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An all new season of the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.
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Mom Talk has just been blowing up.
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Whitney and Jen are on Dancing with the Stars. Taylor is a bachelorette.
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Saying that out loud is crazy.
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Like that is huge.
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But all the cool opportunities could pull us apart.
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It's causing issues in everyone's marriage. My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos. Watch the Hulu original series the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers to from supply. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Hello, I'm Nicholas Gordon, host of the Age Review of Books podcast and in partnership with the New Books Network. In this podcast we interview fiction and nonfiction authors working in, around and about the Asia Pacific region. Borneo, split between two countries, home to some of the world's oldest rainforests and a vast array of animal and plant life, is back in the news. The island is set to be home to Nusantara, Indonesia's new planned political capital, set to maybe open in 2028. And the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, different from the rest of Peninsular Malaysia, are griping for more rights and authority to control their own wealth. Author Olivier Heine tackles the long history of Borneo in his latest book, titled appropriately, the History of an Enigma. He tackles the island's indigenous communities, the spread of Hindu, Chinese, Muslim and European influence, the rise of the White Raja, and how Borneo is treated by today's modern nations. Former diplomat with the un, the OSSE in the uk, Olivier Hein has undertaken postings in Kosovo, Turkmenistan, the USA and France. He is also the author of Star and the Historical Adventure of Mauritius and Mother of the the Remarkable History of Turkmenistan. He is also a regular contributor to the Chap magazine. So, Olivier, thank you for coming on the show to talk about your book Borneo the History of an Enigma. You know, let's talk about the geography of Borneo first. You know, the island's kind of known for its deep jungles. It's got Kota Kinabalu on it. But how does the island's kind of geographic structure affect the development of human society on the island?
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Sure. Firstly, Nicholas, thank you so much for having me on on the program, which is great. Let's talk about Borneo. It' let's not forget this is the third largest island in the world. It's huge. It straddles the equator. It it covers nearly 750,000 square kilometers. And it's right pretty much sat fat and plump in the middle of the Southeast Asian archipelago. I think there's probably four things you can say that dictate its. Its landscape so that it has a surprising mountainous interior. The famous Mount Kinabalu, which is over 4,000 meters, is the. Is the island's highest point. But of course, it's. It's sort of famously defined by its dense and incredibly ancient rainforest. The oldest rainforest in the world, actually sort of 130 million years old and incredibly biodiverse. We'll talk about that in a minute, I think. But it has vast river networks sort of flowing from the interior, and overall a very humid equatorial climate. So it has a lot of heavy rainfall and it's pretty hot all year round. So I think when you put all these things together, you can say Borneo is immense. And it was always, and actually still is, difficult to traverse. So there were always, you know, geography was formed some pretty natural barriers between communities. But I think it's also worth stressing something else about. You know, people have been there for tens of thousands of years, but until 12,000 years ago or so, Borneo wasn't an island at all. It was part of this huge peninsula which we now call the Sunda Shelf. And it was only sort of rising the sea levels after the meltings of the ice caps around that time, that sort of turned it into an island. So as a consequence, you could say that there was never a huge number of people on the island then. And in many ways it's not very densely populated now until quite recently, because of the challenges I think that the island presented. There was only five people per square kilometer. And, you know, I'm recording this from, from the UK and we have 290 people per square kilometer. So that gives an idea about the sort of lack of density. But, yeah, fundamentally, with that interior, which is so mountainous and heavily rainforest, those rivers became the primary highways for sort of cultural development and trade and settlement that came thereafter.
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What are some of the earliest pieces of evidence we have of kind of human settlement on Borneo? What are some of the early humans that got there first?
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Sure. So I think the first. I'll put a caveat here, which is that there's been some work done in Borneo for sure on archaeology, but I bet there's loads more to come that's going to find out a lot more. So the work that we've done across northern Borneo that archaeologists have done shows that there were Stone Age hunter gatherers that were using caves there, the Nea caves in particular, maybe as much as 50,000 years ago. And this was the period, like I said, when there was much lower sea levels connected, you know, Borneo to the mainland of Southeast Asia already. So it was one of the oldest inhabited regions of, of Southeast Asia at the time. The, the oldest specific human skull that we found was getting on for around 40, 000 years old. Like this is again in this place called Near Caves. It was found in the 1950s by rather incredibly eclectic and sort of wonderful archaeologist, ethnologist and many other things called Tom Harrison and it was nicknamed Deep Skull. It's thought to be of a sort of middle aged female and it's one of the oldest modern human remains in Southeast Asia. So we found that since then the human bones, stone tools, animal remains, marine shells have shown a pretty long sequence of occupation since then. The one thing I would point out though is that those rising sea levels that happened after that means that there may have been, you know, human habitation, may have been human habitation before that's now been lost somewhere underneath the, underneath the ocean. But that's the sort of period we're talking about. So definitely at least 40,000 years, possibly a little bit longer.
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So let's, let's talk about some of the, you know, indigenous societies that we find on Bonario. People like, people like the Dayak, you know, what are these societies like and how do they differ from other populations in the region?
