The Best of Borneo Travel

Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 2001. This anthology provides a wild and wonderful series of extracts from travel writing about Borneo over four centuries. Each extract, substantial and self-contained in itself, gives a flavour and sense of travel, with authors ranging from Antonio Pigafetta who, writing in the sixteenth century, provided the first and best description of the Sultanate of Brunei, to Eric Hansen whose accounts of forest journeys on foot with Penans was first published in 1988. Extracts provide us with European perceptions of the exotic: the wonders of the equatorial rain forest; the fauna, such as the orang-utan; flora, like the pitcher plants; the rivers and rapids; the mountains, such as Kinabalu.... But just as the natural environment was seen to be untamed and exuberant, so were the inhabitants, and European travellers often focused on the practices of head-hunting and tribal warfare, as well as on piracy and coastal raiding. Cultural characteristics were emphasized which depicted barbarism and the remarkable: animal sacrifice; funeral rites; striking bodily adornments, such as tattoos, beads, ear-plugs, and feathered head-dresses. Europeans saw natives close to nature and, in the extreme, writers like Carl Bock believed the stories and rumours of 'men with tails'. Professor King sets the scene to this representative range of writings on Borneo with an informative and entertaining Introduction and, in addition, provides background information on each of the travellers and their works. xviii, 315 pp, 10 b&w plates. A new/unread copy in original shrinkwrap.. First Edition. Soft Cover. Fine/n/a. 19 x 13 cm.