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![Government officials, notably Sherip Putra, who died in June, 1906,
after having served the Government well and faithfully for twenty-
two years; and he was the son of Sherip Sahap, and the nephew of
Sherip Mular.
The condition of the country on Rajah Brooke's accession is best
described in his own words. After relating the devastations
committed by the piratical and head-hunting Dayaks of Saribas and
Sekrang, the Rajah goes on to say:—
It is of the hill Dayaks,[95] however, I would particularly write, for a more
wretched, oppressed race is not to be found, or one more deserving the
commiseration of the humane. Though industrious they never reap what they
sow; though their country is rich in produce, they are obliged to yield it all to
their oppressors; though yielding all beyond their bare sustenance, they rarely
can preserve half their children, and often—too often—are robbed of them all,
with their wives.[96] All that rapacity and oppression can effect is exhausted,
and the only happiness that ever falls to the lot of these unhappy tribes is
getting one tyrant instead of five thousand. Indeed, it is quite useless to try to
explain the miserable condition of this country, where for the last ten years
there has been no government; where intrigue and plunder form the
occupation of all the higher classes; where a poor man to possess beyond his
clothes is a crime; where lying is a virtue, religion dead, and where cheating
is so common; and last, where the ruler, Muda Hasim, is so weak, that he has
lost all authority except in name and observance.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-35-2048.jpg)
![LAND-DAYAK VILLAGE.
And further:—
All those who frequent the sea-shore lead a life of constant peril from roving
Dayaks and treacherous Malays, and Illanuns and Balaninis, the regular
pirates. It is a life of watchfulness, hide-and-seek, and fight or flight, and in
the course of each year many lose their lives or their liberty.
This is the country I have taken upon myself to govern with small means, few
men, and, in short, without any of the requisites which could insure success; I
have distraction within and intrigue abroad, and I have the weakest of the
weak,[97] a rotten staff to depend upon for my authority.
To add to his troubles, the season was one of famine following on
intestine troubles. So poor were the people, that, again to quote the
Rajah: "daily, poor wretches in the last stage of starvation float
down the river, and crawl to my house to beg a little, little rice."](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-36-2048.jpg)
![earned and retained the confidence of the Government, and how
honourably they have maintained their position.
The Datu Temanggong Mersal belonged to another family, but he
and his sons were not the less staunch; the eldest, brave Abang
Pata, rendered the Government very signal services, and the
younger, Muhammad Hasan, succeeded his father as Temanggong.
The only one who betrayed the trust reposed in him was the Datu
Patinggi Haji Gapur. Of him, as well as the others, we shall hear
more in the sequel.
About the same time that the old chiefs were reinstated the Rajah
instituted a Court of Justice, in which he presided, and was assisted
in dispensing justice by the brothers of Rajah Muda Hasim, and he
promulgated the following simple laws, of which this is a summary:
—
James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, makes known to all men the following
regulations:—
1. That murder, robbery, and other heinous crimes will be punished according
to the written laws of Borneo;[98] and no man committing such offences will
escape, if, after fair inquiry, he be found guilty.
2. All men, whether Malays, Chinese, or Dayaks are permitted to trade or to
labour according to their pleasure, and to enjoy their gains.
3. All roads will be open, and all boats coming from other parts are free to
enter the river and depart without let or hindrance.
4. Trade, in all its branches, will be free, with the exception of antimony ore,
which the Governor holds in his own hands, but which no person is forced
to work, and which will be paid for at a proper price when obtained.
5. It is ordered that no persons going amongst the Dayaks shall disturb them
or gain their goods under false pretences. The revenue will be collected by
the three Datus bearing the seal of the Governor, and (except this yearly
demand from the Government) they are to give nothing to any other
person; nor are they obliged to sell their goods except they please, and at
their own prices.
6. The revenue shall be fixed, so that every one may know certainly how
much he has to contribute yearly to support the Government.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-38-2048.jpg)
![7. Weights and measures shall be settled and money current in the country,
and doits[99] introduced, that the poor may purchase food cheaply.
8. Obedience to the ordinances will be strictly enforced.
The Rajah's next step was to redress some of the wrongs to which
the unhappy people had been subjected, and by ameliorating their
condition to gain their confidence. The Rajah Muda Hasim and his
brothers were in his way, "and the intriguing, mean, base Brunis,
who depended upon the support of the pangirans to escape
punishment when guilty;"[100]
but, nevertheless, at the end of the
year he was able to write that he had done much good—that he had
saved the lives of many people, restored many captives to their
families, and freed many slaves from bondage, and above all, that
he had repressed vice, and had assisted the distressed.
The Rajah had also to safeguard his country; to prepare to take the
offensive against the Malays and Sea-Dayaks of the Sekrang and
Saribas; and to guard against the plots and designs of his
neighbours the sherips, who viewed with no friendly eye the
establishment of a government in Sarawak, having as its principal
objects the suppression of piracy and lawlessness. It was a menace
to them, and they knew it, and to retain their power they were
prepared to go to any length. Already Sherip Sahap and his brother
Sherip Mular had sent people against the Sempro and Sentah
Dayaks; and the former had endeavoured to withdraw the allegiance
of the datus from the Rajah, but in this he failed. As a defensive
measure the Rajah built a fort and palisaded his little town. He also
constructed war-boats for the protection of the coast, and to take
the offensive, which he saw must be inevitable.
The Rajah soon showed the Saribas the power of his arm. Thirteen
of their large war-boats appeared off the coast on a piratical cruise,
and these were met and attacked by three of the Rajah's well-armed
boats and driven back with heavy loss. Retaliation was threatened,
and the Dayaks prepared, but it was a long time before they again
appeared, and the terror of Brooke's name kept them off Sarawak.
At this time Sherip Sahap also received a lesson. He had sent a](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-39-2048.jpg)
![when the Rajah arrived he was in a compliant mood, and received
him most cordially.
It may be as well here to give a description of Bruni and of its Court.
The Bruni river flows into a noble bay, across which to the north lies
the island of Labuan. Above the town the river is very small, and
rises but some fifteen to twenty miles inland. Where the town is, the
river is very broad, forming a large lake. The town is commanded by
hills once under cultivation; on an island at the mouth of the
entrance are the shattered remains of an old Portuguese fort, which
was still standing, though ruinous, when Hunt visited the place in
1809. The town itself has been designated the "Venice of Borneo" by
old writers, a description to which the Italian Beccari rightly
objected,[101]
and is mainly built on piles driven into the mud on a
shallow in the middle of the lake, the houses occupying wooden
platforms elevated some ten feet above the reach of the tide.
Communication between them is effected by canoes, in which the
women daily go through the town selling provisions. It is, in a word,
similar to the palafitte villages found in prehistoric times in the lakes
of Switzerland and Lombardy. A part of the town, including the
houses of the Sultan and the wazirs, is situated on the left bank of
the river. It is the Bruni of Pigafetta's time, though sadly reduced in
size and importance. Then the Sultan's palace was enclosed by a
strong brick wall,[102]
with barbicans mounting fifty-six cannon, now
it is but a roughly built barn-like shed. Gone are the richly
caparisoned elephants, and gone too is all the old pride, pomp, and
panoply, including the spoons of gold, which particularly struck the
old voyager.[103]
Bruni has no defences now, but, at the period of
which we are writing, there were batteries planted on each side of
the inlet commanding the approach, also two forts on the heights,
and one battery on a tongue of land that looked down the estuary,
and which could rake a fleet advancing towards the town, whilst the
batteries on the two banks poured in a flank fire.
When the tide goes out the mud is most offensive to European
nostrils, as all the filth and offal is cast into it from the platforms,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-42-2048.jpg)
![and left there to decompose. The town at the time of the Rajah's
visit, was in a condition of squalid wretchedness—the buildings, all
of wood and leaf matting, were in a tumbledown state; and the
population was mainly composed of slaves and the hangers on of
the Sultan, the nobles, and other members of the upper classes. The
Sultan was a man past fifty years of age, short and puffy in person,
with a countenance indicative of imbecility. In his journal the Rajah
wrote:
His right hand is garnished with an extra diminutive thumb, the natural
member being crooked and distorted.[104] His mind, indexed by his face,
seems to be a chaos of confusion, without dignity and without good sense. He
can neither read nor write, is guided by the last speaker; and his advisers, as
might be expected, are of the lower order, and mischievous from their
ignorance and their greediness. He is always talking, and generally joking;
and the most serious subjects never meet with five minutes' consecutive
attention. His rapacity is carried to such an excess as to astonish a European,
and is evinced in a thousand mean ways. The presents I made him were
unquestionably handsome, but he was not content without begging from me
the share I had reserved for the other pangirans; and afterwards solicited
mere trifles such as sugar, pen-knives, and the like. To crown all he was
incessantly asking what was left in the vessel, and when told the truth—that I
was stripped bare as a tree in winter—he frequently returned to the charge.
The Court at Bruni consisted of the Pangiran Mumin, the Sultan's
uncle by marriage, a fairly well-disposed man, though a friend of
Makota, but of no ability, avaricious, and with the mind of a huckster,
who afterwards became Sultan. There were several uncles of the
Sultan, but they were devoid of influence, and were mostly absent in
Sarawak, whereas the Pangiran Usup, an illegitimate son of Sultan
Muhammad Tejudin, and consequently a left-handed uncle to the
reigning Sultan,—a man crafty, unscrupulous, and ambitious,—held
sway over the mind of his nephew, and induced him to look with
suspicion on his uncles of legitimate birth. This man was in league
with the pirates, and a determined opponent of British interference.
Consequently, though outwardly most friendly, he was bitterly
opposed to the white Rajah, against whom he was already plotting
to accomplish his eviction, or his death. Though Pangiran Usup was
well aware of the Rajah's determination to stamp out piracy and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-43-2048.jpg)
![oppression, yet he was not wise enough to foresee that to measure
his strength against a chivalrous and resolute Englishman, who had
even a stronger support behind him than those forces he was
already slowly and surely gathering around himself, must be futile,
and that it would end in his own ruin. Among the Sultan's legitimate
uncles the only man of ability and integrity was the Pangiran
Bedrudin, who had accompanied the Rajah to Bruni, and who was
always frank with him and supported his schemes.
The Rajah had daily interviews with the Sultan, who expressed a
great personal regard for him, and frequently swore "eternal
friendship," clasping his hand and repeating "amigo saya, amigo
saya."[105]
He readily confirmed the cession made by Rajah Muda
Hasim, being satisfied with the amount promised as his share of the
Sarawak revenue, and said, "I wish you to be there; I do not wish
anybody else; you are my amigo, and it is nobody's business but
mine; the country is mine, and if I please to give you all, I can."
The deed to which Rajah Muda Hasim had affixed his seal on
September 24, 1841, was to the following effect:—
That the country and government of Sarawak is made over to Mr. Brooke (to
be held under the crown of Bruni), with all its revenues and dependencies, on
the yearly payment of 500. That Mr. Brooke is not to infringe upon the
customs or religion of the people; and in return, that no person is to interfere
with him in the management of the country.
The confirmatory deed was executed on August 1, 1842, and was in
tenor and purport similar to that granted by Hasim, with the
exception of an additional clause precluding the alienation of
Sarawak by the Rajah without the consent of the Sultan.
The Sultan also told the Rajah that it would be a delight to him to
welcome both his uncles, Hasim and Bedrudin, back to Bruni, and
begged the Rajah to carry for him a friendly letter to the former,
conveying assurance that he was completely reconciled to him.
Bruni, he said, would never be well until his return. The Lascars of
the Lord Melbourne were at once given up, and the Rajah also
procured the release of three of the Sultana's Lascars, who had been](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-44-2048.jpg)
![of a government, the principle of which was and has ever since been
"to rule for the people and with the people," to quote the Rajah
writing twenty-two years later, "and to teach them the rights of
freemen under the restraints of government. The majority of the
"Council"[106]
secures a legal ascendency for native ideas of what is
best for their happiness, here and hereafter. The wisdom of the
white man cannot become a hindrance, and the English ruler must
be their friend and guide, or nothing. The citizen of Sarawak has
every privilege enjoyed by the citizen of England, and far more
personal freedom than is known in a thickly populated country. They
are not taught industry by being forced to work. They take a part in
the government under which they live; they are consulted upon the
taxes they pay; and, in short, they are free men.
"This is the government which has struck its roots into the soil for
the last quarter of a century, which has triumphed over every danger
and difficulty, and which has inspired its people with confidence."
The revenue of Sarawak was in utter confusion. Over large tracts of
country no tax could be enforced, and the Rajah, as he had
undertaken, was determined to lighten the load that had weighed so
crushingly, and was inflicted so arbitrarily on the loyal Land-Dayaks—
loyal hitherto, not in heart, but because powerless to resist. To carry
on the government without funds was impossible, and the want of
these was now, and for many years to come, the Rajah's greatest
trouble. Consequently the antimony ore was made a monopoly of
the government, which was a fair and just measure, and to the
general advantage of the community, though it was subsequently
seized upon as a pretext for accusing the Rajah of having debased
his position by engaging in trade. But it was years before the
revenue was sufficient to meet the expenditure, and gradually the
Rajah sacrificed his entire fortune to pay the expenses of the
administration.
In undertaking the government he had three objects in view:—
(1) The relief of the unfortunate Land-Dayaks from oppression.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-47-2048.jpg)
![were therefore not to be molested. Any breach of the peace, every
murder was severely punished. In a short time head-hunting and
intertribal feuds amongst the Sarawak Dayaks were extirpated, and
the raj ceased to be a hunting-field for the Sekrang and Saribas
Dayaks; but they continued to haunt the coast together with the
Lanun and Balenini pirates, and the suppression of piracy was the
most serious undertaking of the three, and took many years to
accomplish.
Early in 1843, the Rajah visited Singapore to further the interests of
his raj, and for a change. His main wish, which he had repeatedly
expressed, was to transfer Sarawak to the Crown, and he likewise
impressed upon the Government the policy of establishing a
settlement at Labuan, and of obtaining a monopoly of the coal in the
Bruni Sultanate. He was able to interest the Chinese merchants in
the trade of Sarawak. But the most important matter was the
immediate suppression of the ravages committed by the pirates,
both Dayak and Malay; and here Providence threw across his path,
in the person of Captain the Hon. Henry Keppel,[107]
the very
assistance he required. Between the white Rajah and the Rajah Laut
(Sea King), the title by which Keppel became known, and was ever
afterwards remembered in Sarawak, a sincere attachment arose.
Keppel was attracted by the Rajah's lovable personality, and
sympathised with his objects; and, being chivalrous and always
ready to act upon his own responsibility, he at once decided to lend
all the support in his power, which any other naval officer might have
hesitated to have done. The aid he so nobly rendered came at an
opportune time, for it not only administered to the pirates a severe
lesson, but also taught those inimical to his rule that the white Rajah
was not held aloof by his own countrymen, and thus consolidated his
power by reassuring the waverers and encouraging the loyal. The
kindly and gallant Keppel stands foremost amongst the friends of
Sarawak, to which State he rendered not only the splendid services
to be recorded in our next chapter, but ever evinced a keen and
kindly interest in its welfare, and in its Rajahs, to whom he was ever](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-49-2048.jpg)
![difficult, task that Rajah Brooke had set before him, and was
determined to accomplish, was the suppression of piracy, which he
rightly described as an evil almost as disgraceful to the European
nations who permitted it as to the native States engaged in it.