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Sure. So I think that the answer is the second part of that question is they differ greatly. But so the indigenous societies in Borneo are really one of the most, I think intricate cultural mosaics of anywhere in, in Ireland, Southeast Asia. So I think that the word diac which we just used is a very important one and it's, but it's very much an umbrella category. So dyac was this word introduced to describe. We don't know where it comes from in Stanley. It was an exonym we think sort of introduced by the Dutch at some stage. But it basically it means all, all the indigenous Borneo populations and only Borneo. It doesn't refer to any indigenous peoples anywhere else, just specifically Borneo, but it encompasses its own umbrella term that encompasses variously hundreds of different ethnic groups that populated both the interior and the coastal areas of Borneo. So diac, if we're going to use that term as a sort of large W, they were so an Austronesian speaking indigenous groups. So often it was still a term to define the sort of those who inhabited the interior of Borneo, those ones who would be living from thousands of years ago onwards in those major rivers that I mentioned earlier on. And initially they'd have practiced forest foraging and all living in or called longhouses, which still exist to this day, which where basically like the entire village would live under one huge long house. There is, there's records of them in fact dating back to Victorian times, which some of which are 500 meters long. So, so that. There we go. Diac is a broad non tribal label rather than a single ethnic group. So when you look at the actual subgroups that sit under there, there are. It's very hard to. To actually quantify that the names you will hear spoken a lot there of different trouble groups are the Iban, the Kayan, the K. Kenya and Gaju. There's lots. But it's hard to actually sort of say there are this many indigenous Diet groups because over thousands of years they separated, merged, re. Separated. Re. Merged. But traditionally speaking, and this is a big generalization, a lot of the Diet groups were non Muslim. Today many are Christian. But more importantly in the past they still practiced and to a certain extent practice sort of more animist indigenous religions, if you will, of, you know, the worship of rocks and plants and trees that went alongside any, any sort of more modern, modern monotheistic religion that would come about that arrived in their, in their areas. So, so that this diversity of. Of all these different cultures that spoke, you know, different languages that didn't necessarily understand each other, that had quite different cultures depending on whether they were in the coast or in land and whatever it challenges the idea of a single day isn't one. So the best way to look at it really is just to look at Borneo as being like a, like a mini continent of micro societies, if you will. And I think it's always worth defining that there was always these, these different ethnic indigenous groups in Borneo, but equally there along the Borneo coast, there were always. And very distinct from these Dyak groups were the Bornean Malays who very much lived along the coast and over the last, say two to three thousand years have sort of shaped the coastal trade networks. They would have adopted Islam quite early and integrated into the sort of wider Malay world. So they're much more closer on the coast and in certain parts to and culturally closer to those Malay Peninsula. The Malay populations that you get on the Malay Peninsula and in Sumatra, they've got more in common with those than they do with the, with the Dyak groups that you get in the interior. And I'd also just put one extra sort of dimension to all this, which is Borneo also developed from again thousands of years ago, people who lived an incredibly maritime existence. They are sometimes called the Sama or the Bajau or the Sama Bajau. Altogether, they're basically sea nomads who lived traditionally boat dwellings or semi nomadic life building villages well out to sea in the shallows, sometimes never touching land for years at a time. And it's an identity shaped very much by seafaring rather than the sort of forest and riverine life that I was describing earlier on for the various diet groups. But they were traditionally an integral part of that sort of wider Borneo ethnic makeup as well, and a pretty unique one that sort of very much marine life that they lived and to a certain extent still do.
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So there's kind of seems like there's like successive waves of like external influences that kind of come into, into Borneo. Maybe. Let's kind of start with. Maybe let's kind of start with the first, the earlier ones, I think specifically kind of first there's the Hindu influence that kind of special about the region, and then there's the Chinese influence. Right.
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The region.
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Kind of talk a bit more about these kind of earlier, these, these earlier kind of waves of cultural influence and how they kind of get to Borneo.
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Sure. So I think you're right. The first ones we can really sort of speak about with any sort of confidence are probably the Hindu and Buddhist influences that would have arrived, very roughly speaking around 2,000 years ago. And it's worth sort of explaining how this happens. So at the time, as we know, this was the sort of start on the Eurasian landmass, the start of what we now call the Silk Roads, which of all the trade that was sort of being slowly linked up between, you know, let's say China at one end and as far as Rome at the other end of Eurasia. But it's easy to forget that actually at the same time there was something similar developing in, in the Indian Ocean on the marine world as well, a sort of big trade network. But it's worth mentioning that in those days you didn't just sail somewhere, sell all your stuff, buy some local produce and then hop back. You, you could only go and go back when the trade winds and the monsoon winds would let you. So we know for a fact that there were Indian traders who were coming to Southeast Asia, including Borneo, starting from that time. But of course, when they would come and trade their goods, they may have had to then stay on the island. And in different islands around that, around the Southeast Asian peninsula, they could have stayed there for months at a time, waiting for the developing networks and waiting for the return travel being made possible. So this was a Perfect opportunity for them to basically share their beliefs, not sort of necessarily forcefully, but just through osmosis. And we know from various finds both on the east