July 18, 2011 • 18 mins
In the 1830s, James Brooke sailed toward the Malay Archipelago and ended up becoming the Rajah of Sarawak. Brooke governed Sarawak until the 1860s and made several beneficial reforms. But what happened next? Join Sarah and Deblina to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm debling a chokerate boarding and I'm Fara Down and
we have another unusual royal story here. This past March,
(00:21):
a guy named Anthony Brook passed away in New Zealand
and this got a little bit of media attention. The
Telegraph had a political obituary on him, and a couple
other newspapers wrote him up, I think, and Brooke was
sort of an independent ambassador for world peace in the
nineties seventies. He and his wife had founded a charitable
trust called Operation Peace through Unity that's accredited by the
(00:43):
u N. But that wasn't really the reason for this
media coverage. Yeah, news outlets who wrote about Brooke and
about his passing did so because he had been the
heir to the throne of Sarawak on Borneo, and had
even ruled there as heir apparent for about six months
back in nineteen thirty nine. He never got a chance, though,
to rule completely on his own, to take over that
(01:05):
role that he had been groomed for, though, because Sarah
Walk became Britain's last colonial acquisition in ninety six. Still
though his family had pretty deep roots there. His English
born family had been the absolute rulers of this area
for one hundred years. And they were no ordinary kings either.
They were known as the White Rajas, and they had
(01:27):
their own currency, stamps, flags, and police force, and they
were independent from Britain. But how did these white men
with English roots, and Sarah mentioned with very close ties
to England, most of them were born and educated there,
how did they end up on Borneo in the first place. Yeah,
so that's what we're going to be looking into today. Yeah,
(01:48):
it's a story of exploration. We love those adventure and
of course colonialism involving Brooks great great uncle, Sir James
brook And he was a man who, according to a
piece by Alex Middleton and Historical Journal quote, captured the
imagination of the British political and intellectual elite more powerfully
than any other imperial adventurer before David Livingstone. So we're
(02:12):
going to start with him. Yeah, that's a pretty good
start at Livingstone, one of our favorite guys. So starting
with this ancestor though, James Brooke, he was born April
twenty nine, eighteen oh three, in the European quarter of
the Naris India and his father was sort of a
high up figure in the East India Company. His name
was Thomas Brooke and he was a wealthy judge there.
(02:33):
So as a result, James had a pretty cushy early life,
a pampered, privileged sort of existence as a as a
kid in India and he was really doated on by
women and his family and not even sent back to
England for his education until he was twelve, which was
much older than was common at the time. Yeah, but
(02:53):
James did go to England and he attended Norwich Grammar School,
but he hated it so much that he ran away
and didn't go back. But luckily his parents returned around
that time to retire in Bath and they had young
James tutored at home instead. But then at sixteen, James
ended up back in India, having taken a commission in
the East India Company's army in May of eighteen nineteen.
(03:14):
So for a time he had a good time there.
He was shooting big game, hunting for wild boar and
basically getting up to all kinds of shenanigan's, having a
good time with his fellows. The other guys in the army.
But he was in the army after all. So in
eighteen twenty five, James saw action in the First Anglo
Burmese War, And though he showed bravery during this conflict,
(03:35):
he was actually only involved in about two significant engagements
before he was very severely wounded. Yeah, and that's the
first sort of unclear area of our story. They're differing
accounts on what sort of injury he had. Some said
it was a lung injury. Others said that he was
wounded in the genitals. And there's an article for History
Today by Richard Cavendish and he writes that the long
(03:58):
wound is probably true, but it's some biographers like to
perpetuate the other injury because it helps explain certain things
about James, namely his apparent lack of interest in women.
And there's a good quote from Cavendish actually that thumbs
all of this up. He said, it would hardly do
for one of the most daring, romantic and ostentatiously high
(04:19):
minded gentleman adventures of Victorian England to have been a homosexual. Right.
But regardless of what kind of injury injury, this was
exactly the incident caused James to have to return home
to England in for what's called a long period of convalescence.
