Chris Armstrong looks at the life of Sir James Brooke, the Norwich educated first ‘White Rajah’ of Sarawak and founder of a dynasty, a character who Errol Flynn wanted to play on film
When you mention education in an article about James Brooke, you have to use the word very loosely. He came to Norwich Grammar School in 1816 at the age of 13 and remained there until he ran away three years later.
Why the school was chosen for him is something of a mystery – he was the son of a senior official in the Honourable East India Company who was also a High Court judge and James spent his early years in India, at Benares. As was the custom then he was sent home to be educated in England.
Since his family later settled in Bath and the grandmother to whose care he was entrusted lived in Surrey, the choice of Norwich seems strange, and it didn’t prove a sound one.
At the time the school was under the headship of the Rev Valpy and enjoying a period of expansion. Valpy was a highly academic classicist – Brooke was neither academically gifted nor interested in the classics. He was not happy at the school and there are a number of probably apocryphal anecdotes about his activities there but it was clear his efforts were not greeted with success – he was apparently repeatedly caned for ‘idleness’.
In the ’History of Norwich School’ published in 1991 he is described not just as ‘unreceptive to the idea of learning’, but also as ‘adventurous, decisive and popular with his fellows’. Certainly, in his adult life he lived up to the ‘adventurous’ tag.
Perhaps the only thing he learned in his time in Norfolk was how to sail, which was to be useful to him later. Given his decision to run away from the school it seems ironic that in later life he chaired two dinners given for old boys of the Valpian era.
Subsequent attempts at educating him by employing private tutors fared little better, despite the presence of his parents who had returned to England. At the age of 16 he joined the East India Company in a military capacity as an ensign in the infantry, enjoying promotion to Lieutenant two years later and was promoted again during the first Anglo Burmese War.
His life of adventure had begun and he was heavily engaged in the war around Assam. But his career might have been brief – he was badly wounded, and was sent back to England to recover. When he had done so he returned to Madras with the intention of resuming his military service but found himself ‘out of time’, having exceeded the five years’ leave he had been granted for recovery. Resigning his commission, he sailed back to England by a circuitous route via China and Malaysia, with which he was much taken.
His parents were inclined to indulge their children – an older brother had already been given the elephant he requested, and James was spoilt too. They bought him a small brig with which he intended to enter the China trade, despite paternal warnings that he was not cut out for such a career. His father’s prediction was correct – he was unsuccessful.
A year later his father died, leaving James something in the order of £30,000 (well over £3 million today). He bought a larger ship, the Royalist, and sailed for Singapore, perhaps seeing an opportunity to emulate Sir Stamford Raffles and expand British interests still further.
The Royalist was an armed schooner with half a dozen 6-pound guns, several swivel guns and plenty of hand-guns too. She was entitled, as a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, to fly the White Ensign.
She must have been an impressive sight – effectually she was a warship in private and very determined hands. Brooke himself described the ship as ‘one which would fight or fly as occasion required’, but under his command there was more fighting than flying.
Arrived in Singapore James set out on an extraordinary career which was to propel him to the title of His Highness the Rajah of Sarawak, a state which he and succeeding members of his family were to rule right up until 1946.
From Singapore he sailed first to Kuching, the capital of Sarawak. He went there at the request of Singapore’s Governor to thank Raja Muda Hassim, uncle of the Sultan of Brunei, for the safe return of some shipwrecked British sailors. Arriving with the White Ensign flying, and on a quasi—diplomatic mission he was probably seen as an official representative of the Empire, which he was not.
He was already aware that Sarawak’s wealth depended on the export of antimony, an alloy with many uses ranging from the manufacture of mascara by the ancient Egyptians to its use in developing electronic products today. While there he discovered that the trade was being badly affected by a rebellion against the Sultan which Hassim had been sent to put down.
After a few months exploring other parts of South East Asia, he returned to Kuching and supported Hassim‘s attempts to quell the rebellion. His authority and the value of his weaponry rapidly became clear and he led Hassim’s forces to a decisive victory over the rebels, storming their headquarters on the Sarawak River. A fine shot and horseman with previous military experience and a natural air of authority he was a respected leader.
