"Engaging" --Journal of Asian Studies, February 2004

"Genuinely new insights" --The International History Review, December 2002

"Interesting and unusually self-reflective ... engaging history, written in a sophisticated style and with definitive new insights" --Itinerario 26 (2002)

In this significant reinterpretation of Sarawak history, John Walker explores the network of power, economic, and ritual relationships that developed on the northwest coast of Borneo in the mid-nineteenth century, from which a coalition led by James Brooke established the state of Sarawak.

Where many authors placed Brooke in the context of nineteenth-century British imperialism, this study perceived him in the context of Bornean cultures and political economies. Brooke emerges from the historical record as a "man of prowess," with the author identifying important ritual sources of Brooke's power among Malays, Bidayuh, and Iban--sources that derived from and expressed indigenous cultural traditions about fertility, health, and status.

John Walker is lecturer in politics at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, Australia.