Ken Goodlet, author of the soon to be published book “Tawau: The making of a Tropical Community”, will be presenting a talk to the Sabah Society on the same subject at 19:30 on Thursday 1st July at the Secretariat.
Please find below a synopsis of the talk in his own words.
I have been asked to speak to the society members for some one and a half hours on my 362 page book, Tawau: The Making of a Tropical Community, which is to be launched the following day. You will not, however, just be listening to me: the talk will revolve around an extensive PowerPoint presentation, a reading of short extracts from the book and, I hope, questions from you.
I shall begin by outlining how the book came to be written, beginning back in early 1965 when I first came to St Patrick’s School Tawau as a 25-year-old teacher, along with my wife and two very young sons. I shall show how my starting point for the history was my multiethnic students, then their older relatives and acquaintances amongst Tawau’s 22 linguistic groupings, leading to documentary authentication and the collection of all this in 1977 in an 80,000 word university thesis. I’ll then briefly outline my publication interests to the present that relate to my present publication.
With this introduction as background, I’ll focus on aspects of Tawau’s history that are triggered off from the PowerPoint and with the use of quotes from the book. I have relied very much on people’s stories as I have looked at the following questions. Some of the questions raised (but not always fully answered) by the PowerPoint will be: How did Tawau begin and what do and don’t we know about that beginning? Who were the early settlers and how did they live and work? How did mining, plantations, the dominance of Japanese interests and immigration affect people’s lives before World War II? How traumatic for people was World War II? How did Tawau recover so well from the war? In particular, what role was played by Borneo Abaca Limited and the trade with surrounding areas? How did the people of Tawau respond to Malaysia? How did things then change? What were the effects of the timber boom of the 1960s and 1970s? How did the opening up of the hinterland, particularly to smallholders, affect people? What were the effects of the rapid legal and illegal population growth from the mid 1970s onward? What did it mean for people when Tawau became the cocoa capital of Malaysia in the late 1970s and early 1980s? What have been the effects of the plantation and smallholding oil palm boom of the 1980s and 1990s on the people of Tawau? How diverse is the Tawau economy and communal life now?
As I said, these questions are largely addressed in the book from the life stories people told me, authenticated as far as possible from the enormous amount of research over many years that lies behind the book. My aim has been to make a heavily researched book as readable as possible. I hope that it then contributes to giving the people of Tawau and Sabah an understanding of where they came from and who they are. I hope, too, that it fills in some of the gaps in the jigsaw of global history for those beyond Sabah.
Ken Goodlet
Further information about Ken can be found in the attached. KEN GOODLET CV
These are interesting topics which we are interested to be featured on http://www.discovertawau.com. Tawau has so much to offer!