Sir James Brooke

Sir James Brooke 1803-68, rajah of Sarawak on Borneo, b. India, of English parents. After active service in Burma (1825-26), he retired (1830) from the army of the East India Company. He sailed (1838) for Borneo, and on the west coast there he assisted (1840) Muda Hassim, uncle of the reigning sultan, to suppress rebel Dyak tribes. For his services he was made (1841) rajah by the sultan of Brunei and proceeded to create a government and to put down head-hunting and piracy. He was given a baronetcy by the British government and entrusted with the governorship (1847-57) of Labuan. He was succeeded by his nephew, Sir Charles Anthony Johnson Brooke, 1829-1917. Sir Charles extended the authority of the government to all parts of the country and abolished slavery. He was succeeded by his son, Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, 1874-1963. Sir Charles was forced out of Sarawak in 1942 by the Japanese invasion. He ceded Sarawak to the British government as a crown colony in 1946.

Bibliography: See Sir Steven Runciman, The White Rajahs (1960); R. Pringle, Rajahs and Rebels (1970); N. Tarling, Britain, the Brookes and Brunei (1972).

Brooke, Sir James (1803–68). Brooke, ‘the White Raja of Sarawak’, was born at Benares, educated in England, and joined the Madras army in 1819. Wounded in the first Burmese War (1824–6), he resigned his commission in 1830. Inheriting a fortune five years later, he became an explorer in south‐east Asia. In 1841, he heard that his friend, the raja of Sarawak, was facing a major rebellion. He rushed to the raja's aid and helped to crush the rising. As a reward, and after the death of the raja, he was offered the rajadom by its overlord, the sultan of Brunei. He accepted and established a dynasty.

Brooke, Sir James (1803–68) British adventurer and ruler of Sarawak (now in Malaysia) (1841–68). Arriving in Borneo in 1839 he helped one of the Brunei princes to put down a revolt and was rewarded with the governorship of Kuching in 1841. He established himself as an independent ruler (the ‘White Raja’) governing as a benevolent autocrat and extending his rule over much of Sarawak. Renowned for his legal reforms (which successfully adapted local custom) he resisted external attacks by Chinese opponents in 1857. Sarawak was effectively ruled by the Brooke family until the Japanese occupation of 1942–45.