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The 1857 Chinese Rebellion in Sarawak: A Reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Craig A. Lockard
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Extract

Given the great strides made over the past twenty years in our understanding of modern Southeast Asian history, it is surprising that many traditional and possibly outdated interpretations remain unchallenged. Despite the growing use of indigenous source materials, the willingness to take an Asian-centric (and occasionally nonelitist) perspective, and the increasing attention to social, economic, and cultural (rather than just political and diplomatic) history, a number of important themes need reinterpretation or reevaluation. Indeed, many modern historians continue to accept as valid traditional assessments of some nineteenth-century events. This is sometimes the case even when the original sources are compromised by a Western ethnocentric and colonialist bias, since European representatives of the imperialist imperative largely produced the documentary sources for the period. The colonial episode now seems a far less benevolent exercise than it did to an earlier generation of historians; yet, outmoded perspectives sometimes remain with us. Such a failure of reinterpretation characterizes the recent writings on one of the better-known episodes in Bornean history, the so-called “Chinese Rebellion” of 1857 in Sarawak. The time has come for a revisionist appraisal.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 85 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1978

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References

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2 Sir Spenser St. John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, quoted in Purcell, Victor, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, Second Edition (London, 1965), p. 369Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., pp. 369–70.

4 Runciman, Steven, The White Rajahs: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1941 (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 125–32Google Scholar.

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21 St. John, op. cit., II, 353.

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29 Keppel, op. cit., II, 70–81.

30 This interpretation was presented to me in April 1966 by C.P. Law, a long-time Teochiu community leader in Kuching and an amateur historian. Mr. Law had many contacts in Bau.

31 See St. John, op. cit, II, 358–77; Runciman, op. cit., pp. 119–33; Helms, op. cit., pp. 164–92; McDougall, op. cit., pp. 125–54.

32 Purcell, op. cit., p. 369.

33 St. John, op. cit., II, 375.

34 McDougall, op. cit., pp. 127–39.

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36 McDougall, op. cit., p. 131. A different account of this story appears in Helms, op. cit., p. 173.

37 St. John, op. cit., II, 406.

38 Helms, op. cit., pp. 176–77.

39 McDougall, op. cit., p. 141

40 Helms, op. cit., p. 176.

41 Ibid., p. 184.

42 Ibid., p. 190.

43 Brooke, op. cit., 1.220.

44 One of five modern administrative districts for Sarawak, Kuching is the centre of the divison.

45 Chaoanns are a small but influential speech group in Kuching. closely allied to the Hokkiens.