Speaker 1: M hmm, what kind of kind of struck out? Honestly, Uh,
Speaker 1: my Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, the podcast
Speaker 1: where I talk about bad people. But this morning I
Speaker 1: woke up like seven minutes before we started recording, and
Speaker 1: so I'm I'm pounding coffee into my face and it's one. Um,
Speaker 1: just for the rock, It's it's the morning, Sophie. It's like,
Speaker 1: this is like nine am for you. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: like seven am for me. Um. I don't think anyone's
Speaker 1: ever awoke this early, except from my guest today, doctor
Speaker 1: kind of holda. Yeah, you just nailed that intro. By
Speaker 1: the way, thank you, professional broadcasting at its finest. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you. I was we just did the Rush Limbaugh episode.
Speaker 1: So I've been I've been thinking of a true professional
Speaker 1: and trying to trying to really nail it down, which
Speaker 1: is why I got drunk last night and slept until
Speaker 1: I did not like that reference to Rush Limbaugh. L
Speaker 1: Rush Bow. Yeah. Uh, you are a podcaster, one of
Speaker 1: the hosts of the House of Pod podcast. Um, you
Speaker 1: are are my my go to source for medical advice
Speaker 1: or bastard. Um we we we got to hang out.
Speaker 1: One of the last times, uh, that I got to
Speaker 1: hang out with anybody outside of um my riot friends
Speaker 1: in Portland right before the plague went down. That would
Speaker 1: have been what when when I was on your podcast,
Speaker 1: that would have been like January. It's worth noting because
Speaker 1: you came and I looked this up because somebody posted
Speaker 1: this and they posted the transcript. I don't know how
Speaker 1: they did that, but they posted the transcript of the episode,
Speaker 1: which we don't do, but someone else did and they
Speaker 1: posted it because it was like January third, and I
Speaker 1: asked you, I said, listen, how is the world gonna end?
Speaker 1: And you said, here's what's gonna happen. Some kid's gonna
Speaker 1: go off to China for like vacation. He's gonna come
Speaker 1: back to his job at like Starbucks, and he's not
Speaker 1: going to have enough insurance to cover his days off.
Speaker 1: He's gonna have some sort of illness and he's gonna
Speaker 1: spread it to everyone at his job, and it's gonna
Speaker 1: spread throughout the country and it's gonna be awful, and
Speaker 1: we're all like, alright, dude. It was a little paranoid,
Speaker 1: and then it happened like a couple of months later.
Speaker 1: I remember very distinctively, and it was I think you
Speaker 1: were one of our last in studio guests too, so
Speaker 1: early January. Don't you know, the world, don't ever ask
Speaker 1: this fool to predict anything. He's a goddamn nightmare. It's creepy.
Speaker 1: It's accurate that one. Well, thankfully we do seem to
Speaker 1: be fingers crossed knock on wood, um, nearer to the
Speaker 1: end than the beginning of this particular biblical plague. Um hopefully.
Speaker 1: Uh So I thought we'd we'd talk about a subject
Speaker 1: that has absolutly nothing to do with mediciner plagues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but does have a lot to do with Malaysia. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the family that stole Malaysia today. Um.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of the brook dynasty? No? Are
Speaker 1: they like the diamond people? No? Um, I think they
Speaker 1: used to. I think they also owned a company that
Speaker 1: made cookies. But no, they are a family who is
Speaker 1: the only family in the history of imperialism that I'm
Speaker 1: aware of, uh, to steal an entire country for their
Speaker 1: own personal property, and that as like part of a country,
Speaker 1: not as not steal it for the British Empire, for themselves,
Speaker 1: for the Brooks. Yeah, for the Brooks. Yes, this one
Speaker 1: for the Brooks. Yeah, a large chunk of Malaysia was
Speaker 1: their personal property for quite for like a century. They
Speaker 1: gave it up in the late nineteen forties. Oh my god, No,
Speaker 1: I have not heard. I'm excited. Yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a fun one. We're mostly going to be talking about
Speaker 1: James brook who was the guy who actually stole Malaysia um,
Speaker 1: but which had a little bit about the rest of
Speaker 1: his family at the end here. So without further ado,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the Brooks. So, once upon a time
Speaker 1: on the island of Borneo there existed a powerful kingdom
Speaker 1: called Brunei. Now there's still a Brunei in Borneo, and
Speaker 1: it's got a sultan and he's super rich. Everybody's heard
Speaker 1: of this. Brune I used to be for a while
Speaker 1: was a protectorate of of the British crown and stuff,
Speaker 1: and how that happened is kind of in this story
Speaker 1: as well. Modern Brunei, though, is really tiny. It's like
Speaker 1: a micro state, like right, It's it's smaller than some
Speaker 1: people's neighborhoods. Back three or four hundred years ago, though
Speaker 1: Brunei controlled a large chunk of the island of Borneo.
Speaker 1: It was a sizeable country and it was a big
Speaker 1: part of like kind of modern Indonesia Malaysia. Um. It
Speaker 1: was a powerful force within that area. The reason why
Speaker 1: it's a micro state today lays with the actions of
Speaker 1: a single British family called the Brooks. There why it
Speaker 1: went from like a whole glass country to a tiny
Speaker 1: little micro state. So today Borneo is split between several
Speaker 1: Malaysian states. It's part of Indonesia and the Kingdom of Brunei.
Speaker 1: So the island of Borneo part of its Indonesia, part
Speaker 1: of its Malaysia, part of it's the Kingdom of Brunei.
Speaker 1: It's a very complicated place geographically, there's a lot going
Speaker 1: on with map lines there um. But back in the
Speaker 1: early eight hundreds it was pretty much just Brunei with
Speaker 1: a little bit of Dutch um. The Dutch control with
Speaker 1: chunk of it for god knows what reason, mainly for
Speaker 1: trading spices and ship The Sultan of Sulu, who was
Speaker 1: this vassal of the Spanish owned Philippines, also owned a
Speaker 1: little bit of the east part, eastern part of Brunei
Speaker 1: or eastern part of Borneo. But mostly Borneo was controlled
Speaker 1: by Brunei. Now that changed in eighteen thirty nine with
Speaker 1: the arrival of a very dumb, young adventurer named James Brooke.
Speaker 1: He was born on April twenty nine, eighteen oh three,
Speaker 1: as the son of Judge Thomas Brooke and Anna Maria
Speaker 1: Stewart was you might guess from the judge part, James
Speaker 1: was born into enormous wealth and privilege. His father was
Speaker 1: in Yeah, an English judge. We're talking like judges back
Speaker 1: when that means something not like not like now with
Speaker 1: our fucking bullshit. Sorry, I might be going of court soon.
Speaker 1: I probably shouldn't talk. They're so rad. Everybody loves a
Speaker 1: good judge with the wigs man incredible look, powder and mallets.
