Factores de riesgo

According to Said (1978: 123), one of the definitive traits of the mid-Victorian age was the “impulse to classify nature and man into types”. Beyond the bipolar definitions of colonised natives as violent „savages‟ and as „noble savages‟ with childlike innocence, the more inclined amongst the colonisers entertained a pressing concern: “With the encroachment of „civilisation‟, what if these culturally inferior natives die out because they cannot cope with the changes?” (Landau 2002: 146 and Ryan 1997: 140). Combined with the more scientific (i.e. for that time), but no less discriminatory, concerns of understanding how these dark- skinned natives came to be so much further down the evolutionary ladder than the

Europeans, part of the colonisation process involved the study of the colonised. According to Cohn (1996), the British in India utilised what he termed “modalities” to map, draw,

90 photograph and collate information about the physical world with the premise that such intimate knowledge justified control over colonial subjects, landscape, and flora and fauna. Such modalities were applied ubiquitously; regardless of the colonisers, and regardless of the lands and peoples they colonised. Throughout the colonies flora and fauna were collected and studied, so too were the indigenes through paintings, sketches and drawings.

Photography arrived at this important juncture of global change and quickly became what Landau (2002: 142) labels “a concrete tool of empire”, specifically for stocktaking-like recording of the resources – including human – in the colonies. The effectiveness of the camera as a recording tool cannot be overestimated. Hand-drawn or hand-painted images took a significantly longer time to execute and also reflected the idiosyncratic interpretations of individual artists. Comparatively, the camera not only allowed the quicker capture of

more images, the life-like quality of photographs also meant that they were deemed to be

able to elicit only objectivity in their viewers, and therefore cutting out the subjectiveness of the artistic license of painters and engravers.

Accordingly to global patterns of colonial governance, the earliest photographs of the Iban to appear in books seem to be for the purpose of “administrative anthropology”, a phrase taken from Eric Gable (2002: 300). To effectively govern the newly colonised natives, a colonial administration would first seek to collect information on the various tribes and their characteristics. While written accounts were adequate for capturing cultural intangibles such as myths and legends, other more subtle differences such as racial

uniqueness – a concept that was very much in fashion in the 19th century – were much better illustrated through physical measurements and photography.

At the time when the different physical types of humans were not thought of as coming from the same scientific family, the human races were thought of as natural types where each race was distinguishable by physical characteristics. While the enlightened sciences were concerned about the human races to varying degrees, perhaps none were more

91 preoccupied with them then ethnology and anthropology. According to Ryan (1997: 147) “theories of physiognomy, the reading of „character‟ in physical features (particularly of the face), and phrenology, the indication of character of the skull, were central to the making and reading of character in Victorian literary and visual culture”. It is evident that such practices also took place in Sarawak. Figure 3.4.1.1 shows a list of skull measurements – length-breadth, length-height and breadth-height – taken from the different „races‟ in Sarawak, with the Iban measurements being at the bottom of the page.

92 Figure 3.4.1.1 Table C: Table of indices of 83 crania from Sarawak

93 However, I found no widespread practice in Sarawak in this area, unlike in Africa as

mentioned by Ryan (1997)56. While I do not have ready answers for this discrepancy from what appears to be the global colonial norm, perhaps the marginal status of Sarawak as a pseudo-colonial state and her relative distance from Europe vis-à-vis Africa offer possible clues. For a start, I presume that much fewer European explorers ever reached Sarawak as compared to those who visited Africa which was much closer to Europe. Also, the race in Europe to acquire colonial properties in Africa, which is also much larger in terms of population, was vastly dissimilar from the situation in Sarawak. Accordingly, the telltale „head-shot‟ photographs – showing full face, left and/or right profiles of the same person – in places where physiognomy was widespread were also rare in Sarawak. Figure 3.4.1.2 shows two such photographs.

Figure 3.4.1.2 A Sea Dayak or Iban and Profile of Sea Dayak of Plate 16 (Hose 1912: vol. 1, 28-29)

56 _{King and Wilder (2003:46) do note that publications on ethnographic classifications in the Malay Peninsula}

and Borneo are “numerous”. However, I would like to emphasise that such publications focus more on „written‟ descriptions and less on photography as supporting evidence for the written observations on „race‟.

94 Typically, such images look like passport photographs where the person‟s ornamentation and context are kept to a bare minimum to allow the physical features to be clearly displayed for inspection. Because such photographs literally „display‟ the subjects for scientific scrutiny, the photographed were usually emotionless, as if they were instructed as such, or that they were genuinely frightened of the unfamiliar photographic equipment as was reported in some parts of Africa (Ryan 1997: 143). However, figure 3.4.1.3 appears to be an anomalous photograph in this aspect. While it clearly shows facial features of an Iban man – including his betel-stained teeth? – and his wide sincere smile, he seems almost as if he was completely comfortable with the photographic process and perhaps even familiar with the photographer.

95 Figure 3.4.1.3 Untitled (Furness 1902: 156)57

My speculation is that perhaps the friendly photographer had requested a particularly jovial Iban to show his betel-stained teeth for the camera? Whatever the case may be, our

57 _{This photograph is remarkably similar to the one of „Luke-The Baboon Boy‟ shown in page 42 of Jan}

Neederveen Pieterse‟s book “White on Black”. Luke, photographed with a similar carefree teeth-baring smile, was allegedly raised by baboons until he was rescued and retrained as a farmhand.

96 interpretation of his smile as a sign of friendliness was likely to have been read very

differently in 1902 when the book in which the photograph was published. Such a smile could just as easily serve to reinforce a viewer‟s perception that the noble savages displayed a childlike innocence harking to a lack of cultural sophistication that was then popularly linked to colonised natives (Pieterse 1995: 97-101). Then, a photograph of a friendly native could be interpreted as a sign that such carefree people were indeed incapable of taking care of themselves without colonial oversight.

From the standpoint of modern photographic analysis, these portrait photographs of the early Iban present a conundrum. According to Kress and Leeuwen (1996: 90, 122), portraits of individuals who „maintain‟ direct eye-contact with the viewer allows one to directly relate with the other. Such a „closeness‟ between the viewer and subject is further compounded by the “close-up” to “medium close-up” shots (Kress and Leeuwen 1996: 130) shown in Figures 3.4.1.2 and 3.4.1.3, which indicate again a “close personal distance”, and relationship, between the two. However, I argue that the photographs in question do anything but allow the viewer to have a close relationship with the Iban subjects. An important aspect in the photographs is missing to allow for the abovementioned closeness. While the close-up shots of the Iban do indicate a “close personal distance” between the viewer and the viewed – albeit to facilitate scrutiny of physical characteristics – the anonymity if the Iban, who remain unnamed and thus unacknowledged by the

photographers and authors, imply a gulf between „seeing‟ the native and „knowing‟ him. I will elaborate later in this chapter on how such early photographs of nameless Iban

contribute to our understating of the complex relations between the Iban and non-Iban prior to World War 2.

Another type of photograph popular for administrative anthropology was concerned with anthropometry, or the “measurement of the living human body, usually whole, with a view to determining its average dimensions at different ages and in different races and

97 classes” (Ryan 1997: 149). Specifically, a single subject appears standing in such

photographs, with a backdrop of visible grids of a known measurement so that viewers are able to estimate bodily dimensions if desired. Again, while such photographs were popular in Africa and even non-colonies like China (Ryan 1997), I have not found any examples for Sarawak. Perhaps, again, the relative distance and size of Sarawak to those places

mentioned were determining factors for the lack of such photographs. However, this is not to say that full-body shots of Iban were rare.