SIR JAMES BROOKE , RAJAH OF SARAWAK
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Painting of the Rajah of Sarawak in 1847 by Francis Grant |
Reign :
18
August 1842 – 11 June 1868
Coronation :
18
August 1842
Predecessor :
Sultan
Tengah (as Sultan of Sarawak), Pengiran Indera Mahkota Mohammad Salleh (as Governor of Sarawak)
Heir apparent :
Charles
Spouse :
none
House :
Brooke
dynasty
Father :
Thomas
Brooke
Mother :
Anna
Maria Brooke
Born :
29
April 1803
Bandel,
Hooghly, British India
Died :
11
June 1868 (aged 65)
Burrator,
United Kingdom
Religion :
Christianity
Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, KCB (29 April
1803[1] – 11 June 1868), was a British adventurer whose exploits in the Malay
Archipelago made him the first White Rajah of Sarawak.
Born in India and briefly educated in England, he served in
the Bengal Army, was wounded, and resigned his commission. He bought a ship and
sailed out to the Malay Archipelago, where by helping to crush a rebellion, he
became governor of Sarawak. He then vigorously suppressed piracy in the region,
and in the ensuing turmoil, restored the Sultan of Brunei to his throne, for
which the Sultan made Brooke the Rajah of Sarawak. He ruled until his death.
Brooke was criticised and officially investigated for his
anti-piracy measures. He was, however, honoured in London for his work. Among
his achievements was to attract the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace to the
Archipelago, leading to Wallace's eight-year expedition there, and ultimately
to his book The Malay Archipelago.
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Attack by Illanun pirates on Brooke's Jolly Bachelor, T. Datu, 1843 |
Brooke was born in Bandel, near Calcutta, Bengal,[2] but was
baptised in Secrole, a suburb of Benares. His father, Thomas Brooke, was an
English Judge Court of Appeal at Bareilly, British India; his mother, Anna
Maria, born in Hertfordshire, was the daughter of Scottish peer Colonel William
Stuart, 9th Lord Blantyre, and his mistress Harriott Teasdale.
Brooke stayed at home in India until he was sent, aged 12,
to England and a brief education at Norwich School from which he ran away.
Some home tutoring followed in Bath before he returned to
India in 1819 as an ensign in the Bengal Army of the British East India Company.
He saw action in Assam during the First Anglo-Burmese War
until seriously wounded in 1825, and sent to England for recovery. In 1830, he
arrived back in Madras but was too late to rejoin his unit, and resigned his
commission.
He remained in the ship he had travelled out in, the Castle
Huntley,and returned home via China.
Sarawak
Battles/wars
First Anglo-Burmese War
Anti-Piracy in Asia
Brooke attempted to trade in the Far East, but was not
successful. In 1833, he inherited £30,000, which he used as capital to purchase
a 142-ton schooner, Royalist.[3] Setting sail for Borneo in 1838, he arrived in
Kuching in August to find the settlement facing an Iban and Bidayuh uprising
against the Sultan of Brunei. Greatly impressed with the Malay Archipelago, in
Sarawak he met Pangeran Muda Hashim, to whom he gave assistance in crushing the
rebellion, thereby winning the gratitude of the Sultan, who in 1841 offered
Brooke the governorship of Sarawak in return for his help.
Rajah Brooke was highly successful in suppressing the
widespread piracy of the region. However some Malay nobles in Brunei, unhappy
over Brooke's measures against piracy, arranged for the murder of Muda Hashim
and his followers. Brooke, with assistance from a unit of Britain's China
Squadron, took over Brunei and restored its sultan to the throne.
Cession of Labuan to Great Britain.
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James Brooke negotiating with the Sultan of Brunei, which led to the signing of the Treaty of Labuan between the Brunei sultanate and the British delegation on 18 December 1846 at the Brunei palace, in which Labuan was ceded to Great Britain.[4][5] |
In 1846, Brooke presented the island of Labuan to the British
government. He was appointed governor and commander-in-chief of Labuan.
Accession as Rajah of Sarawak[edit]
In 1842, Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien II ceded complete
sovereignty of Sarawak to Brooke. He was granted the title of Rajah of Sarawak
on 24 September 1841, although the official declaration was not made until 18
August 1842.
Reign
During his reign, Brooke began to establish and cement his
rule over Sarawak: reforming the administration, codifying laws and fighting
piracy, which proved to be an ongoing issue throughout his rule.[citation
needed] Brooke returned temporarily to England in 1847, where he was given the
Freedom of the City of London, appointed British consul-general in Borneo and
was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB).
Brooke became the centre of controversy in 1851 when
accusations against him of excessive use of force against natives, under the
guise of anti-piracy operations, ultimately led to the appointment of a
Commission of Inquiry in Singapore in 1854. After investigation, the Commission
dismissed the charges but the accusations continued to haunt him.[6]
Brooke met the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in England
around 1852 or 1853, because he wrote to Wallace on leaving England in April
1853, "to assure Wallace that he would be very glad to see him at
Sarawak."[7] This was an invitation that helped Wallace decide on the
Malay Archipelago for his next expedition, an expedition that lasted for eight
years and established him as one of the foremost Victorian intellectuals and
naturalists of the time. When Wallace arrived in Singapore in September 1854,
he found Rajah Brooke "reluctantly preparing to give evidence to the
special commission set up to investigate his controversial anti-piracy activities."[8]
During his rule, Brooke faced threats from Sarawak warriors
like Sharif Masahor and Rentap, and an uprising by Chinese miners in 1857,[9]
but remained in power.
Death and burial
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The red granite chest tomb to James Brooke in Sheepstor churchyard |
Brooke ruled Sarawak until his death in 1868, following
three strokes over ten years.