Speaker 1: Who doesn't like a mallet? This is These are judges
Speaker 1: from the powder and Mallets era. And he's a judge
Speaker 1: in um in India, so he's got to wear like
Speaker 1: James's dad, Thomas has to wear like that whole judge
Speaker 1: get up and like sweltering degree Indians something mallet situation.
Speaker 1: They're like, I feel like I could, I could do things.
Speaker 1: The past must have smelt so bad, you know, just
Speaker 1: all the stuff they wore, lack of showers, and bathing,
Speaker 1: just coding like themselves with powder on top of the
Speaker 1: stenchion b O, just to try and mask it. Just
Speaker 1: dousing themselves with tobacco smoke to try to dull it
Speaker 1: for everyone to burn their noses out. Yeah. So Thomas
Speaker 1: Brooke James Brooke is born eight oh three to a
Speaker 1: judge named Thomas Brooke who lives in India. Um and
Speaker 1: he ruled upon the High Court of Benares interpreting the
Speaker 1: laws of the East India Trading Company, which ruled India
Speaker 1: at this time. So he's not a judge for like
Speaker 1: the government. He I mean, he is, but the government
Speaker 1: is a corporation, like he is a corporate judge. It's
Speaker 1: very cyberpunk, even though it's happening in eighteen o three.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to like put in reference to
Speaker 1: something I can understand, so because I have, you know,
Speaker 1: the most part, a pretty awful American education. So do
Speaker 1: you have to like put it in reference to a
Speaker 1: game or some sort of Disney movie. Yeah, that covered
Speaker 1: this the help. It's like it's like Blade Runner, but
Speaker 1: everyone's dying of cholera all the time. So James had
Speaker 1: a few siblings. He had an older brother, who joined
Speaker 1: the army and again the army is the corporate army,
Speaker 1: and died immediately, leaving James to be the sole inheritor
Speaker 1: of the family fortune. He also had four sisters, two
Speaker 1: of whom died young, not in India, but in the
Speaker 1: filth Strewent Petri Dish that was nineteenth century Britain. Now
Speaker 1: somewhat unusually for a boy boy born into his social class,
Speaker 1: James spent the first twelve years of his life in India.
Speaker 1: He fell in love with the country, it's culture and
Speaker 1: the feeling of adventure that seemed ever present on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of Empire. But he also grew up very aware
Speaker 1: of the many failures of the East India Company. The
Speaker 1: first Great Bengal Famine, which may have killed as many
Speaker 1: as thirty million people accord, occurred in the early seventeen seventies,
Speaker 1: about a generation before James's birth. The nars is on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of Bengal, and the shock waves of so
Speaker 1: much death and social collapse would have been evident even
Speaker 1: in his youth. You know, twenty thirty years after thirty
Speaker 1: million people die, you're going to see some of the
Speaker 1: like the shock waves of that it's not. It hasn't
Speaker 1: passed entirely. Um. Now we've covered that on a previous
Speaker 1: episode Behind the Bastards. But the short of it is,
Speaker 1: once the East India Company stole Bengal, the uprooted millennia
Speaker 1: of agricultural traditions to maximize profits and wound up starving
Speaker 1: the whole country to death. So, unlike many imperialists of
Speaker 1: his era, James did not grow up with a rosy
Speaker 1: idea of the British Empire. His biographer Nigel Barley notes,
Speaker 1: quote India became, to the whole Brook Dynasty an enduring
Speaker 1: and terrible example of how not to run a country. So,
Speaker 1: if you've ever been to India, Benares Is includes as
Speaker 1: a region that includes a modern day city called Varanasi,
Speaker 1: which is where James would have spent a lot of time.
Speaker 1: Varanasi is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on
Speaker 1: the planet and it's the city that it hosts what's
Speaker 1: called the Burning Got, which is where you can stand
Speaker 1: along the banks of the Ganjis every night and watch
Speaker 1: people burn the bodies of their loved ones. Um. It's
Speaker 1: a place you can actually like, I've been there. It's
Speaker 1: it's a a pretty powerful place to see. It's one
Speaker 1: of those intense places I've ever been, and it would
Speaker 1: have been. It was that intense when when James was there,
Speaker 1: and he grew up as a big kind of like
Speaker 1: childhood event of his watching these these burnings on the
Speaker 1: banks of the Ban, the Ganjis and Varanasi. Um and
Speaker 1: this has an impact on him. Um So Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously the year Appean dwellings in Benaras were deliberately built
Speaker 1: upriver from where the actual like native Indian people lived,
Speaker 1: but it would have been hard to miss this entirely,
Speaker 1: and in general, James Brooke got to explore a lot
Speaker 1: in his youth in India because Thomas Brooke was bad
Speaker 1: at imposing boundaries on his son. He was not a
Speaker 1: particularly bright man. He's described by a biographers as not
Speaker 1: really clever, but a good talker, which in nineteenth century
Speaker 1: English terms means he had a dull mind. But he
Speaker 1: went to a good school, so he was a dumb
Speaker 1: guy who had a good education. Yeah. Yeah, And this
Speaker 1: is like you'll hear the people described this way a
Speaker 1: lot in British imperial history. These are the kind of
Speaker 1: men who build the British Empire. They are dumb men
Speaker 1: who are well educated, which is a very dangerous combination.
Speaker 1: Those are the kind of guys that will do genocides
Speaker 1: for profits. Yeah. So Thomas was a doting father, which
Speaker 1: is probably a part of why he allowed James to
Speaker 1: stay in India so late. Normally, a kid like James,
Speaker 1: born to the upper crust would have left India at
Speaker 1: age six to go attend school in in England. Um.
Speaker 1: It was that was it was uncommon for them to
Speaker 1: stay in India too long, and part because Indie was
Speaker 1: seen as being very dangerous, but in part because if
Speaker 1: you're an upper crust kid, you want to get into
Speaker 1: that British education system is as quickly as possible. Um. Now.
Speaker 1: So again, the fact that he waited until he was
Speaker 1: twelve was kind of odd, um and probably good for James.
Speaker 1: When one considers all of the inhuman crimes of the
Speaker 1: British Empire, it's worth noting that said crimes were carried
Speaker 1: out by men who had been separated from their parents
Speaker 1: at age six and shoved into a boarding school when
Speaker 1: they were of kindergarten age. Well, the thing I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm going to hear more about this. But the sense
Speaker 1: I'm getting is that even though he's seeing all this
Speaker 1: bad stuff and he has the opportunity to be like
Speaker 1: this shouldn't happen, or he sees the drawbacks at least
Speaker 1: of this colonialism, he's not going to learn the right
Speaker 1: lessons from it. That's the sense I'm gonna get, just
Speaker 1: because I know the show and it bums me out already.
Speaker 1: He is not going to learn the right lessons of it. Um.
