Population in sarawak4/8/2023 But the commercial promise was not realised (Ooi, 1997). Gold production reached its apex in the late 1900s and mid-1910s, thereafter declining throughout the 1920s with only a brief recovery from the mid-1930s (Lucas, 1949).Ĭoal created high expectations and persuaded the parsimonious Rajah Charles to invest in two mining operations, at Simunjan and Brooketon. Sarawak’s gold exports surged from 984 ounces in 1898 to 24,192 ounces in 1899 (Jackson, 1968). The spurt in gold output was due to the application of ‘cyanidation’, and the ore from the BCL’s Tai Parit mine was the world’s first to undergo this process. And by the early 1930s, Kuching’s residents could listen to the British Broadcasting Corporation and, in the late 1930s, the Sarawak Broadcasting Service began tri-lingual transmission in English, Chinese and Malay.Īlthough the production of minerals was at first dominated by Chinese, later, as the Brooke family’s position became more secure, it was monopolised by James Brooke and the BCL (Kaur, 1995). Telecommunications developed slowly, but by the late 1920s, the main outstations had telephone networks and a line to Kuching. The second Rajah Charles’s only railway, a 10-mile line from Kuching southwards, mainly served Chinese market gardeners in carrying their fresh produce of vegetables, chickens and eggs to Kuching’s markets. Rivers and coastal shipping continued to serve as traditional arteries of transport and communication. Radial networks of roads were built around the main towns of Kuching, Sarawak’s capital Sibu, its main port and Miri, the centre of its oil industry. In 1948, excluding oil, 70 per cent of Sarawak’s imports and 75 per cent of exports passed through Singapore (Hepburn, 1949). The Kuching–Singapore shipping link provided all-important access to international markets. Of the major trade and sea lanes, Sarawak tended to be bypassed in favour of, notably, the Malay peninsula’s west coast states. The main destination for Sarawak’s exports was Singapore, where goods were sorted, graded and bulked for re-export. In 1963 Sarawak, with North Borneo (Sabah) and Singapore, joined the Federation of Malaya to form the Federation of Malaysia (although Singapore seceded in 1965). After liberation, the territory was placed under the British Military Administration until it became a British Crown Colony in 1946. ![]() Periodically, the British navy was requested by the Brookes to assist in suppressing piracy and to settle occasional territorial disputes (Azlan Tajuddin, 2012).įrom December 1941, Japanese forces occupied Sarawak for three and a half years, bringing an end to the Brooke family’s rule. ![]() In 1888, Sarawak became a British protectorate, but remained an independent sovereign state. Sarawak was governed by three generations of the Brooke family over 1841–1946, starting from James Brooke as the first Rajah and absolute monarch. ![]() 1įrom as far back as the early 18th century, northern Borneo had become a sphere of British influence-the rest of Borneo was under Dutch influence. Its population diversity differed from that in the peninsula, with the three largest communities that year Ibans (34 per cent), Malay and Melanaus (26 per cent) and Chinese (25 per cent), with the rest almost entirely other indigenous communities (Noakes, 1948). According to its 1947 population census, Sarawak’s population was less than half a million, with the peninsula’s some 10 times more at almost 5 million. While the two territories are similar in land area, Sarawak was (and remains) much more sparsely populated. Sarawak is located on the north-western side of the island of Borneo, and is separated from the Malay peninsula by the South China Sea.
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