John Maxwell Hall (7 October 1884 – 30 July 1966), known most commonly as Maxwell Hall, was a British colonial administrator,

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

and author who lived in and wrote about

North Borneo North Borneo (usually known as British North Borneo, also known as the State of North Borneo) was a British Protectorate, British protectorate in the northern part of the island of Borneo, which is present day Sabah. The territory of North Borneo ...

(now Sabah).

Early life and career

Hall was born at Kempshot, near

Montego Bay Montego Bay is the capital of the Parishes of Jamaica, parish of Saint James Parish, Jamaica, St. James in Jamaica. The city is the fourth-largest urban area in the country by population, after Kingston, Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, and Por ...

, Jamaica, on 7 October 1884, the son of Maxwell Hall and Agnes Gertrude Tullis. Hall was appointed West Coast Resident, North Borneo, in 1931. Before World War II and the Japanese invasion of Borneo, Maxwell Hall was a senior judge. Immediately after the war he was the Chief Advocate at some of the war crimes trials held at Labuan (holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel) and was attached to BBCAU, the British Borneo Civil Affairs Unit which was responsible for the running of North Borneo and other territories after the handover from

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n military control.

A description by K. G. Tregonning

In his 1960 book ''North Borneo'', K. G. Tregonning described Maxwell Hall as

J. Maxwell Hall, a retired senior officer of the Chartered Company ... one of the very few elderly Englishmen living in the Colony ... the grand old man of the territory.

He lives in a two-storied wooden house, sparsely furnished, as befits his Spartan physique, the owner of some fifty acres of land. On this he has built a half dozen homes, which he rents, with five acres or so of land, to Chinese market gardeners ... He lives as a South-East Asian squire, in solitary contentment: but instead of becoming, after fifty years' service in North Borneo, the grand old man of reminiscences ... this grizzled old live-wire lives vigorously for the present and the future. He is perhaps one of the most wide-awake and pertinent observers of the North Borneo of today whom it was my privilege to meet.

He has written well of the past, in several hard-to-secure books published locally, for he has an historian's bent, and he has contributed numerous articles ... He is writing yet another tale, the history of Labuan. But all this is relaxation; for he is no ivory tower writer, and it is the problems and the possibilities of the present that interest his wide-ranging curiosity and evoke his keenest comments.''North Borneo'' K. G. Tregonning, 1960, 72-3

Several of Maxwell Hall's books have been reprinted, most recently ''Labuan Story: Memoirs of a Small Island near the Coast of North Borneo'' in 2008.

Selected works by Maxwell Hall

* 1929 revised S.S. Cookson's ''The Ordinances of the State of North Borneo, 1881-1915'' (revised again by C.F.C. Macaskie in 1937) * 1949 ''Kinabalu Guerrillas: An account of the Double Tenth 1943'' Kuching: The Sarawak Press. Relates the history of the Japanese occupation of Borneo and the Jesselton Revolt. Contains information about the civil resistance to Japanese occupation, the reactions of the ethnic peoples and their relationship to the Japanese, and includes a few graphic sketches, including the Petagas cemetery which is now known as the

Petagas War Memorial The Petagas War Memorial or Petagas War Memorial Garden ( ms, Taman Peringatan Petagas/Perang Petagas) is a memorial park dedicated to the Second World War victims in Sabah particularly to 324 resistance movement members, who were executed on 2 ...

. The front cover a watercolour painting of Mount Kinabalu by Simon C. Yew. Reprinted by the Borneo Literature Bureau several times in the 1960s. * 1950 ''Makan Siap: Table Tales of North Borneo'' Labuan: Foo Tong Chai, Capitol (also a 1951 Singapore Jitts & Co. edition) Contains twenty-four sketches and stories. * 1954 Prepared a seventh supplemental volume to G. Bannerman Kellager, ''Laws of North Borneo, in force on the 30th June 1953, Revised edition, 1954'' entitled ''Supplement to the Revised Edition'' and containing the Ordinances and subsidiary legislation enacted between July 1953 and the last day of December 1954 * 1955 "Musah of Paitan River" ''North Borneo and Sabah Times''. Recounts the history leading up to Musah's rebellion against the government in 1908 and the years of fighting afterwards. * 1956 "The old fort at Kinarut in Sabah: a relic of three hundred years ago" ''Malayan Historical Journal'' 3:43–49. Recounts the history of a fort at Kinarut and discusses its name. * 1958 ''Labuan Story: Memoirs of a Small Island near the Coast of North Borneo'' Jesselton, North Borneo: Chung Nam. Front cover a watercolour painting of junks by Simon C. Yew. Reprinted by Silverfish Books in 2008.

References

Bibliography

*Doolittle, Amity, 2003, "Colliding discourses: Western land laws and native customary rights in North Borneo, 1881-1918" ''Journal of Southeast Asian Studies'' vol 34,

External links

Bonham's sale of some of Maxwell Hall's manuscripts and booksMaxwell Hall at War Crimes TrialsMaxwell Hall at War Crimes Trials
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Maxwell 20th-century British writers People from Montego Bay North Borneo Chartered Company administrators History of Sabah British Borneo judges