Speaker 1: But he's all going to grow up to be very
Speaker 1: different from a lot of the other imperialists of his
Speaker 1: era because he has a different background. Right. The whole
Speaker 1: British education system is geared towards producing the kind of
Speaker 1: men who can who can further the empire, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't really get trapped in that in the same way
Speaker 1: that other people do, um, because his parents keep him
Speaker 1: out of it for a much longer time. UM. So
Speaker 1: when he's twelve, he finally uh gets sent over to
Speaker 1: England to go to boarding school. Um. And the fact
Speaker 1: that he goes so much later than his peers makes
Speaker 1: it a lot harder for him. All the other boys
Speaker 1: of his age group had had five or six more
Speaker 1: years of formal schooling. Than him by the time he
Speaker 1: arrives at boarding school. He also had to adapt from
Speaker 1: the freedom of unsupervised life in India to being the
Speaker 1: prisoner of a boarding school. One of his biographers, Johnson
Speaker 1: Jin writes, quote, the want of regular training was of
Speaker 1: infinite disadvantage to young Brooke, who thus started life with
Speaker 1: little knowledge and with no idea of self control. So
Speaker 1: he's kind of a wild kid by the standards of
Speaker 1: you know, British this idea at this point. Um his
Speaker 1: education at King Edward the sixth Grammar School in Norwich
Speaker 1: was something of a disaster. He hated arithmetic and grammar,
Speaker 1: and he much preferred doodling in his notebooks. His early biographers,
Speaker 1: who were all propagandists of the British Empire, guys like
Speaker 1: Robert Payne Well write quote, it was remembered that he
Speaker 1: never told a lie and demonstrated at an early age
Speaker 1: a character of the utmost nobility. Uh. They'll say that
Speaker 1: he was seen by the other boys as a natural leader,
Speaker 1: and these are all lies. There's no evidence in any
Speaker 1: of this, like um, and he was a very good
Speaker 1: liar later in life. So this this, this is just
Speaker 1: kind of like traditional biographer lying nonsense. The reality seems
Speaker 1: to be that he was somewhat ostracized. His one good
Speaker 1: friend was another boy named George Western. Uh, and one year,
Speaker 1: instead of going off to holiday, George announced that he
Speaker 1: was heading to see and joined the Navy as a
Speaker 1: cabin boy. He probably died horribly, but James thought that
Speaker 1: the whole idea sounded terribly romantic, and he couldn't stand
Speaker 1: to stay at school without his only friend. So when
Speaker 1: George leaves, he borrows money from a schoolmate and left
Speaker 1: with a very public announcement that he too was going
Speaker 1: to see. Uh. Now, the reality is that he actually
Speaker 1: took the money he'd taken from a classmate and headed
Speaker 1: to hide at his grandmother's yard. Uh. He camped in
Speaker 1: her garden until her servants caught him. Actually, I'm sorting
Speaker 1: to like him now, Yeah. No, I mean there's there's
Speaker 1: parts of this kid that are fun. Yeah. So he uh,
Speaker 1: he camps in his grandma's yard until her servants find him,
Speaker 1: and she sends him back to his school headmaster. Um,
Speaker 1: but the headmaster refuses to admit him because he'd proven
Speaker 1: himself to be quote a rebel. Uh. This could have
Speaker 1: caused great scandal, But not long after his parents returned
Speaker 1: from India so his father could retire, and being again
Speaker 1: very indulgent parents, they just hired a private tutor for
Speaker 1: their son. They described him as a wayward pupil. We
Speaker 1: might say he had severe a d h D because
Speaker 1: he went on to quote torment and terrify this poor teacher,
Speaker 1: which sounds like some cousins I've had this this kid
Speaker 1: is this? Is this so interesting? Like, you know, to
Speaker 1: imagine what these kinds of kids would be like now, Like,
Speaker 1: I think one thing that probably has not changed is
Speaker 1: if you come from money, no matter how bad a
Speaker 1: student you are, no matter how many social failings you have,
Speaker 1: you're still gonna be okay and end up running a
Speaker 1: small country. Yeah, You're you're going to, like, even if
Speaker 1: you're a bad student, even if you you you can't
Speaker 1: abide by the rules, you're gonna wind up conquering like
Speaker 1: a large chunk of Malaysia. I feel like this could
Speaker 1: be like George W. Bush's story, Like if this we
Speaker 1: put this like into a different time. Yeah, I will
Speaker 1: say one of the differences between him is um he
Speaker 1: strikes me as one of those like you know every
Speaker 1: now and then you have those like rich kids who
Speaker 1: drop out of fancy college and just like join the
Speaker 1: military or something because I just got so much fucking energy.
Speaker 1: He's kind of that, that sort of kid. He really
Speaker 1: has this you know, like he's bad at school. He
Speaker 1: doesn't really learn any of the things he's supposed to learn,
Speaker 1: but he's he's devouring all of these like cheap kind
Speaker 1: of pulp fiction novels that are coming out about fighting
Speaker 1: pirates and fighting bandits in India, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: these stories that are written to propaganda as the men
Speaker 1: who are building the British Empire. Like he falls in
Speaker 1: love with that ship. Yes, that's who he wants to
Speaker 1: be as Alan Quarterman. I don't know if that fiction
Speaker 1: comes in at this point in time. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it had been written, but like precursors to that
Speaker 1: were out at least, and he he grows up desperately
Speaker 1: wanting to have a life of adventure in the near
Speaker 1: in the far East, you know, like that's the you know,
Speaker 1: he wants to meet uh what they would call like
Speaker 1: strange and foreign cultures and and find jim stones and
Speaker 1: romance princesses and all that stuff. Yeah, um, and because
Speaker 1: he comes from wealth and privilege, He's going to get
Speaker 1: a chance to try to do all of that, which
Speaker 1: is maybe why fiction should be illegal so adulthood. Adulthood
Speaker 1: came early to Englishmen in those days. At age sixteen,
Speaker 1: he was old enough to join the military. Just it's
Speaker 1: actually not all that different now, Like I have friends
Speaker 1: who joined at seventeen, so it hasn't changed a lot um. So,
Speaker 1: being hungry for glory and generally unable to focus, that's
Speaker 1: the path that he chose. He rose through the ranks quickly,
Speaker 1: not on merit, but due to the fact that rich
Speaker 1: families in those days could purchase ranks for their sons.
Speaker 1: By age eighteen, he was a lieutenant, a job even
Speaker 1: his most faughting biographers admit he was quote wholly unfitted for. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was stationed in India, where Robert Paine writes, quote
Speaker 1: James was in fact a bad soldier with a happy,
Speaker 1: go lucky attitude towards the army. His main task was
Speaker 1: drilling the native troops, and he liked to tell the
Speaker 1: story of how he was once drilling them and marching
Speaker 1: them across the parade ground when it occurred to him
Speaker 1: to tell them to march over a neighboring hill. He
Speaker 1: never saw them again. Collected scandalous story like like they
Speaker 1: just laughed. Yeah, they just left there, Like you think
Speaker 1: this British Empire thing's gonna go anywhere. That's true. He
Speaker 1: collected scandalous stories. This is not This will not be
Speaker 1: the first time that his troops run away from him.
