[ { "id": 206497, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK\n\n39\n\nthe \"local authorities\" rather than from the sovereign prince of Sarawak, as was usual. Thus the anomalous status of Sarawak in the view of some officials remained, and this technicality provided an opportunity for a subsequent permanent undersecretary in the Foreign Office to declare that Brooke had not been recognized as a reigning prince. Julian Pauncefote opined in 1877,19\n\nRaja Brooke has not forfeited his claims of British nationality by accepting the position of ruler of Sarawak and as a matter of constitutional law it is competent to Her Majesty to recognize him as a sovereign prince but no such recognition has yet taken place.\n\nJames Brooke died in 1868, happy at having received his country's recognition, and confident that it was merely a step toward the desired British protectorate. In this he was prophetic. Although a formal protectorate was not granted until 1888, Britain made it quite clear by a pronouncement late in 1868 that her paramount interests on the northwest coast of Borneo constituted it a British sphere.20\n\nRaja James Brooke was presented at court on two occasions, in 1847, and again in 1857. His nephew and successor, Charles Brooke, visited England in 1869 and asked to be received officially. He was told that he might write on his card and be presented as \"Mr. Brooke, Raja of Sarawak\". The second white raja was incensed and refused to appear until finally, in 1874, he was presented as \"His Highness, the Raja of Sarawak”, and granted a place just below the Indian maharajas in the order of precedence at Court.\n\nUntil 1888, Britain's empire building in Borneo was done largely by proxy, by Englishmen indeed, but by the agency of political structures and vehicles outside the direct control of Whitehall. That was the role of the Brooke raj, and later of the chartered company that ruled North Borneo, so far as they were a part of the British empire. One of Brooke's friends, John Abel Smith, M.P., was quite accurate when in 1866 he noted rather sourly,21\n\nThe English government is quite alive to the importance of Sarawak to British interests, but as long as Raja Brooke\n\n19 Pauncefote minute, 2 January 1877, FO12/43.\n\n20 FO to Hennessy, 2 December 1868, FO12/34A.\n\n21 Owen Rutter (ed) Rajah Brooke and Baroness Burdett-Coutts, London, 1935, p. 272.\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209705, "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-1982", "page_number": 362, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "340\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nThe 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.\n\nThis 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.\n\nCharacters 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.)\n\nThe 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.\n\nThe 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", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209706, "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-1982", "page_number": 363, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n341\n\nmight threaten the Brookes' autocratic rule. Again, on page 43 the author describes Rajah Vyner as \"resisting change\" yet in the following chapter (IV) we find the last rajah pressing strongly for a most drastic change of direction to a constitutional monarchy. Given the idiosyncracies of Rajah Charles's rule and the weakness and downright boredom with official obligations of Rajah Vyner perhaps this is an unfair criticism. It may just be impossible to label either ruler so precisely.\n\nThe book is the most exhaustive study of the last few years of Brooke rule that has yet appeared.\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nStudies in Chinese Archaeology, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. 1982. Xii, 148 pp., 45 plates, 3 maps, bibliography, index.\n\nCheng Te-k'un. \n\nThis book is a collection of nine articles previously published in various journals by Prof. Cheng Te-k'un, formerly of Cambridge University and now with the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It is the third in a series published by the Centre for Chinese Archaeology and Art, and the reader is informed fully about the financing of the Centre's publication programme on the page just after the title page. Unfortunately, one searches in vain for biographical information or even an identification of Prof. Cheng himself. The editors have also neglected to include a map of China, a map of Szechuan province (subject of four of the nine articles), or a map of Fukien province (two articles). One minuscule map of \"The Coast of China\" measures 1 x 4 inches, and is useless. There is, on the other hand, a good map of the Santubong region of Sarawak, also showing Sarawak in its Southeast Asian context.\n\nThe articles fall into three groups: general surveys, field reports, and miscellaneous notes. Seven of the articles were written in the period 1933-1949, the other two in 1969 and 1982. As basic descriptions of excavations and field survey results, the earlier articles contain hard data, and have not been rendered obsolete by more recent work, apart from some points of interpretation offered by Cheng. However, the articles do not", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 } ]