and west coast of Borneo that various Borneans at the time, from 2,000 years ago onwards, for about six or seven hundred years, were being influenced specifically by the Shaivist branch of Hinduism, those who worshiped Shiva and also the Theraveda branch of Buddhism. It seems to have been. Seem to have settled in. We found various sort of signs of that there. But it also seems at the same time, and this was something that's always been a trait with Borneans, more recently as well, with other religions that have come, was, yes, they would take on various influences of external religions that were coming, but never at the full expense of the. Of the religious practices they were doing at the time. It was. It was almost a bit like a palimpsest, if you would, they would fit on, in many cases, the new belief system on top of what they already were practicing rather than instead of. And it's also worth saying that importantly, just because of that thick rainforest, we mentioned beforehand that whilst these external influences of Hinduism and Buddhism were affecting the coast and those river mouths, they never really penetrated deep into those sort of diac interiors that we mentioned earlier on. It was more of a coastal thing as well. So I think that was the. They were the first major external influence. But then if we go forward to, let's say, the seventh or eighth century of the Common Era, that's when China began to take an interest in Borneo, sort of discovered it, incented and discovered it, but they discovered for themselves, if you will. And now the main reason for there is that their population in China was growing and they had a lot of need for various goods that were important for them. They were, for example, iron. And Borneo produces iron. They wanted that for weaponry. Secondly, there was rhino horn, which was, and sadly still is a sort of thought to be an aphrodisiac. But there were other things that Borneo seemed to have been offering them at the time which they couldn't find elsewhere. One was this rather mysterious thing called bezoa stone, which is this. These things found in the intestines of various animals that again, the Chinese thought was an aphrodisiac and it was particular prevalence in the Borneo porcupine, would you imagine. And so they seem to have killed a lot of porcupines in Borneo in order to obtain this bezoa stone, which they thought was of good use for their health. There was benzoin gum, which was this tree resin found only on Borneo and Sumatra and gave us a nice scent. And we forget sometimes in that day and age, it was probably a lot smellier than it is now. And so having something that masks bad smell was always well sought out. Borneo had a lot of cave swiftlets and China had developed a taste for bird's nest soup. And so they would come and trade a lot of bird's nests with the Borneans at the time. But perhaps the most important thing that China wanted was camphor. Again, camphor had served several purposes, but one of those was. And camphor trees were only found in Borneo and Sumatra were the best ones thought to be in Borneo. And camphor crystals, which would only sort of form in the particular camphor trees in particular areas that actually have a disease in them, they form these crystals. And for the Chinese, this served particularly three great purposes for them. One is they thought it served medicinal purposes. Secondly, it may have had some sort of. For. For religious ceremonies. It seems to have been useful for them. And thirdly, a bit like the benzoin gum I mentioned earlier, it. It masked nasty smells. It's just a nice smell that became very important to them. So that is how China first started developing a trade with northern Borneo from around the seventh or eighth century. But it became a big cultural influence and a lot of Chinese started settling in that part of the island as well and continued to sort of have establishments there to this day. So that's how I think in ancient times, those two big civilizations of India and China first started engaging with and having an influence in Borneo.
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Then the kind of the next wave of influence is, is Islam, which kind of then I think settle definitely settles in kind of the north of the island around what's now Brunei. I mean, how does Islam make its way to. To the island?
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There's a couple of aspects. So I think merchant networks is the best way to describe that. So the, the sort of influences I was mentioning from, from those countries, let's not assume that everybody from India and China were either sort of of, let's say, practicing Chinese traditional religions or, or, or Hinduism as well. There were many Muslim Indians coming over as well who would have spread Islam when that. But that was sort of quite a bit later than the Eurasian, you know, big explosion of conquest that happened from the seventh and eighth century. This was, we're talking more 10th to 15th century by osmosis and via merchants. There was no, as I said, no sort of aggressive conquest of any kind. And there were a lot of Chinese Muslim traders at the time as well. We forget how big? There was a Chinese Muslim population too, that, that gradually brought Islam again mostly to the coastal regions. And one of the great ways that you've just mentioned was, was Brunei, which was the biggest northern Borneo kingdom, for want of a better word. But it was, it, it was a far, far bigger place than it is now Brunei and, and had a lot of sort of regional power then, but it was Brunei leaders who, who converted. And then slowly, of course, the, a lot of the population would have followed thereafter. But Islam then became embedded as a sort of in maritime trading communities which sort of again distinguish that, that, that coastline quite a lot from the interior Dyak people we're talking earlier on. But that, you know, this slow biosmosis, the slow introduction of Islamic law and writering traditions because Islam brought actually the book, the concept of the book and being able to record information in a sort of more permanent way compared to the methods that had previously of sort of writing on bark paper or stone. And, and so yeah, Brunei and court culture was reshaped and so were others as well. So Islam spread to that part of the world in Borneo very differently to how it had in the sort of the Middle east and North Africa, for example.
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So finally we got the guy talk about empire, talk about European empire. You know, how does the island of Borneo get kind of sucked into, sucked into all these various kind of European imperial orbits. And we do have to talk about the White Rajah at some point. But let's start by talking about how Borneo gets roped into empire first and then we can talk about Sarawak.