Speaker 1: He collected scandalous stories about the officers and their wives
Speaker 1: and liked retelling them. The army amused him, but made
Speaker 1: a few demands on him. There were occasional big game hunts.
Speaker 1: There was always some pig sticking somewhere, but it was
Speaker 1: altogether more pleasant to bait the senior officers. He knew
Speaker 1: obscurely that something was wrong. He was bored by the
Speaker 1: society of white men thirsting for action and devilment. He
Speaker 1: was in a strange mood, caring and not decided, and
Speaker 1: caring and not caring, decided and not decided. No woman
Speaker 1: seemed to have interested him in India, and he spent
Speaker 1: a good deal of time composing poems, no better and
Speaker 1: no worse than hundreds of poems written by his contemporaries.
Speaker 1: We'll read one of his poems later weirdly erotic, so
Speaker 1: my favorite. He wrote constantly to his parents while he
Speaker 1: was stationed in India, and his focus was rather predictably
Speaker 1: self centered for a man of his age. Mostly he
Speaker 1: spread gossip about different wars and conflicts breaking out across
Speaker 1: the Empire and his hope that he might get to
Speaker 1: participate in them. He crowd over his promotions, and he
Speaker 1: repeatedly begged his father for money. For a long span
Speaker 1: of time. He repeatedly requested that his father by him
Speaker 1: an elephant, as he quote, simply cannot manage without one.
Speaker 1: I want the teslas of the day, and considerably better
Speaker 1: for the environment. If Elon Musk was just trying to
Speaker 1: get everybody to write elephants, I would have an issue
Speaker 1: with Yeah, that would be rad as hell. Act, everybody
Speaker 1: with a how to like fucking shooting bows at each
Speaker 1: other from the top of an elephant. Imagine bow hunting
Speaker 1: comes back into boat vogue too, probably still guns, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that would also be pretty rad. I would
Speaker 1: love to get into a gunfight from the top of
Speaker 1: an elephant anyway, So what you know, you want to
Speaker 1: get into an elephant based gun fights, Sophie, Come on,
Speaker 1: I don't grant that otto. But everyone's got a fucking
Speaker 1: elephant that's actually gonna make that game. Someone's got to
Speaker 1: make that game. Yeah, they'll be cross fired and then
Speaker 1: the elephants will get hurt. And then you made me
Speaker 1: feel bad the elephant gun thing. Plus I however, I
Speaker 1: think of elephant fights. I think of that really scary,
Speaker 1: those evil elephants from one of the Rings. Oh the elephants, Yea,
Speaker 1: they're not evil, they're just being used by evil men. No,
Speaker 1: but they're so scary and they get hurt and it
Speaker 1: hurt my heart. You know it doesn't hurt my heart though, Robert.
Speaker 1: The products and services that support this podcast, I hope
Speaker 1: one of them is an elephant manufacturer. Uh, we're back, um,
Speaker 1: And I just want to thank Elephants International for sponsoring
Speaker 1: this podcast. Elephants International. When you want an elephant, they're
Speaker 1: basically your only choice. The only the only elephant brand
Speaker 1: I know is a skincarebra, racist skincarebra and drunk elephant.
Speaker 1: Don't buy that, Oh Jesus, that I will say. From
Speaker 1: the few months I spent living in India, you did.
Speaker 1: I did run into in a couple of cities. Once
Speaker 1: in Delhi, and a few times in Jaipur, and then
Speaker 1: one or two other places people writing elephants in traffic
Speaker 1: with like eighteen wheelers next to them and stuff. And
Speaker 1: it's always seeing seeing like a crowded city street full
Speaker 1: of traffic and just a dude sitting on an elephant
Speaker 1: is just the most powerful flex I've seen in my
Speaker 1: entire life. Just the look of those men writing their
Speaker 1: elephant through town, just like, Okay, you know what, that's
Speaker 1: unbelievably powerful energy. If they have like a boom box
Speaker 1: with them while they're doing it, I'm all for it.
Speaker 1: I think that would be amazing. That would be rad
Speaker 1: as hell. So at this point in his life, newly
Speaker 1: on the cusp of adulthood, Brooke dreamed of making a
Speaker 1: quick fortune in the foreign service. There was always up
Speaker 1: trinity for grafton bribery in the service of the East
Speaker 1: India Company. And then after he made his money, he
Speaker 1: planned to make a glorious return to the comfortable life
Speaker 1: of an English gentleman. He wrote home, quote, my prospects
Speaker 1: are now so good that a few years hence I
Speaker 1: hope to return to England with a fortune which will
Speaker 1: render unnecessary my revisiting this country With what joy shall
Speaker 1: I give? With what joy? I give up what are
Speaker 1: termed the luxuries of India for a cottage and a
Speaker 1: snug fireside. This I am determined to do. So, he
Speaker 1: seems to have initially wanted to like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: really want to stay in India. I want to make
Speaker 1: my money, come buy a farm at home, and never
Speaker 1: leave again. You know, that's his initial goal. But this
Speaker 1: changes with his first experience of action. In late eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, the company went to war with Burma. Now,
Speaker 1: since this was a company army, much of the fighting
Speaker 1: was then with the regular units, which had been risen
Speaker 1: up and organized for profit by a corporate like entity
Speaker 1: whose employees acted as militant subcontractors. James volunteered to raise
Speaker 1: up a unit of a regular cavalry locals who would
Speaker 1: act as scouts for the campaign. Nigel Barley notes quote,
Speaker 1: he had found his niche a big fish in a
Speaker 1: small pond, operating on the margins of established order, and
Speaker 1: this was the kind of position to which he would
Speaker 1: gravitate all his life. So he finds this like very
Speaker 1: enticing and a lot better than you know, traditional military service.
Speaker 1: Uh So, once he put together this unit, he had
Speaker 1: to show it off to his superiors, and his standard
Speaker 1: way of doing this was to like get all of
Speaker 1: his soldiers organized out and order them to charge. Charging
Speaker 1: was in fact the only drill training that he ever
Speaker 1: gave his men. Um just blitz. He was every blitz,
Speaker 1: every play kind of guy. Yeah, yeah, he just blitz.
Speaker 1: Just just go rush at those guys. Then one day
Speaker 1: there's an actual battle and he orders his men to
Speaker 1: charge a group of Burmese fighters, which they promptly did,
Speaker 1: but then forgot to come back and he never saw
Speaker 1: his soldiers again. He's the worst. I love it. It's
Speaker 1: the worst. It's very funny. So in January James saw
Speaker 1: his first close combat against the Burmes in Roumapur, a PSAM.