During that time, he probably got a little more than dejected.
We can imagine. I mean, you're laid up with an injury,
(04:41):
You're thinking of all the things you wanted to do,
all the dreams young man. Right. So A Middleton writes
that James quote dreamed ironically of conquests hardly one rank
and ultimately greatness, but lamented that they would remain beyond
his reach. So he's sitting there dreaming thinking, I don't know,
gonna wear out. I love that word. But he ended
(05:03):
up having to resign his military commission five years after
returning home. But even though James didn't return to East
India's service, he still seemed intent on having some kind
of adventure in the East. So during the eighteen thirties
he made two trips to China, during which he made
stops at the Straight settlements, including Singapore, and there he
was really influenced by Sir Stanford Raffles vision of a
(05:25):
greater role for Britain in the Malay Archipelago. Yeah, but
he also picked up some important intelligence while he was
there too. According to n STP research. While James was
in Singapore, he started to hear rumors of a rebellion
in Borneo in which the Malay Prince Peneran Muda Hassim
(05:45):
was helpless to do anything. So he had a few
potential desires going on here. One might have been the
desire to extend Britain's influence in the East. But he
also had that personal adventurous spirit and here was a
window of opportunity for really going out and having a
big adventure. So James used his inheritance to buy an outfit,
(06:08):
an armed schooner, maybe a hundred forty two tons maybe
two nine tons um and cources seemed to differ on that. Yeah,
so a boat. He equipped the boat, and he called
at the royalists and he sailed east on a geographical
and scientific mission of discovery. Yeah. So he's off now
on that adventure that he was looking for, and he
(06:28):
reaches Coaching Sorrow Walk in August eighteen thirty nine, which
was located in an area of tropical rainforest in northwestern
Borneo along the coast of the South China Sea. Is located,
I should say not was located, and Coaching had a
population of about seven thousand. Well, the rest of the
state was mostly jungle and home to various tribes, some
(06:49):
of whom were pirates. You might remember the Dragon Lady
podcast where we talk about the South China Sea and
all the pirates that were there kind of during this
period late seventeen hundreds through the eighteen hundreds, um. So
some of them were pirates, headhunters, and slavers. And there
weren't a lot of natural resources here, which is probably
among some of the main reasons that it hadn't been
colonized by European power already. So it sounds like a
(07:11):
dangerous place to set out for with your personal armed ship,
or at least a difficult place to go and think, hey,
I'm going to put down roots here. But when James
arrived there was in fact a rebellion going on. So
the rumors he had heard when he was in Singapore
were true. Diet tribesmen were rebelling against unfair taxation, and
they weren't really the kind of people that you wanted
(07:33):
to mess around with. The Diets are the indigenous people
of Borneo, and they've engaged for years in inter tribal
warfare and the somewhat unsavory practice of head hunting. So
again it sounds like kind of a dangerous and difficult
place to land. But James gained the confidence of Muda Hassim,
(07:54):
who offered to make him the sovereign of Sarah lock
control over both the government and the revenues if he
could suppress the uprising. So he not only was he
right about the tip that there was a rebellion, it
seems like if he can put this thing down, he's
he's really going to make it happen and be in
control of this land. So James agreed and he helped
(08:15):
crush the rebellion and on September eighteen forty one, James
Brooke became governor of Sarawak and on August eighteen forty
two he was proclaimed Rajah. So it worked. Yeah, it
turned out to be a good deal for him, and
that he is in charge, he's in the seat of power.
But we've already alluded to piracy here into tribal wars
(08:39):
and lack of infrastructure, lack of natural resources, so it
should be no surprise when we tell you now that
James faced a lot of challenges as Raji wasn't an
easy transition for him, but in general he thought to
have done a pretty good job with what he had.
