North Borneo Chartered Company
The North Borneo Chartered Company (also British North Borneo Company , common abbreviation BNBCC ) was a British company that was formed on November 1, 1881 with the purpose of exploiting British North Borneo , now Sabah in Malaysia . North Borneo became a protectorate of the British Empire . The Society administered the area until 1946, when the area became a colony of British North Borneo.
history
The formation of this society was specifically based on the model of the British East India Company . The businessmen Baron von Overbeck (Austria), Alfred and Edward Dent, the heads of a British trading company in Shanghai and London, met with the rulers of the areas of North Borneo in order to obtain a concession for their colonial interests. The British governor of Labuan, a British colonial island off Brunei, accompanied the negotiations. On December 29, 1877, he was received by Abdul Mumin, Sultan of Brunei , and received the concession for 15,000 Straits dollars. However, since it turned out that the Sultan of Brunei had already ceded some areas to the Sultan of Sulu, new negotiations were necessary. With the help of William Clarke Cowie , a Scottish adventurer and friend of the Sultan, Jamal-ul Azam, the Sultan of Sulu , also signed the concession for 5,000 Straits dollars on January 22, 1878.
The Overbeck and Dents were rulers of an area of North Borneo with an area of 72,000 km². To consolidate his claims, Dent planned to register the company as a Royal Charter . Since it became apparent that this entry would be accompanied by a considerable delay, it was decided to first establish a provisional company. In 1881 the British North Borneo Provisional Association Limited was founded with a share capital of £ 300,000. As directors were Sir Rutherford Alcock , Alfred Dent , Richard Biddulph Martin , Admiral Mayne and WH Read used. The charter contract for the British North Borneo Company, with a capital of two million pounds, was sealed on November 1, 1881. The provisional company was dissolved.
The Latin Pergo et Perago ("I continue and complete") was chosen as the company's motto .
Mat Salleh Rebellion
In 1882 the company settled on Pulau Gaya and just one year later the Chartered Company had the mandate to rule what is now Sabah. In the Mat Salleh rebellion , the settlement was burned down. The tribal leader Mat Salleh led the rebellion, which mainly opposed the levying of taxes by the company.
Dissolution of the company
No other British Commonwealth country was so devastated during the war as North Borneo. Towards the end of the war it was already foreseeable that the company would not be able to finance the removal of the devastating destruction of the country, especially its infrastructure. The company therefore waived the further use of its charter and gave British North Borneo to the British Colonial Office . With the signing of a corresponding agreement on June 26, 1946, the history of the North Borneo Chartered Company ended. From July 15, 1946, and until Malaysia's independence in 1963, North Borneo was a crown colony. The agreement with the UK government included an instant financial settlement of £ 860,000 that enabled the Company to settle outstanding financial claims. The company had already rejected the government's offer to settle all further claims with a payment of 2.2 million pounds. The British government therefore appointed Lord Uthwatt as an independent arbitrator to negotiate further financial compensation. In March 1949 Uthwatt announced the results of his inquiries: 1,400,000 pounds would be awarded to the Company in compensation; it would not include any claims due to the war damage suffered. The news caused a bitter disappointment among the shareholders: overnight the value of the BNBCC share fell from 17 s to 9 s 6 d .
The liquidation of the company ended on October 22, 1962. The bankruptcy administrator in London wrote the last official letter from the old Chartered Company . It was addressed to the Chairman of the North Borneo Welfare Committee and contained 320 straits dollars - the proceeds of the sale of an old company equity deal. The insolvency administrator wrote: "I hope that this small gift will be accepted by the insolvency administrator of the old regime, combined with best wishes for the future of North Borneo."
Territory of the BNBCC
William Hood Treacher made a significant contribution to the consolidation of the administrative area . In tough negotiations with Rajah Brooke, he succeeded in giving the Company territories that were not included in the original lease agreements. These were Pengalat (1883), Klias Peninsular (1884), Mantanani (1885), Padas Hence (1889) and the area from Sipitang , Bongawan to Tuaran (1889).
