A single English adventurer with an inherited ship and a handful of crew became sovereign ruler of Sarawak in 1841, launching a dynasty that governed the territory for over a century before handing it to Britain after World War II. Oil struck at Miri in 1909 became the empire's only find within British-controlled territory, while a Foochow rubber boom that same year turned a failed rice experiment into sudden, outsized wealth. Yet the Brooke Rajahs consistently blocked the capitalist exploitation that enriched colonial Malaya and Java, and the question of whether that protective instinct stunted or shaped Sarawak's foundations lingers into the present. Professor Ooi Keat Gin joins the Breakfast Grill to trace that tension from James Brooke's first sail up the Sarawak River to the eve of independence.

Image Credit: Shutterstock