On this day, James Brooke, a British soldier and adventurer, was granted the title of Rajah of Sarawak by Pengiran Raja Muda Hashim, the uncle of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin II of Brunei. The title was confirmed by the Sultan himself on 18th August the following year. Having used his inheritance to buy the schooner “The Royalist”, Brooke first arrived in Borneo in 1838 and helped Muda Hashim to crush a rebellion against the Sultan of Brunei and to fight piracy in the area. The sovereignty of Sarawak was his reward and gave rise to a hereditary monarchy which would see the Brooke family ruling over the province of Sarawak until it was ceded to the United Kingdom in 1946 by Charles Vyner Brooke, James’s grandnephew and became a British Crown Colony.
