Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace

About Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary and correspondent of Charles Darwin, who traveled widely across the Malay Archipelago between 1854 and 1862, collecting specimens and describing the natural world, and his unique association with Sarawak. 

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 - 1913) arrived in Singapore on 28 April 1854.  Over the next eight years, he traveled extensively in what is now Malaysia and Indonesia, identifying and collecting specimens. 

Wallace's trip to the Malay Archipelago was made possible by a grant covering the expense of his passage to Singapore. He had letters of introduction prepared for him by representatives of the British and Dutch governments. The Rajah of Sarawak, Sir James Brooke, supported Wallace's visit to Kuching and the surrounding areas from 1 November 1854 to 23 January 1856.

In March 1855, Wallace decided to travel from Kuching to Simunjan in the hope of collecting orang utans (mias) which were reported to inhabit the area. In eight months, he collected 15 orang utans. He attempted to raise an infant orang utan, whose mother he had shot. Wallace expressed great sorrow when this orang utan died despite his best efforts at being a foster parent.

Wallace returned to Sarawak in November 1855, this time traveling on foot up the headwaters of the Sadong and Sarawak Rivers. Reactions of people to Wallace ranged from extreme fright to extreme curiosity, and he was often the centre of attention of the entire longhouse.

Wallace spent much of his remaining time in Sarawak at Sir James Brooke's bungalow near the summit of Bukit Serambu, Siniawan. In his book “The Malay Archipelago” he writes, “I have been staying some time at a cottage of Sir James Brooke's, about twenty miles inland, on the ridge of a mountain, at an elevation of about one thousand feet. The path up is peculiar, half is over broken rocks, the other half up ladders.” And further on, he notes, “Huge boulders, as big as the houses themselves, rise among them, and hang over them in the most extraordinary manner. Every one is a picturesque object stained with lichens, and on the shady side covered with mosses, while the tops are generally more are less clothed with curious ferns and orchids.”

Wallace's legacy is not only the journeys, but the theories he developed from his observations. Prior to his travels through the Malay Archipelago, Wallace had begun to think about ways to prove that living creatures are constantly changing. He continued to explore this in the paper he wrote while in Sarawak titled “On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species” published in September 1855 (commonly known as “Sarawak Law 1855”). It was this essay that spurred Darwin to write “Origin of Species”. Wallace and Darwin are recognized today as co-developers of the theory of natural selection.

150 years later, at the “International conference on biogeography and biodiversity: Wallace in Sarawak - 150 years later” held from 13-15 July 2005, the Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud Abdul Taib suggested that the sites Wallace had worked on in Sarawak, like the "Wallace Point" at Santubong, be preserved as historical, educational and scientific heritage as Wallace had brought the state to the height of international acclaim through his writings and collections.

"The old government bungalow on the hill overlooking the mouth of Santubong River, the exact spot where Wallace wrote his Sarawak Law, can be renovated to provide a one-stop centre for the study of natural history for schools, universities and researchers," he said. He also suggested that the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) could take the initiative to set up a Wallace centre at Santubong, with the government's support, to inspire young scientists and promote academic discourses on issues relevant to the state.

“If this is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations. They will charge us with having culpably allowed the destruction of some of those records of Creation which we had it in our power to preserve; and while professing to regard every living thing as the direct handiwork and best evidence of a Creator, yet, with a strange inconsistency, seeing many of them perish irrecoverably from the face of the earth, uncared for and unknown.”

Alfred Russel Wallace, 1823 - 1913

References

Smith, Charles. The Alfred Russel Wallace Page at http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/index1.htm
Wallace, Alfred R. (1869) The Malay Archipelago. Macmillian & Company, London.

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