Niewmismatic Error Coins

http://dniewcollectors.blogspot.com/2011/10/sarawak-coins.html
http://dniewcollectors.blogspot.com/2011/11/sarawak-coins.html


Some of the mintages were very small - a mere 15,000 20 cent in 1911 and only 10,000 of the 50 cents in 1906 - and the series as a whole is pretty elusive in the better grades of condition.

Oddly enough, the 50 cents is not as scarce a coin in VF condition as the 20 cents, probably because a higher proportion of the largest silver coins were preserved by collectors at the time.

The diameter of the 1 cent was increased, from 18mm to 24.5mm, in 1927 when copper replaced cupro-nickel. At the same time, the design was modified, reviving the pattern of the earlier large cents, with the country name on the reverse and the value, in words, within the wreath. Copper cents were also issued in 1929 and 1930, while copper half-cents were issued in this style in 1933. Cupro-nickel 10 cents were struck in 1934 and continued the following year without a change in the date.


Sarawak was invaded by Imperial Japanese force on December 16, 1941. Kuching fell on Christmas Eve and the rest of the country was quickly overrun. The Japanese commandeered all the silver coinage and melted it down.

Consequently most of the 5- and 10-cent coins now encountered in the markets come from jewellery (hence the tell-tale solder marks or filled holes) or traces of purple dye, indicating their interment with the dead.

Sir Charles Vyner Brooke died in 1946, shortly after ceding Sarawak to the British Crown. British military administration after the Japanese surrender in 1945 was followed by crown colony status and the substitution of the coinage of Malaya and British Borneo, forerunners of the present-day Malaysian currency

In 1863 Brooke was knighted by Queen Victoria and Britain recognised Sarawak as an independent state. Although Brooke had ruled Sarawak for 22 years by that time, it was not until he returned to England that year, leaving actual government in his nephew's hands, that he got around to ordering a full series of coinage for Sarawak.

This time he went to the successor of the Soho Mint, Ralph Heaton. Heaton (now known as the Birmingham Mint)won a contract which was to last until the Japanese overran Sarawak at the end of 1941.

The series of 1863 bore a left-facing profile of Sir James flanked by the inscription J BROOKE RAJAH. The sensitive portrait was the work of Joseph Moore, medallist and diesinker. The reverse featured the value within a wreath, with SARAWAK at the top and the date at the foot.

Copper coins in denominations of quarter-, half-, and one-cent were struck. Unfortunately, the Birmingham Mint has no record of the mintage, but production, especially of the quarter-cent, must have been quite small.

A mule of the 1-cent reverse, with the Straits Settlements obverse showing Queen Victoria, has been recorded in brass - possibly deliberately contrived some time in the 1870s after Heaton got the contract to strike the Straits coins.

Sir James Brooke died in 1868 and was succeeded by his nephew, Charles Johnson who had previously adopted the surname Brooke on being named as his heir. He was created GCMG in 1888, the year in which the British government negotiated a treaty of protection. Britain undertook to look after foreign affairs, leaving the "White Rajahs" in control of internal affairs.

Sir Charles had been rajah for three years before he ordered a new series of coins bearing his profile. These coins followed the previous pattern, merely substituting the moustached portrait of Sir Charles, and the initial C instead of  J in the title. The date 1870 appeared on the reverse, although the coins were not actually issued till the following year.

New cents and half-cents were ordered in 1879, but thereafter only cents were issued, at more or less annual intervals, till 1891 (with the exception of 1881 and 1883).
 
For much of this period orders for coins continued to be placed through Smith & Wright. In 1889, however, responsibility for ordering the coins was transferred to the British North Borneo Company in London and henceforward the coins were impressed with the H mint mark of the Heaton Mint.

Thus the cent dated 1889 exists in two versions, with or without the H mint mark which appears on the reverse, below the ribbon of the wreath. Some 3,210,000  cents were struck that year, equally divided between those with and without the mint mark.

All of the cents issued in 1890 had the mint mark, but in 1891 only about  two-thirds of the mintage (1,623,888 in all) bore the letter H, while the others were unmarked.
 
The protected status of Sarawak was reflected in the design of the cent introduced in 1892. This coin had the same weight and diameter as its predecessors, but was slightly thicker, and had a central hole. Above the hole appeared the profile of Sir Charles Brook, while below were the crossed flags of Sarawak and Britain.

The wreathed value reverse was modified to allow for the central hole. These coins bore the H mint mark as before. Cents alone appeared in 1893 and 1894, but in 1896 they were joined  by a comparatively small quantity of halves and quarters.

Despite the attempts by Sir Charles Brooke to protect his subjects from the encroachment of outside influences, these inevitably affected Sarawak whose mineral deposits were exploited in the closing years of the 19th century.   