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Sure. Okay, so I'm trying to think where the best places was to take a step back here. Let's just have a quick overview first of all. So it's around the early 16th century where the two big European powers at the time, which were Portugal and Spain, first arrived in Southeast Asia and more specifically including Borneo. But it was pretty limited in Borneo for a whole bunch of reasons. I think it's sometimes worth explaining why they suddenly turned up at this time in the first place. So it fully indulged me slightly. And I think this is one of the interesting things. We always hear about the famous spice trade, but how and why did it come about? Because this all revolves around spice, which sounds a little bit like sort of talking about Frank Herbert's Dune, but it's all very relevant. So basically from around, let's say 1400 or so, Europe was becoming far more wealthy after the horrors of the Black Death and people were being able to afford and be able to develop a taste for eating more meat. So there was. The problem was there weren't facilities to sort of. You couldn't keep all the animals in Europe, which was a pretty back part of the backwater part of Eurasia at the time. You need to remember you couldn't keep all these animals alive over the winter. There just wasn't the facilities. You had to slaughter them. But the problem is the only way the. The meat needed to be preserved over the. Over the colder months. But the only preservatives they had at the time were salt and vinegar. And I don't need to tell you that if you just go and put fresh meat and salt and vinegar, it doesn't taste very good. But then Suddenly, around the 14th or 15th century on some European markets from Venice onwards, there were these new interesting spices started appearing from distant shores. They weren't entirely sure where from, but they were both made the meat that you were trying to keep over the winter very tasty, and it preserved them for longer. And so they. Yeah, the great powers of Europe, which were mainly Spain and Portugal at the time, said we have to find out where this is coming from and then shamelessly corner that market and become even richer. Which is what first sort of prompted Spain and Portugal to sort of go exploring to that part of the world. The ones we're talking about here in terms of spice are nutmeg, mace, cloves, which were not found in Borneo. They were found in the sort of little islands called Maluku, in the same. In the same part of the world. But Borneo itself did produce in great quantities the other spice that became very popular, which was pepper. So basically from. In around 1521, with the Portuguese traveling eastwards and the Spanish going the other way, going westwards from the Americas and then across the Pacific, they sort of bumped into each other in around 1521, off Brunei, off Borneo. And neither made great inroads, though, because they didn't really understand who. How. Everywhere else had a great ethnic homogeneity and a cultural homogeneity, a sort of centralized structure, whether it was on Java or Sumatra or elsewhere. But Borneo never offered that. It was. It was. That's. That's where the enigma part comes into it. It was a whole gaggle of different and ethnic groups and, and languages and cultures and. And polities that basically had very little to do with each other. So you couldn't just sort of develop a trade treaty with the local prince, and that was that, because it just didn't have any impact anywhere else. So Portugal Sort of flattered to deceive. Their powers actually waned quite quickly. Spain by then was far too preoccupied with its big American conquests that it sort of ignored, and the Philippines nearby that it then basically didn't ever. Neither of these countries had a big influence at all on Borneo, but it was the next great power that came along from around the early 1600s. Well, they certainly did, and that was the Dutch. So the Dutch had set up in 1602, the Dutch East India Company, the Ferengi de Ostengi Kompanie, and it was a rival to the British version, had been set up a couple of years earlier in London. These were basically the world's first companies. And the Dutch basically invented the concept of the stock market. And the VOC ruthlessly came in in the 16th century and cornered that spice market and controlled vast swathes of the of Southeast Asia, becoming in the process the richest company in the history of the world. So with a market valuation, with inflation of about $8 trillion, all because of this spice. But, and here's the thing, despite cornering that market and despite controlling vast swathes of that peninsula, Borneo was like with the Portuguese. And the Dutch was just this enigma to them. They didn't know what to do and how to deal with it. They tried to sort of get the pepper trade going, which they did, and setting up various sort of little trade stations and factories along the coast, but they could never get their head around it. So it just was a bit of a blessing for the Borneans in a certain extent. They weren't being dominated by an external influence like a lot of the other islands had at the time. The British, of course, then came sniffing as well and said, we'll have a go too. They fared a little better, but not a great deal better over the 17th and 18th century. But again, they couldn't ever be said to go and say, yes, we understand Borneo. And we managed to control Borneo and all its trade, far from it. And it's worth pointing out at the time that when there's suddenly a huge amount of wealth going across the islands, that tends to make people sort of take notice. And so that marked a huge rise in piracy at the time. So Borneo then became home in the 17th and 18th century to some. Some huge pirate lairs, which all sounds very romantic. These were horribly scary people, though. They were just as scary as the ones in, I don't know, Tortuga in the West Indies or Yves Sainte Marie in Madagascar were just, you know, their names have not become as famous as Those, but be under no illusions. They were, they were powerful and really scary. So, so that is how the background of how the Europeans chose to come and how, how they were successful in certain ways. But as far as Borneo was concerned, they, they never really made great inroads. And that was the background behind, as you've just mentioned, the White Rajas, which I can talk about. Apologies, my headphones just fell off. So yes, that we can, we can talk about the White Rajas if you like, because that feels like.
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Well, let's definitely talk about the White Rogers and Sarawak because this is very, it's just a very strange turn of events kind of in the period that the Brooks were in charge of, um, were in charge of this large swath of the island. So how did this come about and kind of what did it mean for the Brooks to be in charge of this region?
