Borneo Once Had
a British King

Checking in through a kingdom’s office

These days in Kuching, I stay at the Sheraton. From the meeting room on an upper floor, you get a good view of the Sarawak River.

Before that, my usual hotel was The Waterfront Hotel by the river. Its entrance is a little unusual: you walk in through the grounds of the old courthouse, built in 1874. The old courthouse was the first government office of the White Rajahs. In other words, I had been checking in by walking through a kingdom’s government courtyard.

Right by the riverbank stands a small white fort: the Square Tower, built in 1879. Above its windows and door is a crest, a red and black cross on yellow. From Pengkalan Batu, the landing next to it, the Rajahs are said to have crossed by boat from their palace on the far bank and walked to the office. A royal commute.

In No. 08, I wrote that in East Malaysia you go through immigration even off a domestic flight. I entered the country twice without ever leaving it. Yet a British man who crossed this river did more than enter. He founded a state.

A problem child buys a sailing ship

James Brooke was born in 1803 in Benares, India, the son of a judge. At school in England he was trouble, and at 15 he ran away from boarding school and was expelled. In the East India Company’s army he rose to lieutenant, though he was reportedly not the most diligent officer. Badly wounded in the war in Burma, he went home. So far, nothing in the story suggests a future king.

The turning point came in 1835, with his father’s inheritance. He used it to buy a sailing ship, the Royalist. Not a house, not a carriage: a sailing ship. In 1838, he set sail for Singapore.

Becoming king by mistake

In 1839 he reached Kuching. Sarawak then belonged to Brunei, and a rebellion was dragging on. Asked to put it down, he declined at first, then took the job the following year. By playing rival groups against each other, he brought the revolt to an end.

In 1841 he received the title of Rajah, or king, and in 1842 he went in person to the Sultan of Brunei and was formally appointed. There is a theory that the Sultan took him for an agent of the British Empire. Becoming king by mistake. Some misunderstandings, it seems, are best left uncorrected.

Back in England in 1847, he was given a hero’s welcome and met Queen Victoria. Later, though, after naval battles that left many dead, he was accused at home of massacring local people. Called before a commission of inquiry in Singapore, he was cleared in 1854, but his reputation suffered. Even the British did not admire their king of Sarawak without reservation.

Foreign capital not welcome

The White Rajahs, saying they were protecting local people from exploitation by foreign capital, banned foreign investment and development as a rule. A country founded by a foreigner, closed to foreign capital. As someone who has done business across borders, I am not sure whether to laugh.

There was, however, an exception: Nissa Shokai, a Japanese company. In 1911 it was allowed to lease land and opened a large rubber estate, reportedly because Shozo Yorioka and his successor had earned the Rajah’s trust. The ruler who turned away foreign capital leased land to the Japanese. More than a century ago in Borneo, Japanese businessmen opened a door on trust alone. That makes me a little proud.

The noodles the Rajah invited

The second Rajah was Brooke’s nephew, Charles, who succeeded him in 1868. For his wife Margaret he built the Astana palace across the river, and he named the fort on the hill after her: Fort Margherita. Sources say it was built in 1879, but the entrance is inscribed “1880”. Whether that is the year it was finished or the building simply ran late, I can’t say. Either way, his gift to his wife was a fort.

Charles may have turned away money, but he invited people. In 1900 he signed an agreement with Wong Nai Siong of Fuzhou to bring Foochow settlers and found a farming settlement on the Rajang River. The Rajah lent money for their passage, and the settlers arrived in three groups, 1,118 people in all. Their destination was Sibu. The Rajah’s plan was to turn it into the kingdom’s rice bowl.

The Foochow settlers grew rice. They also brought noodles: Sibu’s famous kampua mee. The Rajah was hoping for rice, but what Sibu is known for today is the noodles.

That day I also had Sarawak laksa: the prawn special, with four big prawns, for RM15. Back in No. 08, in Bintulu, three prawns cost RM16. Kuching gives you one more prawn for one ringgit less.

The lime on the side was sitting in a pool of sambal. Naturally, it was spectacularly hot.

Same Malaysia, different faces

Even within Malaysia, cities show very different faces. Kuala Lumpur is a Malay city, with some Chinese and some Indians.

The streets of Sarawak, I would say, are Chinese. Walking around Kuching or Sibu, the air feels closer to Hong Kong or Singapore. There are some Malays, and probably some Indonesians in the mix too. That is my impression, anyway. Count the whole state and the largest group is the Iban; the streets are another matter.

