North Borneo

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British North Borneo, 1899
British North Borneo Provincial Boundaries, 1888

North Borneo , also North Borneo ( English North Borneo ) or British North Borneo ( BNB ; German  for British North Borneo ), was a British protectorate from 1881 to 1946 under the sovereignty of the North Borneo Chartered Company and from 1946 to 1963 as British North Borneo (BNB), a crown colony of the United Kingdom . It occupied the northeastern part of the island of Borneo . Today the Malaysian state of Sabah is located there . The last governor of North Borneo , Sir William Allmond Codrington Goode , served from 1959 to 1963.

history

The state of North Borneo

In 1865, the US consul in Brunei , Charles Lee Moses, managed to negotiate a ten-year lease for the northern Borneo area with the Sultan of Brunei. However, the United States showed little interest in Asian colonies in the aftermath of the Civil War , so Moses sold his rights to the Hong Kong- based American Trading Company of Borneo , owned by Joseph William Torrey, Thomas Bradley Harris, Tat Cheong, and a few other Chinese Dealers operated. Torrey founded a settlement on Kimanis Bay which he named Ellena . However, all attempts to find investors for the settlement failed. Illnesses, deaths and flight of the recruited workers led to the settlement being abandoned towards the end of 1866. Harris died in 1866, and Torrey returned to America in 1877, where he died in Boston, Massachusetts in 1884.

Before the lease expired in January 1875, Torrey managed to sell his rights to North Borneo to the consul of Austria-Hungary in Hong Kong, the German-born Baron Gustav Overbeck . The first attempt of the two to extend the lease contract failed because of the stubbornness of the old sultan, who flatly refused to negotiate the contract. The two then entered into negotiations with the Temenggong , a prince and future heir of the Sultan, who arbitrarily extended the lease for another ten years for the sum of 1,000 straits dollars. Overbeck was now in possession of a contract that was not countersigned by the Sultan and which was therefore worthless according to the expertise of Sir Hugh Low, the governor of Labuan. The intended resale of his rights failed, and by 1876 Overbeck had almost used up his capital. In this situation, he turned to Alfred and Edward Dent, the young managing directors of Dent Brothers, the successor company of Dent & Co. , for help .

In 1877 Alfred Dent founded the Dent & Overbeck Company (also known as Overbeck & Co. ) together with Gustav Overbeck .

The two brothers gave Overbeck the desired financial support. Nevertheless, Overbeck still failed to find buyers for the rights to North Borneo, and so he withdrew from the business in 1880. The rights - including the associated titles "Maharajah of Sabah and Rajah of Gaya" - passed to Alfred Dent.

Dent was still looking for ways to make a profit on the rights to North Borneo. He was assisted by Sir Rutherford Alcock , Admiral Sir Henry Keppel and RB Martin. In July 1881 Alfred Dent and his brother founded the British North Borneo Provisional Association Ltd , which in the same year became the North Borneo Chartered Company through a royal charter agreement . The company started work in May 1882. Sir Rutherford Alcock became its first president and Alfred Dent became executive director.

Even a few protests by the governments of the Netherlands , Spain and Sarawak did not prevent the North Borneo Chartered Company from continuing to settle the territory and establish local government. Through negotiations with the Sultan of Brunei, the company subsequently acquired further sovereign and territorial rights, which extended the original state territory to the area on the Putatan River (May 1884), the Padas (November 1884), the Kawang (February 1885) and around the Mantanani Islands (April 1885) expanded. Some smaller areas on the Padas were added in March 1898.

The society laid the foundations for economic growth in North Borneo by resolutely addressing the increasing piracy in the coastal waters and the tribal feuds of the indigenous groups of Sabah. The slavery was abolished and created a basic supply of the population in the areas of transport, health and education. Since the population of North Borneo was barely 100,000, the immigration of workers from China was encouraged. All of these measures contributed to the flourishing of the tropical timber business and tobacco and rubber plantations in North Borneo towards the end of the 19th century.

British protectorate

In 1888 North Borneo became a British protectorate , but the administration remained entirely in the hands of the North Borneo Chartered Company (also the British North Borneo Chartered Company , BNBCC). The British Crown only retained control over foreign policy.

From 1890 to 1905 the British government placed Labuan Colony under the administration of the BNBCC.

The role of the BNBCC has had a major impact on the overall development of the region. Although the situation in the state was largely peaceful, the population occasionally opposed measures taken by society, such as levying taxes or giving up land to European plantation owners. The two outstanding uprisings were the Mat Salleh Rebellion from 1894 to 1900 and the All-Round Rebellion in 1915.