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Yeah, you're right. Strange is one of the many adjectives you could use. It was totally anomalous. So a quick overview. Yeah, the White Rajas. James Brooke is the name we need to be legal. He was the first of the three White Rajas have been named and he came to basically, he and his two successors, his family basically came to own, I don't know how a better word to explain it and run that sort of the top third of Borneo through a mix of, let's say, timing, opportunism and local politics. It was emphatically not a formal official British design, far from it. But in essence, in 1839 he was just a middle class Brit just traveling around his home. He sailed to Sarawak just. And Sarawak being in the northwestern corner of Borneo. And he'd always wanted to go there. So he sailed on his yacht. And Brunei is still sort of dominating, sort of owns, if you will, that part of the world. But the Sultanate at the time was struggling to suppress a local rebellion and there was basically a local uprising about forced labor and mining and taxes and whatever which the Sultan couldn't quell and that he, he or his uncle basically who was, who was sort of regent at the time, basically asked Brooke, who happened just to be visiting the region, says, oh, can you help us in some way? And so sure enough, Brooke sort of came back the next year in 1840, asked the Brits if he could borrow a squadron. Remember, he's just an individual, he's not representing Britain at all. He's just as a private individual. So can I borrow a squadron? Because they've asked me to sort of help negotiate a conflict. And the Brits going, okay, let's see where this goes. They're quite intrigued. And sure enough, he steps in with a little bit of help from Goding, from the British squadron. But mainly through, he's a silver tongued diplomat natural, he negotiates the sort of end to the conflict and the grateful Bruneian elite sort of say thank you so much for doing this. It's sort of saved so much hassle. As a thank you, we'd like to give you this tiny little corner of this island from this little village called Kuching and right by the river which is called Sarawak, and said, would you like to become a governor or a raja of this region and run it as a quasi independent state? And he went, okay, why not? And then over the next 30 years, he Basically, or 25 years or so, he basically grows it by buying chunks, you know, buying chunks of land from the Sultan of Brunei, who needs the money. He develops an incredible society there of, you know, on one hand you could go and say, well, hang on, is he just another British colonialist telling people how to be civilized? Well, the answer is yes and no, because he was, you know, this was very much ahead of its time, very inclusive. He insisted that Malay would be the language, not English, as a sort of running this new society of this new area where he would, he would make sure that he drew all the locals into being able, they were Malay, Bornean or Chinese, Bornean or Dayak, to basically help run and develop the economic, the political side of things as well. And it became very successful. And the Brits were officially not part of this. It was just him being, running as an individual. And then when he died in the 1860s, in 1868, his, his nephew Charles took over and was around for the next 50 years. He carried on growing the area even more, again buying chunks from the Sultan of Brunei, who was happy just to flog various parts of his diminishing area more and more just in exchange for cash. And then his son Viner, who took over in the First World War in 1917 and ruled until the Second World War. So basically for about 100 years, from the 1840s to the 1940s, the top, let's say quarter, northwest corner of Borneo was run as this personal fiefdom by private Brits who had officially not a great deal to do with the British authorities. They were at one stage in the 1880s, they did, along with other parts of Borneo and Brunei did cede their sort of security and foreign policy to the British, who sort of gradually had increased their influence there, but insisted at the time whether they were both the Brunei and Sultan, but also the Brooks in Sarawak basically said, don't interfere with the internal side of things. We're dealing with that Britain and we're running that as we choose. So that was the sort of background as to how this totally unique and anomalous situation came about. And like I said, there is a. It's quite easy now to look back on that with our sort of modern eyes and modern ears and think, well, this is all very unsavory sort of colonialism by any other name, but it was quite different compared to the sort of state sponsored colonialism that we used to elsewhere. And the fact is the Brooks were very popular, which sort of success that, you know, the way they went about things by and large, from James Brooke onwards, they, they were very popular and nobody wanted in Sarawak, in that corner of Borneo to actually change the situation because it made them all happy and wealthy and much safer. So yeah, this is how it came about with the Brooks offering stability with a sort of military backing if needed from the Brits, but still very with the Brits tolerating this rule because it sort of basically created a friendly buffer in this rather contested region and the local leaders in that part of the island saw him as a counterweight to the, the actual Bruneian Sultan and those officials. So, yeah, a unique situation, but an absolutely fascinating one that seems in certain ways to have worked.
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B
Currently, you know, Borneo split between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. So it's, you know, most of, I guess southern Borneo. Kalimantan is part of Indonesia. You have Sabah and Sarawak, now part of Malaysia, although it seems like they are. They're constantly having tensions with Peninsular Malaysia about things like energy reserves like that. And then you have, then you have Brunei. That's what the island looks like today in terms of the national split. But kind of how does that grow from. From the immediate kind of post war era. So Second World War ends, the Japanese lose, how do we go from there to the kind of three way split on the island we have now?
