grant and the other officers could be provoked, each visit accompanied by rituals and ceremonies to facilitate the transfer of the visitor's (and the Rajah's) semangat to the community. That Bidayuh regarded Charles Grant's tours to enforce taxation as opportunities for ritual association is evident from Grant's journal of his tour in 1858. Far from avoiding Grant or discouraging his presence, tax-evading Bidayuh urged him to visit their villages and encouraged him to stay the night. When he did so, the familiar rituals associated with the transfer of semangat were staged--Grant's feet was washed, his blessing invoked.[98]
Similarly, avoidance and delay in providing porterage to travellers impeded their progress through villages. Even short delays prolonged a visit by hours, again, exposing the village to the potency of the Rajah's associates. A prolonged delay in supplying guides or porters might succeed in forcing the traveller to stay the night, and provide the opportunity for more complex ceremonies to transfer semangat. Therefore, Bidayuh integrated their desire to minimize material exactions by the Government with a need to maximize the Government's participation in their ritual existence. Material resistance was realized as spiritual dependence.
Conclusion
James Brooke's power among Bidayuh derived from Bidayan recognition of the intensity and expansiveness of his semangat, and their desire to participate in it. This has been a fundamental process in state-formation in southeast Asia. As Wolters observed of an archetypal southeast Asian king, he 'was able to mobilise his coalition not because he could claim to be the descendant of an earlier overlord but because his supporters were able to perceive that he was distinguished by personal qualities and self- confidence, which guaranteed the success of his enterprise'.[99] Brooke manifested cosmic forces which other people wanted to engage, and which became the focus of political association. As Wolters, again, observed of seventh-century Cambodia, 'what we would define as "the kingdom" was no more than the territorial measurement of a particular lord's prowess'.[100]
As Rajah, though, James Brooke needed to establish structures to extract resources and allocate rank and other benefits, in doing so, establishing political networks which expressed, applied and accumulated a more secular power among Bidayuh. Through networks of patron-client relations Brooke regulated his contacts with individuals over wide geographic and social areas. The period of James Brooke's rule was marked by a continual struggle to expropriate sufficient economic surpluses from subject populations to ensure his Government's economic viability. Our need to comprehend both the cultural and structural forms of power and conflict directs attention to apparently contradictory evidence about human motivations, aspirations and loyalty. These contradictions, which could be ignored by examining only one source or form of power or conflict, are essential to understanding political experience in Sarawak.
Where human behaviour is significantly inconsistent, humans will change their perceptions of one or other aspect of their actions in order to integrate them conceptually. This process, that of investing secular or material phenomena with meaning which is then, itself, the object of human perception, is essential to comprehending politics in Sarawak as elsewhere. It is the process described by Peter Berger, of externalization, objectification and internalization, whereby material circumstances and phenomena are transformed into new social and cultural realities.[101] It comprises the process whereby military, economic and political sources of power are comprehended in ritual terms and meet essentially ritual concerns. The ritual values ascribed to Brooke and his activities within the political cultures of Sarawak people served these essential, integrative functions. They determined Bidayan dependence on Brooke as they legitimated Bidayan resistance to his economic exactions.