Pork and alcohol are freely available, and many people are Christian. It feels quite different from West Malaysia.

Why? Back to the White Rajahs. The kingdom brought in Chinese miners to dig for gold; in 1857 those miners even rose in rebellion. And the Foochow settlers invited in 1900 are the noodle story above.

Another story is often told. The Rajahs are said to have restricted missionaries from preaching to Muslim Malays, and missionary work turned instead to the Iban and other Dayak peoples. Part of the reason so many people are Christian may lie in the Rajahs’ policies. The face of today’s towns is a joint work: the people the Rajahs invited, and the lines the Rajahs drew.

The place I love, the place I can live

To be honest, I may like East Malaysia’s food, climate and culture better than West Malaysia’s.

Even so, I live in the West. The reasons are practical. There are direct flights to Japan. Singapore is close. People travelling around the world drop by on their transits. The airport is near. And there are plenty of international schools. The place you love and the place you can live are not always the same. So I don’t live in Kuching. I stay in Kuching.

That equation may not hold for ever. International schools are multiplying in East Malaysia too. Kuching has plans for a new airport, and the state-owned airline AirBorneo reportedly has ambitions to fly direct to Japan. First its own immigration, now its own airline.

If that happens, the place I love and the place I can live will be one and the same. Then I, too, have a grand ambition: Sarawak noodles, three meals a day.

Building a kingdom at the museum

The Borneo Cultures Museum in Kuching is a big, white, new building. In a hands-on corner where you assemble a ship, small hands were fitting parts into the hull one by one. Beside them sat my Leica.

The kingdom took a hundred years to assemble. The museum ship can be rebuilt as often as you like. The kingdom cannot.

A constitution at 100, and the end of a kingdom

The third Rajah was Charles’s son, Vyner. In 1941, to mark the centenary, he introduced a constitution, and the kingdom became a constitutional monarchy.

At the end of that year, the Pacific War began. Japanese forces occupied Sarawak, and Rajah Vyner fled to Australia. Exactly a hundred years in, the dynasty lost real control. Nissa Shokai, too, had all its assets confiscated after Japan’s defeat, and its Japanese staff were sent home. As a Japanese writer, I will leave it there, quietly.

After the war, Vyner sold his rights and gave up the throne, and Sarawak became a British crown colony. The price, the story goes, was a large sum of money and a great deal of his favourite jam. A nation’s price tag, with jam on the itemised bill.

In 1963 Sarawak became part of Malaysia. That curious arrangement, immigration even after a domestic flight, comes from the promise made then.

Through a business lens

Occupational hazard, so three lessons, briefly.

First: trust beats capital. In a kingdom that shut out foreign capital, Nissa Shokai could still lease land. What decided it was not the size of the investment but the Rajah’s trust. For Japanese companies doing business in ASEAN, that still holds.

Second: succession. The first Rajah had no legitimate heir, so his nephew succeeded him, then the nephew’s son: three generations, about a hundred years. Even a family business the size of a country lives or dies by whether it can settle on a successor.

Third: bring people in. The kingdom brought miners for its gold and Foochow settlers for its rice. The shortcut to growing a thinly populated land was to invite people. Sarawak’s bet today on a new airport and an airline of its own may grow from the same root.

Three kings, side by side

The three White Rajahs lie side by side at the church in Sheepstor, a village on Dartmoor in England.

Their name lives on in Borneo, too. A large pitcher plant is called Nepenthes rajah, and a large-winged swallowtail is Rajah Brooke’s birdwing. The kingdom is gone, but the butterfly still flies through the forest. As a photographer, I would rather meet the butterfly than the kings.

The Sarawak flag flying in front of the State Legislative Assembly across the river is yellow, red and black: the same colours as the crest on the Square Tower.

While I breathe

Kipling wrote a story called The Man Who Would Be King, later a film starring Sean Connery. Two former British soldiers set out to become kings of a mountain people. James Brooke is said to be one of its inspirations. This British man, though, became king without even trying.

The motto of the Kingdom of Sarawak, in Latin:

Dum Spiro Spero

While I breathe, I hope (motto of the Kingdom of Sarawak)

The kingdom ended after a hundred years, but the motto still works. My own ambition, Sarawak noodles three meals a day, I will keep alive for as long as I breathe.

Each morning, the Rajah crossed this river by boat to rule his country. In the same town, I am slurping noodles again today.