From 1889 the island of Labuan was temporarily part of the administrative area.
Although Holland had set up a trading post on Borneo shortly after the establishment of the East India Company , there was initially no significant activity on the part of the Dutch on the east coast. That changed in 1846 when Holland signed a treaty with the Sultan of Bolongan that gave the Dutch control of the area. At the instigation of the Dutch, the Sultan married his son to the daughter of the Sultan of Tarakan in 1867, with which the Dutch sphere of influence finally reached the region around Tawau. However, the north of the Dutch area now overlapped with an area that the Sultan of Sulu claimed for himself. A conflict with the British was therefore inevitable when in 1878 the Sultan of Sulu laid the southern limit of his land surrender to the Baron von Overbeck on the Sibuku River . To settle the border disputes, the BNBCC negotiated with the Dutch from the 1880s to define the border between their area awarded by the Sultan of Sulu and the area that the Dutch claimed on the basis of the treaty with the Sultan of Bolongan. On January 20, 1891 they finally agreed on a line along 4 ° 10 'north latitude - which corresponded to a central division of the island of Sebatik.
On January 11, 1905, the BNBCC Lawas - a controversial border area of the Clarke Province - ceded to neighboring Sarawak and received “certain coal fields on Brunei Bay ” in exchange .
Duties of the company
The company had two areas of responsibility. First of all, economic development through the exploitation of the area's natural resources. The company was authorized to use the area for agriculture, colonization, promoting immigration, mining, and cutting wood. An employee of the company and later plantation owner in North Borneo, Owen Rutter, openly mentioned the purpose of "producing dividends". Second, based on the experience with the decline of the British East India Company, a passage was written to protect the rights of the residents. The company was legally responsible for protecting the customs and rights of residents, but in practice it had to earn dividends, which often limited those rights.
The first governor of North Borneo was particularly dedicated to the elimination of slavery. The land laws he enacted, however, in no way respected the traditional land rights of the residents. The second governor, Creagh, in 1888, issued several proclamations largely securing foreigners access to land.
A directorate in London determined the tasks of the company through the governors. Local directors implemented the governor's instructions. The company built up a state power, passed laws (proclamations), recruited Sikh police officers from northern India. Courts were set up to enforce the law. The construction of a railway line ( North Borneo Railway ) from today's Kota Kinabalu (then Jesselton) to Weston and Melalap, the promotion of trade and the establishment of plantations served for the economic exploitation of the area .
The periodical The North Borneo Herald and Official Gazette was published from March 1, 1883 to ensure efficient dissemination of the resolutions passed by the Court of Directors both within the administrative units in North Borneo and among the company's shareholders and investors .
British North Borneo Administration
With the establishment of the company, the administrative division of the country introduced by Overbeck was continued through the establishment of the two residences West Coast Residency and East Coast Residency . The seat of the two residents was Sandakan, where the governor also had his seat. Each residence in turn was divided into different provinces, which were administered by a District Officer . As the country developed, the number of residencies increased to five: Tawau Residency (also called East Coast Residency ), Sandakan Residency , West Coast Residency , Kudat Residency and Interior Residency ; the provinces were initially named after the members of the board of directors: Alcock, Cunlife, Dewhurst, Keppel, Dent, Martin, Elphinstone, Myburgh and Mayne. The senior residents occupied Sandakan and West Coast, while the other three residents had to make do with the 2nd class residences (Interior, East Coast and Kudat). The residents of Sandakan and West Coast were members of the Legislative Council , the Company's legislative assembly.
The election of WC Cowies to the board of directors in 1894 heralded a fundamental change in the style of administration: Before that, North Borneo was governed from North Borneo and the governors were given far-reaching powers and unrestricted responsibility. But now Cowie pulled the strings from London. Instead of the development of the country, the satisfaction of the shareholders was in the foreground. Alfred Dent, who opposed the costly and money-wasting ideas of Cowie's fierce opposition, finally gave up and withdrew from the company.
