Qualla: Fort Alice

Fort Alice: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Every evening at eight o'clock, for a hundred years, a policeman struck a gong and called out in Iban: "Oh Ha! Oh Ha! Oh Ha! The steps have been drawn up. The door is closed. People from up-river, people from down-river, are not allowed to come up to the fort any more." That nightly ritual at Fort Alice, shouted into the tropical darkness above the Batang Lupar river in Sarawak, captures something essential about the place -- a wooden fortress where the boundary between colonial authority and the vast Bornean interior was drawn and redrawn for over a century.

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Fort Alice: The White Rajahs and Their Forts

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Fort Alice owes its existence to the Brooke dynasty, the extraordinary English family who ruled Sarawak as personal monarchs from 1841 until Japanese occupation in 1941. James Brooke, the first White Rajah, ordered the construction of Fort Sakarran in December 1849 at the mouth o...

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Fort Alice: Higher Ground at Simanggang

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Charles Brooke had learned his lesson about building in a floodplain. In 1864, he ordered the fort relocated to an elevated site at Simanggang, where the terrain offered both better drainage and a commanding view of the river below. The new structure went up in belian wood -- Bor...

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Fort Alice: An Outpost of Empire on the River

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After Sarawak was divided into administrative districts in 1873, Fort Alice became the seat of the second district. Inside its ironwood walls, the fort housed the Resident's office, a courtroom, a small garrison of soldiers, and a lock-up for prisoners. From this perch above the ...

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Fort Alice: From Fortress to Museum

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Sarawak State Government listed Fort Alice as a historical monument in 1971, recognizing what the belian wood already proved: the fort had outlasted the dynasty that built it. Restoration work began in June 2013, a painstaking effort that cost MYR5 million and took nearly two...

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