RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h RAJA JAMES BROOKE AND SARAWAK: AN ANOMALY IN THE 19TH CENTURY BRITISH COLONIAL SCENE LEIGH R. WRIGHT* (The text of a lecture given to the Branch on 18th January 1972) To the reading public a hundred years ago the name of Raja James Brooke and his oriental kingdom of Sarawak, then a medium-sized principality on the northwest coast of Borneo, conjured up visions of dark impenetrable jungles; tropical rivers and mangrove coasts infested with the fiercest and most barbaric of pirates; and a pagan headhunting primitive people, ruled over by a Malay sultan and a court of Malay chiefs who had over long years of decline and corruption been reduced to only slightly more respectable status than the pirates. Brooke was usually presented in a highly romantic light—the best type of British export, the humanitarian colonial who helped penetrate the barbaric darkness of remote Borneo and who was holding the thin precarious line of civilization. Joseph Conrad and later, Somerset Maugham, added to the romance and colour surrounding the Borneo and Malay world of which Brooke was an important part. Much that went to make up this mental picture of Borneo in the English reading world was fact. There were pirates aplenty. The Sultanate of Brunei had declined to a low state of impotence and corruption, Brunei was by the nineteenth century one of those decaying Moslem states of the Malay world about which the historian Lennox Mills wrote, + The rule of the Malays was as weak as it was cruel and oppressive; individually brave, they were unable to prevent their state from crumbling to pieces before their eyes. The Malay nobles appear to have divided their time between intrigue and dissipation at Brunei Town, and the oppression of their Dayak subjects. + Many of the Dayaks were indeed the fierce headhunters that were depicted in the nineteenth century accounts. And James Brooke * Dr. Wright is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of The Origins of British Borneo, Hong Kong University Press, 1970. 1 L. A. Mills, British Malaya 1824-67, (Singapore 1925), p. 284. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 109 MCKENZIE, Herbert 29.1.1876 MCMULLEN, Jacob 28.7.1937 George Houghton MCPHERSON, Alex 28.7.1905 MCPHERSON, Buddy 19.9.1938 Aeneas Cameron MCPHERSON, Peter 13.11.1935 MADISON, Geoffrey 22.11.1936 MAHONEY, Cyril 9.2.1845 MALCOLM, Alexander 24.5.1932 James Cook MANIHAN, Alfred 17.7.1938 MANN, Ludwig 28.3.1892 MANRIQUE, Alonso 17.3.1908 MARCUSSON, Paul Not known Lallace MARTIN, J (infant child of) MASON, John Robert MATHEWS, Abraham Peter Everhard MESKE, Karl 1.5.1903 MARTIN, Paul Curt 19.7.1904 Not known MASON, John Jr 11.11.1924 29.8.1903 MENHORN, Max 30.12.1906 5.3.1915 MEYER, Ernesto 5.1903 MEYERBREI, Jean 17.8.1915 MILAS, Leonides 30.6.1962 MITCHELL, James 29.1.1922 MITCHELL, Mary 2.3.1921 MOREHOUSE, Harry W 19.1.1886 MORRIS, Heten 27.5.1944 MOREHOUSE, Oscar F 9.11.1885 MORRISON, Raymond 5.6.1958 Margaret Arthur MUELLER, Heinrich 18.10.1913 MULLEN, G H 27.11.1936 MUNRO, John 1.2.1941 MURRAY, Samuel 12.10.1924 NELLE, John Edw. 29.7.1914 NEUMARK, Walter 2.9.1922 Fritz NEWCOMBE, Mahalla 19.7.1919 NEWTON, A Cochrance 28.4.1942 NICHOLSON, Charles 24.2.1912 NORDMANN, Maria 24.5.1875 Stewart Schwab de NUSSBAUM, Gottlieb 17.1.1900 NYSSENS, George 12.4.1893 OAKEY, Francis 17.11.1880 OGILVIE, John 2.11.1882 OLSEN + Not known OPPEL, Gustav 11.11.1875 OSWALD, James 27.11.1865 OTT, Theodor 26.3.1886 PACKSCHICK, Otto 13.2.1915 PALOMO, Emilio 6.8.1964 PANTELL, H 17.6.1916 PATRICK, David Jean 24.3.1896 PAUKERT, Karl 20.6.1914 PEACOCK, Charles 31.1.1945 Samuel PERRY, Robert 8.1898 PETERSEN, Johnny 30.10.1915 PETTY OFFICER from USS "Richmond” 24.12.1879 PEACET, Emile 8.10.1877 PIDERIT, Karl 16.6.1922 PIERCE, Joseph 19.2.1879 PINFORD, Frederick S 6.1951 PITCHER, Samuel C 31.1.1895 PLAZA, Dominga 30.6.1963 PLITTS, W 3.9.1882 PLUMB, William W 21.7.1902 POLLARD, Reginald Lucas 25.7.1889 POLLARD, Thomas 9.8.1889 POLLITZ, Fernando Sydney 7.1902 POND, Oriana 11.7.1869 PORTE, J Marius 14.1.1866 PRALL, Joseph Apsley 10.4.1905 PREHN, Heinrich Otto Friedr. Ludwig 24.12.1878 PRESTON, SC 14.3.1932 PRESTONJEE, J 25.11.1959 PRING, Reginald D 15.11.1938 PURKISS, Garnett Gladstone 8.12.1966 RAE, Alexander 16.9.1884 RALPH, John 18.9.1908 RALSTONE, Robert 10.2.1945 RASCH, Mrs Herta 9.2.1945 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x Being chairperson of the Activities Committee is a demanding position and we thank Valery Garrett for her considerable effort and for a job well done. We also thank her Committee comprising the Reverend Carl Smith, Doctors Elizabeth Sinn, Michael Lau, Patrick Hase, Joseph Ting, as well as May Holdsworth, Sarah Parnell, Peter Stuckey and Jason Wordie. Others who have helped with the organising of activities include Stephen Selby, Michael Broom and Arthur Hacker. A vote of thanks is accorded to all of them. Projects and other activities Again our Society has been involved in various ways with projects and other activities which sometimes amount to a form of community service. For instance, over the summer we pieced together information for Mrs Victoria Brown of Australia. She was trying to trace details about her great-grandmother, Mrs Miranda Main (née Mann), who served as a school principal in Hong Kong at the end of the 19th and early in the 20th century. When Mrs Brown visited Hong Kong in October of last year, together with Mr S T Chiu of the Antiquities and Monuments Office, he and I showed Mrs Brown the old school building at 136 Nathan Road where her great-grandmother had been principal. Also, RAS members David Clinton and Dr Gillian Bickley met Mrs Brown and provided her with useful information. With the help of Council member Tim Ko, we also provided information regarding bullet and shrapnel marks on a wall on Lower Stubbs Road where a great deal of fierce fighting took place when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in December 1941. In another case a lady in England, Frances Howell, was trying to trace details of her relatives who lived in Shan Dong Province and Hong Kong. Again, in response to a letter in the press, information was provided for a relative in England regarding Lieutenant Henry Dallas who died in Hong Kong in 1844. Information was obtained regarding both the grave and a monument on the wall inside Saint John's Cathedral up until World War Two. Also, our Branch was invited to send a representative to make its views known to a government working party which was looking into the subject, 'Conservation and the Natural Environment.' This is the xvi ================================================================================