The principal piratical peoples at the time were the Illanun, or
Lanun, the Balenini, the Bajaus, and the Sulus, all living to the north
or north-east of Bruni, and consequently far beyond the jurisdiction
of the Rajah. To these must be added the Sea-Dayaks of the Saribas
and Sekrang, who, led by their Malay allies, though less formidable
to trade, were far more destructive of human life.
The Sambas Malays had also been pirates, but at this period had
ceased to be such. Earl, who visited Sambas in 1834, says, that
"before the arrival of the Dutch Sambas was a nest of pirates. In
1812, having attacked an English vessel, several British men-of-war
were sent from Batavia to attack the town. The inhabitants resisted,
but were defeated, the fort was razed to the ground, and the guns
tumbled into the river." The reoccupation by the Dutch shortly
afterwards of this place, Pontianak, and Banjermasin, put some
check upon the piratical habits of the Malays in the western and
southern States,[108]
but the Malays of the eastern shores of Borneo,
especially those of Koti, to the north and north-west, were all
pirates; and even the people of Bruni were imbued with piratical
habits, which were generally inherent in the Malay character, though
they were not enterprising enough to be openly piratical, or to do
more than encourage their bolder neighbours, from whom they
could obtain plunder and slaves cheaply; and near Bruni, within the
territory of the Sultan, were several piratical strongholds. All these
were under the control of half-bred Arab sherips, as also were the
Saribas and the Sekrangs.
The Lanuns are natives of the large island of Mindanau, or
Magindanau, the southernmost of the Philippine group. They were
known to the Spaniards as "Los Illanos de la laguna," and, in
common with all Muhammadans, were classed by them as Moros or
Moors. On the lagoon, or bay, of Lanun they live. They were the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-55-2048.jpg)
![boldest and most courageous of the pirates, and the most
dangerous to Europeans, whom they never hesitated to attack, not
even the Dutch gunboats, and to whom, unlike the Balenini pirates,
they would never give quarter, owing to a hatred, born of former
injustice and inhumanity, received at the hands of those whom they
could only have regarded as white barbarians. They became
incorrigible and cruel pirates, looking upon piracy as a noble
profession, though Dampier, who spent six months amongst them in
1686-7, and who was very hospitably treated, says nothing of piracy,
and he gives a full and intelligent account of the island, its
inhabitants, and products. He describes the "Hilanoons" as being a
peaceable people, who bought foreign commodities with the product
of their gold mines. The Spaniards had sometime before occupied
the island, but the garrison had to be suddenly withdrawn to Manila,
in consequence of a threatened invasion of that place by the
Chinese. The Sultan then seized their cannon, demolished their forts,
and expelled their friars. Then it was the Dutch they feared; they
wished the English to establish a Factory there,[109]
and
subsequently, in 1775, ceded a small island to the H.E.I. Company
for that purpose.
Though the Spanish had a settlement on the western end of the
island they were unable to keep the Lanun pirates in check, and on
occasions were severely handled by them, as were also the Dutch.
With these pirates were associated the Bajaus or sea-gipsies, a
roving people, who lived entirely in their prahus, with their women
and children.
The vessels employed by Lanuns on marauding expeditions were
sometimes of 60 tons burden, built very sharp in the prow and wide
in beam, and over 90 feet in length. A double tier of oars was
worked by slaves to the number of 100, and the fighting men would
be from 30 to 40; the prahus of the smallest size carried from 50 to
80 in all. The bows of the vessels were solidly built, and fortified
with hard wooden baulks capable of resisting a 6-pounder shot;
often they were shod with iron. Here a narrow embrasure admitted a](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-56-2048.jpg)
![gun for a 6 to a 24-pound shot. In addition to this, the armaments
consisted of several guns, usually of brass, of smaller calibre.
Sometimes the piratical fleets comprised as many as 200 prahus,
though the Lanuns usually cruised in small fleets of 20 to 30 sail.
They would descend on a coast and attack any village, sack and
burn it, kill the defenders, carry away men, women, and children as
slaves, slaughter the cattle, and ravage the plantations. A cargo of
slaves captured on the east coast of Borneo would be sold on the
west coast, and those taken in the south would find a ready market
in the north, in Sulu[110]
and the Lanun country. Their cruising
grounds were extensive—around the coasts of the Philippine islands,
Borneo, and Celebes to Sumatra, Java, and the Malay peninsula,
through the Moluccas to New Guinea, and even up the Bay of Bengal
as far as Rangoon. In 1834, a fleet of these Lanuns swept round the
coast of a small island in the Straits of Rhio, opposite Singapore, and
killed or carried away all the inhabitants.[111]
In addition to their
original home in the bay of Lanun, they had settlements in Marudu
Bay in the north of Borneo, and towns along the west coast almost
as far south as Ambong, and on the east coast to Tungku, and on to
Koti. In Marudu their chief was Sherip Usman, who was married to a
sister of the Sultan Muda of Sulu, and who was in league with
Pangiran Usup, uncle to the Sultan of Bruni, and his principal adviser.
Usman supplied the pirates with powder, shot, and guns, and they,
on returning from a piratical expedition, paid him at the rate of four
captives for every 100 rupees worth of goods with which he had
furnished them. Such captives as had been taken in the vicinity of
Bruni he would sell to Pangiran Usup for 100 rupees each, who
would then demand of their friends and relations Rs. 200 for each.
"Thus this vile Sherip, not reckoning the enormous price he charged
for his goods in the first instance, gained 500 per cent for every
slave, and the Pangiran Usup cleared 100 per cent by the flesh of his
own countrymen."
In 1844, Ambong was a flourishing town occupied by an industrious
and peaceable people, subjects of the Sultan of Bruni. In 1846,
Captain Rodney Mundy, R.N., visited it, and the town was](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-57-2048.jpg)
![the Malays, yearly issued forth with fleets composed of a hundred or
more bangkongs,[112]
sweeping the seas and carrying desolation
along the shores of Borneo over a distance of 800 miles.
The Sea-Dayaks soon became aware of their power; and
accordingly, both in their internal government and on their piratical
expeditions, their chiefs attained an authority superior to that of the
Malay chiefs, their titular rulers.
In May, 1843, H.M.S. Dido started on her eventful cruise to Borneo,
having the Rajah on board. After passing Sambas, Captain Keppel
dispatched the pinnace and two cutters under the first lieutenant,
with whom went the Rajah, to cruise along the coast. Lanun pirates
were seen, but, easily outsailing the flotilla, escaped. Off Sirhasan,
the largest of the group of the Natuna islands, whither the boats had
been directed to go, six prahus, some belonging to the Rajah Muda
of Rhio (an island close to Singapore, belonging to the Dutch, and
under a Dutch Resident), and some to the islanders, mistaking the
Dido's boats for those of a shipwrecked vessel, and expecting an
easy prey, advanced with boldness and opened fire upon them. They
were quickly undeceived, and in a few minutes three out of the six
prahus were captured, with a loss of over twelve killed and many
wounded. Neither the Rhio Malays nor those of the islands were
pirates, and the former under an envoy were collecting tribute for
the Sultan of Lingin, but the temptation was irresistible to a people
with piracy innate in their character. They protested it was a mistake,
and that with the sun in their eyes they had mistaken the boats for
Lanun pirates! The little English flotilla had suffered no casualties,
and a severe lesson had been administered, which was rightly
considered to be sufficient. The wounded were attended to, and,
having been liberally supplied with fresh provisions, Lieutenant
Wilmot Horton left for Sarawak to rejoin the Dido.
After having been cleverly dodged by three Lanun prahus, the Dido
anchored off the Muaratebas entrance on May 13th, and proceeded
up to Kuching on the 16th. Keppel described the Rajah's reception](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-60-2048.jpg)
![hands on board and taking her in tow, succeeded in getting off, although
chased by the Jolly Bachelor, after setting fire to the crippled prize, which
blew up and sank.[113]
None of the crew of this prahu survived, and so few in the second
prahu, that, when she separated from her consort, the slaves arose
and put them to death. They were the same three prahus that had
eluded the Dido.
Having satisfied himself as to the character of the Saribas and
Sekrang Dayaks, and how the chiefs governing them encouraged
their depredations, and having received an appeal from the Rajah
Muda Hasim[114]
to relieve the cost of the perils it underwent,
Captain Keppel resolved to attack the Saribas first, as being the most
formidable of the two piratical hordes.
Preparations for the expedition were soon commenced. It was to
consist of a native force of 300 Malays, the Dido's three large boats,
and the Jolly Bachelor, manned by blue-jackets and marines, all
under the command of Lieutenant Wilmot Horton. The datus were
opposed to the Rajah going—they thought the risk too great, but on
his expressing his determination to do so, and leaving it to them to
accompany him or not, their simple reply was, "What is the use of
our remaining? If you die, we die; and if you live, we live; we will go
with you."[115]
The Rajah and Captain Keppel accompanied the
expedition in the Dido's gig.
Intelligence of the design was carried far and wide. The Saribas
strengthened their defences, and several of the half-bred Arab
sherips living nearer Sarawak sent in promises of good conduct.
Tribes that had suffered from the depredations of the pirates offered
to join in attacking them, and the force thus augmented by several
hundreds of Dayaks started early in June.
The first skirmish fell to the lot of Datu Patinggi Ali, who, having
been sent on ahead, met a force of seven prahus at the mouth of
the Saribas, which he attacked and drove back, after capturing one.
Padi, a stockaded town some 60 miles up the Saribas river, and the
furthest up of the piratical strongholds, reputed also to be the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-62-2048.jpg)
![strongest and most important, was the first attacked, and though
defended by two forts and two booms of forest trees stretched
across the river, and being crowded with Malay and Dayak warriors,
it was carried on the evening of June 11, and the place committed to
the flames. The next day some 800 Balau Dayaks,[116]
under Sherip
Japar of Lingga, joined the force, keen to make reprisals for past
injuries.
The enemy, reckoned at about 6000 Dayaks and 500 Malays, had
retired up-river, and against them a small force of about 40 blue-
jackets and the same number of Malays, under the Rajah and
Lieutenant Horton, started the next day. During the night they were
repeatedly attacked by the pirates, who, under cover of the
darkness, closed in on their assailants, especially where some
marines held a post on a cleared height overlooking the river. The
pirates lost a good many men, and the next morning, seeing the
force again preparing to advance, sent in a flag of truce and sued for
mercy. The Rajah then met their chiefs and explained to them that it
was in consequence of their acts of piracy that they were now
punished; that they had been cautioned two years previously to
abstain from these marauding expeditions, and that they had
disregarded this monition; he assured them that they would be
unmolested if they abstained from molesting others, but that if they
continued to prey on their neighbours and to interfere with trading
vessels they would receive further castigation.
It was proposed to these people that the towns of Paku and Rembas
should be spared, if they would guarantee the future good conduct
of the inhabitants. They coolly replied that those people deserved
the same punishment, which had better be administered, otherwise
they would continue pirating, and would lead the Padi people astray
again.
Paku was taken on the 14th, and burnt; here no resistance was met
with. The next day the chiefs submitted. On the 17th, Rembas was
attacked and taken, the Balau Dayaks, under Sherip Japar, having all
the fighting to do. This was the largest and strongest town, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-63-2048.jpg)
![much plunder was secured. After receiving the submission of the
Rembas chiefs the expedition returned to Kuching, having, in seven
days, destroyed the strongholds of the most powerful and dreaded
pirates on the north-west coast of Borneo, who for years had defied
both Bruni and Sarawak. Such an impression was produced, that the
Sekrangs sent messages promising to abstain from piracy, and
offering, if they were spared, to give up a hundred women and
children captives; and Sherips Mular and Sahap, fearing the
punishment they so richly deserved, sent professions of future good
conduct. These were not accepted, but the day of reckoning had to
be deferred, for Keppel had received orders to return to China.
The Saribas had suffered, but not the redoubtable Sekrangs, and the
former not so severely but that in a couple of years all their losses
could be repaired, their stockades be rebuilt, and fresh prahus
constructed, and the old story of blood and rapine continued with
little intermission, not only by them, but by the Lanuns and Sekrangs
as well.
A year was to elapse before Keppel's return; and we will now record
in their sequence the few events of interest that happened during
this short period.
About a month after the departure of the Dido, the Samarang,
Captain Sir Edward Belcher, arrived at Kuching. Sir Edward had been
sent, consequent on Rajah Brooke's actions and recommendations,
to inquire personally into and report officially upon the affairs and
capabilities of north-west Borneo. As Sir Spenser St. John writes—
[117]
This visit was as useless as such visits usually are. What can the most acute
naval officer understand of a country during a few days' or weeks' visit? He
can describe more or less accurately its outward appearance; but to
understand its internal politics is not possible in the time. And yet on such
comparatively valueless reports the British Government relies in a majority of
cases. Mr. Brooke suffered more than any other pioneer of civilisation from
the system.
On getting under way to proceed to Bruni the Samarang grounded
on a rocky ledge off the town, and Sir Edward's brief visit was](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-64-2048.jpg)
![protracted by a fortnight. The ship, which lay in an extremely critical
position, was righted and got off the rocks before the Harlequin,
Wanderer, Vixen, and Diana arrived to assist her. Accompanied by
the Rajah, Sir Edward proceeded to Bruni towards the end of
August, but the latter's visit was very short; he saw the Sultan for
two hours only, and then, as small-pox was raging in Bruni, departed
for Singapore.[118]
The principal object of the Rajah's visit was
obtained, as he was enabled to bear away a deed granting Sarawak
in perpetuity to him and to the heirs of his appointment.
In December the Rajah left for Singapore, and there the next month
he received the news of his mother's death. To quote the Rajah,
after the first shock, he resolved to seek in activity a relief from the
lowness of spirits which he suffered. This led him to join an
expedition to punish certain pirates on the coast of Sumatra for
injuries done to British ships. The ships employed were the
Harlequin, Captain the Hon. G. Hastings; the Wanderer, Captain
Seymour, with whom the Rajah sailed, and the East India Company's
steamer, the Diana. At Achin[119]
they found the once powerful Sultan
unable to control or punish his own subjects, and the ships then
proceeded to Batu and Murdu, the strongholds of the pirates. The
former town was burnt without offering much resistance, but the
latter gave them a tough fight of five hours before it was taken. The
pirates lost from fifty to seventy men killed and wounded, the
English two killed, and about a dozen wounded, amongst whom was
the Rajah, who was shot inside the right arm, and had an eyebrow
cut in two by a spear. This was on February 12, 1844.
In Singapore the Rajah purchased a new vessel, the Julia, having
sold the Royalist; the Julia was fitted as a gunboat. Early in June he
returned to Sarawak in the Harlequin.