He made a lot of reforms. He established a secure
government and made a new code of laws, made expeditions
into the interior of Sarah Walk, managed to decrease the
(09:02):
prevalence of head hunting. Part of that new that was
part of that new code of laws that we mentioned,
head hunting was outlawed. And he also suppressed piracy in
the region, which we're going to talk about a little
more because that's a little bit controversial. So he tried
on one hand to civilize Sara Walk according to British standards,
that is, civilize it. But he also really emphasized the
protection of native interests and promoting their welfare too. He
(09:24):
really went out with his people a lot too, went
out and talked to them. He spent time with the Malay,
with Chinese, with the diet people he governed, and he
was known even for taking walks with them, talking to them,
letting them come and visit him personally at his bungalow.
And Um Daily Mail did a story about the White
Rajah's in March, and the writer David Leaf even mentioned
(09:48):
how he was so hands on. Sometimes he would act
as self appointed judge and hold court hearings at home
that people could come and watch see their government in action.
And one of the crazier cases here, a crocodile was
even put on trial for killing a court translator who
got drunk and fell in the river and devil and
(10:09):
I'm going to have to let you read what James
wrote in his journal. He wrote, quote, I decided that
he should be instantly killed without honors, and he was
dispatched accordingly, his head severed from his trunk and the
body left exposed as a warning to all the other
crocodiles that may inhabit these waters. So that was just
a little sorry of the judgment. Yeah, they actually did
(10:32):
a trial and there were arguments on both sides before
he came to this decision. So definitely, as you say,
tough justice, crocodile had been allowed to represent himself, there
might have been a different outcome. That's probably so. As
we know from the Livingston podcast, right, we were talking
about that before there was a crocodile involved in that too,
were So there are a few things in common that
(10:53):
these guys had in common besides um just being charismatic Victorians.
But despite this accent behavior, or maybe because of behavior
like this, he won a really devoted following in Sarawak,
and he was pretty popular in England too, especially in
the beginning, I guess because he is this almost romantic figure.
James visited England in eighteen forty seven eighteen forty eight,
(11:16):
and though Sarawak was not expressly recognized, he was knighted
by Queen Victoria. He was made a Knight in Commander
of Bath. He became the Commissioner and Consul General to
the Sultan of Berne I and the Governor of the
Colony of Labuan off burn I. So a lot of
pretty prestigious honors. There some other accolades he received. He
(11:38):
was also awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical
Society and an honorary degree at Oxford, in addition to
some other appointments and groups that he was invited into.
He also dined with our recent podcast subjects Victorian Albert,
and attended a lot of high society parties. And finally,
another source of his notoriety, he also had published his
(11:58):
journals in eighteen forties SI, so that got his name
out there as well. But we mentioned that his popularity
was high in the beginning, suggesting that eventually it did
go downhill, and and that did happen. In eighteen forty nine,
his popularity really took a nose dive when he renewed
his efforts against pirates around Sarawas coastline. So those diect
(12:20):
pirates that we mentioned had kicked things up a notch
on their end, and with the help of the Royal Navy,
James set out to stop them. But things really escalated
until July thirty one, when the Royal Navy, combined with
Brooks forces, used a lot of firepower on the pirate
fleet and ended up killing somewhere between five hundred and
(12:41):
eight hundred of the pirates, and some reports inflated this
number even more to around fifteen hundred to two thousand pirates.
