Limbang, Trusan and Lawas districts. The military force—some 250 men, Dyaks and Sikhs—is under the control of an English commandant. There is also a small police force, and the government possesses a few small steam vessels. The civil service is regularly organized and pensioned. The superior posts, about 50 in number, are filled by Englishmen. There are both Roman Catholic and Protestant missions in Sarawak, the latter forms part of the see of the bishop of Singapore. Sarawak is easily accessible from Singapore, whence the passage occupies about forty-six hours: steamers run at intervals of seven days. The coast is well lighted, lighthouses having been built and maintained in good order at Tanjong Po, Sirik, Mukah, Oya, Tanjong, Kidurong, Baram Mouth and Brooketon. The climate is equable, the daily temperature ranging on the average between 70° and 90°. The nights are generally cool. The rainfall averages about 200 in. annually, it is heaviest during the north-east monsoon (October-March), but continues through the south-west monsoon, which blows for the rest of the year.
History.—In 1839–1840 Sarawak (which then comprised only the districts now constituting the first and second divisions), the most southern province of the sultanate of Brunei, was in rebellion against the tyranny of the Malay officials, insufficiently controlled by the raja Muda Hassim. The insurgents held out at Blidah fort in the Siniawan district, and there Sir James Brooke first took part in the affairs of the territory. By his assistance the insurrection was suppressed, and on September 24th Muda Hassim resigned in his favour and he became raja of Sarawak. In 1843–1844 Captain (afterwards Admiral Sir Henry) Keppel (q.v.) and Raja Brooke expelled the Malay and Dyak pirates from the Saribas and Batang Lupar rivers, and broke up the fleets of Lanun pirates, which, descending from the Sulu Islands and the territory which is now British North Borneo, had long been the scourge of the seas.
In 1857 the Chinese, who for many generations had been working the alluvial deposits of gold in Upper Sarawak, sacked Kuching, killed two or three of the English residents and seized the government; Raja Brooke narrowly escaping with his life. His nephew, afterwards raja, quickly raised a force of Malays and Dyaks in the Batang Lupar district and suppressed the insurrection, driving the main body of the rebels out of the Sarawak territory. Raja Sir Charles Johnson Brooke (b. 1829) succeeded his uncle at his death in 1868; in 1888 he was created G.C.M.G. and Sarawak was made a British Protectorate, and in 1904 the position of his highness as raja of Sarawak was formally recognized by King Edward. His eldest son, the raja Muda (Charles Vyner Brooke, b. 1874), has for some years taken part in the administration of the country.
The extent of the raj of Sarawak, at the time when Sir James Brooke became its ruler, was not more than 7000 sq. m.; since that time the basins of the four rivers, Rejang, Muka, Baram and Trusan, have been added. The sultan of Brunei, who claimed suzerainty over them, ceded them on successive occasions in consideration of annual money payments. A few years after these cessions had been made many of the people of the river Limbang rose in rebellion against the sultan, and their territory was annexed by Sarawak, with the subsequent approval of the British government. In 1905 the basin of yet another river, the Lawas, was added to the northern end of Sarawak, the territory being acquired by purchase from the British North Borneo Company.
See Charles Brooke, Ten Years in Sarawak (1866); Gertrude L. Jacob, The Raja of Sarawak (1876); Spencer St John, Life in the Forests of the Far East (1862), and Life of Sir James Brooke (1879); “Notes on Sarawak” in Proc. Roy. Geogr. Soc. (1881), by W.M.Crocker; “In the Heart of Borneo,” Proc. Roy. Geogr. Soc. (July 1900), by Charles Hose; and The Far Eastern Tropics (1905), by Alleyne Ireland. (C. H.)