CHAPTER II 



HISTORY OF BORNEO 



The Pagan tribes of Borneo have no written records 

 of their history and only very vague traditions con- 

 cerning events in the Hves of their ancestors of 

 more than five or six generations ago. But the 

 written records of more cultured peoples of the Far 

 East contain references to Borneo which throw 

 some small rays of light upon the past history and 

 present condition of its population. It has seemed 

 to us worth while to bring together in these pages 

 these few historical notes. The later history of 

 Borneo, which is in the main the story of its occupa- 

 tion by and division between the Dutch and English, 

 and especially the romantic history of the acquisition 

 of the raj of Sarawak by its first English rajah, 

 Sir James Brooke, has often been told,^ and for this 

 reason may be dismissed by us in a very few words. 

 The coasts of Borneo have long been occupied 

 by a Mohammedan population of Malay culture ; 

 this population is partly descended from Malay 

 and Arab immigrants, and partly from indigenous 

 individuals and communities that have adopted the 

 Malay faith and culture in recent centuries. When 

 Europeans first visited the island, this population, 

 dwelling for the most part, as it still does, in villages 

 and small towns upon the coast and in or near the 



1 See especially the recently published History of Sa7-awak under its Two 

 White Rajahs, by S. Baring-Gould and C. A. Bampfylde, London, 1910. 



