“Borneo is bisected by the equator.
vatied over such a large area, but in general it can be described as similar to that of Malaya, with very frequent rain and warm temperature. The land is fertile and thickly forested. The humid warmth that prevails over this lush country has a relaxing, slowingdown effect on human beings.”
“James Brooke? s phar, eFhotnas Brooke, held a Hears post in
the East India Company’s Bengal Civil Service—he was Judge of the High Court of Benares.
This does not indicate that he was
exceptionally gifted, for most Company posts abroad were lucrative. Practically anyone in Brooke’s position, lucky enough to escape an untimely end from malaria, cholera or dysentery, was able to tetire to England, comparatively young, on a fortune. Moreover,
- in all probability the Brooke family was fairly well off to begin with. Through his mother, Thomas was descended from a seventeenthcentury Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Vyner, Bart.”
“So the fact that James didn’t go away until he was twelve and
ready to enter school is probably important. A long childhood sojourn in India, soaking up the ideas of colonials rather than those of stay-at-home Britons, might account for his attitude as an adult dealing with the East. He wasn’t weaned young.”
“The Company had made immense
territorial gains, but in the last analysis the Company was not the better off for that ; on the contrary. Territory means responsibility, and responsibility is expensive. They were happier days for the investor when India was merely a great storehouse waiting to be sacked. Now she was a long-term investment, which is a very different thing.”
“He was seven yeats old when Raffles visited Calcutta and interviewed the Governor-General Minto, and laid the foundations for his famous expedition to Java; and it is likely that Thomas Brooke made the acquaintance of his brilliant young colleague and spoke of him at home.”
“The Brookes planned as a matter of course that James should
go into the Company army just as Henry did. He was a Company child through and through.
His ideas as a boy must have been
those of his environment; he did not question the permanence and tightness of things as they were.”
“Everything he saw in Penang bore out his opinions of the
Company. The island was enchanting: all the more pity that it should be wasted by short-sighted, penny-pinching methods. James had a lot of ideas as to what ought to be done with Penang. It should be developed as the Government was developing New South Wales, perhaps, or. if John Company persisted in opposing European settlement, then land grants should be allowed rent free to native settlers who in return would clear the jungle.”
“But such hopes are now at an end, for the Company have reduced the establishment. . . . It appears to me pretty certain that territorial possessions of the East India Company are considered as secondary to their China trade—the revenues of India are confused with the accounts of tea, the resources of India are not fully developed, or at any tate are imperfectly known, the grasp of monopoly stunts improvement, and the exigencies of war and the necessities of peace ate readily defrayed from the profits of commerce. . a One day, with a few shipboard companions he set forth, “attended by a white and brown creature nicknamed Lord”
“He had been somewhat apprehensive about what to expect from that quarter, this being his first word from Mr. Thomas Brooke since his resignation. He need not have worried ; no scolding awaited him. Either the Brookes had confidence in their son’s ability and trusted he would make his mark without the Company’s help, or they didn’t care. Thomas Brooke knew that his fortune would be enough to provide comfortably for all the children, so why need he agitate too much about the boy’s career ?. Ambition was chastened by these setbacks eee sure, but ambition was not everything in the life of : nabob.”
“JAMES BROOKE OF SARAWAK 20 race he was already determined to dislike—the Chinese.
James took the opportunity in Singapore to check up on a ‘This
prejudice he took over wholesale, like many other of his notions, from Raffles, whose sojourns in Java and Sumatra had resulted in a partisan feeling for Malays. He considered the Chinese intruders ; furthermore, they were swcessful intruders, and this was hard to forgive. Malays were docile people, disinclined to work harder than they must.
Against the brisk industry of the Chinese they
offered little competition. Wherever the Chinese lived in Malaysia, sooner or later they took over most of the trade and money-lending of the community.
doubtful if Raffles fully understood the roots of jealousy and spite from which this unpopularity sprung; had he done so, he might not have accepted Malay opinion of the Chinese, for he was a fair-minded man.”
“Six months later he was still talking about it.
‘“ Iam employing
myself with navigation, resolved on ‘the schooner plan’ when I have money enough. I am not in good spirits ; I never am unless I am knocking about.”