He found that during his absence, his old enemy, Sherip Sahap, had
built many war-boats, and had made great preparations for offensive
operations. Kuching was supposed to be his object, and it had been
put in a state of defence, but on the Rajah's return Sahap deemed it
advisable to retire to the Batang Lupar, and taking with him a large](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/15565-250304133513-2100bdfc/75/Open-Education-from-OERs-to-MOOCs-1st-Edition-Mohamed-Jemni-65-2048.jpg)
Open Education from OERs to MOOCs 1st Edition Mohamed Jemni
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- 5. Lecture Notes inEducationalTechnology Mohamed Jemni Kinshuk Mohamed Koutheair Khribi Editors Open Education: from OERs to MOOCs
- 6. Lecture Notes inEducational Technology Series editors Ronghuai Huang Kinshuk Mohamed Jemni Nian-Shing Chen J. Michael Spector
- 7. The series LectureNotes in Educational Technology (LNET), has established itself as a medium for the publication of new developments in the research and practice of educational policy, pedagogy, learning science, learning environment, learning resources etc. in information and knowledge age, – quickly, informally, and at a high level. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11777 Lecture Notes in Educational Technology
- 8. Mohamed Jemni •Kinshuk Mohamed Koutheair Khribi Editors Open Education: from OERs to MOOCs 123
- 9. Editors Mohamed Jemni Arab LeagueEducational, Cultural and Scientific Organization Tunis Tunisia Kinshuk Athabasca University Edmonton, AB Canada Mohamed Koutheair Khribi Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization Tunis Tunisia ISSN 2196-4963 ISSN 2196-4971 (electronic) Lecture Notes in Educational Technology ISBN 978-3-662-52923-2 ISBN 978-3-662-52925-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-52925-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016945840 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg
- 10. Preface The tremendous growthof ICT in recent years and the increasing availability of advanced high bandwidth network infrastructures have opened up new accessibility opportunities for education, and supported quality teaching and learning at all levels. As opportunities and technologies evolve, the expectations of opening up learning to suit individual needs, ensuring equitable quality education, and lifelong learning for all have become more and more pressing than ever before. Being mindful of these major advancements in technologies and big shifts in education, nations are looking at adopting new educational paradigms to advance educational opportunities for their citizens. To this end, several national policies, strategies, and action plans for the effective use of ICT in education are being formulated worldwide, with the focus on openness, twenty-first century teaching and learning competencies, and smart learning. At the core of these policies, mostly aligned with post-2015 education agenda, is the emphasis on open and free access anytime and anywhere to quality educational resources, whatever its shape, such as Open Educational Resources (OER) or Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This book focuses on reviewing existing policies, initiatives and international experiences, with the aim to promote the use of ICT in education primarily through the development and adoption of OER from the international practices, including implementation and licensing issues. With the particular focus on the new trends of MOOCs, the book explores the potential of this emerging paradigm, and its rise and impact on openness in education. This book starts with Stephen Downes’ documentation of major shifts that education has witnessed, thanks to technologies. He describes the new educational trends in social learning, personal learning, and MOOCs, drawing from the development of open and distributed learning, with free share and access for all, to the licensed quality educational resources. Junfeng Yang and Kinshuk discuss the policies for Open Education (OE) that are mostly formulated as part of general educational policies, overall policies for OE, specific OER policies, and policies for open standards. They review various v
- 11. existing policies fromdifferent countries and regions, and provide recommenda- tions for developing national OE policies. Stylianos Sergis, Demetrios G. Sampson, and Lina Pelliccione introduce the educational design of MOOCs with the emphasis on cultural and motivational issues, and explore existing educational design frameworks. They reveal the ADDIE-based educational design considerations framework (EDCF) for MOOCs, incorporating both “massiveness” and “openness” requirements. Mohamed Jemni and Koutheair Khribi describe the efforts and the ongoing projects of the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) towards promoting the effective use of ICT in education, especially through fostering the development and adoption of open learning, mobile tech- nologies, and cloud computing, creating the so-called “ALECSO Smart Learning Framework.” They describe first the status of ICT use in education in the Arab region through conducted studies and surveys, and then review the completed and ongoing activities with respect to the aforementioned ALECSO Framework’s dimensions. Stephen J.H. Yang, Jeff Cheng-Hsu Huang, and Anna Yu-Qing Huang review the experiences of MOOCs in Taiwan, from perspectives of both the Ministry of Education and the volunteers who come from various universities, K12 schools, and private sectors. They explain the motivation of adopting MOOCs and the purpose and core mission of MOOCs in Taiwan. Sie Wai Chew, I-Ling Cheng, and Nian-Shing Chen explore available strategies and methods for the development and design of MOOCs, and interactive video lectures, ranging from the construction process of video lectures embracing recording, editing, segmenting, and enhancing of video lectures’ phases, from both technical and instructional points of view. J. Michael Spector introduces MOOC concept, its origin, types, goals, and impact. Then he provides a critical look at MOOCs, pointing out what do they effectively lack, especially from an instructional point of view, and what would be the MOOCs’ future. Ronghuai Huang, Yongbin Hu, and Xiaolin Liu provide an openness maturity framework for OER projects. This framework is intended to analyze and assess the promotion and sharing of OER. They first review the development process and typical projects of OER, and then analyze the driving mode of OERs development and promotion approaches, taking into account the OER’s characteristics. Sara Osuna Acedo, Divina Frau-Meigs, Lucía Camarero, Cano, Adeline Bossu, Raquel Pedrosa, and Darco Jansen introduce a pioneering European project entitled “ECO project” providing a new MOOC model named sMOOC (social MOOCs), based on constructivist and connectivist pedagogical theories. They describe the sMOOC experience held at different linguistic and cultural zones. Ebba Ossiannilsson, Zehra Altınay, and Fahriye Altınay provide a possible roadmap for institutions towards establishing policies on open online education quality. They describe how institutions can enhance and ensure quality through OER and MOOC practices. vi Preface
- 12. Martin Ebner, AnjaLorenz, Elke Lackner, Michael Kopp, Swapna Kumar, Sandra Schön, and Andreas Wittke discuss the importance of combining the use of both OER and MOOCs, in order to foster new and innovative didactical approa- ches, as well as future education, especially in German-speaking Europe. Sonia Santoveña Casal and Alejandro Silva report a study of the application of the virtual learning model in a MOOC, “Communication and mobile learning,” within the project “Elearning, Communication and Open-data: Massive Mobile, Ubiquitous and Open Learning (ECO)” of European Commission. The learning model effectiveness is analyzed by contrasting students’ opinions before and after the course, taking into consideration some key aspects related to the acquired knowledge and performance, interest and innovation level, and overall satisfaction with the course. Yves Epelboin points out the importance to set a suitable business model to ensure a successful preparation and launch of MOOCs. He explores some emerging business models for both MOOCs’ providers and creators. He reveals the necessity for a corporation financing model between MOOCs’ creators and providers, as the future of MOOCs and online learning is closely linked to the consolidation of these business models. Darco Jansen, Jon Rosewell, and Karen Kear review current and emerging practices for the quality assurance and quality enhancement of MOOCs. They explain the necessity to consider the quality issue for MOOCs, and discuss the importance of the use of international quality frameworks for MOOCs, embedded in institutional quality processes. Nelson Piedra, Janneth Chicaiza, Jorge Lopez-Vargas, Javiera Atenas, and Edmundo Tovar introduce the evolution of Open Educational Movement and the potential of the use of linked data approach to improve the discoverability, reusability and integration of open and free-access materials. They focus on the benefits of reusability and sharing of open licensed educational resources. Francis Brouns, António Teixeira, Lina Morgado, Santiago, Fano, Aquilina Fueyo, and Darco Jansen propose a collaborative approach for MOOC design. This approach is based on a model already tested in practice and has been further elaborated and evaluated in the ECO project. The pedagogical framework is based on the notion that MOOCs should be designed to accommodate the specific context of open online education with its heterogeneity of learner needs. Finally, Nenad Stefanovic and Danijela Milosevic introduce an innovative open educational model and supporting software system that is capable of answering the major challenges of modern education. The proposed OER model and software platform enables the creation of agile and adaptable educational ecosystem that can transform the learning experience and connect individuals, educational institutions, and companies. We hope that this collection will not only provide an overview of the current state of the art and also serve as a milestone for researchers as they progress further, but will also provide a roadmap for the vision for the future. The quality of this collection would not have been possible without the support of various individuals. Editors would first like to thank Richard Tortorella, who provided excellent support Preface vii
- 13. for smooth progressionof the whole editing process. Various reviewers dedicated their time to ensure the quality as well. Editors would like to thank Ashok Patel, Demetrios Sampson, Fathi Essalmi, Fathi Essalmi, Guang Chen, Hadi Shaheen, Imran Zualkernan, Jan M. Pawlowski, Jeremy Hunsinger, Jon Dron, Junfeng Yang, Koutheair Khribi, Lilia Cheniti, Michael Verhaart, Mike Spector, Mohamed Ally, Mounia Abik, Nian-Shing Chen, Ramesh Sharma, Ramzi Farhat, Ray Yueh-Min Huang, Riadh Besbes, Tore Hoel, and Wong Su Luan for their kind help. Tunis, Tunisia Mohamed Jemni Edmonton, AB, Canada Kinshuk Tunis, Tunisia Mohamed Koutheair Khribi viii Preface
- 14. Contents 1 New Modelsof Open and Distributed Learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Stephen Downes 2 Survey and Reflection of Open Education Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Junfeng Yang and Kinshuk 3 Educational Design for MOOCs: Design Considerations for Technology-Supported Learning at Large Scale. . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Stylianos Sergis, Demetrios G. Sampson and Lina Pelliccione 4 Toward Empowering Open and Online Education in the Arab World Through OER and MOOCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Mohamed Jemni and Mohamed Koutheair Khribi 5 MOOCs in Taiwan: The Movement and Experiences. . . . . . . . . . . 101 Stephen J.H. Yang, Jeff C.H. Huang and Anna Y.Q. Huang 6 Yet Another Perspectives About Designing and Implementing a MOOC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Sie Wai Chew, I-Ling Cheng and Nian-Shing Chen 7 A Critical Look at MOOCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 J. Michael Spector 8 How to Evaluate the Sharing Effects of Open Educational Resource Projects: An Openness Maturity Analysis Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Ronghuai Huang, Yongbin Hu and Xiaolin Liu 9 Intercreativity and Interculturality in the Virtual Learning Environments of the ECO MOOC Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Sara Osuna-Acedo, Divina Frau-Meigs, Lucía Camarero-Cano, Adeline Bossu, Raquel Pedrosa and Darco Jansen ix
- 15. 10 Towards FosteringQuality in Open Online Education Through OER and MOOC Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Ebba Ossiannilsson, Zehra Altınay and Fahriye Altınay 11 How OER Enhances MOOCs—A Perspective from German-Speaking Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Martin Ebner, Anja Lorenz, Elke Lackner, Michael Kopp, Swapna Kumar, Sandra Schön and Andreas Wittke 12 Open Learning: ‘Communication and Mobile Learning’ at Spanish University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Sonia Santoveña Casal and Alejandro Silva 13 MOOCs: A Viable Business Model? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Yves Epelboin 14 Quality Frameworks for MOOCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Darco Jansen, Jon Rosewell and Karen Kear 15 Using Linked Data to Blended Educational Materials With OER—A General Context of Synergy: Linked Data for Describe, Discovery and Retrieve OER and Human Beings Knowledge to Provide Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Nelson Piedra, Janneth Chicaiza, Javiera Atenas, Jorge Lopez-Vargas and Edmundo Tovar 16 Designing Massive Open Online Learning Processes: The sMOOC Pedagogical Framework. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 Francis Brouns, António Teixeira, Lina Morgado, Santiago Fano, Aquilina Fueyo and Darco Jansen 17 Innovative OER Model for Technology-Enhanced Academic and Entrepreneurial Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 Nenad Stefanovic and Danijela Milosevic x Contents
- 16. Chapter 1 New Modelsof Open and Distributed Learning Stephen Downes 1.1 Introduction Historically most learning that has ever taken place has taken place in a classroom with a teacher giving instruction and students reading books and writing on paper. In the twentieth century, however, more and more learning has been taking place outside the classroom, using technology to reach students at a distance. For example, Australia’s “School of the Air” used wireless radio transmissions to send lessons to children growing up on isolated sheep stations (Hanson 2010). And of course institutions like Britain’s Open University became expert providing learning by correspondence. The first online classes were offered starting in the 1980s and over the last 30 years the Internet has been used to offer lessons at all levels all over the world. These new technologies have changed the way educators look at learning. The need to adapt to students working from home and at a distance caused educational institutions to examine their practices more closely. For example, one of the first technological developments was the “course pack”. This was typically a package of printed material containing all the guidance that would normally be provided in class by a teacher: lessons, readings, quizzes. Course packs are still used to this day; the Open University offers them online as part of its OpenLearn initiative. These packs need to be created ahead of time, so their authors had plan every detail of a distance education class ahead of time. As they did so, their understanding of the process changed (Fig. 1.1). S. Downes (&) National Research Council Canada, 1200 Montreal Road, Ottawa, Canada e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://www.downes.ca © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2017 M. Jemni et al. (eds.), Open Education: from OERs to MOOCs, Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-52925-6_1 1
- 17. 1.2 From Passiveto Active The first and most important lesson learned by distance educators concerns the role of the student in his or her own learning. Where students were once thought as passive recipients of learning, today it is understood that they must be willing collaborators in the educational process. And where once it was thought that an education consisted mostly of the facts and data to be remembered, today it is understood that becoming educated is a developmental process, like becoming physically fit. Understanding the student’s role is important because it directly informs the design and methodology employed by online learning technology. At one time, learning may have been thought of as the simple transfer of information from one person to another. In such a model, online learning could then consist just as the presentation of information—put up some videos, give students some texts, and they will learn. But because learning is more than just the transfer of content, online learning must consist of something more than the presentation of content. These define some of the major design criteria for any learning system online today: • Prior learning—learning resources may need to be adapted to a learner’s back- ground and culture, their work, their language, and their understanding of the world, and so history and coherence are important elements of online learning; • Learning styles—learning materials may need to match the individual’s pref- erence to learn visually, or through concrete experience, or by solving problems, and so on, so choice and variety are important; Fig. 1.1 1880s Victorian boys’ classroom. Public domain image via BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ schools/primaryhistory/victorian_britain/victorian_schools/ 2 S. Downes
- 18. • Motivation—the learningenvironment may need to stimulate a student’s interest and engagement, so there needs to be a way to stimulate social presence and interaction with people they can relate to; • Knowledge formation—the student’s environment may need to help a student visualize or construct internal models or representations of the content being learned, so there needs to be a way to compose or construct or create objects to share with others; • Community—the student may need social engagement to comprehend the implicit and unwritten aspects of a discipline, such as a feeling for what is relevant, ways of observing and approaching problems, and standards for success. When online learning technologies were first being developed in the 1990s their designers sought to incorporate not only the presentation of content and learning materials, but also to support these other aspects of the learning experience. Consequently, learning management systems consisted not only of text readers and video players but also additional tools supporting the active engagement of students. These systems—with names like Atutor and Blackboard and WebCT (short for “Web Course Tools”) sought to encourage student participation by replicating the classroom experience. They included at a minimum discussion boards or online conferencing tools, a conversation or chat area, online exercises and quizzes, per- sonal profiles and activity lists, and scheduled activities involving readings, exer- cises, interactions, and assessments. Through the first decade of the twenty-first century, traditional learning man- agement systems came under increasing criticism precisely because by emulating the classroom experience online they did not sufficiently support student engage- ment and participation. The new models of open and distributed learning described in the remainder of this chapter can be seen largely as attempts to reinforce the student’s active and participatory role in learning, to move beyond what is possible in an online classroom, and to embrace the potential of the wider Internet. Today, though, the learning management system (LMS) remains the dominant model for online learning. Virtually every institution along with most large cor- porations and governments use LMSs to manage training and education. The LMS market is worth $925 million in the U.S. and more than a billion dollars worldwide (Mallon 2011). Learning online today means taking a course from an LMS, which means being led through a series of lessons and activities by oneself or with a cohort of classmates. Learning tomorrow, though, will mean something very different as learners and education providers push the limits of the traditional LMS in an effort to make learning increasingly personalized and active. 1 New Models of Open and Distributed Learning 3
