Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- A Note on the Language, Spelling and Pagination of Quotations
- 1 Introduction: Booking Southeast Asia: The History of an Idea
- 2 Booking Southeast Asia: And So It Begins, with a Nightmare
- 3 The New Language-Game of Modern Colonial Capitalism
- 4 Raffles’ Java as Museum
- 5 Dressing the Cannibal: John Anderson’s Sumatra as Market
- 6 Brooke, Keppel, Mundy and Marryat’s Borneo as ‘The Den of Pirates’
- 7 Crawfurd’s Burma as the Torpid ‘Land of Tyranny’
- 8 Bricolage, Power and How a Region Was Discursively Constructed
- Appendix A The full Transcript of the Article by William Cobbett on the Subject of the British Invasion of Java
- Appendix B Keeping an eye on the Javanese: Raffles’ ‘Regulations of 1814 for the More Effectual Administration of Justice in the Provincial Courts of Java'
- Appendix C James Brooke’s Detractors in the British Parliament and the Aborigines’ Protection Society
- Appendix D The clash between the HMS Dido and the Ships of the Rajah of Riao: A Case of Mistaken Identity and Misappropriation of the Signifier ‘Pirate’
- Appendix E The Construction of the Native other in the Writings of Hugh Clifford, British Colonial Resident to Pahang
- Bibliography
- Index
Appendix C - James Brooke’s Detractors in the British Parliament and the Aborigines’ Protection Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- A Note on the Language, Spelling and Pagination of Quotations
- 1 Introduction: Booking Southeast Asia: The History of an Idea
- 2 Booking Southeast Asia: And So It Begins, with a Nightmare
- 3 The New Language-Game of Modern Colonial Capitalism
- 4 Raffles’ Java as Museum
- 5 Dressing the Cannibal: John Anderson’s Sumatra as Market
- 6 Brooke, Keppel, Mundy and Marryat’s Borneo as ‘The Den of Pirates’
- 7 Crawfurd’s Burma as the Torpid ‘Land of Tyranny’
- 8 Bricolage, Power and How a Region Was Discursively Constructed
- Appendix A The full Transcript of the Article by William Cobbett on the Subject of the British Invasion of Java
- Appendix B Keeping an eye on the Javanese: Raffles’ ‘Regulations of 1814 for the More Effectual Administration of Justice in the Provincial Courts of Java'
- Appendix C James Brooke’s Detractors in the British Parliament and the Aborigines’ Protection Society
- Appendix D The clash between the HMS Dido and the Ships of the Rajah of Riao: A Case of Mistaken Identity and Misappropriation of the Signifier ‘Pirate’
- Appendix E The Construction of the Native other in the Writings of Hugh Clifford, British Colonial Resident to Pahang
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Though he would later be praised as one of Britain's empire-builders, James Brooke was the subject of many campaigns by the Aborigines’ Protection Society. The society was formed in 1837 by anti-slavery campaigners such as Thomas Hodgkin, William Allen, Thomas Fowell Buxton and Thomas Clarkson. Following the end of the slave trade in England in 1832, members of the anti-slavery movement began to take an interest in the welfare of native communities in Africa and Asia that had come under British colonial rule. James Brooke was a regular target by the society then, which lobbied the British parliament on a number of occasions and called for an investigation into the conduct of Brooke in Borneo. Following the defeat of Brunei and the gaining of Labuan as another British colonial outpost, a renewed campaign against Brooke was launched in London, which managed to gain the support of MPs as well.
A report in the London Illustrated News in 1850 gives an account of the society's campaign to open up an enquiry into Brooke's dealings in Sarawak, and to investigate reports that Brooke had offered money to his native allies in return for the killing of Dayak natives:
On Wednesday evening a public meeting was held at the London Tavern, convened by the Aborigines’ Protection and Peace Societies, “to consider (to quote the handbill) the fearful sacrifice of human life on the coast of Borneo in July last year (1849); and to petition Parliament for the total and immediate abolition of the practice of awarding head-money for the destruction of pirates.” On the platform were Mr George Thompson, MP, Mr Joseph Sturge, Mr J. Humphreys Parry, the Rev. C. B. Gribble, the Rev. Henry Richards, Mr S. F. Woolmer, Mr Charles Gilpin, Sir Joshua Walmsley, Rev. Dr Cox, and other advocates of the Universal Peace movement. Mr Joseph Sturge, having been called to the chair, read a letter… The Rev. Henry Richards then proceeded to address the meeting, and entered into a lengthened detail of the expedition in July last against the Bornean Dyaks of the Sarabus river, in order to prove that the massacre that followed was deserving of public investigation.
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- The Discursive Construction of Southeast Asia in 19th Century Colonial-Capitalist Discourse , pp. 223 - 225Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2016