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BOOK REVIEWS
The author sticks strictly to plan and plunges directly into the issues (and intrigues) of Brooke rule, giving the space of only twelve pages to a historical background.
This is very much a book centering upon the characters who played roles in Sarawak public life during the three eventful decades of the reign of the third white Rajah, Charles Vyner Brooke (1917-1946). The author says directly what Somerset Maugham would have (and did partially) veiled in fiction about the intrigues, pettyfogging and peccadillos of Englishmen in a remote corner of tropical Malaysia, and the dedication and opportunism in their relationships with an often fickle native elite.
Characters worthy of a Hollywood drama flit, and more often linger, across the engrossing narrative: the opportunist-adventurer (and unbalanced?) T. E. Lawrence-like G. T. M. MacBryan; the feckless and no less opportunistic camp-followers of the Brooke family; the forever feuding Brookes themselves (although in the present century they are pale shadows of the energetic giants of the last century represented by Rajah James and Rajah Charles, the first and second rulers.)
The author's style is an entertaining and revealing approach to the recent history of this always appealing little state. But it is more, for it weaves the characters and episodes into the major serious issues which have confronted Sarawak in its journey from the status of a backwater private estate into the modern "third-world" of Southeast Asia. Such issues as the propriety of the Brooke cession of the territory to the British crown following World War II; and the very real issue of economic modernization in balance with the protection and preservation of traditional ways and rights. The pages on the development of political awareness and activity among the various ethnic groups is most interesting.
The one major criticism of the work is that the author can't seem to make up his mind whether the Brookes were progressive or conservators of the traditional status quo as regards economic and social policies. On pages 9 and 10 Rajah Charles was "preparing" the way for drastic change as the state moved into the twentieth century. But in summing up two pages later the author decided that Rajah Charles was "opposed" to change that