And it didn't get a good response in England at all, No,
not at all. It led to an outcry in England
on behalf of the indigenous people and then an official
commission of inquiry in eighteen fifty four. In eighteen fifty five,
(13:01):
and after that investigation, James was vindicated, but his reputation
was damaged at that point, and he lost some of
his official appointments. The British government also withdrew naval support
from Sara Walk, and they refused to offer protection when
James's rule was threatened by a Chinese uprising in eighteen
fifty seven. So, increasingly disillusioned, James is ready to return
(13:22):
to England for good in eighteen sixty three, and he
does that. He died of a stroke in eighteen sixty
eight and was eventually buried under a you tree in
a churchyard in Dartmoor. But what about Sarawak, Because we
know from our introduction that somehow this family manages to
to hold on for a few more generations. So James
Brook had no legitimate air. Some sources suggest that he
(13:45):
had an illegitimate son around eighteen thirty three, but he
never married, and as we said earlier, some biographers believed
that he was homosexual. So for a while before he
moved back to England, James was just toying with the
idea of turning Sarawak over to the Dutch, just getting
it out of the family. But he had a nephew, Charles,
(14:06):
and Charles would not hear of losing this prize Brooke
family possession right, and it didn't really seem like that's
what James wanted either. Charles Anthony Johnson, his nephew, had
entered the Sarawak service in eighteen fifty two when he
was around twenty three, and he did that at his
uncle's request, and also officially changed his name at that
time to Charles Anthony Johnson Brook kind of like an
(14:28):
air would do exactly, and Charles stepped in. He helped
James out for many years. He led the forces actually
that defeated the Chinese Uprising and governed after James left
the country for England. So before he died, James did
in fact name Charles his heir, and Charles ruled for
forty nine years. He was actually the longest reigning Raja Brooke.
(14:48):
He was also very eccentric, just like his uncle. For example,
he had a glass eye that he lost his eye
while he was hunting, so he replaced it with a
glass eye that he had taken out of a stuffed albatross.
Imagine there'd be some size discrepancy there. I'm gonna have
to go google a picture of an albatross after this,
trying to figure out how big the glass. I would
be good luck with that kind of imagining in a
(15:10):
mad Eye Moody situation. But despite the fact that he
was eccentric, he was generally loved by the people and
he made a lot of reforms to just like James
did um maybe even more. He extended Sarawalk's boundaries, clarified
its international status, secured trade, developed infrastructure in many ways,
including building a railway, and when he died in nineteen seventeen,
(15:32):
his son took over for him. His son, named Viner
or Charles Viner de wint Brooke, took over as the
third and last White Raja, and Viner effectively shared power
with his brother Bertram until Bertram eventually had a nervous breakdown.
That is, but Bertram was the father of Anthony Brook,
the man we mentioned in the intro to this podcast,
so he's our connection here. Because Viner didn't have any funds,
(15:54):
Anthony was next in line to become Raja, but Wiiner
grew increasingly disinterested in ruling, and in nineteen instead of
passing things on to his nephew, he agreed to seed
Sarawak to the British Crown in return for a pretty
hefty financial settlement, so he basically cashed out and Anthony
(16:15):
tried to contest this and there was this long legal
battle that he didn't win, and after that he officially
renounced his claim to the throne in nineteen fifty one,
probably trying to move on with his life and started
his campaign for peace and basically just faded into relative obscurity,
at least until his death. It seems he lived in
a New Age commune in Scotland for a while and
(16:38):
adopted their belief that flying saucers were going to bring peace,
and eventually moved to New Zealand and founded the Operation
Piece through Unity. So a strange, surprising career, I'd say
for this would be Rajah. Yeah, an interesting journey for
this entire family. I think that seemed to have fairly
traditional roots. A judge for the East India Company. Yeah,
(17:01):
from a from a standpoint of looking at the British Empire,
I guess that's a fairly traditional or good beginning. But
it all started with the adventures of James Brooke, and
his story actually influenced literature of the Victorian period. It
really inspired Victorian imaginations. For example, He's referenced in Conrad's
Lord Jim. Lord Jim is actually a Conrad book that's
(17:23):
been on my reading list for a while. Yeah, I
think I read it a long time ago. But I
think you can see the influence of this particular character
in History James Brooke and some other works as well.
