Trouble on the Frontier

Dutch-Brooke Relations and Iban Rebellion in the West Borneo Borderlands (1841-86)

Bibliographic Data

ID3614828
AuthorsReed L Wadley (International Institute for Asian Studies, corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume35
Issue03
Publication date2001-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x01003055
OpenAlexW1986775358
LanguageEN
Citations received15

As European influence expanded in insular Southeast Asia throughout the early modern era, colonial interests shifted from maintaining favorable trade zones along the coasts and rivers to an increasing control of territory and its human populations. The island of Borneo entered the colonial ambit relatively late in this process,Graham Irwin, Nineteenth-Century Borneo: A Study in Diplomatic Rivalry (s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955). but its eventual division between British and Dutch spheres of influence and control has had profound consequences for the peoples that fell under either. There and elsewhere, territorial boundaries sliced across well-established networks of communication, trade, common traditions, and strong ties of kinship. These boundaries came to impose different symbols of formal status on people from the same ethnic groups. From the colonial perspective, boundaries were designed to function negatively, to restrict what was deemed illegal such as smuggling and migration, and positively, to promote legitimate activities like taxation and road construction. The usual colonial attitude was that borders should be precisely defined, clearly demarcated, jealously guarded, and exclusive. A. I. Asiwaju, ‘The Conceptual Framework’, in A. I. Asiwaju (ed.), Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations Across Africa's International Boundaries, 1884-1984 (London: C. Hurst and Co., 1985), pp. 1-18 at pp. 2-3; A. I. Asiwaju, Borderlands Research: A Comparative Perspective. Border Perspectives Paper No. 6 (El Paso: University of Texas, Center for Inter-American and Border Studies, 1983), pp. 2-3; S. Whittemore Boggs, International Boundaries: A Study of Boundary Functions and Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), pp. 10-11. Yet the people so partitioned routinely defied the border divisions, causing no small amount of worry to the colonial states

Colonialism · Economic history · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Frontier · Geography · Kinship · Political science · Rivalry · Sociology · Asian Studies and History · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture

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