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A
Yeah, so I mean like it's. The first thing to say is it's very complex and I could only give a very superficial sort of overview of this. The book goes into great detail of course, but you're right, Borneo is unique. It's the only island, I think in the world that has three different countries, all of one country and parts of two other countries ruling it. So how did that come about? So as you say, after the Japanese defeat of the Second World War and Borneo had really suffered under Japanese hands in the Second World War. Those northern territories we've been talking about, so Sarawak, where the brooks had been North Borneo, which had been run by a sort of British company, for want of a better word, since about the 1880s, and then the Sultanate of Brunei, they all agreed to come under sort of British military administration after the Second World War, before sort of becoming crown colonies, where, because Britain had already sort of taken, at the Malay insistence, actually the Malay Peninsula, Britain sort of had oversight of that. Post Second World War, the Malays sort of wanted Britain to sort of offer a sort of regional power there. The Dutch, meanwhile, had moved back into the southern part of Borneo, known as Kalimantan, but very rapidly. The Indonesian nationalists, which was something that was so many other places around the world post war of independence movements. And Indonesia, as it was now being known, those sort of Dutch East Indies, as it was known previously, they had begun fighting for independence. And so from about 19, you know, the Indonesians had just decided to declare independence very soon after World War II. The Dutch had not recognized it. They'd come back in. But they eventually were told quite clearly by Americans and us and others that there was really no, no room for sort of colonial rule anymore. So they recognized the Republic of Indonesia in 1949. And that, of course, included those that bottom two thirds of Borneo known as Indonesian Kalibandan. That takes us to the 1950s, where Britain had basically sought to wind down its empire for both social and economic reasons, basically. And it had grouped those. Malaya, as it was known, had become independent the 1950s. And the Malayan president, the new Milan President Tunku, had basically said, well, Sarawak and North Borneo, Sabah, as it was also known, just the other side of Brunei. We think they should also form part of a new, you know, of this new Malaya, as well as Singapore, incidentally, and form this new federation. So they proposed, with various different talks going on, that all of these northern Borneo areas should be amalgamated into a new country called Malaysia. And in 1963, Sarawak and North Borneo, Sabah agreed to join the federation of the newly formed Malaysia. Brunei, meanwhile, said, actually, we're not happy about that because Brunei was run as an absolute monarchy. And the Sultan basically thought, yeah, this doesn't work for me because that's going to dilute my power and my rather good lifestyle considerably. So although initially Malaysia wanted Brunei to be part of it, Brunei sort of forced constitutional talks and said, no, Britain, we're happy for you to remain as our protectorate. Please do all the hard work, like sort of security and foreign policy. But we want to sort of carry on living as an independent country in other, you know, in other ways. And that continued, in fact. And in the late 70s, the British, the Bruneians and the Brits basically said, this is antiquated and it's a bit demeaning to us both. So they agreed a roadmap to full independence, which only happened on New Year's Day in 1984, in fact, however, during all this time. So back in, going back to the 60s, with Malaysia and Sabar and Sarawak now being part of the New Malaysia in 1963, Indonesia, the newly formed Indonesia, basically really opposed this under their leader Sukarno, who basically said, you know, this new Malaysia is just a ploy by the Brits to take over and dominate us. And so he started a war for one foot of thing. Initially it was a. An attempt to sort of strangle and crush Malaysia by economic and. And propaganda means, but that simply didn't work. So instead he started a military conflict which was known as the Confrontasi, the confrontation of. And that was all along the Bornean border between those northern Malaysian states. I was talking about Sarawak and Sabah and the Indonesian part of Kalimantan. So for three years there were these sort of big, actually quite substantial battles, the biggest one since the Second World War in Borneo for sure, between Indonesian forces and then the Malaysian security forces, who were very much supported by the Commonwealth of British, Australian and New Zealand troops. And over those three years, which had included thousands of deaths, not just for Borneans, but for the Indonesians, for the Malaysians and some of the Commonwealth troops too, that the Indonesians were gradually crushed until such time as in 66, the Indonesians sued for peace because they realized they had no external support. People didn't agree with them and there was no way of them sort of winning it. So they basically sort of had a peace treaty after that in 1966. But it was. So it's fair to say that that splitting of Borneo between the sort of 1940s to the 1960s had a lot of teething problems. It was not smooth. I mean, these things seldom are. But. And that's a sort of overview of how. Of how this sort of island that was never homogenous, let's be honest, but it ended up being split between three different. Between three different nation states.
- [38:31]
B
So before I start talking about kind of current stuff, I want to ask about kind of your own personal experiences with Borneo. So, I mean, as you were kind of thinking about this book, like, what was your kind of personal experience with this part of the world, what actually
- [38:50]
A
started before I'd even gone there ever. My interest in the island was actually there as a child. So on many rainy afternoons in England, and there are many, I'd be poring over these world maps because I was sort of obsessed with maps. And I don't know why, but I was always sort of drawn to this big, mysterious island in Southeast Asia that I used to look at the maps and see all these other islands that had lots of place names on them. And I'd look at this huge island that just seemed to be. Just used to be this huge jungle, and there were very few sort of markers on it at all. I thought, well, that place looks weird. I love the sound of it as well, the sort of this rounded name. And so this was my sort of young, childish, ignorant imagination. And I thought, I've got to go there one day. But then that opportunity arose sort of rather fortuitously because I was about 20 or so and I was at university, and my uncle, who was a renowned pediatrician and geneticist, he'd been asked to move to Brunei, where he would be, amongst other things, basically asked at the drop of a hat to go and treat the children of the Bruneian royal family whenever necessary. So quite a sort of intriguing job. But as soon as I found out he was moving to Brunei, I'm sorry, I've got to come and take advantage of this. So I shamelessly invited myself over for a whole six weeks over the summer and said, I want to go out and explore. I never thought I'd get that opportunity, but it arose. It was too good to miss. So this was in 95, and, yeah, I spent six weeks exploring much of that northern part of the island in Brunei, but then in Sarawak and Sabah as well, and I just fell in love with it. And then I sort of made a vow to myself, when I have my own family, that I would take them back. And so I did. Sure enough, a couple of years ago, I decided to visit a different part in Kalimantan in the south. And like so many others, I've seen so much of Borneo, but I feel there's barely scratched the surface of what there is to see there. But I like to leave myself hungry for more. So this has been a sort of passion ever since I was a young kid, and it was very much turbocharged after I did that sort of exploration of myself of. Of the island of Ion in. In the mid-90s. So that's the sort of background about why I first fell in love with the island.
- [41:01]
B
You know, Borneo is known for its rainforest, it's known for its biodiversity, which of course leads to kind of a lot of discussions about environmentalism, environmental protection. How are these debates playing out, whether Indonesia or in Malaysia today, whether it's deforestation, whether it's, you know, extinct species, whether it's palm oil, whether it's haze. I mean, how, how, how are kind of environmental debates playing out in Borneo today?