So if anyone out there can think of any other
examples where this comes up, or just any other stories
about the Brooke family that you know that you want
to share, please write us at History Podcast at how
stuff works dot com. You can also look us up
(17:45):
on Twitter at myston History or on Facebook. And if
you want to learn a little bit more about pirates
from all over the world, we have a great article
called how Pirates Work. You can find it by searching
for pirates on our homepage at www dot how stuff
where dot com. Be sure to check out our new
(18:05):
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join houst Works staff
as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm debling a chokerate boarding and I'm Fara Down and
we have another unusual royal story here. This past March,
(00:21):
a guy named Anthony Brook passed away in New Zealand
and this got a little bit of media attention. The
Telegraph had a political obituary on him, and a couple
other newspapers wrote him up, I think, and Brooke was
sort of an independent ambassador for world peace in the
nineties seventies. He and his wife had founded a charitable
trust called Operation Peace through Unity that's accredited by the
(00:43):
u N. But that wasn't really the reason for this
media coverage. Yeah, news outlets who wrote about Brooke and
about his passing did so because he had been the
heir to the throne of Sarawak on Borneo, and had
even ruled there as heir apparent for about six months
back in nineteen thirty nine. He never got a chance, though,
to rule completely on his own, to take over that
(01:05):
role that he had been groomed for, though, because Sarah
Walk became Britain's last colonial acquisition in ninety six. Still
though his family had pretty deep roots there. His English
born family had been the absolute rulers of this area
for one hundred years. And they were no ordinary kings either.
They were known as the White Rajas, and they had
(01:27):
their own currency, stamps, flags, and police force, and they
were independent from Britain. But how did these white men
with English roots, and Sarah mentioned with very close ties
to England, most of them were born and educated there,
how did they end up on Borneo in the first place. Yeah,
so that's what we're going to be looking into today. Yeah,
(01:48):
it's a story of exploration. We love those adventure and
of course colonialism involving Brooks great great uncle, Sir James
brook And he was a man who, according to a
piece by Alex Middleton and Historical Journal quote, captured the
imagination of the British political and intellectual elite more powerfully
than any other imperial adventurer before David Livingstone. So we're
(02:12):
going to start with him. Yeah, that's a pretty good
start at Livingstone, one of our favorite guys. So starting
with this ancestor though, James Brooke, he was born April
twenty nine, eighteen oh three, in the European quarter of
the Naris India and his father was sort of a
high up figure in the East India Company. His name
was Thomas Brooke and he was a wealthy judge there.
(02:33):
So as a result, James had a pretty cushy early life,
a pampered, privileged sort of existence as a as a
kid in India and he was really doated on by
women and his family and not even sent back to
England for his education until he was twelve, which was
much older than was common at the time. Yeah, but
(02:53):
James did go to England and he attended Norwich Grammar School,
but he hated it so much that he ran away
and didn't go back. But luckily his parents returned around
that time to retire in Bath and they had young
James tutored at home instead. But then at sixteen, James
ended up back in India, having taken a commission in
the East India Company's army in May of eighteen nineteen.
(03:14):
So for a time he had a good time there.
He was shooting big game, hunting for wild boar and
basically getting up to all kinds of shenanigan's, having a
good time with his fellows. The other guys in the army.
But he was in the army after all. So in
eighteen twenty five, James saw action in the First Anglo
Burmese War, And though he showed bravery during this conflict,
(03:35):
he was actually only involved in about two significant engagements
before he was very severely wounded. Yeah, and that's the
first sort of unclear area of our story. They're differing
accounts on what sort of injury he had. Some said
it was a lung injury. Others said that he was
wounded in the genitals. And there's an article for History
Today by Richard Cavendish and he writes that the long
(03:58):
wound is probably true, but it's some biographers like to
perpetuate the other injury because it helps explain certain things
about James, namely his apparent lack of interest in women.
And there's a good quote from Cavendish actually that thumbs
all of this up. He said, it would hardly do
for one of the most daring, romantic and ostentatiously high
(04:19):
minded gentleman adventures of Victorian England to have been a homosexual. Right.
But regardless of what kind of injury injury, this was
exactly the incident caused James to have to return home
to England in for what's called a long period of convalescence.
During that time, he probably got a little more than dejected.