He was moping; nothing stirred him”
“but hunting, and he did that only for want of better employ. He embraced politics for a time, and wrote a pamphlet or two on Reform. He was not passionately interested in politics, but life should consist of more than “dangling at a woman’s petticoat and fiddling and dancing.””
“Cruickshank teased him for his romanticism, but James would
not be laughed out of it. The nebulous quality of his ideas must have irritated Cruickshank occasionally; at twenty-nine Brooke talked as wildly as a schoolboy, and the geographical point towards which he aimed veered as wildly. One week it would be North or South America, and the next he was chattering about the other half of the world.”
“Our present plan is to go and take a tract of land in New
Holland,” he wrote enthusiastically after a visit to Kennedy in Ireland, “and turn farmers in the back settlements—”’
Farmers ?
The sober Cruickshank must have clutched at his brow and groaned as he turned the page—“ which will give us the opportunity of exploring an unknown country and making discoveries in certainly one of the wildest and least-known quartets of the globe. I feel myself, however, disposed to buckle to anything that offers, and I only wish I had money enough to carry a letter of marque against the Dutch vagabonds in the Eastern Seas.”
“James’s longings were not sharply defined, and he didn’t
impress the people who might have helped him. He had a bad case of wanderlust but no firm plans. He wanted to dedicate himself, but to what? He was hobbled by his expectations.
All he could do. was beg his father to buy him a schooner, like a child begging
- for a toy, and Thomas Brooke steadily refused.”
“Mr. John Dill Ross told Owen Rutter a story, quoting his Mr. Ross said that the
father who was James’s contemporary.
young girl Angela Burdett, the heiress who later adopted the name of Angela Burdett-Coutts, fell madly in love with James Brooke, but that Brooke’s wound made it impossible for them to marry. “Doubtless she never understood why he did not marry her,” said Mr. Ross. “A thousand pities, because with her vast wealth to back him he would have done a great many things in Sarawak he could not do alone. . . . Lady Burdett-Coutts never married until late in life. She was true to her love for Sir James Brooke.””
“Ar last James got his ship. The Findlay, a brig for sale at Liverpool, sounded just the sort
of thing he wanted, and he begged his father to buy it. Mrs. Brooke joined forces with her son and so James got his way, for Thomas Brooke was in bad health, unable to hold out against combined assaults. He probably reflected that a brig was not a life-and-death matter; it would be better to give in, and have peace in the family. He still thought it a very foolish fancy, however. Just what did James want to do, once he had his ship? If he intended to trade, he must be mad. What did a soldier know about business”
“At the end of 1835, Thomas Brooke died.
James’s share of his property was £30,000, and it was not three months before he
_ was buying a 142-ton schooner, the Royalist. “The Royalist . . . belonged to the Royal Yacht Squadron,
which in foreign ports admits her to the same privileges as a manof-war, and enables her to carry a white ensign,” wrote James in the prospectus he was preparing.
“‘ She sails fast, is conveniently
fitted up, is armed with six six-pounders, a number of swivels and small arms of all sorts, carries four boats and provisions for four months.””
“In order to be near his beloved ship, James took a cottage at
Greenwich, and there he spent most of his days in serious study. The place was full of literature and maps of the Indian Archipelago,
“ everything on the subject that he could collect. He went about his work with a sobriety that had never before characterized his behaviour.
At the age of thirty-three James Brooke was at last
growing up.”
“Gradually his ideas were centring on Borneo. A traveller named George Windsor Earl had recently spent some time sailing
- atound the little-known areas to the north of that island, and published a paper on his discoveries and observations.
It was not
quite terra incognita. A portion of land in what James called the fringe of Borneo belonged to the East India Company, and during the eighteenth century there had been several attempts to start British colonies on the offshore islands of Balimbangan and Labuan. However, these attempts had failed, and for many years the holdings had been practically written off and forgotten.”
“Territorial possession is necessary if you want to trade on firm
foundations, said Sir Stamford’s disciple. England already had as good a claim to the still unsettled lands of the Archipelago as Holland could offer.