- [41:27]
A
Very politically is probably the best way to phrase it, probably for the most neutral way to phrase it, and I think even before. So it's worth really just having some context about the sheer, you know, stunning beauty of the, of the. The biodiversity of the island before we sort of say, or how it has been before we. And appreciating that before understanding that the challenges that are now in the area of deforestation, of how. What's being affected. So we're talking about, as I say, an ancient rainforest that has well over 2,000 species of tree, 7,000 species of flowering plant, many found nowhere else. In fact, the biggest flower in the world, rafflesia, is found there, the sort of big, huge stinking plant which you can find there, and it's very rare as well. But then you've got thousands of species of orchid. And then there's 600 species of birds from storks, kingfishers, kites, you know, the world's biggest woodpecker, and then the famous hornbills that are sort of like the Old World equivalent of the toucans. Beautiful, stunning birds. We're Talking of nearly 300 species of mammal, from tiny ones up to, you know, the Bornean elephants, the pygmy elephants, the Bornean rhino, the clouded leopard, so many monkeys and gibbons, and of course the bears as well, the sun bear, the world's smallest bear, and then the famous orangutan. We're talking about a, you know, an incredibly unique and rich biodiverse setup of jungle that is. That is really not found anywhere else in that way. So there's the background behind what we're talking about. But Borneo's forests have been, you know, over the last, I say, 40 years in particular, sort of massively cleared and degraded by the timber industry and palm oil, I think, mostly, but also rubber and mining. And this is what poses the greatest threat to the island's ecosystem. Now, palm oil. And I think 87% of the world's palm oil is, Is grown in Borneo. Now in terms of. So basically the timber industry comes in, not always legally strips all the old trees away and then for timber and then the palm oil industry often sort of comes in and implants these trees that are actually West African. They don't belong in Borneo at all. And you may not buy palm oil as it is on its own, but I assure you, in your shopping cart, when you go and do a big sort of food shop or, or of other household goods, a huge number of the things that you buy have palm oil in them. And. And 87%, as I said, of the world's palm oil supply comes from Borneo. It has caused huge amounts of deforestation in the island. And the issue that comes about by that is that on the one hand you've got the government, we're talking both Malaysia and Indonesia here, emphasizing, well, it brings in jobs and export revenue and energy security. But the problem is this expansion at the expense of the rainforest occurs often. Let's talk about the people first. These were Dayak lands for all, lots of different groups. I mean, most famously, from the 1980s onwards, it was the Penan hunter gatherers who tried to push back against these sort of logging, illegal or otherwise, which were just being taken without consent about the lands they'd lived in for generations. And as a consequence, after that, land grabbing, there's the loss of cultural landscapes and of course, that wildlife just being depleted. So the local communities would just highlight, you know, what about our rights, our livelihoods and our cultural survival. And then you've got the environmental groups very obviously talking about, and rightly about the biodiversity and climate impacts about all of this. So it's really complex and nobody pretends that there's an easy answer. It's hard not to feel in many ways, sort of quite sort of personal about these things when you just see some of the. The depredation that's happened. But if I can just quote a couple of figures. So in Sabah, which is the sort of northeastern big chunk of the Malaysian area, along with Sarawak of Borneo, since it used, you know, in 1982, 75% of Sabah was covered in primary and secondary rainforest. That figure is now 16% in Kalimantan in the Indonesian part of Borneo over that period. Again, I'm using, Since the early 80s, there has been a reduction in terms of the rainforest cover equivalent to the size of Mississippi or Greece. I mean, we're talking a huge amount of land here which was once primary rainforest and which is now, you know, plantations of a plant that really just shouldn't belong there. So this is a very politically sensitive, as I say, issue that doesn't show any signs of rectifying itself anytime soon. Both Malaysia and Indonesia have made the right noises more recently via UN channels and elsewhere of trying to protect more areas of rainforest. Officially, what that will amount to in practice, I think it's still too early to tell, but it's going to need, I think, maybe changing buying habits on the one hand from the rest of the world, but also sort of some external pressure to really understand how best to solve this. Because, yeah, the Bornean ecology at the minute has been sort of savaged compared to what it was even 50 years ago. And it's just very tragic in one case. But the governments will say, well, there's always an economic factor to this as well. So, yeah, it's not going to solve itself anytime soon.
- [47:07]
B
You know, just to kind of close off our, the, the conversation. I mean, so in kind of the role that Borneo plays in both Indonesia and Malaysia, I mean, Borneo, Kalimantan is going to be the home for Nusantara, which is this planned capital, this new capital to replace Jakarta, which is sort of progressing, but also not as fast people might like. But, but, but Borneo is in theory going to be the homeland in Egypt's new capital. Then, of course, in Malaysia, I mentioned earlier, you have Saba and Sarawak, which they always seem to be having tensions with Peninsular Malaysia again about things like who owns the energy and stuff like that. How do you see, kind of, what do you see, like what, what role is Borneo going to continue to play for both of these very important Southeast Asian countries?