Speaker 1: After shouting out what he what he described as a
Speaker 1: few inspiring words to his comrades, he charged headlong into
Speaker 1: a well defended elevated position, which is what most military
Speaker 1: experts would call a bad idea. One has to say
Speaker 1: that James Brooke was at least fully willing to engage
Speaker 1: in the same foolhardy acts of bravery that he demanded
Speaker 1: of his men, and on this occasion, stupid bravery worked.
Speaker 1: The Burmes were so shocked to see a single man
Speaker 1: charging them down, raving a saber and shrieking like a Hellian,
Speaker 1: that they broke and ran. James earned a commendation for
Speaker 1: bravery and was written up repeatedly for his raw physical courage. However,
Speaker 1: this kind of bravery tends to bite people in the ass.
Speaker 1: From the book White Raja quote. A few days after
Speaker 1: the General and command heard of a strong stockade being
Speaker 1: in front and sent out Lieutenant Brooke to reconnoiter, but
Speaker 1: he was not able to return in time to prevent
Speaker 1: the advance guard from falling into an ambuscade. As the
Speaker 1: Foremost company turned a corner in the road, they were
Speaker 1: received by a volley which knocked over a number of men.
Speaker 1: In the midst of the confusion, Brooke came galloping up,
Speaker 1: putting himself at the head of the men charged, and
Speaker 1: Foremost fighting fell. When the affair was over and the
Speaker 1: enemy driven from their stockades, Lieutenant Colonel Richards asked after
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Brooke, who he had seen fall, and he was
Speaker 1: reported dead. Take me to his body, was his reply,
Speaker 1: and they rode to the spot. Poor Brooks, said, the colonel,
Speaker 1: getting off his horse to have a last look at him,
Speaker 1: kneeling over him, he took him in his hand. He's
Speaker 1: not dead, he cried, and instantly had him removed to camp.
Speaker 1: So Brooks active military career had asked, like his actual
Speaker 1: time fighting had been about two days, and because of
Speaker 1: the severity of his injuries, he was spent the next
Speaker 1: five years recovering. So that's kind of the next half
Speaker 1: decade of Brooks life is he gets shipped back home
Speaker 1: because his injuries are so severe, and he spends most
Speaker 1: of it like in bed or in hospitals that the
Speaker 1: doctor and me just kind of wants to know. Maybe
Speaker 1: they didn't say it, but what do they say? What
Speaker 1: his injuries were? That brings us to one of the
Speaker 1: great mysteries over James Brooke. You're gonna like this one.
Speaker 1: So most sources at the time would note somewhat surreptitiously
Speaker 1: that he had been shot in the jump um. This
Speaker 1: rumor is common even today. I found a Daily Beast
Speaker 1: article that included the line, A painful war injury in
Speaker 1: what Victorian's delicately called his private parts probably discouraged brook
Speaker 1: from marrying. Because this guy again he conquers a large
Speaker 1: chunk of land he never has natural descendants, right, So
Speaker 1: one of the rumors that was kind of spread, may
Speaker 1: have been spread by him, was that he had been
Speaker 1: he'd been shot in the junk and so he was
Speaker 1: unable to reproduce and that's why he never had any descendants.
Speaker 1: Now more reputable modern scholarship suggests that this may have
Speaker 1: been a face saving lie, because depending on what you
Speaker 1: read and who you ask, it's likely that Brooke was
Speaker 1: either gay, a pedophile, or a bisexual man with a
Speaker 1: quasi sexual interest in extremely young men. We don't really know.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about this a lot throughout the episode, and
Speaker 1: I'll see where you land on this because one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why we don't really know if he's gay
Speaker 1: or a pedophile is a lot of times he's romancing
Speaker 1: people who are called boys, but who are also legally
Speaker 1: adults in the society that he's So there's sixteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: but that's also their adults who were like lieutenants in
Speaker 1: the military. So it I I don't know, like how
Speaker 1: he it's odd, it's very it's very uncomfortable, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of very kind of abusive stuff in Brooks
Speaker 1: background with this, But we don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: entirely how to characterize the man um but it seems
Speaker 1: likely that he was not in fact shot in the junk,
Speaker 1: but that was a kind of a face saving thing
Speaker 1: because he was not interested in women as a general rule.
Speaker 1: That seems accurate to say, not super interested in women,
Speaker 1: and he needed you know, you could get punished with
Speaker 1: execution for being a gay man and this, and it
Speaker 1: happened like the British like put people to death for
Speaker 1: being homosexual. So if he was, even if he was
Speaker 1: just kind of not straight like, even if he may
Speaker 1: have been sort of like more on the a sexual
Speaker 1: side of things, we don't really know. He had to
Speaker 1: come up with the reason why he wasn't having kids,
Speaker 1: and may have been shot in the junk was the reason.
Speaker 1: It's a good way to get sympathy. Yeah, good way
Speaker 1: to get sympathy, good way to have people not ask
Speaker 1: anymore about But that conversation, it's pretty much right there, somebody, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I have a terrible injury and it's rendered me infertile.
Speaker 1: You know, people aren't going to ask much more, got it.
Speaker 1: So we don't exactly know how he was injured, but
Speaker 1: it was bad you know, five years of recovery time
Speaker 1: is a pretty severe, um, pretty severe injury, and obviously
Speaker 1: medicine mac then is mostly like screaming and mercury. But um,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit better today. I should also note
Speaker 1: that information would come over come forward in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties to suggest that he had at least one
Speaker 1: bastard son that he hit away from the public eye. Again,
Speaker 1: we don't really know. It's all very muddled with this, dude.
Speaker 1: We'll talk some more about this later. So in any case,
Speaker 1: whatever the matter of his actual injury is, whatever the
Speaker 1: case of his sexuality is, Brooks spent nearly five years recuperating.