- 19. 1.3 From Formalto Informal A second major trend in recent years concerns the management of learning. For the most part, learning is managed formally under the auspices of departments of education, college or university administrations, or corporate training departments. Formal learning involves the statement of specific learning objectives or curricula, a rigorous mode of teaching such as classroom instruction, and evaluation or assessment leading to credential or certification (Ainsworth and Eaton 2010). Whether offered through an in-class or distance education setting, one of the central issues of formal learning revolves around its cost (Cross 2007; Cofer 2000). Savings expected through the use of distance or online media do not materialize due to the expense of course design, formal instruction, and assessment or evaluation. Through the 1990s as well criticisms began to be voiced regarding the formal and inflexible nature of learning management systems. A distinction between formal learning and a more bottom-up or democratic form of learning has existed for more than 20 years. In 2007 an OECD report defined two additional forms of learning in addition to informal learning (Werquin 2007): • Nonformal learning refers to a type of learning that may still be offered by an educational institution but which does not have a formal credential or certifi- cation as an outcome. Nonformal learning may thus be more loosely structured and delivered than formal learning. • Informal learning by contrast is not managed by an institution at all, but is rather managed by the individual learner. Consequently, it may be thought of (from an institutional perspective) as lacking any form of organization or objective. Informal learning in particular has received increasing attention because of its relation to lifelong learning. It may be thought of as “learning on the job” or “experiential learning”. In particular, learning occurs as individuals make sense of the experiences that arise during their daily lives on the job. It is rooted in a person’s existing knowledge, skills and interests, and often adapted to meet a participant’s specific needs. As a result, the development of informal learning systems managed by learners themselves tend to focus less on the presentation of information and the remem- bering of facts and more on descriptions of experience, discussions about practice, response to requests for advice, and conversations of a more general nature. These systems arise outside the traditional learning infrastructure and often outside learning institutions entirely. The emergence of the Internet, and specifically the free and open-source soft- ware movements, have shown that peer-to-peer communications technology can put people in symbiotic, “you answer my question, I’ll answer yours’ relationships.” For example, self-organizing social systems arise in discussion websites such as Slashdot and Yahoo Groups (Wiley and Edwards 2002). These are essentially learning communities organized around some topic of interest, whether it be knitting or learning disabilities or beekeeping. Instead of there being one teacher 4 S. Downes
- 20. leading instruction, peopleask questions and are engaged by the community. Sometimes an answer is provided, but just as often more questions are asked as people try to narrow the context or reframe the question entirely from a more informed perspective. Informal learning is often viewed less as a means of acquiring some body of knowledge and more as a means of enabling or fostering some future action. In other words, informal learning serves a different purpose from traditional learning. In formal systems, there is a greater emphasis on educational progression through a body of knowledge, perhaps leading to a diploma or other form of recognition, while in the case of informal learning the effort generated leads to some form of community involvement, action or even activism (McGivney 1999). The principles of informal learning apply to any form of environment where informed and effective action is the desired outcome. Jay Cross, for example, writes about Company Command, an informal learning community developed by two American company commanders who knew each other from West Point (Cross 2007). The Company Command website states, “We are a grass-roots, voluntary forum that is by and for the profession with a specific, laser beam focus on company-level command.” Cross cites some of the very specific advice found in comments on the site, varying from taking off armor in tents to wearing seatbelts in the vehicles. “Every community needs a clubhouse where members can discuss things and draw conclusions,” he says. Informal learning has become increasingly associated with the concept of online community or, more formally, communities of practice. A good example is the Australian Research Council funded project “Uncovering Learning in the Workplace”. This project emphasizes the role of community in online learning, seeking to increase social interaction among staff at different educational institu- tions in Australia. It points to the extent of everyday learning in workgroups created in the educational system and their importance in “getting the job done.” (Leontios et al. 2003). 1.4 Open and Distributed Learning A major element in the development of informal learning through the early 2000s has been the emergence and development of open learning. The term “open learning” originally referred to “Policies that permit open entry to learning, liberal transfer of credits, and recognition of prior learning.” (Farrell 2003). Institutions such as Britain’s Open University and Canada’s Athabasca University were created in order to offer access to learning without admission barriers by offering distance and online learning, though in a formal mode, with clear learning objectives leading to a certificate or degree. That said, open learning has over time come to be associated with flexible or distributed learning and in particular to be associated with the following characteristics: 1 New Models of Open and Distributed Learning 5
- 21. • Separation ofteacher and learner in time or place. • Ue of mixed-media courseware. • Two-way communication between teacher and learner. • Industrialized processes including development and delivery teams (CoL 2013). A significant proportion of the investment in open learning is toward the learning materials to be used in course packages and other delivery media. The course packages would be constructed out of reusable modules of digital learning content called “learning objects”. Beginning in the late 1990s the development of these “learning objects” and associated infrastructure has become central to online learning. Consequently, open learning has come over time to also be associated with the concept of open access, which is to say, a lowering of barriers to the access to these educational materials themselves. A number of academic and technological initiatives emerged in support of open access. The concept of open access covered not only learning objects but also any resource involved in education, including for example books and journal articles. Open access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (Suber 2004). An early advocate of open access was the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), formed in 1997 by the association of research libraries. The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) was the first major statement by scholars in support of open access. The first major technological development in support of open access was probably the Open Archives Initiative. This project described a set of specifications for the provision of open content through repositories, and included methods for submission, indexing, search and retrieval of content. The initiative was designed primarily for research materials, but its wider applicability to educational materials is apparent. The Open Archives Initiative was the basis for the DSpace Project, founded at MIT as “a turnkey institutional repository application.” Numerous journals have declared themselves to be ‘open access’ journals, either by making their content freely available online (this is known as the “Gold” model) or by allowing authors to self-archive their content (the “Green” model) (Harnad et al. 2004). The expansion of open access over the last decade has been nothing short of dramatic. The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) indexes 36 million documents from 2000 repositories. The Directory of Open Access Journals lists 8000 titles. The Internet Archive contains 670,000 movies, 100,000 concerts, 1.3 million audio recordings, and 3.5 million texts (Morrison 2012). 1.5 Open Licensing In addition to lobbying and the provision of technological infrastructure, the pri- mary mechanism employed in support of open access, and therefore open learning generally, is open licensing. This term may be used to refer to any of a number of licenses that support open access. 6 S. Downes
- 22. Open licensing isbased on the similar innovation in software development, the open-source license. These licenses were based originally on the four freedoms outlined by Richard Stallman in 1996: • The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). • The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. • The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). • The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). A core element therefore of open licensing is not merely access to the content in question, but also the ability to share the content thus accessed. In the realm of educational content, the license most frequently used to support open access is Creative Commons. This form of licensing preserves copyright in the material thus licensed, but allows free access and distribution with, as the website notes, “some rights reserved.” Creative Commons licensing allows the author or copyright holder to stipulate some or all of the following conditions (Fig. 1.2): • That the author of the work be attributed. • That the work be used noncommercially. • That the work be shared under the same license it was granted. • That the work be shared as a whole, without a derivative being made. Numerous funding institutions have begun to require that materials produced under their programs be released as open access, typically under a Creative Commons license. These open access mandates, as they are known, have been implemented by such agencies as the Wellcome Trust, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the World Bank, and others. The development of learning management systems, discussed above, led to the development of repositories of learning resources similar to the Open Archives Initiative. These learning resources, called “learning objects,” were designed in Fig. 1.2 Creative commons licenses and characteristics. Image by the author 1 New Models of Open and Distributed Learning 7
- 23. such a wayas to be discoverable, sharable, and reusable in learning management systems. Examples of learning object repositories include the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT), Europe’s ARIADNE project, Canada’s Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects (CAREO), and Australia’s EdNA (Education Network Australia) (McGreal et al. 2004). Many of the resources offered through these repositories were licensed under Creative Commons or more specific licensing schemes, such as the Open Content License, created by David Wiley in 1998, or the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), created to support open-source software. Then in 2002 MIT launched the Open Courseware (OCW) project, offering open access to teaching and learning resources under the Creative Commons “Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike license” (CC By-NC-SA). By 2003 materials from 500 courses had been posted online. To date OCW has seen 140 million visits by 100 million visitors from around the world (MIT 2012). In 2002 the global effort to begin formally recognizing open educational resources began. The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was adopted at a global forum convened to study OERs, and the UNESCO OER project has been active since, focusing on research into development, distribution, and sustainability, and launching OPAL, an initiative to investigate the quality of OERs. Even with these initiatives, the number of open educational resources is dwarfed compared to the number of open resources available generally. The Internet Archive, mentioned above, collected millions of audio, video, and text resources. Additionally, sites like Flickr and YouTube store millions more photos and videos: Flickr, for example, has more than 220 million photos licensed under Creative Commons in addition to hundreds of millions more with all rights reserved. YouTube sees 3 billion hours of video viewed each month. Additional services with millions of openly licensed resources include Jamendo and CCMixter (music), Open Clip Art Library, Photopedia, and Pixabay (images), as well as Wikimedia, Europeana, and SopinXpress (media). The impact of open licensing over the last decade is that hundreds of millions of high-quality educational materials have been made available without charge to the educational community. In some cases, these resources may be reused or incor- porated into course materials. This was the type of use envisioned by the developers of learning object repositories and open educational resources. The resources would become a part of a course package; open licensing was used to allow the resources being adapted into course packages and to allow for resale, if necessary. But the growing ubiquity of web access begged the question: why incorporate materials into course packages at all? Why not just send the student to the resource? This would make many more resources available instantly. Some objections present themselves immediately: questions about the persistence of materials were raised, their quality and provenance, as well as privacy and security concerns. But the possibly suggests new models of online learning, and these began to appear with the articulation of E-learning 2.0. 8 S. Downes
- 24. 1.6 E-Learning 2.0 In2005 the concept of “Web 2.0” was first articulated. It represented a shift in the way developers looked at the World Wide Web. Before, the web was thought of as a collection of documents. These documents were collected and hosted on web servers, and readers would navigate from one document to the next to the next. After, the web was thought of as a body of interconnected data. Rather than viewing pages, web users were thought of as using applications. These applications might have a location, the way a web page does, but it could draw data from anywhere else on the web (O’Reilly 2005) (Fig. 1.3). A good example of web 2.0 was the way Flickr worked with other services, such as Piknik. As mentioned above, users uploaded and stored their photos on Flickr. So Flickr was like a big database of photos. But if the user wanted to edit their photo, they could go to a different service called Piknik. Once they logged in and gave Flickr permission, Piknik could access their photo data. The user would use Piknik to edit the photo, and then the photo would be sent back to Flickr, all behind the scenes. Flickr was one of a group of websites—two other notable examples are Twitter and Del.icio.us—which gave users access to each other’s data. This allowed users to use the sites socially—they could share links, information, and photos. Because the data was interlinked, these services came to be known as social net- works rather than simply websites. Before web 2.0, online services were provided by heavy enterprise programs (like a learning management system) that would access data either locally or using web services to obtain it from other systems. These programs would present that data as web pages, much like a course page that might be viewed on an LMS. After web 2.0, online services began to be provided by lightweight web applications (or “apps”) that could access data directly from the source and manipulate it inside the web browser. Fig. 1.3 Web architecture before and after web 2.0. Image by the author 1 New Models of Open and Distributed Learning 9
- 25. The concept ofE-Learning 2.0 was based on this idea. It merged the idea of the “net generation” learner with the concept of social networks and “web 2.0” developed by Tim O’Reilly. The idea was that individual learners could find and share resources with each other using social networks. For example, they could each create their own blogs and use these blogs to link to photos or videos they may have found on the web. These blogs were saved as data feeds that could be read using feed readers. Thus a student could use a web application, such as “Google Reader”, to read everyone else’s blogs. While much of the attention paid to e-learning 2.0 focused on social networks, it is important to understand how e-learning 2.0 changed the data model underlying online learning: • Before—learning resources were collected by institutional learning management systems and stored locally; these resources would then be combined to form course packages that would be presented to students as an online course • After—students would link to resources wherever they may occur around the web and make these links available to other students; these resources would be viewed individually with no preset order or organization. E-learning 2.0 thus represents an unbundling of educational resources; what was once presented as a single package is now presented as a set of discrete resources. It marked the transition from the World Wide Web as a medium for presenting documents and other static content to the web as a platform for social networking, interactive applications, and communications networks. 1.7 Social Learning As noted above, examples of informal learning could be found in communities like Slashdot, Yahoo Groups, and content management systems. These communities followed the development of the World Wide Web through the evolution of social networks and web 2.0. Though large and informal, these communities became cohesive and offered substantial value to their members. One example of a distributed social learning community is the “Webheads in Action” community. The Webheads, a community of language instructors, emerged out of online sessions held at the Electronic Village prior to the community’s annual TESOL conference. Eventually some conference sessions were held online as speakers presented remotely using Wimba for voice and Yahoo for webcam broadcasts. By 2004 the community had created its own Yahoo group, which was active for about a year. They used a variety of media to collaborate, including a PBWorks wiki, online chats and more. Another example is the “Edubloggers” community. The community began as a loose collection of individuals who blogged about education and found each other through comments on each other’s blogs. Over time, loose networks of edubloggers developed. Those who attended the NECC conference in the United States created 10 S. Downes
- 26. an “edubloggercon” aheadof the conference, and a large informal network of school teachers using blogging. Another branch developed with James Farmer installed a multi-user version of WordPress, an open-source blogging tool, and set up edublogs.org and invited teachers to join for free. Edublogs now hosts 1.3 million blogs created by and for educators. Another important example is Wikipedia. Most readers will be familiar with Wikipedia, created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001. It has 22 million articles (over 4 million in English alone) and about 100,000 regularly active con- tributors. The principle behind Wikipedia is that any reader may contribute to, or edit an article (this process has become more formalized over time). Wikipedia has expanded in other ways as well; the Wikimedia Commons, mentioned above, is a branch of Wikipedia and hosts several million images and other resources. Wikipedia is just one example of a wiki. The wiki has become an alternative form of content management and can be found everywhere from corporate intra- nets, school divisions, and informal learning. They are a popular way for a learning community to gather and store knowledge and resources. One example of this is the Audacity Wiki. Audacity is a widely used open-source audio editing application. The Audacity wiki is used by the community to share notes and tips about the software. Some major education wiki initiatives have emerged as well: • Wikiversity—an extension of Wikipedia, “devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from preschool to university, including professional training and informal learning.” • Curricki—“the result of work done for GELC—the Global Education and Learning Community—an online project started by Sun Microsystems to develop works for education in a collaborative effort.” Curricki is focused on K-12 schools and contains about 43,000 resources. • WikiEducator—“WikiEducator is a community project working collaboratively with the Free Culture Movement toward a free version of the education cur- riculum by 2015.” This wiki is focused on offering full online courses in col- laboration with participating institutions (Fig. 1.4). These wiki-based initiatives have led to what may be called the hybrid institu- tional model of online learning. There are several versions of this model, but it is most clearly articulated by the “logic model” authored by James C. Taylor and adopted by WikiEducator (Taylor 2007). The idea is that educational institutions and other collaborators provide free online learning materials, much along the model of Open Courseware. These resources are used to create online courses with learning support and tutoring provided by a net- work of volunteers. Finally, credentials are provided by accredited educational institutions through some sort of learning assessment. This logic model was used as the basis for OERu, founded by the Commonwealth of Learning with Wikipedia and formally inaugurated by founding partners at a meeting in New Zealand in 2011. 1 New Models of Open and Distributed Learning 11
