The Clunies-Ross family were the original settlers of the Cocos (Keeling) 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 (1857–1955) and Australian (1955–1978) 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 Weisdale is a bay, hamlet and ancient parish on Mainland in Shetland, Scotland. The bay opens near the northern extremity of Scalloway Bay, and strikes four and a half miles to the north north east. The hamlet lies at the bay's head, about twelv ...

Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the no ...

on 23 August 1786. In 1813 he was at Timor as Third Mate on board the whaler ''Baroness Longueville'' when he received the opportunity to become captain of the brig ''Olivia'', which he took. He reportedly first cruised the waters of the then uninhabited Cocos (Keeling) Islands in 1825. After surveying them he moved his family to live on one of the islands in 1827. Only

Joshua Slocum Joshua Slocum (February 20, 1844 – on or shortly after November 14, 1909) was the first person to sail single-handedly around the world. He was a Nova Scotian-born, naturalised American seaman and adventurer, and a noted writer. In 1900 he wr ...

used different dates, when he wrote that "John Clunis-Ross, who in 1814 touched

he island He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

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".Joshua Slocum, (1901
"Sailing Alone Around the World"
New York Century Co, Pan American edition, p. 212 In 1823 an English adventurer,

Alexander Hare Alexander Hare (1775–1834) was an English merchant, infamous for his polygamous lifestyle. He is also known for his attempts at founding settlements near Banjarmasin on the island of Borneo and the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Malacca The son o ...

, had settled on another of the islands with some runaway slaves. Hare soon departed, and Clunies-Ross alone obtained permanent rights by settlement. He planted hundreds of coconut palms and brought in Malay workers to the islands to harvest the nuts, building a business by selling copra.Nick Squire
The man who lost a 'coral kingdom'
BBC News, 7 June 2007 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 " anhis 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 omitted the sentence that immediately followed: "but in most other points they are considered as slaves". Ross traded with Dutch vessels en route 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. John Clunies-Ross died in 1854.

John George Clunies-Ross

His son John George Clunies-Ross (born 1823) took over from his father under the name of Ross II. 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 The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between th ...

. John George Clunies-Ross received the native title of Tuan Pandai ('the learned one') due to his amateur medical knowledge and research into the natural history of the islands. The head of the family Clunies-Ross kept the title 'Tuan', a term that can be translated as 'sir'. He married S'pia Dupong, a Malay of high rank, in 1841.

George Clunies-Ross

Born on 20 June 1842 in the Cocos Islands to John George Clunies-Ross and S'pia Dupong, George Clunies-Ross was sent to Scotland where he studied engineering at Glasgow. In 1871, known as Tuan Tinggi, he became superintendent after his father died, then married Inin (1850–1889), a Malay of high-rank like his mother. It was during his administration, in 1885, that the first annual inspection by a representative of the

Straits Settlements The Straits Settlements were a group of British territories located in Southeast Asia. Headquartered in Singapore for more than a century, it was originally established in 1826 as part of the territories controlled by the British East India Comp ...

Government occurred. In 1886 Queen Victoria granted the islands in perpetuity to the Clunies-Ross family. Representatives of the Government of the

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 ''Chambers's Edinburgh Journal'' was a weekly 16-page magazine started by William Chambers in 1832. The first edition was dated 4 February 1832, and priced at one penny. Topics included history, religion, language, and science. William was so ...

'', there had not been any metallic coins since 1837. Six years after Inin's death, George Clunies-Ross married Ayesha, a former ''boi'' (servant) in 1895. In 1903, the islands were annexed to the

and incorporated as part of the settlement of Singapore, without affecting the ownership of the territory. George Clunies-Ross died on 7 July 1910 at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, after going to England for medical treatment. His body was taken back to the Cocos in 1914.

John Sidney Clunies-Ross

John Sidney Clunies-Ross was born in the Coco Islands on 13 November 1868, the son of George Clunies-Ross and Inin. Known as Tuan Ross, he inherited an economic disaster after a cyclone destroyed almost every house and coconut palm on Home Island in November 1909. During the Second World War, the Cocos islands served as a major base for the Royal Air Force. John Sidney Clunies-Ross died of a heart attack during a Japanese bombing on the islands in August 1944. The British military took over control of Home Island until John Cecil Clunies-Ross returned to the Cocos on 6 July 1946.

John Cecil Clunies-Ross

The title to the islands was claimed by the Ross family until 1978, when John Cecil Clunies-Ross (born 29 November 1928), known as Tuan John, sold them to the Commonwealth of Australia for £2.5m ($4.75m) under threat of expropriation, with the exception of his house on Home Island, which was eventually purchased by the government in 1993. The Commonwealth had already been administering the islands since November 1955, with the proclamation of the Cocos (Keeling) Island Act 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, he campaigned for independence but the majority of the islanders chose integration with Australia. He died in Perth at the age of 92 on 13 September 2021.

Legacy

, John "Johnny" George Clunies-Ross (born 1957), the son of John C. Clunies-Ross, lived on the West Island, breeding clams. He stated 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".

List of resident magistrates

References

External links

Cocos Island page
Genealogical Gleanings Cocos (Keeling) Islands History of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands History of Christmas Island Scottish diaspora Families of Scottish ancestry Asian kings