Speaker 1: He was better by eighteen thirty, but his journey back
Speaker 1: to India to resume his service with the company was
Speaker 1: dogged by bad weather and worse luck. He didn't arrive
Speaker 1: in Madras until twelve days before his deadline to return
Speaker 1: to service. Out his dad, being like an influential person
Speaker 1: within the company, was able to kind of pull some
Speaker 1: strings to get him more leave time. Um, but Brooke
Speaker 1: like didn't want to. Basically, what happens is he winds
Speaker 1: up arriving late, realizes he's not going to get to
Speaker 1: India in time for his deadlines. So he applies for
Speaker 1: a position to serve the company in Madras and that
Speaker 1: was refused and this made James Brooke very angry, so
Speaker 1: he resigned rather than get dismissed from the company. This
Speaker 1: was his public claim, at least now, the reality seems
Speaker 1: to be that his journey back through company controlled Southeast
Speaker 1: Asia had really like he'd seen a lot of things
Speaker 1: that made him angry at the way the company did things,
Speaker 1: and he no longer wanted to serve them. Um and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from a rite up by the University
Speaker 1: of Canberra here. Brookes subsequent musings in his journal suggest
Speaker 1: a growing divergence between the company's activities in India and
Speaker 1: his own emerging ideas about Britain and its role in Asia,
Speaker 1: which might have motivated him to seek new opportunities. He
Speaker 1: continued on in Castle Huntly to Chi that's the ship
Speaker 1: that he's traveling on to China via Penang, Malacca and
Speaker 1: Singapore with him on board, where James Templer, whose brother
Speaker 1: John would become his close friend and supporter, and Arthur Crookshank,
Speaker 1: who would also later become one of Brooks protegees and
Speaker 1: Borneo the ideas Brooke began to set down in his
Speaker 1: journal June. In Pain's view, bemoaned the deterioration of the
Speaker 1: native character arising from their intercourse with the whites. So
Speaker 1: you see what he's saying. This is interesting because it
Speaker 1: talks about the kind of racist that Brooke is becoming.
Speaker 1: Because you have different kinds of racists in the British Empire.
Speaker 1: You have the people these non white people's are inferior
Speaker 1: to us and we need to rule them. And you
Speaker 1: have these these non white people's um are being hurt
Speaker 1: by us. Uh, and so I need to like I
Speaker 1: need to uh fix them right. And then you have
Speaker 1: the idea that like I need to like raise up
Speaker 1: these people who are who are not inferior inherently but
Speaker 1: have an inferior culture. I mean to make their culture
Speaker 1: of it. There's a couple of different kinds of racists,
Speaker 1: like so close to getting it, but then just takes
Speaker 1: that left turn when you should just kept going with
Speaker 1: that thought. Yeah, and and book is I don't know
Speaker 1: if you call this the least offensive kind of the
Speaker 1: racist that you could be in the British Empire. Service
Speaker 1: but he rather than being kind of the standard sort
Speaker 1: of white supremacist, he's the noble, savage kind of white supremacist, right,
Speaker 1: and he felt that the decadent values of modernity were
Speaker 1: responsible for ruining the noble natives of India. Now interspersed
Speaker 1: within this bigotry was a morsel of troop truth. Brooke
Speaker 1: had spent his early career stumbling into a subcontinent that
Speaker 1: had seen its cultural substrate torn apart in the name
Speaker 1: of short term profits. Inter Village crop and water sharing
Speaker 1: arrangements built up over centuries to mitigate the shifting tides
Speaker 1: of climate had been ripped apart by venal corporate administrators
Speaker 1: who wanted to suck as much money out of the
Speaker 1: area as quickly as possible. This had reduced many people
Speaker 1: who had once been independent farmers two beggars on the street.
Speaker 1: The introduction of hard liquor had also had a visible
Speaker 1: negative impact on many of the now urban poor. James
Speaker 1: Brooke did not entirely blame his fellow English for the
Speaker 1: state of affairs um which is again part of his racism.
Speaker 1: As he reached the Malay Peninsula, he had his first
Speaker 1: close contact with Chinese people, many of whom ran businesses
Speaker 1: and carried on trading operations in the region, and he
Speaker 1: blamed a lot of what he was seeing in India
Speaker 1: on the Chinese. He wrote, quote, their habits are most filthy,
Speaker 1: their dress in the most unbecoming, their faces the most ugly,
Speaker 1: and their figures the most ungraceful to any people under
Speaker 1: the sun. They appear cut out of a log of
Speaker 1: wood by the hand of someone skillful savage. Their mouths
Speaker 1: are wide, their noses snub, and their eyes small and
Speaker 1: set and crooked in their heads. When they move they
Speaker 1: swing arms, legs and body like a paper clown pulled
Speaker 1: by a string. And to sum it up, all their
Speaker 1: color is a dirty yellow. So he is a really
Speaker 1: racist against Chinese people. So he has this view that like,
Speaker 1: Indian people are inherently noble and we've corrupted them, and
Speaker 1: they've also been corrupted by these like by the Chinese
Speaker 1: right um who he is super racist against like and
Speaker 1: this will continue to be a major factor in his life.
Speaker 1: He is a huge anti Chinese bigot um and as
Speaker 1: a huge anti Chinese bigot, James and a group of
Speaker 1: these guys that I mentioned are on the boat with
Speaker 1: him the world. This is yeah, yeah, the guys described
Speaker 1: as his protege. These are his friends. They might also
Speaker 1: be his lovers. Um, it's kind of hard to tell. Um.
Speaker 1: But at one point, while they're in Southeast Asia, Um,
Speaker 1: they dress up in yellow face. Uh yeah man. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A jape involved him and shipmates disguising themselves as Chinese
Speaker 1: at the Feast of Lanterns in order to penetrate the
Speaker 1: city declared out of bounds to Europeans. Being once in
Speaker 1: the whole party threw off disguise and broke some of
Speaker 1: the lanterns, which were accounted precious. They barely escaped with
Speaker 1: their lives. And how escape was possible is the marvel.
Speaker 1: James would always have it just it cracks me up
Speaker 1: because if they really did that, it cracks me up
Speaker 1: because it's like they do they really believe that they
Speaker 1: fooled anybody, did they Actually, we're getting away with this.
Speaker 1: They don't even know. They don't even know. We're dressed
Speaker 1: in local garb. Look at us, we're nailing it. We're
Speaker 1: nailing this. They don't even know. Yeah, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: bad at this and they do get caught. Um. So
Speaker 1: James would later learn to work with Chinese traders in
Speaker 1: the land that he eventually conquered, but he never got
Speaker 1: over his bigotry against them, which would eventually lead to
Speaker 1: horrific bloodshed. But at this point Brooke had been kind
Speaker 1: of He recognized the evils of the East India Company
Speaker 1: and some of the evils of colonialism. He knew there
Speaker 1: was something immoral going on in all of this um
Speaker 1: but unfortunately his reaction to this was to invent ways
Speaker 1: that he might do colonialism but nicer. Right. His solution
Speaker 1: to this is obviously an an unethical system, is I
Speaker 1: can do it better, as opposed to maybe we should
Speaker 1: get the funk out of here. Yeah. He even picked
Speaker 1: out a spot, Penang in Malaysia, that he thought was
Speaker 1: ripe for his kinder sort of colonialism. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from the University of Canberra again. He towed with
Speaker 1: the idea of Penang as the spot on which the
Speaker 1: experiment should be made for a permanent British colony in
Speaker 1: which individuals could reap the rewards of their own effort,
Speaker 1: unlike under the company's monopoly. Later, his interest grew to
Speaker 1: include Sumatra. Brooke and his companions soon developed a plan
Speaker 1: to return to the Eastern Archipelago for and seek for adventure.
