Article

The British North Borneo Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1893–1897) and its museum

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The British North Borneo Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1893–1897) and its museum

Danny Wong Tze Ken (2000) recovers the brief but consequential history of the British North Borneo Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1893–1897) and the Sandakan museum it administered, arguing that this largely forgotten institution laid the groundwork for subsequent cultural and scientific engagement in Sabah. The article draws on the society’s own journal, the British North Borneo Herald, and colonial company records to reconstruct an episode that later officials had effectively erased from institutional memory.

Summary

The article addresses a conspicuous gap in the cultural history of colonial Sabah: the existence of a Royal Asiatic Society branch in North Borneo, a fact that remained unknown to most officials serving in the territory well into the twentieth century. Wong traces the branch from its inception in late 1893, driven primarily by Dr Nicholas Belfield Dennys, the newly appointed Chinese Protector whose prior role as founding member and pro-tem secretary of the Straits Branch provided both the model and the impetus for a local society. The branch’s four stated purposes—investigating subjects connected to Borneo, publishing a journal, establishing a library, and establishing a museum—were pursued with considerable energy, though constrained by the small European population (fewer than 100) and limited resources.

The museum, which predated the society, became its central activity after the council voted in February 1895 to take over its management. Wong draws on the journal’s acquisition lists and the retrospective account of C. F. Macaskie to describe a collection of nearly 2,000 exhibits spanning natural science, ethnology, and historical artifacts, housed in a 20-by-60-foot building shared with the District Magistrate’s Court. The article also examines the journal’s content and international connections, noting its coverage of the International Congress of Orientalists in Paris and reprints from the Selangor Journal and other periodicals.

The society’s dissolution after its September 1897 Annual General Meeting is attributed to the departure of key members, Dennys’s preoccupation with labour procurement in China and Hong Kong, and the demands of the Mat Salleh resistance. The museum survived the society by a further decade before its collections were scattered in 1905, with portions sent to the North Borneo Company’s London headquarters at Threadneedle Street and eventually to the Imperial Institute. Wong’s narrative is grounded in the primary journal issues (held at the Sabah State Archives and the Public Record Office), the CO 874 company papers, and Macaskie’s 1961 retrospective, which together allow him to reconstruct both the society’s activities and the circumstances of its subsequent obscurity.

Key Findings

  • The branch was formally established on 14 December 1893 in Sandakan, with Governor C. V. Creagh as President and Dr N. B. Dennys as Vice-President; 38 members were on the roll by 1895 (pp. 3–4).
  • The society’s journal, first published on 1 February 1895 as a supplement to the British North Borneo Herald, produced 12 issues in 1895, 4 in 1896, and 1 in 1897, each comprising two to three printed pages (p. 5).
  • The museum was granted $300 per year for maintenance by the government and reported approximately 500 visitors per month, with Chinese residents of Sandakan (population ~8,000) typically the largest group (p. 6).
  • Nearly 2,000 exhibits were collected and displayed, including a lump of tin ore from the Malay States, an umbrella captured from Mat Salleh, and a gold-mounted kris presented by Pangiran Shahbandar of Padas Damit in March 1889 (pp. 6–7).
  • The society became inactive after its September 1897 AGM, at which five new members had to be elected to replace those who had left; the museum collections were scattered in 1905 when the Court House was converted into the Government Printing Office (pp. 7–8).
  • When Gueritz’s personal collection of the journal surfaced in 1938, the Company Secretary’s response to Governor C. R. Smith indicated the society’s existence was not taken seriously and the journal was deemed not worth purchasing (p. 8).

Conclusion

Wong’s definitive takeaway is that the British North Borneo Branch, despite its brevity, represented a genuine attempt to create an intellectual infrastructure in a territory where such efforts were otherwise absent, and that its erasure from institutional memory—evidenced by the 1938 correspondence—reflects a broader pattern of neglect toward the cultural history of colonial Sabah. The society’s legacy endured only in the form of the museum it administered and in the scattered archival remnants that made its recovery possible.

Context

  • Primary archival collections consulted include the Sabah State Archives (Kota Kinabalu), the Public Record Office at Kew (CO 874: British North Borneo Company Papers, Vols. 663 and 1054), and the SOAS Library (Gueritz papers, MS 283792, Vol. 25).
  • The article’s historiographical contribution lies in recovering a forgotten institution and demonstrating how the interplay of personnel turnover, competing administrative demands, and the absence of a sustained scholarly community in colonial Sabah led to the rapid dissolution of what might otherwise have become a lasting cultural body.

References