Page 46 - The Guide To Sarawak

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INTRODUCTION TO THE STATE OF SARAWAK
Rajah Sir Charles Brooke, the second White Rajah, who ruled Sarawak from 1867 to his death in 1917.
and encouraged the mass migration of Chinese labourers and farmers. He built the state’s first and only railway, set up the Sarawak Museum, and even created Southeast Asia’s first radio communications network.
To consolidate his power he established a modern Civil Service, founded the
Sarawak Constabulary and the Sarawak Rangers (who still exist today as part of the Malaysian Army), led
a punitive expedition into the Kayan heartland (1873), and built a network of forts in strategic locations. Fort Margherita, a major Kuching landmark named after his wife, Ranee Margaret De Windt, is the most imposing of these.
In later life Rajah Sir Charles Brooke lost an eye during a riding accident. Refusing to pay for a prosthetic human eye he instead wore a yellow glass eye intended for a stuffed albatross. This gave him
a fearsome gaze which intimidated opponents in negotiations, failing which he would remove the
glass eye and roll it across the table at his horrified counterpart.
Falling ill with pneumonia, he returned to Britain in
early 1917, and died on 17th May that year, a month
short of his 88th birthday. Such was his reputation
in Sarawak that when the first aircraft to visit Kuching arrived unannounced during the unveiling of his memorial in 1921, people fled the scene, believing the angry ghost of the Rajah had returned to castigate his subjects for wasting public money.
Charles’s eldest son, Charles Vyner Brooke,
took over on 24th May 1917. Although handicapped by his father’s political will, which decreed that younger brother Bertram Brooke should be consulted on all major issues, Vyner was
at best a reluctant Rajah,
at worst a dilettante. A painfully shy man, Vyner spent most of his time in England, leaving Sarawak
to Bertram, aided by the Council Negeri and the Civil
Service. A Committee of Administration
was later formed in 1939. Although much modernisation took place during Vyner’s reign, and he authored the state’s first constitution, most of the people were still illiterate and living in isolated villages.
The Centenary Celebration of Brooke Rule took place on 24th September 1941, but the dynasty of White Rajahs was abruptly ended three months
The original facade of the Sarawak Museum, built by Rajah Charles Brooke in 1891.