Speaker 1: They called it the Schooner Plan, awaiting only the financial
Speaker 1: means to implement it. So this dude, like, he's not likable.
Speaker 1: There's no qualities I've seen that are redeeming. He's just
Speaker 1: like a fucking piece of ship. I mean, they all
Speaker 1: they all kind of are like. It's he's he's a
Speaker 1: he's a young he's a man who was raised to
Speaker 1: believe that he and people like him ought to rule
Speaker 1: the world, and he recognizes people actually ruling are bad
Speaker 1: at it, and the solution is for me to do
Speaker 1: it better. You know. Yeah, it's not great. He's he sucks.
Speaker 1: I don't like, yeah, this is behind the bastards. You
Speaker 1: might have heard of it. Yeah, why, thank you, Robert,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. No, but I'm just saying a
Speaker 1: lot of times when you're when we do these episodes,
Speaker 1: and it's like you can find like one thing where
Speaker 1: you're like, okay, well, the one redeeming thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is such a small thing. But he does seem
Speaker 1: to have a genuine affection for India at least, which
Speaker 1: is very little, and it's a slightly more mellow form
Speaker 1: of racism. But that's I guess something for the time.
Speaker 1: I don't like him saying it. Now. I'm still on defense.
Speaker 1: I'm still a defense about this guy. I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: gonna wait till the ends I make up my mind.
Speaker 1: I'm like forty minutes in not into him. Him he
Speaker 1: could still pull out of this tail span. He does not.
Speaker 1: The schooner plan, and a schooner is a type of boat,
Speaker 1: was very much the dream of an upper class English schoolboy. Basically,
Speaker 1: his idea was that, like he and his best buddies
Speaker 1: that he'd like met and hung out with on this
Speaker 1: boat and traveled around Southeast Asia with, we're going to
Speaker 1: like learn how to navigate and sail together under get
Speaker 1: his ship and sail to get away under his leadership,
Speaker 1: to have like adventures and participate in glorious bad goals
Speaker 1: and get rich. It was. His biographer describes it as
Speaker 1: quote an all boys adventure written large upon the real world.
Speaker 1: So again it's the kind of ship that he reads
Speaker 1: in these in these fantasy books that are very popular
Speaker 1: among young English boys of this day. He just wants
Speaker 1: to do it for real, and because he's a rich kid,
Speaker 1: he's going to get a chance to how old is
Speaker 1: he at this point, He's like early twenties of this.
Speaker 1: So it was always unclear how the schooner plan was
Speaker 1: going to lead to wealth and influence, for especially how
Speaker 1: it was going to lead to them creating colonies in Malaysia. UH.
Speaker 1: When James returned home to England and broke the news
Speaker 1: to his doting dad that he'd resigned his commission with
Speaker 1: the East India Company, he tried to convince the old
Speaker 1: judge to invest money in this scheme. He assured his
Speaker 1: father that with the vehicle quote equally capable of fight
Speaker 1: or flight, he and his friends would be able to
Speaker 1: make a fortune trading through Southeast Asia and having adventures
Speaker 1: in between deliveries. Now this is have you seen Stepbrothers.
Speaker 1: This is the scene where they show the stepdad the
Speaker 1: video boats and hose, boats and hose and they're they're
Speaker 1: trying to build their media company and they're like, check
Speaker 1: it out. We need a boat where it's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1: Boats and hose that's all he needs. And that's so
Speaker 1: it's like, um, it's it's like that's what's happening. But
Speaker 1: he's saying, we need to buy us a warship, like
Speaker 1: we we need we need to get like a battleship
Speaker 1: so that we can sail around and have adventures and
Speaker 1: that will be profitable somehow, Dad, trust me. So it's
Speaker 1: more like boats and guns and boys as opposed to
Speaker 1: now being a practical man. James's dad told him that
Speaker 1: his plan was nonsense, warned him that he had no
Speaker 1: head for business, and that even if he was good
Speaker 1: at business, working on a trading vessel was one of
Speaker 1: the most dangerous and miserable jobs that a person could get.
Speaker 1: But James kept badgering his old man, and as he'd
Speaker 1: done with the elephant, his dad eventually threw down the
Speaker 1: money to buy a two ninety tons slaver brig. It's
Speaker 1: called a slaver big because it used to be used
Speaker 1: for transporting slaves. You know, um no, we got that,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, so yeah. So Iphi's liking this guy,
Speaker 1: less and less. Less and less. Dad also not it.
Speaker 1: He's This is the era where slavery has been outlawed
Speaker 1: and the British Empire is fighting a crusade across the
Speaker 1: world against slavery that allows them to do more colonialism,
Speaker 1: like they're conquering land and subjugating people in the name
Speaker 1: of ending the slave trade. That's a lot of what's
Speaker 1: happening in this period. So, um, that's why, like this
Speaker 1: is in the news right now. Like, but there's been
Speaker 1: a couple of cases recently where it was some fucking
Speaker 1: I think it might have been pierced more than somebody,
Speaker 1: some British person was, Like, nobody has done more to
Speaker 1: fight against racism than the British Empire. Um. And what
Speaker 1: the referring to is all of these different anti slavery
Speaker 1: wars and crusades that the British Empire fought, and what
Speaker 1: they neglect to mention is that they were always used
Speaker 1: to subjugate people. They were used as justifications to militarily
Speaker 1: occupy places and and the denying pe their sovereignty. Like
Speaker 1: that was the only reason for these crusades. Um, it was.
Speaker 1: It was I don't know, a modern Americans can't imagine this,
Speaker 1: but imagine seeing a real problem and your government uses
Speaker 1: that real problem to justify conquering of people and taking
Speaker 1: their stuff. Again, very hard to very hard to visualize. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So James had only been home a few months when
Speaker 1: he convinced his dad to buy the boat, and by
Speaker 1: all accounts those few months had been much more than
Speaker 1: enough for him. He wrote to a friend that quote,
Speaker 1: I feel the irksomeness of civilized society greater than ever,
Speaker 1: and it's bonds shall not hold me long. My own
Speaker 1: families speak to me of the years we are to
Speaker 1: pass together, and that it always makes me sad to
Speaker 1: think that in my innermost heart, I have determined to
Speaker 1: plunge into some adventure that will bestow activity and employment.
Speaker 1: So he's he comes home and quits the company, and
Speaker 1: his family is happy to have him back and be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: We're all going to get to live together in England,
Speaker 1: and James kind of feels bad because he has again
Speaker 1: the kind of the shot of adrenaline that he had
Speaker 1: participating in that war. His experience traveling around is convinced
Speaker 1: him like, I'm not gonna stay in England, Like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go get into dumb adventures in Southeast Asia. Um.
