ABSTRACT
Another important explanation offered, and nowadays by many authors believed to be the major population limiting factor in colonial and pre-colonial Borneo, is lethal disease (e.g. Alexander and Alexander, 1993: 253; Rousseau, 1990: 114). If substantiated at all, this explanation has so far mainly been based on some impressionistic remarks. The occurrence of epidemics is indeed very remarkable when studying the history of Borneo, and this stimulated me to examine the disease factor in more detail in the demographic history. In this essay I do not intend to consider all the explanations of limited population growth, although I am convinced that they almost all played a part in some way or another. Instead, I want to take a closer look at some important lethal diseases in Bornean history. I shall attempt to demonstrate that these diseases were the most important mechanism regulating population density before the twentieth century.
