Maluka


Maluka was a small independent state located around the Sungei Maluka, southeast of Bandjermassin on the island of Borneo. It was established in a land concession acquired by an English adventurer Alexander Hare from the Sultan of Banjarmassin in 1812 and lasted 4 years until 1816.

History

After the successful British invasion of the then previously French territory of Java and the establishment of a British colony the Lieutenant-Governor Stamford Raffles sent Hare to the region and appointed him Resident of Banjarmasin and Commissioner of the Island of Borneo when Dutch control briefly passed to Britain.
Hare then acquired 1,400 square miles of land from the Sultan of Bandjermasin and established it as an independent state which he ran as a private fiefdom, with the style of Rajah of Maluka and issued his own coinage. Thus he can be called the first White Rajah in Borneo, 30 years before James Brooke established his own White Rajahs dynasty in Sarawak.
His importation of convicts as slave labour, especially female, became infamous and he was known to have set up a harem. An inquiry was carried out by William Boggie, the British Resident in Samarang in 1837 to uncovered how he had operated what had become known as the Bandjemassing Enormity or the Banjermasin Outrage
The state cease to exist when the Dutch returned in 1816 and Hare and his harem of 40 Malay women and others were forced to leave.