Under Sir Malcolm, the administration was given strict control of expenditure. Various governors reduced the number of district officers by cutting positions in Ranau, Pensiangan, Tenom, Sipitang, Penampang, Tuaran, Langkon, Lamag, Beluran and Semporna. Jardine, governor from 1934, completed this process by amalgamating the Tawau Residency with the Sandakan Residency on the one hand and the Interior Residency with the West Coast on the other; he also initiated the removal of the District Officer in Papar.
The administration at the community level was regulated by the Village Ordinance of 1891. This regulation fundamentally changed the status of the chiefs, the traditional indigenous tribal leaders. From now on, the BNBCC only accepted those chiefs as communal leaders whom it had appointed itself. Other chiefs, who had played an important role for generations, were sidelined or even branded as criminals or troublemakers. It was, among other things, the disregard for traditional leaders that shaped the spirit of resistance of personalities like Mat Salleh or Ontoros Antanom.
Company President
The company's supervisory board was headed by a chairman who officially became president of the company from 1910 :
| Chairman of the Board of Directors of the British North Borneo Chartered Company | |
| 1882-1893 | Sir Rutherford Alcock |
| 1893-1903 | Richard Biddulph Martin |
| 1903-1909 | Sir Charles James Jessel |
| 1909-14. September 1910 | William Clarke Cowie |
| President of the British North Borneo Chartered Company | |
| 1910-1926 | Sir Joseph West Ridgeway |
| February 3, 1926-15. July 1946 | Sir Neill Malcolm |
See also
literature
- Owen Rutter: British North Borneo - An Account of its History, Ressources and Native Tribes , Constable & Company Ltd, London, 1922.
- Regina Lim: Federal-state relations in Sabah, Malaysia: the Berjaya administration 1976-85 , Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2008, ISBN 978-981-230-811-5 .
- North Borneo Chartered Company: Views of British North Borneo ; London, 1899.
- WH Treacher: British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan and North Borneo , Singapore, Government print department, 1891.
- KG Tregonning: A History Of Modern Sabah (North Borneo 1881-1963) , 2nd edition, University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1965, reprint 1967.
- Datu Paduka Mat Salleh - Hero of Sabah (1894-1900) , ed. from the Sabah State Archives, Kota Kinabalu, May 2007.
Web links
- Wording of the British North Borneo Company's charter agreement
- Newspaper article on the North Borneo Chartered Company in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Remarks
- ↑ To date, Malaysia pays an annual sum of 5,000 ringgit to the government of the Philippines to maintain the lease agreement. The successor of the Sultan of Sulu derived ownership claims on Sabah from this levy. The clashes most recently escalated in February 2013, when around 200 uniformed and armed supporters of the Sultan of Sulu landed in Lahad Datu and demanded that Sabah's membership of the Sulu Sultanate be renegotiated.
- ↑ The final contractual stipulation of this border was of course not confirmed until 1912 by the joint border commission and on February 17, 1913 it was paraffined by Dutch and British negotiators.
- ↑ The original name was initially Magistrates-in-Charge .
Individual evidence
- ^ Property & Politics in Sabah, Malaysia. Amity A. Doolittle
- ^ Rutter, page 119
- ^ Lim, page 17
- ↑ Geoffrey Marston: "International Law and the Sabah Dispute" (PDF; 312 kB), which contains the official English translation of the contract
- ^ WH Treacher, page 101/102
- ^ WH Treacher, page 165
- ↑ a b The Straits Times ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Edition of June 20, 1946, page 3
- ↑ Tregonning, page 222-223
- ↑ The Straits Times ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Issue of March 8, 1949, page 11
- ↑ The Straits Times ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Edition of October 22, 1962, page 5
- ↑ The Straits Times, May 2, 1905, page 4 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Property & Politics in Sabah, Malaysia. Amity A. Doolittle
- ^ Property & Politics in Sabah, Malaysia. Amity A. Doolittle
- ↑ Tregonning, page 51
- ^ Rutter, page 157
- ↑ Tregonning, page 53
- ^ Sabah State Archive: Datu Paduka Mat Salleh , page 5
