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 it was a time and place so different from now as to almost seem science fiction rather than history.
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Brooke lived at a time and in such a place in which force was the only power. He had a war ship – one 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 help was accepted.
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To provide legitimacy to his rule, Brooke made Sarawak a pirate fighting haven and received recognition from the British government for his efforts. And of course, the great legitimizer of nineteenth century Colonialism – issuing postage stamps – was actively used by him to further his acceptance to European powers. Brooke was a benevolent despot to the people living under him, encouraged immigration to bring a merchant class to Sarawak. And he protected the native population from exploitation at the hands of the British and Chinese.
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Sarawak was a created hereditary sultanate, ratified by a treaty with B
ritain and as ‘The White Rajah” (as Brooke styled himself) had no legitimate children (he was primarily gay in orientation) his successors were his nephews, continuing the nepotistic (which is a word that literally means “nephew favoring”) tradition of the Popes (who had no legitimate heirs as marriage was forbidden to them). Brooke was an enormously colorful character and survived in literature as the model for Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. The nineteenth century was a time when a dynamic individual could literally carve an empire out for themselves.