- 27. Another example employinga similar model is P2P University which “provides an online space for people to work together to learn a particular topic by completing tasks, assessing individual and group work, and providing constructive feedback.” Yet another example is CodeAcademy, which provides community-contributed resources helping people learn to write software. Yet another is Khan Academy, which features about 3000 resources on mathematics and physics. Once again, the model is to offer a set of open and freely accessible learning resources, and then to provide some degree of coaching or tutoring offered by volunteers. 1.8 Personal Learning A major objective of online learning has always been to provide more personalized learning. As indicated above, new pedagogies enabled by Internet technologies allows designers to adapt to an individual’s learning styles, adapt to prior learning, and respond to a students’ needs and interests. Learning management systems adapted to these needs through a combination of customization and personalization#: • Personalization is the process of tailoring content and presentation to an indi- vidual’s characteristics or preferences. For example, when Google logs what sites you have visited and tailors search results, that is personalization. • Customization is provision of mechanisms that allow a user to explicitly state what content they want and how they want it presented. For example, when you narrow a Google search range to “Creative Commons only”, that is customization. Fig. 1.4 OERu logic model. Used with permission. http://www.slideshare.net/mackiwg/ summary-of-oeru-for-2nd-meeting-of-anchor-partners 12 S. Downes
- 28. The combination ofcustomization and personalization provides some, but not all, of the objectives set my new pedagogies. Students are limited by the capacity of the LMS. Community formation is limited to the students enrolled in the course. Students can participate and interact, but their creativity is limited by the LMS environment, and they lose access to their work at the end of the semester. Many LMS developers have been adapted by adding e-portfolio capability. An e-portfolio is a collection of a student’s work presented for display to an external audience, much like the way an artist would collect a portfolio of her work to show to prospective clients. Students can select their best work and customize how the work is presented. LMS vendors began offering e-portfolio applications as extensions to learning management systems. Additionally, open-source e-portfolio systems, such as Mahara, were developed for use with open-source e-learning software. But what if the e-portfolio were a web 2.0 application instead of just another part of a learning management system? This idea led to the development of what has come to be known as the personal learning environment, or PLE. Although no commercial PLE software yet exists, the concept of the PLE represents a significant transformation in the idea of online learning: • The PLE uses lightweight data and communication standards characteristic of web 2.0 rather than the server-side application-based LMS software. • The PLE is centered around the person rather than around the institution; each person has his or her own PLE, which they customize according to their own tastes. • The PLE connects to a variety of services and resources around the web rather than being limited to course contents contained in a single LMS (Fig. 1.5). The idea of the personal learning environment is that it takes advantage of the many sources of open educational resources available on the web, including not only those available in formal learning repositories, but also those contained in sites such as YouTube and Flickr. In addition, the design of the PLE encourages students to create and contribute to this wider community by creating blog posts and uploading images and videos. Finally, the PLE supports participation in open social networks to a much greater extent than the traditional LMS, for example, by reading from and sharing to social network services such as MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook. While the PLE is thought of as being based on a particular application, a sec- ondary concept, that of the Personal Learning Network has also emerged, this not being based on an application at all. The idea of the PLN is that a learner uses existing social network applications, the most popular being Facebook and Twitter, and assembles a network of contacts with whom to share educational experiences such as discussions, live chat sessions, and learning resources. Both the PLE and the PLN emphasize learning as something that takes place in a network. As such, PLEs and PLNs support informal learning based on open edu- cational resources (indeed, it is arguable that they require open educational resources, in order to support modification and resharing). But in addition, learning networks differ from traditional LMS-based learning in four major respects: 1 New Models of Open and Distributed Learning 13
- 29. • Autonomy—because eachlearner supports and manages his or her own learning environment, PLEs and PLNs support a great deal of individual autonomy, with each learner making his or her decision about which resources to use and what course of studies to follow. • Diversity—while an LMS and the resources offered in traditional courses tend to be standardized and formalized, learning networks support a diversity of resources, online learning systems, pedagogical styles and formats, and more. In addition, the members of a learning network will use diverse technologies and resources. • Openness—a learning management system is typically a closed environment, meaning that only those with appropriate credentials may access the resources and community, typically by means of a login. A network, by contrast, is formed by means of peer-to-peer communications between its members, which means that any person may join and share resources. • Interactivity—in a learning management system, the same content is passed from an instructor to all participants; this content forms the core of the learning, and communications are distributive, that is, from the center distributed to the whole. In a network, however, there is no centralized content, and consequently communications are interactive, with diverse contents being passed from many distinct sources. Fig. 1.5 Future VLE—the prototypical PLE diagram by Scott Wilson. Used with permission. https://www.flickr.com/photos/elifishtacos/90944650 14 S. Downes
- 30. 1.9 Connectivism Concurrent withthe development of e-learning 2.0 and the personal learning environment was the development of a web pedagogy known as connectivism. Coined by George Siemens in 2004, the term captures the essence of a new model of online learning based on networks and community. As Siemens writes, connectivism integrates some important properties of net- works such as chaos, complexity, and self-organization. Learning, meanwhile, is a process that occurs within these networks, “nebulous environments of shifting core elements”. Importantly, knowledge is something that does not simply exist inside a learner— it exists as well in the wider community or network. Learning therefore can occur in any network, not merely in the individual. Learning is constantly changing, con- stantly shifting, and as Siemens says, “the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.” Siemens summarizes the principles of connectivism as follows: • Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. • Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. • Learning may reside in nonhuman appliances. • Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known. • Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning. • Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill. • Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities. • Decision-making is itself a learning process. Connectivism offers a new model of online learning because it presents a dif- ferent view of the nature of knowledge and learning themselves. It draws not only on the formal theory of networks but also on recent work in artificial intelligence and neuroscience. Normally we think of knowledge as something that is concrete and discrete. A sentence like “Paris is the capital of France” is a typical example. The meaning is contained in the sentence, it is true by virtue of correspondence or reference to the external world, and “learning” this bit of knowledge is tantamount to acquiring or remembering the sentence that contains the information. But as noted above, educators have come to view learning as more than merely remembering bits of knowledge. Connectivism explains why. The knowledge that “Paris is the capital of France” is not actually contained in the sentence itself. Understanding the sentence requiring understanding an entire language, and understanding the language requires knowing things about thousands of other words, the people that speak them, and the community that gives those words meaning. The knowledge, in other words, is distributed—it does not exist in any one place, but is rather spread out across a network of interconnected entities, whether these entities are words, brain cells, textbooks, or computer circuits. 1 New Models of Open and Distributed Learning 15
- 31. The theory ofconnectivism therefore amounts to this: the knowledge is itself a set of connections in network, a pattern of connectivity. A person cannot simply acquire this pattern of connectivist, it has to be grown through repeated interactions. Learning therefore needs to be active, it needs to be network-based, and it needs to be constituted essentially of interactions between networks of users. 1.10 Massive Open Online Courses In the fall of 2011 Sebastian Thrun, a professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, and Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, announced that they would offer an open online course in artificial intelligence. No credit would be offered, but students who finished the course would be issued a Statement of Accomplishment. 160,000 people signed up, and the world took notice of what had become a phenomenon, the Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC. The MOOC had two major precedents: the Wiley Wiki and the open course. The Wiley Wiki pioneered the idea of open online content that can be edited by course participants; created by David Wiley in 2007. Like other wiki course initiatives, it could be edited by participants and accepted contributions from the web as a whole. What made the Wiley Wiki different was that the wiki was the online home for a university course being offered at Utah State University. Participants from outside and people enrolled in the course would enjoy the same resources and the same interactions (Wiley 2010). Open Teaching, meanwhile becomes possible when you take the synchronous conferencing application you are using and open it up to visitors from across the Internet. The model was pioneered by Alec Couros in his online Social Media and Education class beginning in 2007. Sessions were offered using the Elluminate conferencing system (now Blackboard Collaborate) and typically featured guest presenters as well as visitors from around the world (Couros 2010). The first MOOC was offered by Stephen Downes and George Siemens at the University of Manitoba in 2008. Originally planned as a small course on connec- tivism, 24 students signed up for credit. When the course was opened to anyone who was interested, however, an additional 2200 signed up. This large contingent of students helped create some of the innovations that made the course a MOOC, rather than simply a large course online. When the course—called “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2008”, or CCK08—was set up, the authors decided to follow an explicitly connectivist model. This meant that thought here would be a start date and an end date with a list of course topics in between, there would be no “official” curriculum. Additionally, the course was designed as a network, with participants encouraged to use their own websites and weblogs and to register RSS feeds with the central course website. An application designed to aggregate feeds and distributed the results as a daily email newsletter, gRSShopper, was incorporated into the course design. 16 S. Downes
- 32. One of thecourse participants created a map of the course on launch day (Fig. 1.6). In the upper left of the diagram are the last vestiges of a formal course structure: the structured design of a learning management system, in this case, an open-source Moodle installation. Another square structure, at the top middle of the diagram, is the course wiki, on which the planning for weekly course topics took place. The remainder of the structure of the MOOC consists of distributed services linked together by the RSS aggregator: a Technorati search on the #CCK08 tag, a Bloglines harvester, a PageFlakes web portal, Flickr, del.icio.us and Twitter tags, a Google Group, a CCK08 blog, and The Daily, the course newsletter. The second year the same course was offered, a new wrinkle to the model was added. Students returned from the first year, began adding their own materials, and in many ways began to teach the course themselves. This mirrors a phenomenon that was beginning to be seen in traditional classrooms: the idea of the “Fisch Flip” (Pink 2010) whereby students watch videos, read books, and otherwise receive instruction on their own time, outside of class, and then bring their knowledge and insight into the class, which is focused on students relating these insights to one another in discussions and other activities. In 2010, two MOOCs combined the idea of personal learning with the MOOC. Offered by Will Richardson and Dave Warlick (educational consultants who were influential in the edublogger movement), the “Personal Learning Networks” course used a PBWiki for course content and offered a series of “challenges” leading Fig. 1.6 Structure of the MOOC. Matthias Melcher. Used with permission. https://x28newblog. wordpress.com/2008/09/06/cck08-first-impressions/ 1 New Models of Open and Distributed Learning 17
- 33. participants to constructtheir own personal learning networks (PLNs). Downes and Siemens were joined by Dave Cormier and Rita Kop to offer “Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge” (PLENK2010) to explore the idea of the personal learning environment and related concepts. Another MOOC of note, offered by Jim Groom at Mary Washington University, was “Distributed Storytelling 106”. This MOOC was based on a WordPress blog. Students (and participants from around the world) were asked to submit storytelling assignments (for example, describe a movie in four icons; create an animated image; rewrite a movie poster to reflect a current event). Participants would com- plete the assignments; these were then aggregated and displayed on the central DS106 blog. The course spawned some innovative side projects, such as DS106 Radio, a live web radio service created by participant to share their audio projects. 1.11 The MOOC Model The structure of the MOOC was essentially established by these early MOOCs. (Fournier and Kop 2015) The course could be as short as 8 weeks or as long as 30. Each week would have its own topic, would be introduced with a set of readings, would involve a guest speaker or host, and would invite participants to add their own resources and build on the comments offered by the hosts. Basic MOOC technology entailed the following elements: • A host website—very often a wiki, either hosted at an institution website or using a free wiki services; a content management system such as Drupal or Joomla could also be used, or a site hosting service such as Google Sites. • A synchronous conferencing environment such as Elluminate, Big Blue Button, WizIQ, Adobe Connect, or Wimba. Some MOOCs used what might be called the “WorldBridges” option, broadcasting audio using ShoutCast or IceCast, and video using UStream or LiveStream. In more recent years, Google Hangout has been widely used. • An RSS aggregation service – the Downes–Siemens courses used gRSShopper, and thus added an email newsletter to the mix; other courses used WordPress, which has a feed aggregation module, or Drupal, which has the same. Students used: • Blogging tools, for the participants: recommended services include Blogger, WordPress, EduBlogs, Tumblr, or Posterous. • Media upload sites such as Flickr or YouTube. • Social networking services such as Twitter or Facebook (the open-source identi. ca service was also used). • Discussion boards such as Google or Yahoo Groups; some MOOCs also offered discussion boards through LMSs such as Moodle (but these tended to be less useful with large numbers of participants). 18 S. Downes
- 34. Exploring the Varietyof Random Documents with Different Content
- 35. Government officials, notablySherip Putra, who died in June, 1906, after having served the Government well and faithfully for twenty- two years; and he was the son of Sherip Sahap, and the nephew of Sherip Mular. The condition of the country on Rajah Brooke's accession is best described in his own words. After relating the devastations committed by the piratical and head-hunting Dayaks of Saribas and Sekrang, the Rajah goes on to say:— It is of the hill Dayaks,[95] however, I would particularly write, for a more wretched, oppressed race is not to be found, or one more deserving the commiseration of the humane. Though industrious they never reap what they sow; though their country is rich in produce, they are obliged to yield it all to their oppressors; though yielding all beyond their bare sustenance, they rarely can preserve half their children, and often—too often—are robbed of them all, with their wives.[96] All that rapacity and oppression can effect is exhausted, and the only happiness that ever falls to the lot of these unhappy tribes is getting one tyrant instead of five thousand. Indeed, it is quite useless to try to explain the miserable condition of this country, where for the last ten years there has been no government; where intrigue and plunder form the occupation of all the higher classes; where a poor man to possess beyond his clothes is a crime; where lying is a virtue, religion dead, and where cheating is so common; and last, where the ruler, Muda Hasim, is so weak, that he has lost all authority except in name and observance.
- 36. LAND-DAYAK VILLAGE. And further:— Allthose who frequent the sea-shore lead a life of constant peril from roving Dayaks and treacherous Malays, and Illanuns and Balaninis, the regular pirates. It is a life of watchfulness, hide-and-seek, and fight or flight, and in the course of each year many lose their lives or their liberty. This is the country I have taken upon myself to govern with small means, few men, and, in short, without any of the requisites which could insure success; I have distraction within and intrigue abroad, and I have the weakest of the weak,[97] a rotten staff to depend upon for my authority. To add to his troubles, the season was one of famine following on intestine troubles. So poor were the people, that, again to quote the Rajah: "daily, poor wretches in the last stage of starvation float down the river, and crawl to my house to beg a little, little rice."
