THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL
VOL LXXXI NO.102 DECEMBER 2019

1. Edward Banks, ‘Reminiscence of a curator’, The Sarawak Museum Journal (53, 1983) pp. 59–60.
2. See, for example: Lucas Chin et al. ‘Development of the Sarawak Museum’, The Sarawak Museum Journal (53, 1983) pp. 1–14; Gary Maitland, ‘Sarawak Museum: the Museum of Borneo’, The Sarawak Museum Journal (74, 1998) pp. 95–107; Zora Chan, ‘Uniqueness of Sarawak Museum’, The Star Online, 13 Oct 2012, https://www.thestar.com.my/news/community/2012/10/13/uniqueness-of-sarawakmuseum/ [accessed 14 June 2018]; Kevin Y. L. Tan, Of whales and dinosaurs: the story of Singapore’s Natural History Museum (Singapore: NUS Press, 2015) p. 81.
3. Interestingly, Ting’s analysis debunks another of Banks’s anecdotes from the 1983 article, proving that Banks had misremembered some – although not all – of the details about the building’s design; John Ting, ‘Notes on the architecture of the Sarawak Museum’, Sarawak Heritage Society Newsletter (5, Jan–Sept 2011) pp. 12–13.
4. A number of short articles referring to the museum’s foundation have been published in The Sarawak Museum Journal over the years, often to commemorate landmark anniversaries, but these largely rely on secondary sources such as Banks’s article for their detail; Lucas Chin et al. ‘Development of the Sarawak Museum’; Earl of Cranbrook, ‘Sarawak Museum Centenary: address by the Earl of Cranbrook’, The Sarawak Museum Journal (64, 1992) pp. 219–229; Maitland, ‘Sarawak Museum: the Museum of Borneo’.
5. ‘Notice’, Sarawak Gazette, 26 March 1878, p. 18.
6. ‘Our Notes’, Sarawak Gazette, 1 November 1886, p. 173.
7. ‘Opening of the New Museum’, Sarawak Gazette, 1 September 1891, p. 135.
8. Ibid.
9. John M. Mackenzie, Museums and empire: natural history, human cultures and colonial identities, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), p. 1.
10. Kate Hill, Culture and class in English public museums 1850–1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
11. Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London: Verso, 2006) p. 184.
12. Tony Bennett, Pasts beyond memory: evolution, museums, colonialism (London: Routledge, 2004); Tony Bennett, The birth of the museum: history, theory, politics (London: Routledge, 1995) p. 181.
13. Sarah Longair & John McAleer, eds. Curating empire: museums and the British imperial experience (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016).
14. For detailed analysis of the role of colonial knowledge-gathering across the British Empire, see: Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: the British in India (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996).
15. For example, a stone ewer “dug up one hundred miles inland, on the western coast of Borneo in 1811”, British Museum Object Number: 1939,0312.18; and a quiver of ‘Dayak’ darts, Object Number: As1859,1228.235.a-b.
16. Robert Reece, The White Rajahs of Sarawak: a Borneo dynasty (Singapore: Archipelago Press, 2004) p. 10.
17. James Brooke, ‘Letter from James Brooke relating to the habits and points of distinction in the Orangs of Borneo’, Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (9, 1841) pp. 55–59.
18. J. Forshall to John G. Children, ‘Instructions for James Brooke’, 17 October 1838, Natural History Museum London Archive, DF ZOO/205/1/97-98, p. 2.
19. John G. Children to J. Forshall, ‘Instructions for James Brooke in the Far East’, 18 October 1838, Natural History Museum London Archive, DF ZOO/205/1/100, p. 1.
20. See, for example, the following specimens: Tropidolaemus wagleri, Natural History Museum London Specimen Number: 1845.10.2.29; Hipposideros diadema vicarius, Natural History Museum London Specimen Number: 1845.10.2.9; Elaphe flavolineata, Natural History Museum London Specimen Number: 1845.10.2.97.
21. Including: Hugh Low, Sarawak: its inhabitants and productions, being notes during a residence in that country with His Excellency Mr Brooke (London: R. Bentley, 1848); Spenser St. John, Life in the forests of the Far East (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1862).
22. James Brooke to Brooke Johnson-Brooke, 27 January 1856, WCP3791.3705 in Beccaloni, G.W. ed., Wallace Letters Online. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/researchcuration/ scientific-resources/collections/library-collections/wallace-letters online/3791/3705/T/details.html [accessed 14 June 2018]; Spenser St. John, The Life of Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak: from his personal papers and correspondence (London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1879) p. 274.
23. Alfred Russel Wallace to Mary A. Wallace, 25 December 1855, reproduced in: James Marchant, Alfred Russel Wallace Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. I (London: Cassell & Co., 1916) p. 59.
24. Charles Bunyon, Memoirs of Francis Thomas McDougall, sometime Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak and of Harriette his wife (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1889) p. 133.
