Asun's "rebellion": the political growing pains of a tribal society in Brooke Sarawak, 1939-1940

Abstract

Sarawak does not fit the stock tropical image of swaying palms and lazy warm breezes. Kuching, the capital of Malaysian Borneo's largest statd, lies only 1 degrees from the equator, yet somehow there is little indolence in the air. It is not merely the absence of coral strand (here the coastline is mainly mud and mangrove) or the hyperthroid energy of the Chinese small farmers and shopkeepers who dominate many of the more thickly settled areas near the coast. Even more in the interior, there is something hard and vital in the air.