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COLONIALISM AND THE BROOKE ADMINISTRATION: INSTITUTIONAL BUILDINGS AND INFRASTRUCTRE IN 19TH CENTURY SARAWAK John Ting, University of Melbourne jtarchitect@gmail.com

This paper argues that hybrid processes were reflected in Sarawak’s institutional architecture and infrastructure from 1841, showing a different colonial encounter to that of the Straits Settlements. British colonial settlements replicated European architectural templates that contrasted with indigenous models to convey colonial authority, reinforced by the agency given to the ‘creators’ of those colonies. Sarawak’s Brooke rajahs are often considered similarly, however their architecture and infrastructure evolved from an awareness of the local context, engaged with local cultural systems, and involved indigenous actors in their design and implementation. This paper will compare the architecture and infrastructure of Sarawak with those of Singapore and Penang in order to investigate how Sarawak is positioned in terms of British colonialism in 19th century Southeast Asia. This paper aims to show that Sarawak offered a different reading of the colonial encounter, by looking at how built form resulted from engagement with local cultures.

This paper was presented to the 17 Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in Melbourne 1-3 July 2008. It has been peer reviewed via a double blind referee process and appears on the Conference Proceedings Website by the permission of the author who retains copyright. This paper may be downloaded for fair use under the Copyright Act (1954), its later amendments and other relevant legislation.

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KUCHING TODAY The colonial urban morphology of Kuching (now the capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak) was similar to the Straits Settlements of Penang and Singapore. Their ports were lined with warehouses, adjacent to a parade ground (padang in Malay) that was surrounded by institutional buildings, and with ethnically defined commercial...