25. Both Robert Shelford and John Coney Moulton had contact with Wallace during their curatorships. See: Robert Shelford to Sidney Harmer, 8 June 1901, University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology, Correspondence Archive V4.713; Alfred Russel Wallace to John Coney Moulton, 29 Sept 1912, Moulton Papers, Wiltshire & Swindon Archives, 4186:3A:4:3.
26. John Coney Moulton, ‘Dr Alfred Russel Wallace, O.M. F.R.S.’, Sarawak Gazette, 17 November 1913, p. 262.
27. Harrisson spoke of “this lovely museum that the Second Rajah had started largely under the influence of Alfred Russel Wallace” on the BBC’s People Today. Quoted in: Judith M. Heimann, The most offending soul alive: Tom Harrisson and his remarkable life, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998, p. 243.
28. Banks, ‘Reminiscence of a curator’, p. 59.
29. Angela Burdett-Coutts to Charles Brooke, 24 November 1868, Brooke Trust Archive Online, MPS83.2.56 http://archive.brooketrust.org/DA/showObject. php?id=MPS83.2.56 [accessed 4 September 2018].
30. Charles Brooke to William Greenell Wallace, 22 January 1914, WCP6135.7095 in Beccaloni, G.W. ed., Wallace Letters Online. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/researchcuration/ scientific-resources/collections/library-collections/wallace-lettersonline/6135/7095/S/details.html [accessed 14 June 2018].
31. Alfred Russel Wallace, ‘Museums for the people’, Macmillan’s Magazine (19: 111, 1869) pp. 244–55; where this article is quoted here, reference is to the 1900 revised version published in: Wallace, Studies Scientific and Social, Vol. II (London: Macmillan, 1900) pp. 1–15.
32. Charles Brooke to William Greenell Wallace, 22 January 1914.
33. William Hornaday, ‘Correspondence: The Sarawak Museum’, Sarawak Gazette, 17 December 1878, p. 78.
34. John Walker, ‘Building authority: Charles Brooke, legitimacy and the built environment in Sarawak, 1865-1907’, in Stuart King et al. eds., Myth, Nature, Heritage: the 29th Annual Conference of Architectural Historians of Australia & New Zealand (Launceston: Society of Architectural Historians of Australia & New Zealand, 2012) pp.1119–1135 [p. 1120].
35. Tan, Of whales and dinosaurs, pp. 12–13.
36. Hornaday, ‘Correspondence: The Sarawak Museum’.
37. Untitled, Sarawak Gazette, 2 August 1886, p. 118.
38. Charles Brooke to Odoardo Beccari, 23 December 1869, Papers of Odoardo Beccari, Biblioteca Botanica, University degli Studi, Florence. I am grateful to John Walker for bringing this source to my attention.
39. Charles Brooke to John E.A. Lewis, 14 December 1889, reproduced in: Tom Harrisson,‘“Second to none”: our first curator (and others)’, Sarawak Museum Journal (17–18, 1961) pp. 17–29.
40. ‘Opening of the New Museum’, Sarawak Gazette, 1 September 1891, p. 135.
41. Charles Brooke to Francis Henry Dallas, 18 January 1904, UK National Archives, PRO 30/79/2, p. 1.
42. Ooi Keat Gin, World beyond the rivers: education in Sarawak from Brooke rule to colonial office education, 1841-1963, Hull: Dept. of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hull, 1996, p. 13.
43. Ibid, p. 155.
44. Wallace, ‘Museums for the People’, 1900, p. 2.
45. Maitland, ‘Sarawak Museum: the museum of Borneo ’, p. 99.
46. Wallace, ‘Museums for the People’, 1900, p. 3.
47. Ibid, pp. 5–7.
48. Ibid, pp. 11–12.
49. Ibid, p. 3.
50. Hornaday, ‘Correspondence: the Sarawak Museum’.
51. ‘Notice’, Sarawak Gazette, 1878.
52. Our Notes’, Sarawak Gazette, 1886.
53. Charles Brooke, Queries: past, present and future (London: The Planet Offices, 1907) p. 4.1907) p. 4.
54. ‘Our Notes’, Sarawak Gazette, 1886.
55. Sandra Manickam, Taming the wild: aborigines and racial knowledge in colonial Malaya (Singapore: NUS Press, 2015) pp. 154–156.
56. ‘Items’, Sarawak Gazette, 24 June 1878, p. 44.
57. ‘Sarawak Museum’, Sarawak Gazette, 1 August 1889, p. 111; Charles Brooke to Lewis, 14 December 1889, in: Harrisson, “Second to none”: our first curator (and others)’.
58. For example: Charles Brooke to John Coney Moulton, 7 October 1913, Moulton Papers, Wiltshire & Swindon Archives, 4186.3A.4.5.
59. Charles Brooke to Dallas, 18 January 1904, p. 1; Charles Brooke to John Coney Moulton, 1910, Moulton Papers, Wiltshire & Swindon Archives, 4186.3A.4.5.