To Be Continued...
Link:
http://dniewcollectors.blogspot.com/2011/10/sarawak-coins.html

State Of Sarawak.

In THE 17TH CENTURY the powerful sultanate of Brunei extended its sway over most of the large island of Borneo. This dominion endured for little more than a hundured years, and in the 18th century it declined under a series of weak sultans.

By the early years of the 19th century the rule of the sultan was more or less confined to the present area of the sultanate, but Sarawak, which lay beyond its southern border, remained nominally under the rule of the sultan.

In turn, Borneo lay entirely within the Dutch sphere of influence and they enjoyed a monopoly of the island's external trade trade - a matter which was regarded with envy by the British East India Company.

At that time Sarawak was relatively small and ill-defined and in a perpetual state of rebellion with the sultan's officials. Help was at hand, in the form of an English adventurer named James Brooke.

The son of a high court judge in the service of the East India Company, Brooke was born in 1803 at Secrore near Benares in India. An ancestor on his mother's side was Sir Thomas Vyner who had been Lord Mayor of London in the time of Oliver Cromwell and the republican commonwealth.



A 1863 One Cent Of James Brooke.

 Young James was educated at Norwich Grammar School in England and at the age of 16 was appointed a cadet in the EIC Army and assigned to the 6th Bengal Infantry. A brief spell as Sub-Assistant Commissary General (an impressive title for what was little more than a stores' clerk) was followed by active service, when the Burmese War broke out in 1825.

This gave him the opportunity to develop his talents as a linguist and the abilities to get on well with the indigenous people. He was granted permission to raise a regiment of local horsemen who served as scouts for the Indian Army. Brooke led his cavalry at the battle of Rangpur but was badly wounded and invalided out of the army with a pension of £70 a year.

The life of an English country squire did not suit him. He toured Malaya in 1830-31 and in 1834 purchased a small ship, whit which he sailed to China to seek his fortune. This expedition proved abortive;but when he inherited £30,000 on the death of his father he purchased a large ship and set sail for Borneo in December 1838.

After a brief spell at Singapore, Brooke sailed to Borneo and landed at Kuching on August 15, 1839. He surveyed the coastline, lived for a time with Dayak tribesmen, then crossed over to Celebes where made a great impression on the warlike Bugis by his prowess - he was a skilled horseman and a crack shot.

He revisited Sarawak in the autumn of 1840 and found that country in a turmoil. Rajah Muda Hassim, the uncle and heir of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin II (1829-52) enlisted Brooke in his war against the rebels. Brooke organized the sultan's forces and rapidly subdued the fort at Blidah. Muda Hassim resigned as rajah, and Brooke was appointed in his place on September 24, 1841.

At that time Brooke's dominion only extended from Tanjong Datu to the entrance of the Samarahan River, with an area of 18,130 square kilometres (7,000 square miles). In 1843-44 Brooke, with Captain (later Admiral Sir Henry)Keppel of the Royal Navy, cleared the Malay and Dayak pirates from the Saribas and Batang Lupar rivers.

In 1861 the sultan granted to Brooke all the rivers and territory from the Samarahan River to Kedurong Point. Further grants of territory were made between 1882 and 1905, bringing the state of Sarawak up to its present area of 121,400 square kilometres or about the size of England and Wales.

Rajah Brooke had a fairly rough and ready approach to government. He abolished the system of forced trade which had caused the people to revolt, and substituted a much fairer scale of taxes. He was always easily accessible to his subjects and personally dispensed justice. The adulation of the people is seen in the saying "The son of Europe is the friend of the Dayaks".

Although himself a Christian, James Brooke ruled Sarawak according to the tenets of Islam. In a letter to a friend Brooke wrote: "Wine and grog we have none and all appear better for it".

On the other hand Brooke introduced a proper coinage soon after becoming rajah in 1841. Through Messrs Smith & Wright, a trading company based in London and Birmingham, he ordered a quantity of kepings from a private mint in Birmingham, & Watt which was still in existence at that time, through it creased operations soon afterwards.

These kepings had a pangolin on the obverse above the initials J.B., with the date SEP:24 1841 round the foot - the date on which Brooke became rajah. The reverse bore bore the value in Arabic script and the date in the Muslim calendar.


A 1841 Keping.Counterfeits.

Despite the date, it is unlikely that any of these coins were supplied from England before 1842. They were struck in copper or brass, the later being the scarcer variety, although both versions are rare.
Dangerous counterfeit of the 1841 keping came on to the market in 1971 and have since caused many a headache to collectors.

To Be continued....

Source: JAMES A MACKAY,Coin Digest,1989.Vol.2.No.1.