The administrative system of the BNBCC was based on the standard of the British colonial administration. The country was divided into residences, which in turn consisted of different "provinces". The term "province" was later given up in favor of subdivision into "districts". Originally there were only two residencies, the East Coast Residency and the West Coast Residency , whose residents were stationed in Sandakan and Jesselton , respectively. The districts were administered by district officers. In 1922 the number of residences was increased to five and the number of districts to 17 in order to better manage the newly developed areas in the interior of the country. The five residences West Coast, Kudat, Tawau, Interior and East Coast formed the basis for today's subdivision into West Coast Division , Kudat Division , Tawau Division , Interior Division and Sandakan Division .

In this administrative system, the top positions were given entirely to the British, while the tribal chiefs ruled at the lower municipal level. This distribution was not about a deliberate attempt of the British, an indirect rule system ( indirect rule introduced), but only an extremely convenient for the district officers down, as the latter with the customs and tribal policies of the indigenous groups were not familiar.

In fact, the BNBCC ruled the area until January 1, 1942. After the invasion , North Borneo was under Japanese rule until 1945 . The armed forces of the society were only 650 strong and hardly able to offer resistance to the invasion. During the occupation, the Europeans were interned and the public institutions ceased to operate. Poverty, disease and malnutrition were the order of the day at that time.

In June 1945 the Australian 9th Division landed in Brunei and liberated North Borneo before the end of the war. North Borneo was placed under British military administration until civil government was restored on July 15, 1946.

British North Borneo Crown Colony

The North Borneo Chartered Company was nowhere near the financial resources to rebuild North Borneo after the devastation of World War II . The larger cities were completely destroyed by the Allied bombardment and the infrastructure of the country was in a state of complete desolation. The company decided to cede its interests to the British government. The territory was initially placed under the control of the Colonial Office and became a British Crown Colony on July 15, 1946, along with Labuan . The destruction of the former capital Sandakan was so enormous that Jesselton was designated the post-war capital . The administrative system, including its division into residences and districts, was identical to the system introduced before the war; however, as a result of the changed status, North Borneo now had access to government funds that were used for reconstruction.

A governor and a commander -in-chief were placed at the head of the crown colony , who ruled North Borneo with the help of an advisory body. This Advisory Council consists ex officio of a State Secretary as Deputy Chief Secretary , the Attorney General and the Treasurer, as well as other advisors that the Governor deems necessary. In 1950 the Advisory Council was replaced by the Executive Council (German: “Executive Council”) and the Legislative Council (German: “Legislative Council”).

The Executive Council worked as a cabinet and was headed by the Chief Secretary . In addition to the attorney general and the treasurer, two official representatives and four nominated members belonged to this group. The governor presided over the meetings of the executive board and had sole authority to put questions to the council.

The legislative council consisted of the governor as president, the three ex-officio members already mentioned, nine official representatives and ten nominated members.

The top positions in the administration were again occupied by the British and it was not until 1957 that the first non-European succeeded in taking up the post of senior administrative officer.

On August 31, 1963, British North Borneo in Keningau was given full self-government. A little over two weeks later, on September 16, 1963, the state joined the Malaya Federation, together with Sarawak and Singapore , which forms what is now Malaysia .

Postage stamps

Originally, mail from northern Borneo was forwarded via Labuan or Singapore using Straits Settlement stamps . The North Boneo Chartered Company issued its first own postage stamps in March 1883, bearing the company's coat of arms - a dhow and a lion - the inscription "NORTH BORNEO" and the value in English , Jawi and Chinese . The values ​​used were initially 2c, 4c and 8c, followed by large stamps valued at 50c and $ 1, which by the way had a more elaborate design and in which the coat of arms was flanked by two natives.

In 1886 stamps with a value of ½c, 1c and 10c were added. The need for the values ​​3c and 5c was met by overprinting the existing stamps. At the same time, the print shop Blades, East, and Blades in London published an edition with the inscription "BRITISH NORTH BORNEO", which also contained the values ​​25c and $ 2 and was provided with an elaborate frame. The stamps were changed again in 1888 and now contained the inscription "POSTAGE & REVENUE" instead of "POSTAGE" as before, as well as minor changes to the values ​​from 25c to $ 2. In 1889, larger and more elaborate stamps were added at $ 5 and $ 10.

Bottlenecks in 1890, 1891 and 1892 made it necessary to introduce additional surcharges.

In 1894 the Protectorate published a new, permanent series , engraved by Waterlow and Sons , which included nine illustrations of plants, animals and scenes from North Borneo and was inscribed "STATE OF NORTH BORNEO".

literature

  • KG Tregonning: A History Of Modern Sabah (North Borneo 1881–1963) , 2nd edition, University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1965, reprint 1967.

Web links

Commons : North Borneo  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Tregonning, Chapter 1
  2. ^ Biography of Baron Overbeck , accessed June 30, 2011