A “Suitable Population”: Charles Brooke and Race-Mixing in Sarawak

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Abstract
In the “Concluding Remarks” appended to his journal for 1853–63, published in London in 1866 as Ten Years in Sarawak, Charles Brooke gave his support to the unfashionable idea of miscegenation between Europeans and Asians. The younger nephew of the first Rajah, James Brooke, and heir apparent to the Brooke raj to which he succeeded two years later, his views were of some significance. Accepting that a tropical climate was “not adapted for the permanent residence of Anglo-Saxons,” he proposed that a mixed race could provide Sarawak with a “suitable population.” To support his argument, Brooke cited the observation of Dr W.J. Moore of the Bombay Medical Service that Europeans had not survived as a race after many generations of British rule in India:Of the numerous pensioners, etc. etc., there is not one single instance – there is not a great-grand-child or grand-child of these pensioners retaining their European characteristics. An infusion of native blood is essential to the continuance of the race. The fact is, for the white man, or his offspring, there is no such thing as acclimatisation in India. Exposure, instead of hardening the system, actually has the contrary effect, and the longer Europeans remain in this country, the more they feel the effects of the vertical sun.

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