DR ROBERT REECE

Assoc Professor, Murdoch University,
Australia

Dr Bob Reece is Associate Professor in History at Murdoch University, Western Australia and one of the foremost authorities on the history of Brooke Sarawak. He first visited Sarawak as correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review in July 1969 and subsequently wrote his doctoral dissertation at the Australian National University (Canberra) on the 1946 cession and annexation of Sarawak. This was published in 1982 by Oxford University Press as The Name of Brooke: The End of White Rajah Rule in Sarawak.  His other major contributions to Sarawak history are Datu Bandar; Masa Jepun: Sarawak Under The Japanese 1941-1945; and introductions to the Oxford University Press reprint series of 19^th Century Borneo classics, notably Hugh Low’s Sarawak (1848), Captain Henry Keppel’s The Expedition to Borneo of HMS Dido … (1846) and Spenser St. John’s The Life of Sir James Brooke … (1879). He was also a major contributor to The Encyclopedia of Malaysia, Vol. 6, and The Encyclopedia of Iban Studies. Most recently, he published a pictorial history of the Brooke family, The White Rajahs of Sarawak: A Borneo Dynasty (2004). He is currently engaged on a biography of the second Rajah, Charles Brooke.

LEARNING FROM SARAWAK’S HISTORY

Professor Bob Reece

Murdoch University, Western Australia

 ABSTRACT
 

This paper has two aims: firstly, to provide a brief resumé of Sarawak history for those who may not be so familiar with it; secondly, to see what useful lessons can be drawn from Sarawak history. The paper will look at pre-Brooke Sarawak, the Sarawak of the White Rajahs, British colonial Sarawak and Sarawak’s forty years as part of the Federation of Malaysia to see what themes and continuities of economic, social and political life have emerged to give the state its unique identity within Malaysia and Southeast Asia. Finally, the paper will examine the historical legacy to identify those elements which might be seen as serving the needs of Sarawak now and in the future. All this is by way of answering a more general question: just how useful can a country’s history be in the era of information explosion and globalisation?

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