He then bought a ship and sailed to the Malay Archipelago where, in gratitude for helping to crush a rebellion, he was rewarded with the position of governor of Sarawak.

[1] His father, Thomas Brooke, was an English judge in the Court of Appeal at Bareilly, British India; his mother, Anna Maria was born in Hertfordshire and was the daughter of Scottish peer Colonel William Stuart, 9th Lord Blantyre, and his mistress Harriott Teasdale.

[7] Setting sail for Borneo in 1838, he arrived in Kuching in August to find the settlement facing an uprising against the Sultan of Brunei.

However, some Malay nobles in Brunei, unhappy over Brooke's measures against piracy, arranged for the murder of Muda Hashim and his followers.

[citation needed] Brooke returned temporarily to England in 1847, where he was given the Freedom of the City of London,[15] appointed British consul-general in Borneo[16] and created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB).

[18] In 1851 Brooke was accused of using excessive force against the native people, under the guise of anti-piracy operations, leading to the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry in Singapore in 1854.

When Wallace arrived in Singapore in September 1854, he found Rajah Brooke "reluctantly preparing to give evidence to the special commission set up to investigate his controversial anti-piracy activities.

[22][23] James Brooke was 'a great admirer' of the novels of Jane Austen, and would 'read them and re-read them', including aloud to his companions in Sarawak.

His actions in Sarawak were directed at expanding the British Empire and the benefits of its rule, assisting the local people by fighting piracy and slavery, and securing his own personal wealth to further these activities.

His own abilities, and those of his successors, provided Sarawak with excellent leadership and wealth generation during difficult times, and resulted in both fame and notoriety in some circles.

His appointment as rajah by the Sultan, and his subsequent knighthood, are evidence that his efforts were widely applauded in both Sarawak and British society.

Two years later, the Rajah reacted to criticism by returning to the East: after a brief meeting in Singapore, John was deposed and banished from Sarawak.

James increased the charges to treasonous conduct and later named John's younger brother, Charles Anthoni Johnson Brooke, as his successor.

Brooke died in Burrator, Dartmoor, Devon, in south-west England, on 11 June 1868, having suffered three strokes during his last ten years, and was buried at the graveyard of St Leonard's Church in Sheepstor.

Brooke was also a model for the hero of Joseph Conrad's novel Lord Jim, and he is briefly mentioned in Rudyard Kipling's short story "The Man Who Would Be King".

Source:[35] Some Bornean plant species were named in Brooke's honour: also insects: three species of reptiles:[38] and a snail: In 1857, the native village of Newash in Grey County, Ontario, Canada, was renamed Brooke and the adjacent township was named Sarawak by William Coutts Keppel (known as Viscount Bury, later the 7th Earl of Albemarle) who was Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Canada.

[39] James Brooke was a close friend of Viscount Bury's uncle, Henry Keppel having met in 1843 while fighting pirates off the coast of Borneo.

In 2001, Sarawak and Keppel became part of the township of Georgian Bluffs; Albemarle joined the town of South Bruce Peninsula in 1999.