When Charles Brooke—whose reign as Rajah lasted nearly a half century—returned to London and died in 1917, his son C.V. (Charles Vyner) became the third and final Rajah Brooke of Sarawak. His first coins were dated 1920 and had included a reduced-fineness 10-cent piece, but the sharp postwar rise in silver prices—as elsewhere—soon invited a “rethink.” A revised 10-cent piece was produced in copper-nickel, also dated 1920. Another mintage of the type was dated 1927, and then finally these coins, dated 1934.
The Great Depression hit this part of the world hard, maybe harder than most—partly because of the easy money that had preceded it. Rubber, for instance, which U.S. industry had gobbled up during the ‘20s, had peaked in 1926 at US$1.14 per pound—but had then bottomed out in 1932 at under US$0.04 per pound.
By the time this 1934h 10-cent piece was coined, however, the area economy had begun its rebound. (It was in 1934 that Sarawak joined a world quota system for rubber production.) But war was around the corner.
The Japanese occupied Sarawak in 1942 and managed to so wreck the country by war’s end—gathering up all the Sarawak silver coinage they could find and melting it, for one thing—that C.V. Brooke ceded Sarawak to the British Crown in July, 1946. Ceded? Well, sold maybe (I have read that nice pensions were created for C.V. and his three daughters). At any rate, there were no additional Rajahs Brooke. After more than a century, the great family adventure was over.
What were sometimes called the “White Rajahs” were finished; and after 1950—give or take—so was this 10-cent piece finished, their final white-metal coin.
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