The Micropolitics of Statemaking: Practical Knowledge as an Instrument of Statecraft in the 19th Century Sarawak

Abstract

In the context of traditional governance in the Malay Archipelago, statecraft was a style of governing characterised by the ruler’s personality, charisma and wisdom. The era of colonialism ushered in a new governance method modelled after a modern state’s bureaucracy. In Sarawak, the statecraft had shifted from one that was founded on the dichotomous relation between the coastal and upriver polities to the Brooke’s governance that was based primarily on the incorporation of the nonstate people. This article investigates the strategy of state’s incorporation through the role of native administrators and the perspective of the upriver groups involved in the statemaking. The article examines the function of knowledge in the micro-context of colonial administration by underlining the tension between the state-centric perspective upheld by the European officers and the native administrator’s practical knowledge. The study employed interpretive method in the reconstruction of the natives’ perspective from the district officers’ reports that were published in the government periodical The Sarawak Gazette. The findings show that the natives’ response in the early period of the modern statemaking took multiple forms of dissent, ranging from cynicism and indifference to rumours, foot dragging and factual manipulation. Their opposition was translated into avoidance from participating in the state’s economy. By examining the daily order of the state from the activity of the native officers, the contradiction between the Brooke’s state priority and the natives’ interest was exposed. The findings were significant because the perspective from ‘below’ has produced valuable information about how the early modern state was perceived by the natives.