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1/2 Cent - Charles V. Brooke Rajah
| Issuer | Government of Sarawak |
|---|---|
| Year | 1933 |
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| Currency | Dollar (1868-1946) |
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| Obverse description | Bare-headed right-facing effigy of Charles Vyner Brooke, third and last White Rajah of Sarawak, rendered in high relief with finely detailed hair strands and naturalistic facial modeling. The truncation of the neck is clean and unadorned. The encircling legend reads 'C. V. BROOKE RAJAH' in raised serif capitals, disposed along the upper and right periphery of the field. The design is contained within a toothed inner border set against a plain field, consistent with the restrained colonial coinage aesthetic of the Brooke era. |
|---|---|
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| Obverse lettering | C. V. BROOKE RAJAH |
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| Additional information |
Charles Vyner Brooke, the third and final White Rajah of Sarawak, issued this piece during a period when the territory remained one of the last privately governed colonial states on earth — a personal fiefdom established by his great-uncle James Brooke in 1841 after suppressing a local rebellion and receiving the land as a grant from the Sultan of Brunei. The 1933 date places it squarely in the Depression era, when copper coinage was cheap to produce and fractions still had genuine purchasing power in rural Sarawak's bazaar economy.
Vyner would cede the territory to the British Crown in 1946, ending over a century of Brooke family rule and making this among the later issues of an issuing authority that would simply cease to exist.