- 37. One of thefirst acts of the Rajah was to obtain the return to their families of the women and children of the late rebel Malay chiefs, who had been detained by Hasim now for nine months. He then recalled the Sarawak Malays, who, after submission to Hasim, had retired with their chiefs to distant parts, not trusting the good faith of their Malay Rajah and his right-hand man, Makota. The Bruni datus appointed by the former Governor were displaced, and the old Sarawak Malay datus, who had been in rebellion against the Bruni Government, and who owed their lives to Rajah Brooke's intercession, were reinstated, and in their families the offices remain to this day. Who these chiefs were at that time there seems to exist some doubt, with the exception of the premier datu, the Datu Patinggi Ali, who fell gallantly fighting for the Government three years after he had been reinstated, and the Datu Temanggong Mersal. The old Datu Bandar, Rancha, had died before this, and no one appears to have succeeded him directly, but Datu Patinggi Ali's son-in-law, Haji Abdul Gapur, and his son Muhammad Lana, evidently held office of some kind as native chiefs. On the Datu Patinggi's death, Haji Gapur succeeded him in office, and Muhammad Lana became the Datu Bandar. When Haji Gapur was dismissed in 1854, another son of the Datu Patinggi Ali, Haji Bua Hasan, was made the Imaum, and a few years afterwards Datu Imaum, but no one was then, or has since been, appointed to the office of Datu Patinggi. On Muhammad Lana's death, his brother Haji Bua Hasan became Datu Bandar, and, shortly afterwards, another relative, Haji Abdul Karim, was appointed Datu Imaum, and he was succeeded on his death in 1877 by Haji Muhammad Taim, the youngest son of the Datu Patinggi Ali. The Datu Bandar, Haji Bua Hasan, died in harness in 1905, over one hundred years of age, and has been succeeded by his son, Muhammad Kasim, formerly the Datu Muda; another son, Haji Muhammad Ali, is the Datu Hakim. These offices are not hereditary, so this narration will show how well the family of gallant old Patinggi Ali, the direct descendant of the original founder of Sarawak, Rajah Jarom, with the sole exception of Haji Gapur, have
- 38. earned and retainedthe confidence of the Government, and how honourably they have maintained their position. The Datu Temanggong Mersal belonged to another family, but he and his sons were not the less staunch; the eldest, brave Abang Pata, rendered the Government very signal services, and the younger, Muhammad Hasan, succeeded his father as Temanggong. The only one who betrayed the trust reposed in him was the Datu Patinggi Haji Gapur. Of him, as well as the others, we shall hear more in the sequel. About the same time that the old chiefs were reinstated the Rajah instituted a Court of Justice, in which he presided, and was assisted in dispensing justice by the brothers of Rajah Muda Hasim, and he promulgated the following simple laws, of which this is a summary: — James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, makes known to all men the following regulations:— 1. That murder, robbery, and other heinous crimes will be punished according to the written laws of Borneo;[98] and no man committing such offences will escape, if, after fair inquiry, he be found guilty. 2. All men, whether Malays, Chinese, or Dayaks are permitted to trade or to labour according to their pleasure, and to enjoy their gains. 3. All roads will be open, and all boats coming from other parts are free to enter the river and depart without let or hindrance. 4. Trade, in all its branches, will be free, with the exception of antimony ore, which the Governor holds in his own hands, but which no person is forced to work, and which will be paid for at a proper price when obtained. 5. It is ordered that no persons going amongst the Dayaks shall disturb them or gain their goods under false pretences. The revenue will be collected by the three Datus bearing the seal of the Governor, and (except this yearly demand from the Government) they are to give nothing to any other person; nor are they obliged to sell their goods except they please, and at their own prices. 6. The revenue shall be fixed, so that every one may know certainly how much he has to contribute yearly to support the Government.
- 39. 7. Weights andmeasures shall be settled and money current in the country, and doits[99] introduced, that the poor may purchase food cheaply. 8. Obedience to the ordinances will be strictly enforced. The Rajah's next step was to redress some of the wrongs to which the unhappy people had been subjected, and by ameliorating their condition to gain their confidence. The Rajah Muda Hasim and his brothers were in his way, "and the intriguing, mean, base Brunis, who depended upon the support of the pangirans to escape punishment when guilty;"[100] but, nevertheless, at the end of the year he was able to write that he had done much good—that he had saved the lives of many people, restored many captives to their families, and freed many slaves from bondage, and above all, that he had repressed vice, and had assisted the distressed. The Rajah had also to safeguard his country; to prepare to take the offensive against the Malays and Sea-Dayaks of the Sekrang and Saribas; and to guard against the plots and designs of his neighbours the sherips, who viewed with no friendly eye the establishment of a government in Sarawak, having as its principal objects the suppression of piracy and lawlessness. It was a menace to them, and they knew it, and to retain their power they were prepared to go to any length. Already Sherip Sahap and his brother Sherip Mular had sent people against the Sempro and Sentah Dayaks; and the former had endeavoured to withdraw the allegiance of the datus from the Rajah, but in this he failed. As a defensive measure the Rajah built a fort and palisaded his little town. He also constructed war-boats for the protection of the coast, and to take the offensive, which he saw must be inevitable. The Rajah soon showed the Saribas the power of his arm. Thirteen of their large war-boats appeared off the coast on a piratical cruise, and these were met and attacked by three of the Rajah's well-armed boats and driven back with heavy loss. Retaliation was threatened, and the Dayaks prepared, but it was a long time before they again appeared, and the terror of Brooke's name kept them off Sarawak. At this time Sherip Sahap also received a lesson. He had sent a
- 40. Pangiran Bedrudin toKuching on a secret mission, and the pangiran on his way down river fell in with and attacked a Chinese boat, wounding two of the crew, one mortally. The Rajah immediately gave chase, and after eight days came up with them. One of the pangiran's crew, a Lanun penglima, amoked, but was killed by the Datu Patinggi Ali before he could do any harm; the rest surrendered, and were taken to Kuching, where the pangiran, and another, a relation of his, were executed, and the crew imprisoned. A month later, two Singgi Dayak chiefs, Pa Rimbun and Pa Tumo, for killing Segu Dayaks within the State, were arrested and executed. These examples showed his neighbours that the Rajah was determined to protect his people; and it showed the people that the law would be administered with an equal and firm hand. But as yet the ratification of his appointment had not been made, and on July 14th, 1842, the Rajah left for Bruni to obtain from the Sultan the confirmation of his nomination by Hasim, and to effect, if possible, a reconciliation between the Sultan and his uncle, as he was naturally desirous to get the latter, his brothers, and their Bruni followers, away from Sarawak, so as to give stability to the Government, and to prevent a needless drain upon the treasury. Another object the Rajah had in view was to obtain the release of about twenty-five Lascars belonging to an English ship, the Lord Melbourne, which had lately been wrecked, and who had found their way to Bruni, where they were being detained in captivity. As it happened, another English ship, the Sultana, had about eighteen months previously been wrecked on the N.W. coast, struck by lightning, and the captain, his wife, two passengers, one a lady, and some English seamen, had escaped to Bruni in the long boat; the Lascars had landed farther north, and had been captured and sold into slavery by Sherip Usman. The Sultan seized these unfortunate people, and robbed them of their money, some jewels, and their boat. He further compelled them to sign bonds to himself for considerable sums of money, and he had treated them with harshness and inhumanity.
- 41. LAND-DAYAK HEAD-HOUSE. On hearingof this Mr. Brooke had sent his yacht, the Royalist, to Bruni to obtain their release, but this had been refused by the Sultan, and then he communicated with Singapore. The East India Company's Steamer Diana was despatched to Bruni, ran up the river and pointed its guns on the palace. The Sultan was so thoroughly alarmed that he surrendered the captives, after a detention of eight months, and the dread of the "fire-ship" remained on him, so that
- 42. when the Rajaharrived he was in a compliant mood, and received him most cordially. It may be as well here to give a description of Bruni and of its Court. The Bruni river flows into a noble bay, across which to the north lies the island of Labuan. Above the town the river is very small, and rises but some fifteen to twenty miles inland. Where the town is, the river is very broad, forming a large lake. The town is commanded by hills once under cultivation; on an island at the mouth of the entrance are the shattered remains of an old Portuguese fort, which was still standing, though ruinous, when Hunt visited the place in 1809. The town itself has been designated the "Venice of Borneo" by old writers, a description to which the Italian Beccari rightly objected,[101] and is mainly built on piles driven into the mud on a shallow in the middle of the lake, the houses occupying wooden platforms elevated some ten feet above the reach of the tide. Communication between them is effected by canoes, in which the women daily go through the town selling provisions. It is, in a word, similar to the palafitte villages found in prehistoric times in the lakes of Switzerland and Lombardy. A part of the town, including the houses of the Sultan and the wazirs, is situated on the left bank of the river. It is the Bruni of Pigafetta's time, though sadly reduced in size and importance. Then the Sultan's palace was enclosed by a strong brick wall,[102] with barbicans mounting fifty-six cannon, now it is but a roughly built barn-like shed. Gone are the richly caparisoned elephants, and gone too is all the old pride, pomp, and panoply, including the spoons of gold, which particularly struck the old voyager.[103] Bruni has no defences now, but, at the period of which we are writing, there were batteries planted on each side of the inlet commanding the approach, also two forts on the heights, and one battery on a tongue of land that looked down the estuary, and which could rake a fleet advancing towards the town, whilst the batteries on the two banks poured in a flank fire. When the tide goes out the mud is most offensive to European nostrils, as all the filth and offal is cast into it from the platforms,
- 43. and left thereto decompose. The town at the time of the Rajah's visit, was in a condition of squalid wretchedness—the buildings, all of wood and leaf matting, were in a tumbledown state; and the population was mainly composed of slaves and the hangers on of the Sultan, the nobles, and other members of the upper classes. The Sultan was a man past fifty years of age, short and puffy in person, with a countenance indicative of imbecility. In his journal the Rajah wrote: His right hand is garnished with an extra diminutive thumb, the natural member being crooked and distorted.[104] His mind, indexed by his face, seems to be a chaos of confusion, without dignity and without good sense. He can neither read nor write, is guided by the last speaker; and his advisers, as might be expected, are of the lower order, and mischievous from their ignorance and their greediness. He is always talking, and generally joking; and the most serious subjects never meet with five minutes' consecutive attention. His rapacity is carried to such an excess as to astonish a European, and is evinced in a thousand mean ways. The presents I made him were unquestionably handsome, but he was not content without begging from me the share I had reserved for the other pangirans; and afterwards solicited mere trifles such as sugar, pen-knives, and the like. To crown all he was incessantly asking what was left in the vessel, and when told the truth—that I was stripped bare as a tree in winter—he frequently returned to the charge. The Court at Bruni consisted of the Pangiran Mumin, the Sultan's uncle by marriage, a fairly well-disposed man, though a friend of Makota, but of no ability, avaricious, and with the mind of a huckster, who afterwards became Sultan. There were several uncles of the Sultan, but they were devoid of influence, and were mostly absent in Sarawak, whereas the Pangiran Usup, an illegitimate son of Sultan Muhammad Tejudin, and consequently a left-handed uncle to the reigning Sultan,—a man crafty, unscrupulous, and ambitious,—held sway over the mind of his nephew, and induced him to look with suspicion on his uncles of legitimate birth. This man was in league with the pirates, and a determined opponent of British interference. Consequently, though outwardly most friendly, he was bitterly opposed to the white Rajah, against whom he was already plotting to accomplish his eviction, or his death. Though Pangiran Usup was well aware of the Rajah's determination to stamp out piracy and
- 44. oppression, yet hewas not wise enough to foresee that to measure his strength against a chivalrous and resolute Englishman, who had even a stronger support behind him than those forces he was already slowly and surely gathering around himself, must be futile, and that it would end in his own ruin. Among the Sultan's legitimate uncles the only man of ability and integrity was the Pangiran Bedrudin, who had accompanied the Rajah to Bruni, and who was always frank with him and supported his schemes. The Rajah had daily interviews with the Sultan, who expressed a great personal regard for him, and frequently swore "eternal friendship," clasping his hand and repeating "amigo saya, amigo saya."[105] He readily confirmed the cession made by Rajah Muda Hasim, being satisfied with the amount promised as his share of the Sarawak revenue, and said, "I wish you to be there; I do not wish anybody else; you are my amigo, and it is nobody's business but mine; the country is mine, and if I please to give you all, I can." The deed to which Rajah Muda Hasim had affixed his seal on September 24, 1841, was to the following effect:— That the country and government of Sarawak is made over to Mr. Brooke (to be held under the crown of Bruni), with all its revenues and dependencies, on the yearly payment of 500. That Mr. Brooke is not to infringe upon the customs or religion of the people; and in return, that no person is to interfere with him in the management of the country. The confirmatory deed was executed on August 1, 1842, and was in tenor and purport similar to that granted by Hasim, with the exception of an additional clause precluding the alienation of Sarawak by the Rajah without the consent of the Sultan. The Sultan also told the Rajah that it would be a delight to him to welcome both his uncles, Hasim and Bedrudin, back to Bruni, and begged the Rajah to carry for him a friendly letter to the former, conveying assurance that he was completely reconciled to him. Bruni, he said, would never be well until his return. The Lascars of the Lord Melbourne were at once given up, and the Rajah also procured the release of three of the Sultana's Lascars, who had been
- 45. transferred to Brunimasters. He remained at Bruni for ten days—a period, as he wrote, "quite sufficient to discover to me the nakedness of the land, their civil dissensions, and the total decay of their power, internal and external." On his return the Rajah received a cordial welcome, for it was believed that he would certainly be killed in Bruni; and on September 18, the deed was read appointing him to hold the government of Sarawak. The ceremony was impressive, but it nearly became tragical. We will give the Rajah's own description of it. After the deed had been read— The Rajah (Muda Hasim) descended, and said aloud "If any one present disowns or contests the Sultan's appointment, let him now declare." All were silent. He next turned to the Patinggis and asked them. They were obedient to the will of the Sultan. Then came the other pangirans. "Is there any pangiran or any young Rajah that contests the question? Pangiran der Makota, what do you say?" Makota expressed his willingness to obey. One or two other obnoxious pangirans, who had always opposed themselves to me, were each in turn challenged, and forced to promise obedience. The Rajah then waved his sword, and with a loud voice exclaimed, "Whoever he is that disobeys the Sultan's mandate now received I will separate his skull." At the moment some ten of his brothers jumped from the verandah, and, drawing their long krises, began to flourish and dance about, thrusting close to Makota, striking the pillar above his head, and pointing their weapons at his breast. This amusement, the violence of motion, the freedom from restraint, this explosion of a long pent up animosity, roused all their passions; and had Makota, through an excess of fear or an excess of bravery, started up he would have been slain, and other blood would have been spilt. But he was quiet, with his face pale and subdued, and, as shortly as decency would permit after the riot had subsided, took his leave. The Rajah now ordered Makota to leave the country, an order that could not be ignored, though he kept deferring his departure on one pretext after another, and it was not until the arrival of the Dido some eight months later that he quitted Sarawak, and that suddenly. He then joined Sherip Sahap at Sadong, and when that piratical chief's power was broken, he retired along with him to Patusan. Makota was captured after the destruction of that place in 1844, but, unfortunately, the Rajah spared his life. He then retired to Bruni,
- 46. there to continuehis plots against the English, and in 1845 was commissioned by the Sultan to murder Rajah Brooke, but found that the execution of this design would be too distinctly dangerous; and, though he bearded the lion in his den, it was only in the guise of a beggar. At Bruni he rose to power, and, as already related in chapter II., became a scourge to the natives in that part of the sultanate. His end was this:—In November, 1858, he headed a raid at Awang in the Limbang to sweep together a number of Bisaya girls to fill his harem, when he was fallen upon by the natives at night time and killed. The Rajah now set to work in earnest to put the Government on a sound footing. He made no attempt to introduce a brand new constitution and laws, but took what already existed. He found the legal code was just enough on paper, but had been over-ridden and nullified by the lawless pangirans. All that was necessary was to enforce the existing laws, modifying the penalties where too cruel and severe, and introducing fresh laws as occasion required. "I hate," he wrote in October, "the idea of an Utopian government, with laws cut and dried ready for the natives, being introduced. Governments, like clothes, will not suit everybody, and certainly a people who gradually develop their government, though not a good one, are nearer happiness and stability than a government of the best which is fitted at random. I am going on slowly and surely, basing everything on their own laws, consulting all the headmen at every step, instilling what I think right—separating the abuses from the customs." The government which he had displaced was so utterly bad that any change was certain to be accepted by the people with hope of improvement; and when it was found, that by the introduction of a wise system of taxation, which actually doubled the revenue, whilst to the popular mind it seemed to halve their burden—when, moreover, they found that justice was strictly and impartially administered in the courts—they welcomed the change with whole-hearted gratitude. The Rajah associated the native chiefs with himself in the government, and found them amenable to wholesome principles, and on the whole to be level-headed men. By this means mutual confidence was inspired, and the foundation laid
- 47. of a government,the principle of which was and has ever since been "to rule for the people and with the people," to quote the Rajah writing twenty-two years later, "and to teach them the rights of freemen under the restraints of government. The majority of the "Council"[106] secures a legal ascendency for native ideas of what is best for their happiness, here and hereafter. The wisdom of the white man cannot become a hindrance, and the English ruler must be their friend and guide, or nothing. The citizen of Sarawak has every privilege enjoyed by the citizen of England, and far more personal freedom than is known in a thickly populated country. They are not taught industry by being forced to work. They take a part in the government under which they live; they are consulted upon the taxes they pay; and, in short, they are free men. "This is the government which has struck its roots into the soil for the last quarter of a century, which has triumphed over every danger and difficulty, and which has inspired its people with confidence." The revenue of Sarawak was in utter confusion. Over large tracts of country no tax could be enforced, and the Rajah, as he had undertaken, was determined to lighten the load that had weighed so crushingly, and was inflicted so arbitrarily on the loyal Land-Dayaks— loyal hitherto, not in heart, but because powerless to resist. To carry on the government without funds was impossible, and the want of these was now, and for many years to come, the Rajah's greatest trouble. Consequently the antimony ore was made a monopoly of the government, which was a fair and just measure, and to the general advantage of the community, though it was subsequently seized upon as a pretext for accusing the Rajah of having debased his position by engaging in trade. But it was years before the revenue was sufficient to meet the expenditure, and gradually the Rajah sacrificed his entire fortune to pay the expenses of the administration. In undertaking the government he had three objects in view:— (1) The relief of the unfortunate Land-Dayaks from oppression.
