Plantation Agriculture and the Formulation of Native Land Rights in British North Borneo c. 1880-1930

1992 ◽  
Vol 158 (2) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. C. Cleary
Keyword(s):  
Land Rights ◽  
Native Land ◽  
North Borneo ◽  
Plantation Agriculture

Colliding Discourses: Western Land Laws and Native Customary Rights in North Borneo, 1881-1918

2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amity Doolittle
Keyword(s):  
Land Management ◽  
Shifting Cultivation ◽  
Native People ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Native Land ◽  
North Borneo ◽  
Scientific Agriculture ◽  
Peripheral Position ◽  
Customary Rights ◽  
Customary Laws

A comparison of European tobacco plantations and native shifting cultivation in North Borneo between 1881 and 1928 illustrates the discursive and political strategies through which colonial administrators justified intervention into native land matters and articulated their vision of ‘appropriate’ land management. The discourse of rational law, scientific agriculture and commercialisation provided the tools of colonial power that pushed native people and their customary laws into an increasingly peripheral position in relationship to the centralising state.

The Effect of Registration of Title Upon Customary Land Rights in Kenya

1978 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Coldham
Keyword(s):  
Soil Erosion ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Land Consolidation ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Native Land ◽  
Traditional Institutions ◽  
Customary Land

When the State of Emergency was declared in 1952, most Africans in Kenya were living on the land in tribal reserves known as Native Land Units. Land rights within the Land Units were governed by native law and custom, though the demand for individual titles was strong, particularly in the Kikuyu Land Unit. However, administrators were divided about the desirability of hastening the demise of traditional institutions and concentrated their efforts on promoting agricultural development by taking measures against soil erosion and encouraging farmers to consolidate their holdings. It was only when large-scale compulsory land consolidation schemes were initiated in the mid-fifties among the Kikuyu that serious consideration was given to the nature of the title which the owner of a consolidated holding would acquire. Many people saw customary law as an obstacle to agricultural development (after all, the customary law relating to the allocation and inheritance of land was largely responsible for the considerable fragmentation of holdings that had occurred) and recommended that it be replaced by a system based on the registration of individual titles.

The Papar Land Protest, 1910–11

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-440
Author(s):  
Danny Wong Tze Ken
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
North Borneo ◽  
The Government ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
First Contact

One of the recurring problems that emerged during the height of European expansion into Southeast Asia was the encroachment of European enterprises into indigenous lands. In most cases, problems existed especially in the manner that landholdings were understood by the natives vis-à-vis the new land laws introduced by the colonial powers. This often led to disputes which resulted in the natives being deprived of their rights. This paper looks into a case where the Dusun in Papar, North Borneo — an indigenous people — took the European colonial government to court over land rights which involved land encroachments by European enterprises and railways. The event took place barely 30 years after the first contact with European civilisation took place. The paper will examine the nature of the case and also investigate the role played by the Dusun and their fight against the government. The paper will also investigate the role of an English lawyer retained by the Dusun for the case, and that of the Roman Catholic Mission in championing the affairs of the indigenous people.

Native Land Rights in Australia

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-16
Author(s):  
Craig A. Davison
Keyword(s):  
Land Rights ◽  
Native Land

Maps and Counter-Maps: Globalised Imaginings and Local Realities of Sarawak's Plantation Agriculture

2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fadzilah Majid Cooke
Keyword(s):  
Land Rights ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Community Mapping ◽  
Plantation Agriculture

This article examines differences and overlaps in imagined spatial ideas of rural Sarawak which underpin official and community mapping. It looks at the ways in which ‘counter-mapping’ is used by indigenous communities to support their claims to traditional land rights when these are contested by other parties.

Transporting Concepts of ‘Native’ Land as Birthright between Fiji and Australia’s North

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 325-345
Author(s):  
Kirstie Close-Barry
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Northern Territory ◽  
Native Land ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Indigenous Land

This article focuses on the experiences at two Methodist communities in the Pacific and their assertions of sovereignty from the 1920s to the 1960s. It explores the connections between two nodes of the Methodist Mission – Fiji and Australia’s Northern Territory – through one missionary, Kolinio Saukuru. While there were moments of great political mobilisation at each site, efforts to assert Indigenous land ownership and autonomy were hampered by persistent racialized views of the ‘native’ amongst missionaries and the colonial state. This article engages with questions emerging from the histories of colonial missions, particularly whether missions aligned with colonial administrations on strategies of governance. However, it also points to the need to think beyond national boundaries when studying mission histories. An examination of the Methodist Overseas Mission using a transnational framework illuminates a network of Indigenous people who worked to protect what some missionaries and anthropologists considered an Indigenous ‘birthright’: the land. This study therefore expands on the existing historiography of colonial missions, of Indigenous labour, and of land rights activism in Fiji and Australia’s north.

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