The third (and
final) book about John Williamson will be published in April and that has me
thinking about how Williamson’s story started.
I introduced John
Williamson in my first novel, The White
Rajah. The story is based on the life of James Brooke, the first White
Rajah of Sarawak. Sarawak, now part of Malaysia, is a small state on the island
of Borneo. It came under British protection when it was ruled by James Brooke
in the mid-19th century, which has led many people to see it as part
of the British Empire.
M.C.V.Egan runs a blog exploring historical "facts" that, on examination, turn out to
be nothing of the sort. She asked me to write on 'the agreed upon lie' that
Sarawak was part of the Empire. (The phrase ‘the agreed upon lie’ is supposed
to be how Napoleon described history.) This was my response, which first
appeared in her blog on 7 December 2013 and on my own blog a little later.
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In the National
Maritime Museum in London, there is a map of the world which shows all the
countries that were once part of the British Empire. Over there, on the right,
a little blob of red marks Sarawak. This reflects the widespread belief that
Sarawak, ruled by an Englishman and later to become part of the British
Commonwealth, was one of the myriad countries that made up the "Empire on
which the sun never set".
Sarawak was never
part of the British Empire. In fact, there was a formal enquiry to establish
the relationship of Sarawak to the Crown, and the conclusion was that it was a
not a British possession.
 |
| W.J. Turner 1881 Royal Geographical Society Map |
Sarawak's
peculiar status reflected the way in which it was acquired by its first
European ruler, James Brooke. It is easy to present Brooke as an adventurer who
seized control of the country by force. Indeed, nowadays the Brooke Rajahs are
often referred to officially as "pirates". It's far from the truth,
though.
 |
| Portrait of James Brooke by Francis Grant (1847) |
James Brooke was,
indeed, an adventurer. His principal goal when he arrived in Sarawak was to
improve relations between the British and the local population, which he hoped
would bring him benefits as a trader. His ship, the Royalist, carried six small
cannon and he had less than thirty crewmen with him. He was in no position to
take the country by force. However, he arrived in the middle of a civil war. It
had been going on for a long time, with no sign of resolution. Sarawak was
governed from Brunei, where a faction in the Sultan's court had whipped up a
revolt in that distant province in order to advance their own political position.
The politics was Byzantine and the Sultan was increasingly frustrated as
faction balanced against faction and the war dragged on and on. He saw the
arrival of Brooke as offering a way out of the impasse. The Royalist's guns, if brought
into action against the enemy, could be decisive.
This proved to be
the case. The cannon and the crew broke the deadlock and brought victory to the
Sultan's forces. For his help, Brooke was offered the rule of Sarawak.
Sarawak remained
a province of the Brunei Sultanate. It wasn't very important province and the
Sultan hardly missed it. For him, the benefit of having James Brooke ruling
there was that his enemies could not stir up trouble that could be used against
him in Brunei. However, for much the same reason, it was essential that he
could say that he still had control of his whole realm. So Brooke acknowledged
the Sultan as his overlord and claimed that his authority came from Brunei.
Brooke was
proudly British and saw his rule in Sarawak as strengthening the position of
the British in the South China seas. At the time, the Dutch dominated trade in
the area and this British foothold in Borneo was politically and militarily
significant. Burke wanted to have strong ties with Singapore, the main British
possession in the region, and he wanted to benefit from the protection of the
Royal Navy. The obvious solution was for him to rule the territory as governor,
but for it to be officially part of the British Empire with his loyalty pledged
to the Queen. However, he felt unable to do this. He argued that his personal
loyalty, as a British citizen, was to Queen Victoria, but as ruler of Sarawak,
he had pledged his loyalty to the Sultan in Brunei. The British government was
very uncomfortable with the situation, believing that they had been manoeuvred
into a position where they were responsible for Sarawak but did not actually
have any control of it. However, the practical reality of the politics of the
region prevailed, and Sarawak never did become formally part of the British Empire.
Sarawak continued
to be ruled by three generations of Brooke Rajahs until the Second World War,
when it was invaded by the Japanese. The third Rajah, Anthony Brooke, claimed
that he did not have the resources to make good the damage that had occurred before
the Japanese were defeated. Controversially, he agreed to hand his country over
to the British. The age of Empire was over when Sarawak finally became,
briefly, a British colony. It was a British possession from 1946 until it was
officially granted independence in July, 1963. Later that year, it was
incorporated into Malaysia. Sarawak's days as a separate nation were over.