- 48. (2) The suppressionof piracy, and the restoration to a peaceable and orderly life, of those tribes of Dayaks who had been converted into marauders by their Malay masters. (3) The suppression of head-hunting. But these ends could not be attained all at once. The first was the easiest arrived at, and the news spread through the length and breadth of the island that there was one spot on its surface where the native was not ground to powder, and where justice reigned. The result was that the Land-Dayaks flocked to it. Whole families came over from the Dutch Protectorate, where there was no protection; and others who had fled to the mountains and the jungle returned to the sites of their burnt villages. How this has worked, on the same undeviating lines of a sound policy, under the rule of the two Rajahs, the following may show. Writing in 1867, on revisiting Sarawak, Admiral the Hon. Sir Henry Keppel said: It brought back to my mind some four-and-twenty years ago, when I first came up in the Dido with Sir James Brooke on board, and gave the first and nearly the only help he had in securing his position, thereby enabling him to carry out his philanthropic views for the benefit of a strange race. If he had not succeeded to the full extent of his then sanguine hopes, still there is no man living, or to come, who, single-handed, will have benefited his fellow- creatures to the extent Brooke has. In 1842, piracy, slavery, and head-hunting were the order of the day. The sail of a peaceful trader was nowhere to be seen, not even a fisherman, but along the length of this beautiful coast, far into the interior, the Malays and Dayaks warred on one another. Now how different! Huts and fishing stakes are to be seen all along the coast, the town of Kuching, which on the visit of the Dido, had scarcely 800 inhabitants, now has a population of 20,000. The aborigines, who called themselves warriors, are now peaceful traders and cultivators of rice. The jungle is fast being cleared to make way for farms. Head-hunting, the third aim which Rajah Brooke held before his eyes, was an ingrained custom of the race which could not be eradicated at once. The utmost that he could effect at first was to prevent the taking of heads of any of the subjects under his rule. All the tribes that were in his raj were to be regarded as friends, and
- 49. were therefore notto be molested. Any breach of the peace, every murder was severely punished. In a short time head-hunting and intertribal feuds amongst the Sarawak Dayaks were extirpated, and the raj ceased to be a hunting-field for the Sekrang and Saribas Dayaks; but they continued to haunt the coast together with the Lanun and Balenini pirates, and the suppression of piracy was the most serious undertaking of the three, and took many years to accomplish. Early in 1843, the Rajah visited Singapore to further the interests of his raj, and for a change. His main wish, which he had repeatedly expressed, was to transfer Sarawak to the Crown, and he likewise impressed upon the Government the policy of establishing a settlement at Labuan, and of obtaining a monopoly of the coal in the Bruni Sultanate. He was able to interest the Chinese merchants in the trade of Sarawak. But the most important matter was the immediate suppression of the ravages committed by the pirates, both Dayak and Malay; and here Providence threw across his path, in the person of Captain the Hon. Henry Keppel,[107] the very assistance he required. Between the white Rajah and the Rajah Laut (Sea King), the title by which Keppel became known, and was ever afterwards remembered in Sarawak, a sincere attachment arose. Keppel was attracted by the Rajah's lovable personality, and sympathised with his objects; and, being chivalrous and always ready to act upon his own responsibility, he at once decided to lend all the support in his power, which any other naval officer might have hesitated to have done. The aid he so nobly rendered came at an opportune time, for it not only administered to the pirates a severe lesson, but also taught those inimical to his rule that the white Rajah was not held aloof by his own countrymen, and thus consolidated his power by reassuring the waverers and encouraging the loyal. The kindly and gallant Keppel stands foremost amongst the friends of Sarawak, to which State he rendered not only the splendid services to be recorded in our next chapter, but ever evinced a keen and kindly interest in its welfare, and in its Rajahs, to whom he was ever
- 50. ready to lendhis able support and influence, and of whom the Rajah wrote, "He is my friend and the benefactor of Sarawak." THE PART OF KUCHING SHOWN IN HEAD-PIECE OF PRESENT CHAPTER, AS IT NOW IS. 78. Camoen's Lusiad (Sir Richard Burton's translation.) Camoen here refers to the islands of the Malayan Archipelago, which he visited in his exile some 350 years ago. 79. St. John tells us that a few years before this an English ship that had put into the Sarawak river to water was treacherously seized; the Englishmen were murdered, and the Lascars sold into slavery. 80. Anglice, cat. 81. A short time before the commencement of this history this place had been attacked by the Saribas Dayaks, and 120 people were slain. 82. 3000 feet. 83. Spencer St. John, Sir James Brooke, 1879.
- 51. 84. Mr. Brooke.He was a good-looking man. Capt. the Hon. H. Keppel gives his portrait, the frontispiece to vol. i. of his Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido, which is incorrectly entitled the portrait of Rajah Muda Hasim. 85. Spelt Sahib by Mr. Brooke in his letters and journals, and by others, but correctly his name was Sahap. He had a reputation for bravery, and was styled by the Sekrang Dayaks "Bujang Brani," the brave man. 86. There is no strict law of primogeniture in Bruni, otherwise Rajah Muda Hasim could not have been heir-presumptive. As he was of royal blood, and the prince most fitted to succeed, he was looked upon as the heir to the throne, and was so acknowledged (publicly in 1846) by the Sultan, and was therefore more correctly heir-apparent. At this time Sultan Omar Ali had two sons, and the eldest, also named Hasim, must have been about thirty-five years of age. There was a disgraceful harem scandal in connection with their birth, which pointed to their having been the sons of a Nakoda, or merchant. Though this appears to have been generally credited, Hasim nevertheless became the 24th Sultan in 1885. It may be noted here that Omar Ali himself was only de facto Sultan, as he was never able to obtain the legal investiture which in Bruni constitutes an election to the throne de jure, and which confers upon the sovereign the title of Iang de Pertuan, the Lord who rules, the most exalted title, and one which he never assumed. 87. Or an abbreviation of Muhammad Husain. In former works he is incorrectly styled Moksain (for Matsain), following Mr. Brooke's published letters and journals, which were badly edited in regard to native names and words. 88. Mr. Brooke. 89. Mr. Brooke. 90. The Bruni, not the Sarawak Malays. 91. Mr. Brooke. 92. Idem. 93. By which he was generally referred to, both in documents and verbally, by the Malays of Bruni and Sarawak. "Rajah of Sarawak" was a complimentary title given to him by Europeans only. He has been frequently styled Muda Hasim by former writers; this would be unintelligible to a Malay.
- 52. 94. Such wasthis ascendency that they became the founders of the present ruling dynasties of Bruni (Chap. II., p. 1), Palembang (Sumatra), Pontianak, Sambas, Mindanau, and Sulu, and probably of other native states. 95. Land-Dayaks. 96. Shortly before Rajah Brooke's arrival, Sherip Sahap with a large force of Sekrang Dayaks had attacked the Sau tribe of Land-Dayaks in Upper Sarawak. Many were killed, their villages plundered and burnt, and nearly all the surviving women and children, to the number of some two hundred and fifty, carried off into slavery. The Rajah eventually recovered nearly all. 97. Meaning Rajah Muda Hasim. 98. Bruni. 99. Duit, Malay for a cent. 100. Rajah Brooke. 101. "I admit that Bruni has its points, but what irony to compare for a moment the city of marble palaces with the mass of miserable huts which a single match could easily reduce to ashes."—Beccari, op. cit. The Rajah called the place a "Venice of hovels." Mercator in his Atlas describes it as "being situated on a saltwater lagoon like Venice," hence probably it became known as the Venice of Borneo. 102. Kota batu, stone fort. The name still remains. It was built towards the close of the fifteenth century by Sherip Ali, the first Arab Sultan, with the aid of the Chinese subjects his wife's mother had brought to Bruni. The city was then nearer the mouth of the river. It was moved to its present position by Sultan Muadin about 200 years ago. 103. Magellan, Hakluyt Society, and the Portuguese Jorge de Menezes, who visited Bruni five years after Pigafetta, notices that the city was surrounded with a wall of brick, and possessed some noble edifices. Other early voyagers describe the sultans and rulers of Malayan States as maintaining great style, and their equipments,—such as swords of state, saddles, chairs, eating and drinking utensils—as being of pure gold. Allowing for some exaggeration, this
- 53. would still pointto a former condition of prosperity which enabled rulers and nobles to keep up a pageantry which has long since vanished. 104. This malformation, according to the laws of Bruni, would have disqualified him for the throne, for these provide that no person in any way imbecile in mind or deformed in person can enjoy the regal dignity, whatever title to it his birth might have given him.—Sir Hugh Low, op. cit. p. 108. 105. Saya, or more correctly, sahaya (mis-spelt suya in the Rajah's badly edited journals) is the Malay for I, mine; so amigo saya would be, My friend. Amigo was one of the few Spanish words the Sultan had. 106. Established in 1855. 107. Afterwards Admiral of the Fleet. He died, January 1904.
