| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

J. H. Walker. Power and Prowess: The Origins of Brooke Kingship in Sarawak. (Southeast Asia Publications Series.) Canberra: Asian Studies Association of Australia, with Allen and Unwin, Crowns Nest, Australia and Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2002. Pp. xx, 300. $36.00.

In this provocative book, J. H. Walker describes himself as a historian with an interpretive anthropological project. The label implies a particular conception of culture as well as of the historian's responsibilities. Culture for Walker is above all a system of symbols, rituals, and relationships, and the historian's primary task is to decode their meaning. The author analyzes the networks of power, economic, and ritual relationships that developed on the northwest coast of Borneo in the mid-nineteenth century. He argues from a revisionist standpoint that James Brooke, as a consequence of these networks and relationships, emerged from the historical record as a "man of prowess" to establish the state of Sarawak. 1

In 1838, Brooke, a young merchant-adventurer, became embroiled in the domestic politics of the Sultanate of Brunei. He shortly became the self-styled white rajah of Sarawak, a province under the nominal control of the sultan. At the same time, he extended his commercial network to Singapore and other markets over which the Dutch, whom he held in contempt, had no claim. But to the coastal Iranun, the Chinese miners of Bau, and the Iban of the Skrang River, who all possessed great force, no stretch of coast was big enough to accommodate this shadowy interloper with seemingly more energy than influence, who was working around the clock to bring about their downfall. . . .

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