In the nineteenth century Malaysia was like India, an amalgam of independent states nominally aligned under a central government. One of the most interesting of these states was Sarawak. This was a country carved out of Borneo for Sir James Brooke, a British adventurer who helped the Sultan of Brunei against an insurrection. This was only 150 years ago but so different from now as to almost seem science fiction rather than history. Brooke lived in a part of the world and a time in which force was the only power. He had a war ship (which he bought with an enormous inheritance he had received in his late twenties) and his country of Sarawak was ceded to him because of the help he gave the Brunei sultan and because of covert threats he made towards the sultan after that. Brooke made Sarawk a pirate fighting haven to provide legitimacy for his regime. He was a benevolent despot to the people living under him, encouraged immigration to bring a merchant class to Sarawak, and protected the native population from exploitation at the hands of the British and Chinese. Sarawak was a hereditary sultanate, ratified by a treaty with Britain and as Brooke had no legitamate children (he was primarily gay in orientation) his successors were his nephews, continuing the nepotistic tradition of the Popes(who had no legitimate heirs for other reasons). Brooke was the model for Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. This was a time when a dynamic individual could literally carve an empire out for themselves.