- 54. CHAPTER IV THE PIRATES s wehave already mentioned, the second, and by far the most
- 55. difficult, task thatRajah Brooke had set before him, and was determined to accomplish, was the suppression of piracy, which he rightly described as an evil almost as disgraceful to the European nations who permitted it as to the native States engaged in it. The principal piratical peoples at the time were the Illanun, or Lanun, the Balenini, the Bajaus, and the Sulus, all living to the north or north-east of Bruni, and consequently far beyond the jurisdiction of the Rajah. To these must be added the Sea-Dayaks of the Saribas and Sekrang, who, led by their Malay allies, though less formidable to trade, were far more destructive of human life. The Sambas Malays had also been pirates, but at this period had ceased to be such. Earl, who visited Sambas in 1834, says, that "before the arrival of the Dutch Sambas was a nest of pirates. In 1812, having attacked an English vessel, several British men-of-war were sent from Batavia to attack the town. The inhabitants resisted, but were defeated, the fort was razed to the ground, and the guns tumbled into the river." The reoccupation by the Dutch shortly afterwards of this place, Pontianak, and Banjermasin, put some check upon the piratical habits of the Malays in the western and southern States,[108] but the Malays of the eastern shores of Borneo, especially those of Koti, to the north and north-west, were all pirates; and even the people of Bruni were imbued with piratical habits, which were generally inherent in the Malay character, though they were not enterprising enough to be openly piratical, or to do more than encourage their bolder neighbours, from whom they could obtain plunder and slaves cheaply; and near Bruni, within the territory of the Sultan, were several piratical strongholds. All these were under the control of half-bred Arab sherips, as also were the Saribas and the Sekrangs. The Lanuns are natives of the large island of Mindanau, or Magindanau, the southernmost of the Philippine group. They were known to the Spaniards as "Los Illanos de la laguna," and, in common with all Muhammadans, were classed by them as Moros or Moors. On the lagoon, or bay, of Lanun they live. They were the
- 56. boldest and mostcourageous of the pirates, and the most dangerous to Europeans, whom they never hesitated to attack, not even the Dutch gunboats, and to whom, unlike the Balenini pirates, they would never give quarter, owing to a hatred, born of former injustice and inhumanity, received at the hands of those whom they could only have regarded as white barbarians. They became incorrigible and cruel pirates, looking upon piracy as a noble profession, though Dampier, who spent six months amongst them in 1686-7, and who was very hospitably treated, says nothing of piracy, and he gives a full and intelligent account of the island, its inhabitants, and products. He describes the "Hilanoons" as being a peaceable people, who bought foreign commodities with the product of their gold mines. The Spaniards had sometime before occupied the island, but the garrison had to be suddenly withdrawn to Manila, in consequence of a threatened invasion of that place by the Chinese. The Sultan then seized their cannon, demolished their forts, and expelled their friars. Then it was the Dutch they feared; they wished the English to establish a Factory there,[109] and subsequently, in 1775, ceded a small island to the H.E.I. Company for that purpose. Though the Spanish had a settlement on the western end of the island they were unable to keep the Lanun pirates in check, and on occasions were severely handled by them, as were also the Dutch. With these pirates were associated the Bajaus or sea-gipsies, a roving people, who lived entirely in their prahus, with their women and children. The vessels employed by Lanuns on marauding expeditions were sometimes of 60 tons burden, built very sharp in the prow and wide in beam, and over 90 feet in length. A double tier of oars was worked by slaves to the number of 100, and the fighting men would be from 30 to 40; the prahus of the smallest size carried from 50 to 80 in all. The bows of the vessels were solidly built, and fortified with hard wooden baulks capable of resisting a 6-pounder shot; often they were shod with iron. Here a narrow embrasure admitted a
- 57. gun for a6 to a 24-pound shot. In addition to this, the armaments consisted of several guns, usually of brass, of smaller calibre. Sometimes the piratical fleets comprised as many as 200 prahus, though the Lanuns usually cruised in small fleets of 20 to 30 sail. They would descend on a coast and attack any village, sack and burn it, kill the defenders, carry away men, women, and children as slaves, slaughter the cattle, and ravage the plantations. A cargo of slaves captured on the east coast of Borneo would be sold on the west coast, and those taken in the south would find a ready market in the north, in Sulu[110] and the Lanun country. Their cruising grounds were extensive—around the coasts of the Philippine islands, Borneo, and Celebes to Sumatra, Java, and the Malay peninsula, through the Moluccas to New Guinea, and even up the Bay of Bengal as far as Rangoon. In 1834, a fleet of these Lanuns swept round the coast of a small island in the Straits of Rhio, opposite Singapore, and killed or carried away all the inhabitants.[111] In addition to their original home in the bay of Lanun, they had settlements in Marudu Bay in the north of Borneo, and towns along the west coast almost as far south as Ambong, and on the east coast to Tungku, and on to Koti. In Marudu their chief was Sherip Usman, who was married to a sister of the Sultan Muda of Sulu, and who was in league with Pangiran Usup, uncle to the Sultan of Bruni, and his principal adviser. Usman supplied the pirates with powder, shot, and guns, and they, on returning from a piratical expedition, paid him at the rate of four captives for every 100 rupees worth of goods with which he had furnished them. Such captives as had been taken in the vicinity of Bruni he would sell to Pangiran Usup for 100 rupees each, who would then demand of their friends and relations Rs. 200 for each. "Thus this vile Sherip, not reckoning the enormous price he charged for his goods in the first instance, gained 500 per cent for every slave, and the Pangiran Usup cleared 100 per cent by the flesh of his own countrymen." In 1844, Ambong was a flourishing town occupied by an industrious and peaceable people, subjects of the Sultan of Bruni. In 1846, Captain Rodney Mundy, R.N., visited it, and the town was
- 58. represented by aheap of ruins alone; the inhabitants had been slaughtered, or enslaved to be passed on to Usup, that he might make what he could out of them, by holding them to ransom by their relatives. The Balenini were hand in glove with the Lanuns, and often associated with them in their expeditions. They issued from a group of islands in the Sulu sea, and acted in complicity with the Sultan of Sulu, whose country was the great nucleus of piracy. They equipped annually considerable fleets to prey upon the commerce with Singapore and the Straits; they also attacked villages, and carried off alike crews of vessels and villagers to slavery, to be crowded for months in the bottom of the pirate vessels, suffering indescribable miseries. Their cruising grounds were also very extensive; the whole circuit of Borneo was exposed to their attacks, except only the Lanun settlements, for hawks do not peck out hawk's een. When pursued and liable to be overtaken, they cut the throats of their captives and threw them overboard, men, women, and children alike. Up to 1848, the principal Balenini strongholds were in Balenini, Tongkil, and Basilan islands, but they were then driven out of the two former islands by the Spaniards, and they established themselves on other islands in the Sulu Archipelago; and Tawi Tawi island, which had always been one of their strongholds, then became their principal one. Trade with Borneo and the Sulu Archipelago was rendered almost impossible, or at least a very dangerous pursuit, and even merchantmen using the Palawan passage to China, which takes them close along the coast of Borneo, often fell a prey to these pirates. Earl, writing a year or two before the advent of the late Rajah to Sarawak, remarks in connection with Borneo, that it ought to be considered but "an act of justice to the natives of the Indian Archipelago, whom we have enticed to visit our settlement of Singapore, that some exertion should be made towards the suppression of piracy." He blames the unaccountable indifference
- 59. and neglect whichthe British Government had hitherto displayed, and expresses his sympathy for the natives. He considered it his duty to point the way—it was left to the late Rajah to lead in it. The Natuna, the Anamba, and the Tambilan islands, which stretch across the entrance of the China sea between Borneo and the Malay peninsula, were common lurking haunts of the pirates. Amongst these islands they could find water and shelter; could careen, clean, and repair their prahus; and they were right in the track of vessels bound to Singapore, or northward to the Philippines or China. To replenish their stores and to obtain arms and ammunition they would sail to Singapore in innocent-looking captured prahus, where they found a ready market for their booty amongst the Chinese. Muskets of English make and powder from English factories were found in captured prahus and strongholds. At Patusan a number of barrels of fine gunpowder from Dartford were discovered exactly as these had left the factory in England. Against these the Rajah was powerless to take the offensive. They had to be left to be reduced or cowed by the spasmodic efforts of British men-of-war. What he urged, though ineffectually, was that a man-of-war should patrol the coast and curb the ruffians. What was actually done, but not until later, was to attack and burn a stronghold or two, and then retire. The pirates fled into the jungle, but returned when the British were gone, rebuilt their houses, and supplied themselves with fresh vessels. Near at hand were the Saribas and Sekrang Sea-Dayaks occupying the basins of rivers of these names, the Sekrang being an affluent of the Batang Lupar. In each of these rivers was a large Malay community of some 1000 fighting men who lived by piracy, and who trained the numerous Dayaks, by whom they were surrounded, to the same lawless life that they led themselves, and guided them on their predatory excursions. Here again both Dayaks and Malays were under the influence of Sherips, Mular, his brother Sahap, and others. In course of time these Dayaks became expert seamen, and, accompanied by
- 60. the Malays, yearlyissued forth with fleets composed of a hundred or more bangkongs,[112] sweeping the seas and carrying desolation along the shores of Borneo over a distance of 800 miles. The Sea-Dayaks soon became aware of their power; and accordingly, both in their internal government and on their piratical expeditions, their chiefs attained an authority superior to that of the Malay chiefs, their titular rulers. In May, 1843, H.M.S. Dido started on her eventful cruise to Borneo, having the Rajah on board. After passing Sambas, Captain Keppel dispatched the pinnace and two cutters under the first lieutenant, with whom went the Rajah, to cruise along the coast. Lanun pirates were seen, but, easily outsailing the flotilla, escaped. Off Sirhasan, the largest of the group of the Natuna islands, whither the boats had been directed to go, six prahus, some belonging to the Rajah Muda of Rhio (an island close to Singapore, belonging to the Dutch, and under a Dutch Resident), and some to the islanders, mistaking the Dido's boats for those of a shipwrecked vessel, and expecting an easy prey, advanced with boldness and opened fire upon them. They were quickly undeceived, and in a few minutes three out of the six prahus were captured, with a loss of over twelve killed and many wounded. Neither the Rhio Malays nor those of the islands were pirates, and the former under an envoy were collecting tribute for the Sultan of Lingin, but the temptation was irresistible to a people with piracy innate in their character. They protested it was a mistake, and that with the sun in their eyes they had mistaken the boats for Lanun pirates! The little English flotilla had suffered no casualties, and a severe lesson had been administered, which was rightly considered to be sufficient. The wounded were attended to, and, having been liberally supplied with fresh provisions, Lieutenant Wilmot Horton left for Sarawak to rejoin the Dido. After having been cleverly dodged by three Lanun prahus, the Dido anchored off the Muaratebas entrance on May 13th, and proceeded up to Kuching on the 16th. Keppel described the Rajah's reception
- 61. by his peopleas one of undisguised delight, mingled with gratitude and respect, on the return of their newly elected ruler to his country. The temerity of the pirates had become so great that it was deemed advisable to despatch the little Sarawak gunboat, the Jolly Bachelor, under the charge of Lieutenant Hunt, with a crew of eighteen marines and seamen, to cruise in the vicinity of Cape Datu, and there to await the arrival of a small yacht which was expected from Singapore with the mails, and to escort her to Kuching. Two or three days after they had left, at about 3 o'clock one morning, writes Captain Keppel:— The moon being just about to rise, Lieutenant Hunt, happening to awake, observed a savage brandishing a kris, and performing his war-dance on the bit of deck in an ecstasy of delight, thinking in all probability of the ease with which he had got possession of a fine trading boat, and calculating the cargo of slaves he had to sell, but little dreaming of the hornets' nest into which he had fallen. Lieutenant Hunt's round face meeting the light of the rising moon, without a turban surmounting it, was the first notice the pirate had of his mistake. He immediately plunged overboard; and before Lieutenant Hunt had sufficiently recovered his astonishment, to know whether he was dreaming or not, or to rouse his crew up, a discharge from three or four cannons within a few yards, and the cutting through the rigging by the various missiles with which the guns were loaded, soon convinced him there was no mistake. It was as well the men were still lying down when this discharge took place, as not one of them was hurt; but on jumping to their legs, they found themselves closely pressed by two large war-prahus, one on each bow. To return the fire, cut the cable, man the oars, and back astern to gain room, was the work of a minute; but now came the tug-of-war, it was a case of life and death. Our men fought as British sailors ought to do; quarter was not expected on either side; and the quick and deadly aim of the marines prevented the pirates from reloading their guns. The strong bulwarks or barricades, grapeshot proof, across the fore part of the Lanun prahus, through which ports are formed for working the guns, had to be cut away by round shot before the muskets could bear effectually. This done the grape and cannister told with fearful execution. In the meantime, the prahus had been pressing forward to board while the Jolly Bachelor backed astern; but as soon as this service was achieved, our men dropped their oars, and seizing their muskets dashed on: the work was sharp but short, and the slaughter great. While one pirate boat was sinking, and an effort made to secure her, the other effected her escape by rounding the point of rocks where a third and larger prahu, hitherto unseen, came to her assistance, and putting fresh
- 62. hands on boardand taking her in tow, succeeded in getting off, although chased by the Jolly Bachelor, after setting fire to the crippled prize, which blew up and sank.[113] None of the crew of this prahu survived, and so few in the second prahu, that, when she separated from her consort, the slaves arose and put them to death. They were the same three prahus that had eluded the Dido. Having satisfied himself as to the character of the Saribas and Sekrang Dayaks, and how the chiefs governing them encouraged their depredations, and having received an appeal from the Rajah Muda Hasim[114] to relieve the cost of the perils it underwent, Captain Keppel resolved to attack the Saribas first, as being the most formidable of the two piratical hordes. Preparations for the expedition were soon commenced. It was to consist of a native force of 300 Malays, the Dido's three large boats, and the Jolly Bachelor, manned by blue-jackets and marines, all under the command of Lieutenant Wilmot Horton. The datus were opposed to the Rajah going—they thought the risk too great, but on his expressing his determination to do so, and leaving it to them to accompany him or not, their simple reply was, "What is the use of our remaining? If you die, we die; and if you live, we live; we will go with you."[115] The Rajah and Captain Keppel accompanied the expedition in the Dido's gig. Intelligence of the design was carried far and wide. The Saribas strengthened their defences, and several of the half-bred Arab sherips living nearer Sarawak sent in promises of good conduct. Tribes that had suffered from the depredations of the pirates offered to join in attacking them, and the force thus augmented by several hundreds of Dayaks started early in June. The first skirmish fell to the lot of Datu Patinggi Ali, who, having been sent on ahead, met a force of seven prahus at the mouth of the Saribas, which he attacked and drove back, after capturing one. Padi, a stockaded town some 60 miles up the Saribas river, and the furthest up of the piratical strongholds, reputed also to be the
- 63. strongest and mostimportant, was the first attacked, and though defended by two forts and two booms of forest trees stretched across the river, and being crowded with Malay and Dayak warriors, it was carried on the evening of June 11, and the place committed to the flames. The next day some 800 Balau Dayaks,[116] under Sherip Japar of Lingga, joined the force, keen to make reprisals for past injuries. The enemy, reckoned at about 6000 Dayaks and 500 Malays, had retired up-river, and against them a small force of about 40 blue- jackets and the same number of Malays, under the Rajah and Lieutenant Horton, started the next day. During the night they were repeatedly attacked by the pirates, who, under cover of the darkness, closed in on their assailants, especially where some marines held a post on a cleared height overlooking the river. The pirates lost a good many men, and the next morning, seeing the force again preparing to advance, sent in a flag of truce and sued for mercy. The Rajah then met their chiefs and explained to them that it was in consequence of their acts of piracy that they were now punished; that they had been cautioned two years previously to abstain from these marauding expeditions, and that they had disregarded this monition; he assured them that they would be unmolested if they abstained from molesting others, but that if they continued to prey on their neighbours and to interfere with trading vessels they would receive further castigation. It was proposed to these people that the towns of Paku and Rembas should be spared, if they would guarantee the future good conduct of the inhabitants. They coolly replied that those people deserved the same punishment, which had better be administered, otherwise they would continue pirating, and would lead the Padi people astray again. Paku was taken on the 14th, and burnt; here no resistance was met with. The next day the chiefs submitted. On the 17th, Rembas was attacked and taken, the Balau Dayaks, under Sherip Japar, having all the fighting to do. This was the largest and strongest town, and
- 64. much plunder wassecured. After receiving the submission of the Rembas chiefs the expedition returned to Kuching, having, in seven days, destroyed the strongholds of the most powerful and dreaded pirates on the north-west coast of Borneo, who for years had defied both Bruni and Sarawak. Such an impression was produced, that the Sekrangs sent messages promising to abstain from piracy, and offering, if they were spared, to give up a hundred women and children captives; and Sherips Mular and Sahap, fearing the punishment they so richly deserved, sent professions of future good conduct. These were not accepted, but the day of reckoning had to be deferred, for Keppel had received orders to return to China. The Saribas had suffered, but not the redoubtable Sekrangs, and the former not so severely but that in a couple of years all their losses could be repaired, their stockades be rebuilt, and fresh prahus constructed, and the old story of blood and rapine continued with little intermission, not only by them, but by the Lanuns and Sekrangs as well. A year was to elapse before Keppel's return; and we will now record in their sequence the few events of interest that happened during this short period. About a month after the departure of the Dido, the Samarang, Captain Sir Edward Belcher, arrived at Kuching. Sir Edward had been sent, consequent on Rajah Brooke's actions and recommendations, to inquire personally into and report officially upon the affairs and capabilities of north-west Borneo. As Sir Spenser St. John writes— [117] This visit was as useless as such visits usually are. What can the most acute naval officer understand of a country during a few days' or weeks' visit? He can describe more or less accurately its outward appearance; but to understand its internal politics is not possible in the time. And yet on such comparatively valueless reports the British Government relies in a majority of cases. Mr. Brooke suffered more than any other pioneer of civilisation from the system. On getting under way to proceed to Bruni the Samarang grounded on a rocky ledge off the town, and Sir Edward's brief visit was
- 65. protracted by afortnight. The ship, which lay in an extremely critical position, was righted and got off the rocks before the Harlequin, Wanderer, Vixen, and Diana arrived to assist her. Accompanied by the Rajah, Sir Edward proceeded to Bruni towards the end of August, but the latter's visit was very short; he saw the Sultan for two hours only, and then, as small-pox was raging in Bruni, departed for Singapore.[118] The principal object of the Rajah's visit was obtained, as he was enabled to bear away a deed granting Sarawak in perpetuity to him and to the heirs of his appointment. In December the Rajah left for Singapore, and there the next month he received the news of his mother's death. To quote the Rajah, after the first shock, he resolved to seek in activity a relief from the lowness of spirits which he suffered. This led him to join an expedition to punish certain pirates on the coast of Sumatra for injuries done to British ships. The ships employed were the Harlequin, Captain the Hon. G. Hastings; the Wanderer, Captain Seymour, with whom the Rajah sailed, and the East India Company's steamer, the Diana. At Achin[119] they found the once powerful Sultan unable to control or punish his own subjects, and the ships then proceeded to Batu and Murdu, the strongholds of the pirates. The former town was burnt without offering much resistance, but the latter gave them a tough fight of five hours before it was taken. The pirates lost from fifty to seventy men killed and wounded, the English two killed, and about a dozen wounded, amongst whom was the Rajah, who was shot inside the right arm, and had an eyebrow cut in two by a spear. This was on February 12, 1844. In Singapore the Rajah purchased a new vessel, the Julia, having sold the Royalist; the Julia was fitted as a gunboat. Early in June he returned to Sarawak in the Harlequin. He found that during his absence, his old enemy, Sherip Sahap, had built many war-boats, and had made great preparations for offensive operations. Kuching was supposed to be his object, and it had been put in a state of defence, but on the Rajah's return Sahap deemed it advisable to retire to the Batang Lupar, and taking with him a large
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