Interesting items

Sarawak

The Kingdom of Sarawak

The English Brooke family founded and ruled it from 1841 to 1946.

The kingdom is on the island of Borneo and is part of Malaysia. The Brooke family that ruled the kingdom were called the White Rajah.
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James Brooke was granted the territory as a reward for helping the Sultanate of Brunei fight piracy and insurgency among the indigenous peoples in 1841.
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He was the first Rajah (King) of Sarawak and did rule from 1841 to 1868. From 1859 to 1863 John Brooke Johnson, is nephew, was named Rajah Mudah of Sarawak (Heir). He was disinherited in 1863 for what he termed ‘ treason ‘.
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Charles Brooke, the second White Rajah, ruled as the head of the Kingdom of Sarawak from1868 until 1917. By the time of his death, Britain had granted Sarawak protectorate status. It had a parliamentary and a railway and oil had been discovered.
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The Third Rajah, Charles Vyner de Windt Brooke, ruled as the head of the Kingdom of Sarawak from1917 to 1946 (a role he performed in tandem with his younger brother, Bertram, in accord with their father’s wish). He did modernise the country’s institutions, including the public service and introduce a penal code developed on British India lines in 1924.
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During the World War II, the country was occupied by the Japanese for three years. After the war Charles Vyner de Windt, ceded Sarawak to Britain, and in 1946 it became a British Crown Colony.

On 22 July 1963, Sarawak was granted self-government by the British and subsequently became one of the founding members of the Federation of Malaysia, established on 16 September 1963. However, the federation was opposed by Indonesia leading to a three-year confrontation. The creation of the Federation also resulted in a communist insurgency that lasted until 1990.