A memorial stained glass window in St Leonard's Church,
Sheepstor, dedicated to those from Sarawak who died in World War II. It depicts
a butterfly, a moth, and pitcher plants, two of which were named after James
Brooke
All three White Rajahs are buried in St Leonard's Church in
the village of Sheepstor on Dartmoor.
Successor.
Having no legitimate children, in 1861 he formally named
Captain John Brooke Johnson-Brooke, his sister's eldest son, as his successor.
Two years later, the Rajah reacted to criticism by returning to the east: after
a brief meeting in Singapore John was deposed and banished from Sarawak. James
increased the charges to treasonous conduct and later named John's younger
brother, Charles Anthoni Johnson Brooke, as successor.
Personal life
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James Brooke
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Brooke was influenced by the success of previous British
adventurers and the exploits of the British East India Company. His actions in
Sarawak were directed to both expanding the British Empire and the benefits of
its rule, assisting the local people by fighting piracy and slavery, and
securing his own personal wealth to further these activities. His own
abilities, and those of his successors, provided Sarawak with excellent
leadership and wealth generation during difficult times, and resulted in both
fame and notoriety in some circles. His appointment as Rajah by the Sultan, and
his subsequent knighthood, is evidence that his efforts were widely applauded
in both Sarawak and British society.
Among his alleged relationships was the one with Badruddin,
a Sarawak prince, of whom he wrote, "my love for him was deeper than
anyone I knew." This phrase led to some considering him to be either
homosexual or bisexual. Later, in 1848, Brooke is alleged to have formed a
relationship with 16‑year‑old Charles
T. C. Grant, grandson of the seventh Earl of Elgin, who supposedly
'reciprocated'.[10][11] Whether this relationship was purely a friendship or
otherwise has not been fully revealed. One of Brooke's recent
biographers wrote that as Brooke spent his final years in Burrator in Devon
"there is little doubt ... he was carnally involved with the rough trade
of Totnes."[12] However, Barley does not note from where he garnered his
opinion. Others have suggested Brooke was instead "homo-social" and
simply preferred the social company of other men and have disagreed with
assertions he was a homosexual.[13]
Although he died unmarried, he did acknowledge one son.
Neither the identity of the son's mother nor his birth date is clear. This son
was brought up as Reuben G. Walker in the Brighton household of Frances Walker
(1841 and 1851 census, apparently born ca. 1836). By 1858 he was aware of his
Brooke connection and by 1871 he is on the census at the parish of Plumtree,
Nottinghamshire as "George Brooke", age "40", birthplace
"Sarawak, Borneo". He was married (in 1862[14]) and had seven
children, three of whom survived their infancy; the oldest was called James.
George died travelling to Australia, in the wreck of the SS British
Admiral[15][16] on 23 May 1874. A memorial to this effect – giving a birthdate
of 1834 – is in the churchyard at Plumtree.[17]
Fiction
Fictionalised accounts of Brooke's exploits in Sarawak are
given in Kalimantaan by C. S. Godshalk and The White Rajah by Nicholas
Montserrat. Another book, also called The White Rajah by Tom Williams was
published by JMS Books in 2010. Brooke is also featured in Flashman's Lady, the
6th book in George MacDonald Fraser's meticulously researched The Flashman
Papers novels; and in Sandokan: The Pirates of Malaysia (I pirati della
Malesia), the second novel in Emilio Salgari's Sandokan series.
Brooke was also a model for the hero of Joseph Conrad's
novel Lord Jim, and he is briefly mentioned in Kipling's short story "The
Man Who Would Be King".
Charles Kingsley dedicated the novel Westward Ho! (1855) to
Brooke.
Errol Flynn intended to star on a film on Brooke's life
called The White Rajah for Warner Bros., based on a script by Flynn himself.
However although the project was announced for filming it was never made.[18]
Honours and legacy
British Honours
KCB: Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, 1848
Some Bornean species were named in Brooke's honour:
Rhododendron brookei, a flowering plant named by Hugh Low
Rajah Brooke's Pitcher Plant (Nepenthes rajah), a pitcher
plant named by Joseph Dalton Hooker
Rajah Brooke's Birdwing (Trogonoptera brookiana), a
butterfly named by Alfred R. Wallace
Brooke's Squirrel (Sundasciurus brookei), a squirrel named by
Oldfield Thomas
In 1857, the native village of Newash in Grey County,
Ontario, Canada, was renamed Brooke and the adjacent township was named Sarawak
by William Coutts Keppel (known as Viscount Bury, later the 7th Earl of
Albemarle) who was Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Canada.[19] James Brooke
was a close friend of Viscount Bury's uncle, Henry Keppel; they had met in 1843
while fighting pirates off the coast of Borneo.[20] Townships to the northwest
of Sarawak were named Keppel and Albemarle. In 2001, Sarawak and Keppel became
part of the township of Georgian Bluffs; Albemarle had joined the town of South
Bruce Peninsula in 1999. Keppel-Sarawak School is located in Owen Sound,
Ontario.
The municipality of Brooke's Point, a major municipality on
the island of Palawan, Philippines, is named after him. Both Brooke's
Lighthouse and Brooke's Port, historical landmarks in Brooke’s Point, are
believed to have been constructed by Sir James Brooke. Today, owing to erosion
and the constant movement of the tides, only a few stones can still be seen at
the Port. The remnants of the original lighthouse tower are still visible,
although the area is now occupied by a new lighthouse.
James Brooke Brooke family
Born: 29 April 1803 Died: 11 June 1868
Regnal titles
New title
Kingdom established
Rajah of Sarawak
1842–1868
Succeeded
by Charles