| In 1839-1840 Sarawak, the most southern province of the sultanate of Brunei, was in rebeffion against their 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 favor and he became raja of Sarawak. In 1843-1844 Captain (afterwards Admiral Sir Henry) Keppel 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 of 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 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), took over 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. miles. After that time the basins of the four rivers, Rejang, Muka, Baram and Trusan, were added. The sultan of Brunei, who claimed suzerainty over them, ceded them on successive occasions in return for 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 of Brunei and their territory was also 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.
The Japanese occupied Sarawak from 1942 to 1945. The rule of the Brooke family was replaced by Crown rule in 1946. Sarawak became part of Malaysia in 1963.
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