When James Brooke first arrived in Sarawak it was governed as a vassal state of the Sultanate of Brunei, with much of the system of government based on the Bruneian model.
When James Brooke first arrived in Sarawak it was governed as a vassal state of the Sultanate of Brunei. When he assumed control of the original area around Kuching in the 1840s, much of the system of government was based on the ineffective Bruneian model.