The Clunies-Ross family were the original settlers of the Cocos Islands, a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean. From 1827 to 1978, the family ruled the previously uninhabited islands as a private fiefdom, initially as terra nullius and then later under British and Australian sovereignty. The head of the family was usually recognised as the resident magistrate, and was sometimes styled as the "King of the Cocos Islands" – a title given by the press.
History
John Clunies-Ross
John Clunies-Ross was a merchant born in Weisdale, Shetland. In 1813 he was at Timor as Third Mateon board the whalerBaroness Longueville when he received the opportunity to become captain of the brig Olivia, which he took. Reportedly he first cruised the waters of the then uninhabited Cocos Islands in 1825. After surveying them he moved his family to live on one of the islands in 1827. Only Joshua Slocum used different dates, when he wrote that "John Clunis-Ross, who in 1814 touched in the ship Borneo on a voyage to India", nailed up a Union Jack with plans to settle in the future and " returned 2 years later with his wife and family". He planted "hundreds of coconut palms and brought in Malay workers to harvest the nuts", building a business by selling copra. In the beginning, Javanese convicts were used as labourers and "crime of all kinds was rife", before "getting rid of the criminal class and obtaining a better type of Malay coolie." According to a 1903 article in The Timaru Herald Ross "... his little colony on model lines and succeeded beyond expectation" and Charles Darwin mentioned after his 1836 visit with HMS Beagle that he "found the natives in a state of freedom". However the article left out the sentence that immediately followed :"but in most other points they are considered as slaves". Ross traded with Dutch vessels going to Dutch ports on Java and Sumatra and became a naturalised Dutch subject; he had approached both the British and the Dutch government for annexation but neither had responded.
In 1851, his son John George Clunies-Ross took over, and in 1857 British Captain Stephen Grenville Fremantle visited aboard who "took possession of the islands in the name of the Britannic Majesty's Government." Fremantle appointed John George as superintendent of the islands and left after a 3-month vacation. The connection to Britain changed nothing in Ross's autonomous administration, and it was not until fifteen years later another British ship arrived for a complete survey of the island. Apparently Fremantle annexed the islands by mistake, thinking he had arrived on the Coco Islands of the Andaman Islands.
George Clunies-Ross
In 1871, George Clunies-Ross became superintendent after his father had died. It was during his administration, in 1885, that the first annual inspection by a representative of the Straits Settlements Government occurred. In 1886 Queen Victoria granted the islands in perpetuity to the Clunies-Ross family. Representatives of the Government of the Straits Settlements were sent to the island each year and reports reflected that "members of the Clunies-Ross family are to-day in every sense of the word proprietors of the islands, for Mr George Clunies-Ross makes his own laws and interprets them, polices his little domain, provides his own coinage controls the entire trade and acts as "the universal provider" to satisfy the wants of the community". According to Chambers' Journal, there had not been any metallic coins since 1837. He died of a heart attack during a Japanese bombings on the islands in August 1944.
The title to the islands was claimed by the Ross family until 1978, when John Cecil Clunies-Ross, known as Tuan John, sold the islands to the Commonwealth of Australia for £2.5m under threat of expropriation. The Commonwealth had already been administering the islands since 1955. John C. Clunies-Ross eventually went bankrupt after the Australian government refused to give any business to his shipping line company. He then moved to Perth with his wife. During the 1984 referendum, Clunies-Ross campaigned for independence but the majority of the islanders chose integration with Australia.
John George Clunies-Ross
, John "Johnny" George Clunies-Ross lives on the West Island, breeding clams. He stated in 2007 that he was initially frustrated with the 1978 transfer of the islands to Australia, but that he had changed his mind since then: "I was 21 and I'd been brought up to do the job. But even in the old man's time, it had become anachronistic. It had to change".
