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Charles Vyner BrookeSir Charles Vyner deWindt Brooke (September 30, 1874–May 9, 1963) was the third and final white Rajah of Sarawak. Brooke spent his youth in the Sarawak public service before travelling to England, meeting and marrying Sylvia Brett, daughter of Lord Esher, on February 21, 1911 and returned to Sarawak with her. Following the death of the second Rajah, Charles Anthoni Johnson Brooke, Brooke was proclaimed Rajah of Sarawak on May 24, 1917. Brooke's early years as Rajah saw a boom in the Sarawak rubber and oil industries and the subsequent rise in the Sarawak economy allowed Brooke to modernise Sarawak institutions, including the public service and introduced a penal code developed on British India lines in 1924. Granted a knighthood in 1927, Brooke continued to run a hands off and relatively popular administration that banned Christian missionaries and fostered indigenous traditions (to an extent; cannibalism was outlawed). Sarawak however was not immune to Japanese imperial ambition, which manifested itself in Sarawak on December 25, 1941. Reading the signs, Brooke had already evacuated his family and him to Sydney, Australia, where he would remain for the duration of the war. Brooke returned to Sarawak on April 15, 1946 and temporarily resumed as Rajah, until July 1, 1946 when Brooke ceded Sarawak to the British government as a crown colony, thus ending White Rajah rule in Sarawak. Vyner Brooke died in London on May 9, 1963, four months before Sarawak was formally incorporated into the Federation of Malaysia.
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