Hassim had promised Brooke the governorship of Sarawak as a reward for putting down the revolution but this wasn’t implemented until, having received the personal support of the Sultan of Brunei, he trained the Royalist’s main armament on Hassim’s palace.
In his new role, he sought to impose a more humanitarian approach abolishing such practices as slavery and head-hunting, while encouraging local involvement in government and ensuring religious toleration. His immediate deputies however were mainly young Europeans and although not all the indigenous population were supportive most appreciated the new approach based on law and order.
But he was far from satisfied – piracy was still rife and the coast was under frequent attack from the Dayaks – a separate Borneo tribe. He fought a series of successful campaigns, sometimes aided – perhaps not wholly officially – by the Navy.
His support from the Sultan of Brunei wavered about this time and Hassim and other Brooke allies were murdered on the Sultan’s orders. He set out as part of a punitive expedition and the Sultan, making reparations, ceded to the British the island of Labuan, a useful strategic base.
Returning to London, he found himself a hero and was made a Knight Commander of the Bath and appointed as Governor of Labuan. The government was however less inclined to recognise his royal status in Sarawak.
His ambition continued unabated, and he expanded the territory of his kingdom by outwitting and defeating some of the Dayak tribes. He established a series of forts to frustrate continued Dayak piracy and continued his policy of ‘civilising colonisation’ by establishing churches and schools.
But his position was under threat from a different source. Some of the naval officers with whom he had co-operated became the subject of a parliamentary investigation into the sums of prize-money awarded in respect of their joint expeditions.
A full enquiry was set up in Singapore and although Brooke himself was found not to have behaved as claimed with inhumanity and illegality, it must have been an embarrassing experience, and difficult to cope with, especially as he was suffering from smallpox.
From then, although he managed to expand his territory still further with another acquisition from Brunei, things did not progress otherwise so well. With his separate state of Sarawak still not recognised by the British government he even offered it unsuccessfully for sale to other European states and soon after he retired to Devon.
But James had been just the first in a line of dynastic Rajahs and, having no legitimate issue, he was succeeded by his nephew, Charles Brooke, having first disinherited Charles’ older brother. In turn Charles was succeeded by his son, Vyner, and then by Vyner’s brother Bertram and finally by Bertram’s son. Anthony.
Sarawak, occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War subsequently only retained its independent status until 1946 when the British Government, who had always had an ambivalent attitude to the rule of the white rajahs took over and made it a Crown Colony, which it remained until gaining independence as part of what is now Malaysia.
James Brooke was clearly a man of ambition, of derring-do, but not without humanity in his treatment of indigenous peoples. Above all he was a charismatic and effective leader, always at the front on his campaigns. He was, in many ways, an enigmatic figure.
He never married, though there was a rumoured engagement in his youth. A story at the time was that his original wound had not been in the lung as is now generally accepted, but in the genital area, resulting in the breaking off of the engagement.
A number of biographers have attributed his apparent disinterest in women to a sexual orientation towards other men and there is some superficial evidence to support this. One biographer asserted that, in retirement, James had been ‘carnally involved with the rough trade of Totnes’. Despite this he did claim paternity of an illegitimate son, who died at sea.
Whatever his sexual orientation, there can be no doubt that he was an extraordinary man both of action and of government. He seems to have had a softer side, too.
Despite his lack of formal education he was apparently prone to reading Jane Austen aloud to his staff. In the steamy atmosphere of Sarawak and the constant struggles to eliminate piracy that must have seemed an oasis of peace.
Whatever else his adventures did for him, they didn’t make him wealthy. Having inherited £30,000 from his father, his own estate on death was just £1,000.
His story is said to have been the inspiration for Conrad’s ‘Lord Jim’ and certainly its romance has led to a number of novels, Nicholas Monsarrat’s The White Rajah being perhaps the best known. Later there was a plan to film his story with Errol Flynn in the leading role but in fact the only film about his story was not completed until 2021, entitled The Edge of the World.
