[
    {
        "id": 206490,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1972",
        "page_number": 38,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "32\n\nLEIGH R. WRIGHT\n\nSeptember 1841, I was declared Rajah and Governor of Sarawak amidst the roar of cannon, and a general display of flags and banners from the shore and boats on the river. Some observers in Singapore pronounced Brooke's new position a sentence rather than a reward. Nevertheless the new Raja set about vigorously organizing the state and establishing a rule of law, roughly based upon the Bengal code and local adat or customary law. In 1842 he visited the sultan in his ramshackle wooden palace in Brunei Town, an unattractive clutter of Malay huts built on stilts over a sluggish tidal stream. From the sultan he obtained confirmation of his appointment. The following year it was made hereditary, in perpetuity, and in 1846 the sultan executed a deed of cession of Sarawak to Brooke and his heirs. In subsequent years Brunei ceded additional portions of territory to the Brooke dynasty of white rajas, until by 1890 the state of Sarawak reached approximately its present size.\n\nThis, in a somewhat sketchy way, is how Raja James Brooke acquired control of an oriental state almost as large as England and sparsely inhabited by a conglomeration of frequently fierce pagan peoples, a few Malays and some Chinese. In the remaining part of the paper I want to consider ways in which, to my mind, Sarawak under Brooke rule stood out as an anomaly in the British colonial experience.\n\nII\n\nFirst, let me consider Raja Brooke's position in his own state of Sarawak. Brooke considered that he had been prevailed upon by the Malay chiefs to become their raja, that they chose him. He described, in his journals, the scene upon the occasion in 1842 when the Sultan's confirmation of his appointment was proclaimed in Sarawak.4\n\nWhen we returned from Borneo the Sultan's letter giving me the country was read in public, and when finished we had a scene. Muda Hassim, who was standing, asked aloud, whether anyone dissented; for if they did they were now to make it known.\n\n3 For a study of the growth of British influence in Borneo see L. R. Wright, The Origins of British Borneo (Hong Kong University Press, 1970).\n\n4 R. Munday, op. cit., pp. 323-24.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206491,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1972",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\nNo one dissented, whereupon\n\n33\n\nMuda Hassim then drew forth his sabre, and raising it, proclaimed in a loud voice, that any one who contested the Sultan's appointment, his head should be split in two. On which ten of his brothers drew their krisses and flourished them\n\n+\n\nAs we have seen James Brooke acquired Sarawak as a private individual; but there is little question but that elements within the Brunei court, centered upon Hasim and Bedruddin, which came to be known as the \"English party\" wished to bring the British into an alliance with them to further their own political ends, and they saw Brooke as an agency by means of which this goal might be pursued. Although given a pseudo-political mission by the Singapore authorities Brooke undertook no official duties for Britain until 1844 when he was appointed \"agent near the person of the Sultan of Borneo\", a \"special and temporary office\", and was commissioned to find a site for a naval station along the northwest coast of Borneo.\n\nWhen Labuan was purchased from Brunei and created a British colony Brooke became its first governor in 1847. The same year he negotiated a consular treaty with the Sultan and was named consul to Brunei. His dual appointment from the Foreign and Colonial Offices came largely as a result of the reputation he enjoyed in England as a result of his successful battles against Borneo pirates. Not only was he popular with officers of the Royal Navy in the East who aided him in his anti-piracy warfare on the coast. His exploits had also been well publicised at home. In 1847 he returned to England, the hero of the day. He was fêted, given the freedom of the City of London, presented at Court at Windsor Castle, where the Prince Consort found him an interesting conversationalist, and was knighted.\n\nAt the end of the 1840s, then, Brooke found himself the possessor of three posts. He was Raja of Sarawak in his own right, and an officer of the Crown as Governor of Labuan and Consul to Brunei. The nature of his responsibilities in the three positions very soon created a conflict of interest situation and in 1854 he resigned his crown appointments.\n\n5 Aberdeen to Brooke, 1 November 1844, Foreign Office Series 12, Volume 2 (FO12/2).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
        "rank": 0
    }
]