In light of the tremendous changes that have come to the island of Borneo in recent decades, this volume takes a detailed historical look at the Borneo environment from native, colonial and national perspectives. It examines change and continuity in the economic, political and social dimensions of human-environment interactions. Reflecting the increasingly multidisciplinary nature of environmental history, the book brings together an international group of historians, anthropologists, geographers and social foresters, all looking through a historical lens at the environment in the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak, and the Indonesian province of Kalimantan and Brunei. Drawing on extensive archival research and fieldwork, these ten original contributions encompass eleven centuries of history on Borneo, examining interrelated topics that include long-distance trade, conservation, land tenure, resource access, property rights, perceptions of the environment, migration, and development policy and practice. The chapters in this volume are extensively revised versions of selected papers presented at an international seminar on "Environmental change in native and colonial histories of Borneo: Lessons from the past, prospects for the future" held in Leiden under the auspices of the International Institute for Asian Studies.

The onslaught on the Bornean rain forest is a recurrent theme in the media today. Studies dealing with the island, however, have largely ignored the long-term antecedents of modern environmental changes and problems. Yet phenomena such as forest fires, logging, the decimation of animal populations, and lack of arable land are far from new, even for a sparsely populated island like Borneo. This book is the first attempt to deal with the long-term interrelation between humans and their environment in Borneo, going back to the moment when first historical information becomes available in the early seventh century. The book deals with the relationship between people and the natural environment in Southeast Borneo, based on many hitherto unused primary sources. It describes the ways in which people made a living within the wide range of environments found here, focusing on agriculture, hunting, fishing, animal husbandry, forest exploitation, and the collection of products for the market. It deals with the impact of these activities on the natural environment and attempts to explain why most areas were strikingly little affected until modern times, yet others showed clear signs of human occupation and exploitation from an early date.

The onslaught on the Bornean rain forest is a recurrent theme in the media today. Studies dealing with the island, however, have largely ignored the long-term antecedents of modern environmental changes and problems. Yet phenomena such as forest fires, logging, the decimation of animal populations, and lack of arable land are far from new, even for a sparsely populated island like Borneo. This book is the first attempt to deal with the long-term interrelation between humans and their environment in Borneo, going back to the moment when first historical information becomes available in the early seventh century. The book deals with the relationship between people and the natural environment in Southeast Borneo, based on many hitherto unused primary sources. It describes the ways in which people made a living within the wide range of environments found here, focusing on agriculture, hunting, fishing, animal husbandry, forest exploitation, and the collection of products for the market. It deals with the impact of these activities on the natural environment and attempts to explain why most areas were strikingly little affected until modern times, yet others showed clear signs of human occupation and exploitation from an early date.

This edited book is the first major review of what has been achieved in Borneo Studies to date. Chapters in this book situate research on Borneo within the general disciplinary fields of the social sciences, with the weight of attention devoted to anthropological research and related fields such as development studies, gender studies, environmental studies, social policy studies and cultural studies. Some of the chapters in this book are extended versions of presentations at the Borneo Research Council’s international conference hosted by Universiti Brunei Darussalam in June 2012 and a Borneo Studies workshop organised in Brunei in 2012. The volume examines some of the major debates and controversies in Borneo Studies, including those which have served to connect post-war research on Borneo to wider scholarship. It also assesses some of the more recent contributions and interests of locally based researchers in universities and other institutions in Borneo itself. The major strength of the book is the inclusion of a substantial amount of research undertaken by scholars working and teaching within the Southeast Asian region. In particular there is an examination of research materials published in the vernacular, notably the outpouring of work published in Indonesian by the Institut Dayakologi in Pontianak. In doing so, the book also addresses the urgent matters which have not received the attention they deserve, specifically subjects, themes and issues that have already been covered but require further contemplation, elaboration and research, and the scope for disciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration in Borneo Studies. The book is a valuable resource and reference work for students and researchers interested in social science scholarship on Borneo, and for those with wider interests in Indonesia and Malaysia, and in the Southeast Asian region.

Bulungan regency is the northern part of the province of East Kalimantan, Indonesia. In the course of the last decade, Kalimantan's or Borneo's hinterland has been the target of unprecedented non-timber forest products (NTFP) collecting activity. More intensive NTFP use has contributed to unsustainable extractive practices and environmental damage and to deep social and political disruption. This book examines northern East Kalimantan's trade networks. The historical scope extends from about 1880 to present and primarily focus on Long Pujungan and Malinau districts. Thematically, the study is on institutions and land and forest use patterns, and their changes with emphasis on social and economic features. It explains regional patterns in the light of past relationships between tribal interior groups and trading coastal polities and seeks to understand both the economic contribution of NTFPs and the institutions controlling their use. It offers some broad ideas that should prove useful in understanding how the past has shaped the present and how the present socio-economic situation owes many of its specific features to past patterns and events.

Eric Hansen was the first westerner ever to walk across the island of Borneo. Completely cut off from the outside world for seven months, he traveled nearly 1,500 miles with small bands of nomadic hunters known as Penan. Beneath the rain forest canopy, they trekked through a hauntingly beautiful jungle where snakes and frogs fly, pigs climb trees, giant carnivorous plants eat mice, and mushrooms glow at night. At once a modern classic of travel literature and a gripping adventure story, Stranger in the Forest provides a rare and intimate look at the vanishing way of life of one of the last surviving groups of rain forest dwellers. Hansen's absorbing, and often chilling, account of his exploits is tempered with the humor and humanity that prompted the Penan to take him into their world and to share their secrets.