Murder at Siang Moia; 'Amok' at Lahad Dato: Colonial responses to violence and the laying down of authority in North Borneo

Abstract

Colonial governance in late-colonial North Borneo was chiefly concerned with the laying down of authority and the consolidation of British rule. Legacies of anti-colonial violence and myriad armed rebellions, from the early days of colonial incursion in the late nineteenth century, had set a precedent of vulnerability and reinforced perceptions of colonial weaknesses. This was especially the case considering the administrative and geographic disconnect between the territory’s urban zones and the rural hinterlands. Combined with this perceived necessity to sureup colonial rule was a fixation with violence and colonial exotica, which characterised methods of governance well into the decolonisation era in the 1950s and 1960s. In a world where violence was utilised as a technology of rule—even becoming associated with colonial leisure pursuits—the fears of all-out indigenous insurrection and seemingly random acts of violence served to characterise late-colonial North Borneo as a raw frontier of empire; functionally and infrastructurally lagging behind other colonies. This paper will explore two incidents of mass-violence in 1916 and 1917, and discuss how they shaped and reflected the colonial state and its society as it coursed towards greater assimilation and modernity. Drawing on a range of sources, this paper will shed light on hitherto unmentioned and forgotten events in Southeast Asian history.