It was merely a matter of occupying land
after claiming it: the only question that remained was, what land ?”
“James was fascinated with the Raffles pattern of thought that had produced Singapore. He envisaged a similar colony to the east of Indonesia, and then another and another, as far as the Pacific islands reach; one after another speedily occupied by the British, in an islandhopping race with Holland.
4 4 If not Maludu Bay, he said, then let
us consider Port Essington. Or what about the large and fertile island of Timor ? No doubt Portugal would be willing to exchange a piece of it for some other land of the same size, “as it has long been virtually abandoned,” he said hopefully, “and is utterly useless to the mother country.””
“ess to the mother country.” “ The same, indeed, may be said of Leuconia ” (Luzon), which,
offering no benefit to Spain, would, in the hands of the English, be a lever to rule both China and the Archipelago. . . . When our relations with China come to be settled, and settled they must shortly be, the importance of Manilla can scarcely be overrated. “Spain, distracted and torn by internal factions and pledged
to England by treaty and obligation, would readily place Leuconia in our hands as a guarantee for the sums due.””
“It should be mentioned at this point that the absence from the
Indian Archipelago of Christian missions did not really distress James Brooke very much. On the contrary, his attitude towards the Church and her emissaries was utilitarian to a degree bordering on the tactless. The gentle ladies of his household, aware of this, worried a good deal about the state of James’s soul. However, he knew that where missionaries went, public support was sure to
- follow, and so without compunction he now used the conventional arguments.”
““Whilst the trumpet tongue of many an orator excites thousands
to the rational and charitable object of converting the Jews, and reclaiming the gypsies ; whilst the admirable exertions of Missionary enterprise in the Ausonian climes of the South Sea have invested them with worldly power as well as religious influence; whilst the benevolent plans of the New Zealand Association contemplate the protection of natives by the acquisition of their territory ; whilst we admire the torrent of devotional and philosophical exertion—we cannot help deploring, that the zeal and attention of the leaders of these charitable crusades have never been directed to the countries under consideration.””
“34 JAMES BROOKE OF SARAWAK
the rainy season. There they would stay until dry weather, studying Malay and exploring the islands in the vicinity. From Singapore they would sail to Maludu Bay, and scrape acquaintance with the natives, and explore the rivers and the mountain Kinabalu, which dominates the northern range of Borneo. After that to the Celebes. After that, Timor and Port Essington.
Et cetera, collecting
knowledge all the way. “Tt is probable that I shall visit our Australian settlements,
glance at the Islands of the Pacific, and return to Europe round the. Horn.””
“Lots of young men in 1838 were seething with similar ideas. John Company was old and settled, but the new generation was not tranquil about the country’s status quo.
‘The new Queen was still
a girl and Disraeli, at thirty-four, had scarcely begun to show his hand: but the forces which were to bring them together and make of Britain an Empire, which had sent Raffles roaming beyond the boundaries of Clive’s domain, were those that now pushed James Brooke out to sea.”
“Though he felt himself swept along in the same current as the others, he wanted to make the journey on his own. He was not aboard a stout merchantman ; he sailed a cockleshell craft. A chronic rebel against the Company, he would no doubt have
been much surprised had he been told he resembled the founders of that same Company, the Gentleman Adventurers of England. The last thing in the world Brooke would have admitted to being was a buccaneer, but the word comes to mind.”
“One item was exceptionally interesting. A certain petty king of Borneo seemed to be making friendly overtures
to the English.”
““Borneo Proper, once the seat of piracy, which few vessels
could approach with safety, is now under the sway of the Rajah Muda Hassim,” said James to his Journal.
“ The character given
this Rajah by many persons who know and have traded with him is good, and he is spoken of as generous and humane, and greatly inclined to the English. These reasons have induced me to abandon my intention of proceeding direct to Maludu Bay, and during the season of the south-west monsoon to confine myself principally to the north-west coast. Muda Hassim being at present reported to be at Sarawak, I propose, after taking a running sketch of the coast from Tanjong Api, to enter the river of that name and proceed as far as the town.””
