Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Clunies-Ross, George
CLUNIES-ROSS, GEORGE (1842–1910), owner of Cocos and Keeling Islands, born on 20 June 1842, in the Cocos Islands, was eldest son in the family of six sons and three daughters of John George Clunies-Ross by his wife S'pia Dupong, a Malay lady of high rank. His grandfather, John Clunies-Ross, born in the Shetland Islands, of a family which had taken refuge there after 'being out in 1715,' landed in 1825, after many adventures as captain of an East Indiaman during the English occupation of Java, on Direction Island, one of the Cocos or Cocos-Keeling Islands; there he settled with his whole family. In 1823 an English adventurer, Alexander Hare, had settled on another of the islands with some runaway slaves. The islands, till then uninhabited, had been first sighted and named in 1609 by Captain William Keeling [q. v.]. Hare soon departed, and Clunies-Ross alone obtained permanent rights by settlement. Although the Dutch government professed a vague and informal supremacy, Clunies-Ross regarded himself, and was apparently regarded by others, as not merely the owner of the soil but as also possessed of sovereign authority over the islands. These Cocos Islands the name is now commonly applied to the whole group, but should, strictly speaking, be reserved for the more southern islands, the name of Keeling being correspondingly reserved for the more northern are a tiny group of very small coral islets, some twenty in number, 'extraordinary rings of land which rise out of the ocean' (Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, iii. 539), strangely isolated in the Indian Ocean about 700 miles S.W. from Sumatra and 1200 from Singapore. Clunies-Ross's original intention was to form a depot on the islands whence the spices collected from the surrounding East Indies might be dispersed to the markets of the old world. This scheme failed; but the coconut palm, almost the only plant which really flourishes on the bare coral atolls of the tropics, yielded sufficient oil and other products to maintain the fortunes of the family. In 1857, in the time of John George, the first settler's son, the islands were first declared a British possession, and subjected to British sovereignty but without detriment to the Ross family's ownership of the land. The head of the family was until 1878 treated by the British Government as governor as well as landowner.
George, the grandson of the first settler, was, like the rest of his brothers, sent to Scotland for education. In 1862, when studying engineering at Glasgow, he was recalled to the Cocos Islands to help in re-establishing the then somewhat decadent fortunes of the family there. In 1872 he succeeded to his father's interests in the Cocos Islands and married Inin, a Malayan who, like her mother-in-law, S'pia Dupong, was of high rank and resolute temper. Clunies-Ross resembled his grandfather in strength of character, business capacity, and attractiveness of personality. By the introduction into the islands of modern machinery and of scientific methods, by planting coconut palms where these had before been chiefly self-planted, and by devising new markets for the produce, he not merely restored the family fortunes but transformed the industry, on which these depended, from the moderate state of prosperity which the favourable natural conditions had hitherto allowed into a well-paying concern. Under George Clunies-Ross's rule the authority implied in the governorship of the islands was definitely transferred, by letters patent, first (in 1878) to the governor of Ceylon and next (in 1886) to the governor of the Straits Settlements still, of course, without detriment to the family's ownership of the land. A further change took place in 1903, when the islands were actually annexed to the Straits Settlements and incorporated as part of the settlement of Singapore. But none of these administrative changes in any way affected George Clunies-Ross's interest as owner of the land. Meanwhile he steadily pursued his business and improved his island estates. From time to time he was in England, attending to his affairs and to the education of his children.
He died at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, on 7 July 1910, and was buried in Bon-church churchyard. His property, which was considerable even outside that in the Cocos Islands, was devised to his wife and his family of four sons and five daughters; but his eldest son, John Sydney, was recognised as, by primogeniture, 'chief' of the island estate.
[The Times, 8 July 1910; H. B. Guppy's The Cocos-Keeling Islands, Scottish Geog. Soc., v. 1889; H. O. Forbes, A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, 1884; Law Reports, and public records.]