A Chinese Christian colony in Sarawak: Ivy Kenneth Janson, Shifting Sovereignties: Sovereignty Production across the New Fuzhou Settler-Colonial Environment in Sarawak in the Early Twentieth Century (1901-1935), MA dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2024

14Jun24

Abstract: This thesis examines the Indigenous Iban and the New Fuzhou settlers of the Lower Rejang Valley in Sarawak, presently Malaysia, at the turn of the twentieth century through the lens of Silverstein’s theory of sovereignty production. Specifically, this thesis examines the ways in which sovereignty production methods changed from 1901 to 1935. The Iban lost access to their traditional forms of sovereignty production through nomadic rice cultivation due to government policy and economic incentives, but maintained a distinct identity through rubber profits and the perpetuation of oral genealogies. Meanwhile, the New Fuzhou settlers originally sought to reproduce the Southern Chinese agrarian countryside supplemented by liberal Christian values, but ecological conditions and a new American Missionary leader resulted in a new Christian-Capitalist sovereignty expressed through cash crop production and joint-stock corporations. Sovereignty production and how it changes helps recognize non-traditional expressions of agency among all groups present in settler-colonial environments.