“Borneo Proper,
as Brunei was called, was still very much a haunt of pirates; they had not been cleaned up at all, as James was to discover. Nor was Brunei under the sway of Rajah Muda Hassim. Hassim was only small potatoes; he was the uncle and heir-presumptive of the Sultan Omar Ali Suffedin, ruler of all the north of Borneo. (The Rajah and Sultan were, of course, Malays.)”
“Then came the British, who would have had even mote of a disastrous effect had they meddled with Malacca as they planned to do. Raffles halted that much destruction, but he was not interested in the northern area of Malaya generally, and much devastation had already been accomplished there. By Brooke’s time all the islands between the South China Sea and Australia had been cut off from China for a hundred years.”
“|. . what might be called the bread-and-butter lines of trade—rattans, sago, wild rubber, beeswax and other jungle produce —came to be neglected owing to the expense of the double carriage, so that thousands of natives were bereft of their normal occupation. . . . The Malay potentates were driven to replenish their depleted”
“James did not rush his approach to Kuching. The charts he
possessed being badly in need of correction, he went slowly and surveyed the islands, and he took soundings in the bay.”
“The Borneo atmosphere has a peculiar quality which reduces the most tumultuous blood to a more leisurely tempo, and James enjoyed his leisure. He was delighted with the country. “The bay... is free from danger; the beach is lined by a feathery row of beautiful casuarinas, and behind is a tangled jungle, without fine timber; game is plentiful, from the traces we saw on the sand; hogs in great numbers, troops of monkeys, and the print of an animal with cleft hoofs, either a large deer, tapir or cow. We saw no game save a tribe of monkeys. .”
“This dark forest, where the trees shoot up straight and tall . . .
strikes the imagination with pictures trite yet true” .. . “The bay that lies between Capes Datu and Sipang is indeed
a lovely one,” says St. John, “ ... but the gems of the sea are the little emerald isles that are scattered over the surface of the bay, presenting their pretty beaches of glistering sand or their lovely foliage, drooping to kiss the rippling waves;
Talang-Talang,
noted for their turtles ; Sumpadien and the Satangs, in their wild, new, tich, coco-nut groves.””
“Kuching was a sadly dilapidated village, a collection of miserable huts housing a few fishermen.
Such activity as it showed was due
to the presence of Hassim and his entourage, and was purely | transitory. [he Rajah Muda had neither desire nor intention to remain in Sarawak. His home was in Brunei, whence he had been sent as the Sultan’s deputy to deal with rebellion among these backwoods people.
Brunei nobles considered Sarawak a dull distant
province that offered nothing of elegance or luxury to tempt them from the capital.”
“It is doubtful if Omar Ali would have troubled
to put down the rebellion at all had he not hoped, against all experience, ultimately to get revenue from the Sarawak mines. Antimony was there in a good rich deposit and it was sold sporadically to foreign traders, being well known in Malaya as “ Singapore tock,” but this trade never resulted in the profits the Sultan felt it should show. The proceeds seemed to melt away in transit between Sarawak and Brunei.
His kinsman, Governor Pangeran Makota,
had very sticky fingers. Makota sweated his l”
“Accordingly one tribe of Dyaks, the Sows, rebelled.
Local
Malays who were also victimized joined them, and James found Sarawak in the throes of civil war, the seat of which was Siniawan. James was not to hear this side of the story immediately, nor did he discover Makota’s true character until later, for his first informants were the Brunei Malays themselves, and they shielded each other.”
“Brooke thought Hassim’s friendliness was probably due to a
desire to intimidate the rebels with the Roya/ist’s presence, but there was a more important motive. The Malays did not for a moment believe that the mysterious Englishman was really disassociated from the Singapore government, really travelling about on his own. Of course, they had decided, he was an agent or a spy, and his visit had some significance, possibly sinister. Hassim asked questions about the Dutch and listened keenly to Brooke’s reply. AngloDutch rivalry was a subject of acute interest to all the Malay world, who had seen Java and Sumatra wrested by the British from Holland, and then most puzzlingly handed back again by the conquerots. Just who, really, had the upper hand? Which power would it be better for the Sultan of Brunei to propitiate”
