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Vyner, Rajah of Sarawak, GCMG (Charles Vyner de Windt Brooke; 26 September 1874 - 9 May 1963) was the third and last White Rajah of Sarawak.
Following the death of his father, Vyner succeeded on 17 May and was proclaimed Rajah on 24 May 1917 at Kuching. He took the oath before the Council Negri on 22 July 1918. Vyner's early years as Rajah saw a boom in the Sarawak rubber and oil industries and the subsequent rise in the Sarawak economy allowed him to modernise the country's institutions, including the public service, and introduce a penal code developed on British India lines in 1924.
Granted a knighthood in 1927, Vyner continued to run a hands-off and relatively popular administration that banned Christian missionaries and fostered indigenous traditions (to an extent; headhunting was outlawed). Sarawak, however, was not immune to Japanese imperial ambition, which manifested itself in Sarawak on 25 December 1941. In that same year, he withdrew £200,000 from the Treasury for his personal expenses, in exchange for limiting his powers by a new constitution. Vyner and his family were visiting Sydney, Australia, where he would remain for the duration of the war.
Vyner returned to Sarawak on 15 April 1946 and temporarily resumed as Rajah, until 1 July 1946 when he ceded Sarawak to the British government as a crown colony, thus ending White Rajah rule in Sarawak. |
