The White Rajahs

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 161, 11 July 1939, Page 2

The White Rajahs

ENGLISH RULE IN WILD BORNEO Hollywood is planning a film based on the story of the three White Rajahs of Sarawak, the independent Malaysian State in Borneo. By a happy coincidence with tho 100th anniversary of James Brooke’s arrival in tho East Indies and the founding of tho State (writes a correspondent of tho Sunday Observer), the Ranee of Sarawak, wife of Sir Charles Yyner Brooke, the present Rajah, is to help in the production. It is a hundred years next month since James Brooke arrived in Singapore in the yacht Royalist after a seven-month voyage from England, and, after taking on fresh supplies, left for the Borneo coast.

His objective was to “take his vessel to places where the keel of no English ship had ever ploughed the water . . . and to plant his food where no white man’s food had ever been before.”

He was too ambitious, for the Borneo coast, although little known, had been visited before, and the masters of several vessels knew to their cost that the region was notorious for piratos. James Brooke arrived off Sarawak in the summer of 1939, and the friendly relations which he established with the native chiefs promised well for tho trade ho hoped to establish between Sarawak and Singapore. He found, however, that civil strife made his task difficult, and he returned to Singapore within a month or two. It was not until a year later that, after a tour of the Celebes and the Spico Islands, Brooko returned to Sarawak, and, at the invitation of the native chiefs, was established as Rajah. The remarkable story of an Englishman’s rule over a wild region of Borneo gained fame for James Brooke, who is reputed to have told Queen Victoria when she asked how he did it, “Madam, I find it easier to govern 30,000 Malays and Dyaks than to manage a dozen of your Majesty’s politicians.”

Although the first Rajah restored order to Sarawak and did much to abolish slavery, stamp out piracy, and suppress the head-hunting customs of tho Dyak population, he was once nearly murdered by Chinese gold workers in his own residence.

The Chinese uprising is one of the black sopts in Sarawak’s history, but Rajah Brooke, then a man of 50, and a partial invalid, escaped by swimming across the river from his “palace” with a knife between his teeth.

Tho development of Sarawak during the past 100 years has been remarkable, the more so because most of it has taken place within the past 30 years. The chief towns of the State, above all Kuching, the capital, are prosperous, yet the flow of foreign capital for agriculture and mining development has been controlled to prevent the country being “spoiled” for the natives. The policy of the first Rajah, followed by his successor and the present ruler, has never beeu to increaso the revenue of tho State by inviting foreign capital. It is part of the Brooke tradition that “Sarawak belongs to the Malays, the Sea Dyaks, the Land Dyaks and the Kayans and other- tribes. It is for them we labour; not for ourselves.” Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, the present Rajah, has pointed out that capitalist development would probably have increased the total wealth of the State, but its distribution would inevitably have shown disparities and “militated against the happiness of my people.” For this reason, as well as owing to the fact that Sarawak is still comparatively isolated and off the main lines of Imperial communications, the State is backward, and its people, in a sense,

“uncivilised.” Yet crime and social unrest are less prevalent than in most other of the Malaysian countries. While Sarawak is discussing the celebrations to bo arranged for the centenary of the proclamation of the first whito Rajah, the State is assuming fresh importance in the Imperial scheme of defence.

Sir Charles Brooke, who is now in England on a short holiday, said in an interview in Singapore when he passed through on his way from Sarawak to Europe, that two aerodromes are being built in the State for R.A.F. use.

Sarawak commands an important position in tho China Sea, and with Japan’s “ Advance in the South.” policy it shares with all other Malaysian countries a common fear of armed aggression from the north.

Tho chain of communications which tho R.A.F. are building between Singapore and Hong lvong, via Sarawak and British North Bornoeo ports, and the fact that the Navy draws some of tho oil supplies from the fields near Miri, aro a guarantee that its importance to the Empire has not been overlooked.