A couple of years ago, a friend and I made a brief visit to the Kudat area. It is definitely a sleepy area far from the hustle and bustle of Kota Kinabalu or Sandakan. Beneath it all, it was the location of a very interesting part of the fabric of the early history of North Borneo which I shall elaborate later. Stamps first!
Violet cancellation
I prefer colour inked fiscal cancellation because they look so much better. There was no post office at Marudu in the early days of chartered rule. A district office was present to deal with fiscal and legal matters as there were large plantations in the area. The nearest town was Kudat which is about 80km to the north and Jesselton was 120km to the south west. The earliest post office located here was called Bandau and started in the early 1960s. Around the early 1970s, the name was changed to Kota Marudu. There is a gap between between the dates of the post office postmarks between 1971 and 1976 which implies that there was no functioning post office between these dates. You can see my Bandau postmarks on this blog by clicking : https://mynorthborneostamps.blogspot.com/2014/06/bandau-cancellation-and-sembulan-cover.html
The history of this area dates back at least to the 15th century as it was present on maps of that period. The most famous personality of this area was Sharif Usman or Syarif Osman. Short writeup here: https://thesabahsociety.com/event/the-fall-of-marudu-history-of-syarif-osman/ There is also a book for readers who are more interested.
Essentially, it is now believed that he was not a pirate at all but painted as such to further the imperialist designs of Rajah Brooke and his friends at the Colonial Office. The settlement which he presided would have been the largest in North Borneo at the time. He ruled over a large area in this northern part of Borneo and was autonomous enough to be considered the rightful ruler of an area separate from the sultanates of both Brunei and Sulu.