- [47:51]
A
A very good question that I, I wish I and others could give a really definitive answer to, but it's the right question to reflect upon at the end, for sure. So there is no doubt Borneo's influence, its importance is just set to grow. Um, it's just that the nuance of how. So you mentioned Nusantara. So, yeah, Nusantara, for those who don't know, is the. Is the new Indonesian capital. So the country with the fourth largest population in the world. It's, it's, you know, home to its capital city at the minute. Jakarta, which is one of the world's biggest cities, is sinking. And so they've had to, they're building a new capital in the jungle, but they had to go and find somewhere a new capital from scratch that was going to be, you know, that was in where there was lots of space that reflected Indonesia's ethnic diversity. That was not going to be sort of at the whims of volcanoes and earthquakes, like lots of other parts of the peninsula, of the, of the archipelago. And Borneo ticked all those boxes which is why they've chosen to basically build an entirely new city, Nusantara, in the east of Kalimantan for Indonesia. So this gives Borneo a sort of new strategic role. This is the island becoming, you know, the lockers of national planning and infrastructure investment and geopolitical signaling, you could say, which had never been in that sort of, in that role before. So it's placing for once, Borneo is now at the center of Indonesia's political future. And like I said, but it's also of course, that like we've just been discussing with the rainforest depletion just it amplifies those, those long running tensions about ecology, development and indigenous rights. So it's going to be. So looked at it through that lens, this is a, ironically, it's a green city, as in they're trying to write it as a green city, although they've had to sort of done quite a few of forest clearance in order to grow it in the first place. It will, I think officially that they've been sort of already sort of opening ceremonies for Nusantara. I think in 2028 it will become allegedly the official capital of Indonesia, but it's going to take decades after that to properly grow it. So we'll just have to go and wait and see to what extent Nusantara will embed itself and how that will affect Borneo as an island. You've mentioned, of course, Saba and Sarawak in the north still have lots of conflicts, not the right words, but disagreements with Kuala Lumpur and the Malay Peninsula, the capital of Malaysia, in terms of to what extent they have a little bit more regional autonomy or not to what extent they have a bit of cultural autonomy or not, because they are very different in many ways. These things are not going to again solve themselves overnight. The one thing I would say though, and throw into this mix is the external role of China. China, as we sort of mentioned earlier on, always had a big influence on coastal regions for 1500 years on Borneo. I think that that's always continued and there's lots of large Chinese populations in Borneo. The, the issue though is, you know, and this is where it may become, where Borneo might sort of come again into, into world affairs a bit more is famously, you know, China has got its, what's called this nine dash line of basically claiming vast waves of the South China Sea thousands of miles from the Chinese mainland. And they have been quite assertively building artificial islands in that sea off the Philippines and off Vietnam. Those countries have tried to push back and, and have come off second best. And I Think it's just a matter of time before China then builds more artificial military islands, this time off the northern coast of Borneo, off Malay, the Malay of Saban, Sarawak, and, and Brunei. And I think the interesting thing there will be to see if and when that happens, to what extent the response from Brunei off their coast, from Malaysia off the coast, because it's off the Surak and Sabah coast, and indeed from Indonesia, who is, you know, sees itself very much as a regional power, to what extent they will want to respond to that individually or as a whole, as Borneans, if you will, to basically say you are, you know, this isn't right. How are we going to counter this? To what extent are we worth more than the sum of our parts, even though we've always been at odds with each other, you know, Malaysia and Indonesia in particular. And the response to that hypothetical scenario, I think is going to be quite interesting as. And when it happens, which I'm not sure when it's going to happen, but I suspect it will. So will Borneo become a sort of flashpoint? I'm not sure, but it might. So I think Borneo's days of being sort of in the shadows of world affairs is gradually coming to a close because of that and because of Nusantara.
- [52:31]
B
So I think that's a great place to end our conversation with Olivia Hine, author of Borneo the History of an Olivier. I actually have two final questions for you, which are where can people find your work? Not just this book, but all of your work, and what's next for you? What do you think the next project might be?
- [52:48]
A
Sure. Well, I'm happy to say that my. Yes, but Borneo History of Enigma is available. You can find it in, I'm sure, lots of local good bookshops and online. It's published by Hearst Publishers, so you're welcome to go onto their website if you want to find out more. It is, and they are a publisher based in London, but which has a strong interest in sort of Indian Ocean and Asian affairs. In terms of what I hope to be doing next, in fact, I've got a couple more projects which are coming out later this year. So the next book that I'm writing is about somewhere else in Asia, but very, very different. And it's the history of Turkmenistan in Central Asia, which is a. Back in. Back in my olden days when I was a diplomat, I was posted to Turkmenistan and so I was fascinated by it. It's a quite extraordinary place and unfortunately has a reputation which is just unfair, based on sort of more modern political reasons rather than its extraordinary history, which is little known. So I've written the History of Turkmenistan, which comes out later this year. In fact, I've got two books later this year because a bit of a backlog for a whole bunch of reasons because at the end of the year I've also got another book also published by Hearst, which is the History of Peru. Not an Asian book on this occasion, but that's reflecting another great passion of mine. But yeah, so I've spreading my tentacles about all the different passionate areas that I have of the world. And so there you go. Next up is. Next up is Turkmenistan.
- [54:23]
B
So you can follow me Nicholas Gordon on Twitter Ick R I Gordon. That's N I C K R I G O R D O N. You go to agereviewbooks.com for other reviews, essays, interviews and excerpts. Follow them on Twitter at bookreviewsasia. This review is plural and you can find many more authors at the New books network and newbooksnetwork.com we're on all your favorite podcast apps, Apple Podcasts, Spotify Rate us, recommend us, share us with your friends Supports interviewing those running in around and about Asia. Next week, join us for an interview with Mahesh Rao, author of the novel Half Light. But before then, Olivier, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
- [54:57]
A
Thank you very much, Nicholas. It's been great.