We can imagine. I mean, you're laid up with an injury,
(04:41):
You're thinking of all the things you wanted to do,
all the dreams young man. Right. So A Middleton writes
that James quote dreamed ironically of conquests hardly one rank
and ultimately greatness, but lamented that they would remain beyond
his reach. So he's sitting there dreaming thinking, I don't know,
gonna wear out. I love that word. But he ended
(05:03):
up having to resign his military commission five years after
returning home. But even though James didn't return to East
India's service, he still seemed intent on having some kind
of adventure in the East. So during the eighteen thirties
he made two trips to China, during which he made
stops at the Straight settlements, including Singapore, and there he
was really influenced by Sir Stanford Raffles vision of a
(05:25):
greater role for Britain in the Malay Archipelago. Yeah, but
he also picked up some important intelligence while he was
there too. According to n STP research. While James was
in Singapore, he started to hear rumors of a rebellion
in Borneo in which the Malay Prince Peneran Muda Hassim
(05:45):
was helpless to do anything. So he had a few
potential desires going on here. One might have been the
desire to extend Britain's influence in the East. But he
also had that personal adventurous spirit and here was a
window of opportunity for really going out and having a
big adventure. So James used his inheritance to buy an outfit,
(06:08):
an armed schooner, maybe a hundred forty two tons maybe
two nine tons um and cources seemed to differ on that. Yeah,
so a boat. He equipped the boat, and he called
at the royalists and he sailed east on a geographical
and scientific mission of discovery. Yeah. So he's off now
on that adventure that he was looking for, and he
(06:28):
reaches Coaching Sorrow Walk in August eighteen thirty nine, which
was located in an area of tropical rainforest in northwestern
Borneo along the coast of the South China Sea. Is located,
I should say not was located, and Coaching had a
population of about seven thousand. Well, the rest of the
state was mostly jungle and home to various tribes, some
(06:49):
of whom were pirates. You might remember the Dragon Lady
podcast where we talk about the South China Sea and
all the pirates that were there kind of during this
period late seventeen hundreds through the eighteen hundreds, um. So
some of them were pirates, headhunters, and slavers. And there
weren't a lot of natural resources here, which is probably
among some of the main reasons that it hadn't been
colonized by European power already. So it sounds like a
(07:11):
dangerous place to set out for with your personal armed ship,
or at least a difficult place to go and think, hey,
I'm going to put down roots here. But when James
arrived there was in fact a rebellion going on. So
the rumors he had heard when he was in Singapore
were true. Diet tribesmen were rebelling against unfair taxation, and
they weren't really the kind of people that you wanted
(07:33):
to mess around with. The Diets are the indigenous people
of Borneo, and they've engaged for years in inter tribal
warfare and the somewhat unsavory practice of head hunting. So
again it sounds like kind of a dangerous and difficult
place to land. But James gained the confidence of Muda Hassim,
(07:54):
who offered to make him the sovereign of Sarah lock
control over both the government and the revenues if he
could suppress the uprising. So he not only was he
right about the tip that there was a rebellion, it
seems like if he can put this thing down, he's
he's really going to make it happen and be in
control of this land. So James agreed and he helped
(08:15):
crush the rebellion and on September eighteen forty one, James
Brooke became governor of Sarawak and on August eighteen forty
two he was proclaimed Rajah. So it worked. Yeah, it
turned out to be a good deal for him, and
that he is in charge, he's in the seat of power.
But we've already alluded to piracy here into tribal wars
(08:39):
and lack of infrastructure, lack of natural resources, so it
should be no surprise when we tell you now that
James faced a lot of challenges as Raji wasn't an
easy transition for him, but in general he thought to
have done a pretty good job with what he had.
