Of Freeman’s three points, the most contentious has proved to be the last: his characterization of Iban leadership as voluntaristic and consensual. Thus Marshall Sahlins (1958:313), in an early review of Freeman’s Iban Agriculture (1955), noted that while Iban political institutions appear to be “elementary” — “hardly surpassing a family level of integration” — the Iban were historically able to organize large-scale war parties, comprising hundreds, at times thousands, of warriors. Sahlins questioned how this was possible in the absence of chieftainship, ascribed ranking, or corporate descent groups.

In his essay on the kindred, Freeman (1961) gave a partial answer. Thus, he noted that the highly ramifying and preferentially endogamous kindred networks of the Iban extend from longhouse to longhouse, over entire river watersheds, thereby providing the basis for large-scale mobilization, including in the past mobilization of warriors for raiding and predatory expansion, Moreover, as Freeman (1961:214) goes on to observe, in assembling war parties, “institutionalized authority” was not required, that is to say, authority which “allows its holder to discipline unwilling followers”. This was because Iban men joined war parties by choice. They come together of their own free will, under the leadership of men of demonstrated ability, who were able to attract and hold their allegiance by virtue of their personal qualities as leaders. Thus Iban war parties took the form of “loosely organized” companies of “free and equal men” (1961:214). Leaders and followers alike shared a common interest in gaining personal renown, were usually kin, and in coming together both, in Freeman’s terms, “were doing what they were doing because they wanted to” (1961:214). Each, it may be said, acted in accordance with the Iban notion of muntis ka diri’, “choosing for oneself”.

Donald Brown (1979) has more recently re-examined the question of Iban leadership. He begins by applauding Freeman’s emphasis upon its consensual basis (1979:20) and like Ulla Wagner (1972), he argues that the power of Iban leaders was consistently underestimated in the past because it does not fit well with Western notions of authority. Thus, while the Iban lacked the “hereditary chiefs” and ascribed ranking of some of their neighbours, they nevertheless “did in fact enjoy governmental institutions”, including, in the pre-Brooke and early historical period, a permanent pattern of supra-local leadership (Brown 1979:16; see Sather 1994:9-12).

In the Saribas river area of Sarawak, regional leaders were known traditionally as tuai menoa. The most powerful of these were drawn from the raja berani, literally “the rich and brave”, and were typically self-made men with a reputation for military prowess, resourcefulness and wealth. Reputation was gained primarily through farming success, trade in surplus rice, fairness in dealing with others; migrational leadership; and from bravery and personal leadership in warfare and raiding. Greatest renown attached to those who were recognized as major war leaders. Such men were called tau’ serang or tau’ kayau [tau’, “have the capacity”, “be able to”; serang, “attack”; kayau, “war” or “raid”], and in the past no title carried greater prestige or was more sought after.

In nineteenth-century Sarawak, Iban war leaders, when they were first encountered by European observers, were indisputably powerful figures, capable of entering into military alliances with one another and of mobilizing hundreds of followers under their direction, for territorial expansion, raiding and the defence of their home rivers. In newly-opened regions, tuai menoa allocated settlement areas among their followers, arbitrated boundary disputes and set aside forest reserves (pulau ban) for communal use as a source of boat- and house-building timber (cf. Sather 1994:11-12). In the past, military status, like many other types of status in Iban society, was finally ranked or be-rintai. Thus, a young man who displayed bravery on the battlefield was called a bujang berani or “brave bachelor”. If he succeeded in killing or taking the head of an enemy (bedengah), he was entitled to receive an ensumbar or “praise-name”. The most successful and experienced warriors serving under a senior war leader’s command were called his manok sabong, literally his “fighting cocks”. In the past tuai menoa, including tau’ serang, generally settled their most trusted manok sabong at the pintu kayau (“doors of war”), the areas along the frontiers of their domain most vulnerable to attack or invasion. Once a man gained a reputation for bravery and judgment, others might join him, under his leadership, on small raids (anak kayau) of his own devising. Only gradually, after having achieved success as an independent leader, was a man likely to begin his ascent to the status of a veteran war leader (tau’ kayau). Only a man of exceptional abilities, who had managed to gather around him a following of seasoned warriors, and who was able to forge alliances with others and had demonstrated his ability to mobilize and lead large-scale raids and defensive campaigns, was likely to be accorded the highest rank and acknowledged as a tau’ serang (cf. Sandin 1980:80-81; Sather 1994:12). Such men were extremely rare. They were also believed, in addition, to be supernaturally-inspired.

Brown describes the tau’ serang as the holder of a political “commission” (cf. Brown 1973a), in this case, what he calls a “charismatic commission”. The tau’ serang obtains his “commission”, not by appointment or succession, but by means of a dream experience, or by a series of dreams in which his future success as a war leader is foretold. Such dreams were considered to be a sign of direct spiritual inspiration and were typically accompanied by gifts from the guiding spirit-heroes or gods of magically-potent war charms (pengaroh) (Sandin 1966). Success in war served to validate such dreams, giving authenticity to an aspiring leader’s commission. It also, as a rule, permitted successful war leaders to attract still larger followings and to enter into warring alliances with other successful leaders.^[4] With the establishment of Brooke rule in the second half of the nineteenth century, this pattern of competitive regional leadership was superseded by the creation of formal administrative districts under officially-appointed Penghulu or “native chiefs”. Thus the Iban were brought within a centralized governmental structure. Although tau’ kayau and tau’ serang were sometimes appointed as Penghulu, this centralized structure was externally imposed and succession was routinized in a way diametrically opposed to traditional Iban political values (Freeman 1981:15-24; Sather 1980:xiv-xxviii).

In referring to Iban war leaders of the past, Brown (1979:18) contrasts a “commission”, characterized by what he calls “ad hoc or discontinuous leadership”, with an “office”, characterized by “a system of perpetual succession”. The tau’ serang’s commission, unlike an “office”, attached to his person alone and was not derived from any overarching governmental authority. Instead, it came from what was taken to be a “sign” of direct supernatural authorization. I shall return to the issue of leadership again presently, but the point that Brown makes here is an important one: namely, that the tau’ serang and other veteran Iban war leaders, though not office-holders or part of a formally constituted hierarchy of authority, represented nevertheless highly effective leaders, who, operating above the level of the longhouse, were a regular feature of traditional Iban society, exercising very real power, even though the positions they occupied were not “regularly constituted” in the sense that each individual leader had to obtain and validate his own personal dream-commission, there being, until the beginnings of colonial rule, “no way to pass one person’s commission on to a successor” (Brown 1979:17).