He made a lot of reforms. He established a secure
government and made a new code of laws, made expeditions
into the interior of Sarah Walk, managed to decrease the
(09:02):
prevalence of head hunting. Part of that new that was
part of that new code of laws that we mentioned,
head hunting was outlawed. And he also suppressed piracy in
the region, which we're going to talk about a little
more because that's a little bit controversial. So he tried
on one hand to civilize Sara Walk according to British standards,
that is, civilize it. But he also really emphasized the
protection of native interests and promoting their welfare too. He
(09:24):
really went out with his people a lot too, went
out and talked to them. He spent time with the Malay,
with Chinese, with the diet people he governed, and he
was known even for taking walks with them, talking to them,
letting them come and visit him personally at his bungalow.
And Um Daily Mail did a story about the White
Rajah's in March, and the writer David Leaf even mentioned
(09:48):
how he was so hands on. Sometimes he would act
as self appointed judge and hold court hearings at home
that people could come and watch see their government in action.
And one of the crazier cases here, a crocodile was
even put on trial for killing a court translator who
got drunk and fell in the river and devil and
(10:09):
I'm going to have to let you read what James
wrote in his journal. He wrote, quote, I decided that
he should be instantly killed without honors, and he was
dispatched accordingly, his head severed from his trunk and the
body left exposed as a warning to all the other
crocodiles that may inhabit these waters. So that was just
a little sorry of the judgment. Yeah, they actually did
(10:32):
a trial and there were arguments on both sides before
he came to this decision. So definitely, as you say,
tough justice, crocodile had been allowed to represent himself, there
might have been a different outcome. That's probably so. As
we know from the Livingston podcast, right, we were talking
about that before there was a crocodile involved in that too,
were So there are a few things in common that
(10:53):
these guys had in common besides um just being charismatic Victorians.
But despite this accent behavior, or maybe because of behavior
like this, he won a really devoted following in Sarawak,
and he was pretty popular in England too, especially in
the beginning, I guess because he is this almost romantic figure.
James visited England in eighteen forty seven eighteen forty eight,
(11:16):
and though Sarawak was not expressly recognized, he was knighted
by Queen Victoria. He was made a Knight in Commander
of Bath. He became the Commissioner and Consul General to
the Sultan of Berne I and the Governor of the
Colony of Labuan off burn I. So a lot of
pretty prestigious honors. There some other accolades he received. He
(11:38):
was also awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical
Society and an honorary degree at Oxford, in addition to
some other appointments and groups that he was invited into.
He also dined with our recent podcast subjects Victorian Albert,
and attended a lot of high society parties. And finally,
another source of his notoriety, he also had published his
(11:58):
journals in eighteen forties SI, so that got his name
out there as well. But we mentioned that his popularity
was high in the beginning, suggesting that eventually it did
go downhill, and and that did happen. In eighteen forty nine,
his popularity really took a nose dive when he renewed
his efforts against pirates around Sarawas coastline. So those diect
(12:20):
pirates that we mentioned had kicked things up a notch
on their end, and with the help of the Royal Navy,
James set out to stop them. But things really escalated
until July thirty one, when the Royal Navy, combined with
Brooks forces, used a lot of firepower on the pirate
fleet and ended up killing somewhere between five hundred and
(12:41):
eight hundred of the pirates, and some reports inflated this
number even more to around fifteen hundred to two thousand pirates.
And it didn't get a good response in England at all, No,
not at all. It led to an outcry in England
on behalf of the indigenous people and then an official
commission of inquiry in eighteen fifty four. In eighteen fifty five,
(13:01):
and after that investigation, James was vindicated, but his reputation
was damaged at that point, and he lost some of
his official appointments. The British government also withdrew naval support
from Sara Walk, and they refused to offer protection when
James's rule was threatened by a Chinese uprising in eighteen
fifty seven. So, increasingly disillusioned, James is ready to return
(13:22):
to England for good in eighteen sixty three, and he
does that. He died of a stroke in eighteen sixty
eight and was eventually buried under a you tree in
a churchyard in Dartmoor. But what about Sarawak, Because we
know from our introduction that somehow this family manages to
to hold on for a few more generations. So James
Brook had no legitimate air. Some sources suggest that he
(13:45):
had an illegitimate son around eighteen thirty three, but he
never married, and as we said earlier, some biographers believed
that he was homosexual. So for a while before he
moved back to England, James was just toying with the
idea of turning Sarawak over to the Dutch, just getting
it out of the family. But he had a nephew, Charles,
(14:06):
and Charles would not hear of losing this prize Brooke
family possession right, and it didn't really seem like that's
what James wanted either. Charles Anthony Johnson, his nephew, had
entered the Sarawak service in eighteen fifty two when he
was around twenty three, and he did that at his
uncle's request, and also officially changed his name at that
time to Charles Anthony Johnson Brook kind of like an
(14:28):
air would do exactly, and Charles stepped in. He helped
James out for many years. He led the forces actually
that defeated the Chinese Uprising and governed after James left
the country for England. So before he died, James did
in fact name Charles his heir, and Charles ruled for
forty nine years. He was actually the longest reigning Raja Brooke.
(14:48):
He was also very eccentric, just like his uncle. For example,
he had a glass eye that he lost his eye
while he was hunting, so he replaced it with a
glass eye that he had taken out of a stuffed albatross.
Imagine there'd be some size discrepancy there. I'm gonna have
to go google a picture of an albatross after this,
trying to figure out how big the glass. I would
be good luck with that kind of imagining in a
(15:10):
mad Eye Moody situation. But despite the fact that he
was eccentric, he was generally loved by the people and
he made a lot of reforms to just like James
did um maybe even more. He extended Sarawalk's boundaries, clarified
its international status, secured trade, developed infrastructure in many ways,
including building a railway, and when he died in nineteen seventeen,
(15:32):
his son took over for him. His son, named Viner
or Charles Viner de wint Brooke, took over as the
third and last White Raja, and Viner effectively shared power
with his brother Bertram until Bertram eventually had a nervous breakdown.
That is, but Bertram was the father of Anthony Brook,
the man we mentioned in the intro to this podcast,
so he's our connection here. Because Viner didn't have any funds,
(15:54):
Anthony was next in line to become Raja, but Wiiner
grew increasingly disinterested in ruling, and in nineteen instead of
passing things on to his nephew, he agreed to seed
Sarawak to the British Crown in return for a pretty
hefty financial settlement, so he basically cashed out and Anthony
(16:15):
tried to contest this and there was this long legal
battle that he didn't win, and after that he officially
renounced his claim to the throne in nineteen fifty one,
probably trying to move on with his life and started
his campaign for peace and basically just faded into relative obscurity,
at least until his death. It seems he lived in
a New Age commune in Scotland for a while and
(16:38):
adopted their belief that flying saucers were going to bring peace,
and eventually moved to New Zealand and founded the Operation
Piece through Unity. So a strange, surprising career, I'd say
for this would be Rajah. Yeah, an interesting journey for
this entire family. I think that seemed to have fairly
traditional roots. A judge for the East India Company. Yeah,
(17:01):
from a from a standpoint of looking at the British Empire,
I guess that's a fairly traditional or good beginning. But
it all started with the adventures of James Brooke, and
his story actually influenced literature of the Victorian period. It
really inspired Victorian imaginations. For example, He's referenced in Conrad's
Lord Jim. Lord Jim is actually a Conrad book that's
(17:23):
been on my reading list for a while. Yeah, I
think I read it a long time ago. But I
think you can see the influence of this particular character
in History James Brooke and some other works as well.
So if anyone out there can think of any other
examples where this comes up, or just any other stories
about the Brooke family that you know that you want
to share, please write us at History Podcast at how
stuff works dot com. You can also look us up
(17:45):
on Twitter at myston History or on Facebook. And if
you want to learn a little bit more about pirates
from all over the world, we have a great article
called how Pirates Work. You can find it by searching
for pirates on our homepage at www dot how stuff
where dot com. Be sure to check out our new
(18:05):
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join houst Works staff
as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
The houstepp Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it
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