Speaker 1: And he knows that um. And so in early eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, James finds himself with the giant boat purchased
Speaker 1: by his dad, which had a half dozen cannons and
Speaker 1: a hold for full of merchandise that he was going
Speaker 1: to trade in Singapore. He hired a crew in a captain,
Speaker 1: and he brought along some friends who again probably were
Speaker 1: romantic interests, and he set sail for the Far East.
Speaker 1: The trip was almost immediately a disaster jamesknew. James knew
Speaker 1: very little about boats or the nautical life, but he
Speaker 1: insisted on being in command over the venture, even though
Speaker 1: he'd hired a perfectly good captain. That said, his main
Speaker 1: issue with the captain he hired is something most of
Speaker 1: us will find sympathetic. Back in the early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: British naval discipline was held up with what I think
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill later described as room sodomy and the lash.
Speaker 1: So basically, the reason that like our boats are able
Speaker 1: to function is that we get our crews drunk at night,
Speaker 1: they get to funk each other, and we beat them
Speaker 1: when they break any rules. Right like that in the
Speaker 1: beatings were vicious, like the kind of whipping sailors would
Speaker 1: receive from minor and flat fractions of discipline are not
Speaker 1: unsimilar to the kind of whippings you would hear about
Speaker 1: slaves getting like people would get sentenced to sometimes hundreds
Speaker 1: of lashes with a leather whip in the back like
Speaker 1: people sailors died getting whipped. It was pretty pretty ugly
Speaker 1: naval discipline in this period of time. Um. Now, this
Speaker 1: uh was seen as necessary because obviously, when you're on
Speaker 1: a boat, especially the kind of boats they had back then,
Speaker 1: fucking up can get hundreds of people killed. Right, Which
Speaker 1: is not to say that it's cool to whip people
Speaker 1: for a problem like that, but that's why they saw
Speaker 1: it as necessary. If you don't have strict naval discipline,
Speaker 1: you're going to get everyone on the boat killed. James
Speaker 1: was not comfortable with cruelty. He preferred kindness, and he
Speaker 1: felt that sailors could be kept in line just as
Speaker 1: well by a loving attitude. He later wrote on the
Speaker 1: subject of discipline, quote, it was necessary to form men
Speaker 1: to my purpose, and by a line of steady and
Speaker 1: kind conduct, to raise up a personal regard for myself
Speaker 1: and an attachment for the vessel. Now we don't really
Speaker 1: know if this worked on board his first voyage, but
Speaker 1: it definitely piste off the captain and made for a
Speaker 1: tremendously unpleasant trip. Now, to make matters worse, James was
Speaker 1: as horrible as trade as his father had expected. He
Speaker 1: eventually sold their cargo for a massive loss in Macau
Speaker 1: and sailed back to England of failure. But he was
Speaker 1: still a rich failure because his parents are rare rich,
Speaker 1: and his parents also had no desire to chastise him
Speaker 1: for his funk ups. Soon after he landed back at home,
Speaker 1: his dad died and left all of his surviving children
Speaker 1: a considerable inheritance. James received some thirty thousand pounds sterling,
Speaker 1: which is the equivalent of about four or five million
Speaker 1: dollars today. So now he's independently wealthy. His first voyage
Speaker 1: has been a massive failure, but his dad dies and
Speaker 1: he's rich. He doesn't have to ask his family for
Speaker 1: anything else. So as soon as he gets back, he
Speaker 1: sells his old boat and he buys a new one.
Speaker 1: And this one is a yacht. Uh And when I
Speaker 1: say yacht here, I'm not talking about like just a
Speaker 1: rich guy boat. A yacht in this period of time
Speaker 1: is a military vessel. This was actually one of the
Speaker 1: old royal yachts that he buys um and it has
Speaker 1: a full complement of cannons. It's got something like a
Speaker 1: dozen big guns. And because of how British naval law
Speaker 1: was at the time it legally counted as a military vessel.
Speaker 1: This gave James the right to fly a special naval
Speaker 1: flag and to wear a special naval uniform, and to
Speaker 1: receive salutes from British naval vessels. While English sailors would
Speaker 1: know that this was not really a ship of the
Speaker 1: Royal Navy anymore, these perks meant that, as far as
Speaker 1: any foreigners knew, James was captaining a British Royal Navy
Speaker 1: vessel and representing the British government. And he will never
Speaker 1: go out of his way to disabuse them of this notion. Right,
Speaker 1: that's going to be important for what comes later. So
Speaker 1: the British are just okay with this because it's like,
Speaker 1: this is a super rich guy and this is how
Speaker 1: we treat our rich people. They can do whatever they want.
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that what's happening Again, A lot of
Speaker 1: the British kind of military apparatus at this point is corporate,
Speaker 1: so they're not against the idea of people of private
Speaker 1: entities representing the empire with military vessels. He buys a
Speaker 1: naval vessel that is still part of the navy, and
Speaker 1: because because of what this vessel is, he retains the
Speaker 1: right to represent himself as kind of like UM, almost
Speaker 1: like a naval national guard sort of thing, right, And
Speaker 1: I think that is part of the idea. If there's
Speaker 1: an emergency, all of these guys who own these different votes,
Speaker 1: we can call on them to serve UM. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the situation. Yeah, it's it's gonna get
Speaker 1: it's gonna get funds. So, with his yacht, which was
Speaker 1: called the Royalist, loaded with firepower, and of course a
Speaker 1: bunch of new friends, some of whom were probably lovers,
Speaker 1: James Brooks sets off on a new adventure, and again
Speaker 1: the goal was Malaysia, this time a place called sarah Wak,
Speaker 1: ruled over by the Sultan of Brunei. They left Port
Speaker 1: on July thirty nine. Upon arrival, their first task was
Speaker 1: to carry out a series of gun salutes, which means
Speaker 1: firing cannons wildly into the air. This was how Brooke
Speaker 1: decided he was going to signal his peaceful intentions to
Speaker 1: the locals. Yeah, I see this going wrong. As you
Speaker 1: might expect, there's a couple of I mean, cannon salutes
Speaker 1: are common things at this time, so it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: an aggressive act. But it's also not for nothing that
Speaker 1: he does this, because it lets everyone in sarah wak No,
Speaker 1: this guy's got a bunch of giant cannons right like that.
Speaker 1: It's it's, it's, it's It makes it clear that if
Speaker 1: you funk with this guy, he's got he's got some shit. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, James fires his cannons and then he
Speaker 1: sends a boat ashore to meet the local ruler, Rajah
Speaker 1: Muda Hashim. Now, this guy Hashim is basically the local
Speaker 1: governor under the command of the Sultan of Brunei. Um,
Speaker 1: he's one of the Sultan's uncles, I think. So he
Speaker 1: and Hashim smoked tobacco from foot long cigarettes, and they
Speaker 1: drink tea. They listened to a band, and they do
Speaker 1: all of the polite stuff you'd expect from a royal welcome.
Speaker 1: Hashim and his people assumed Brooke was there representing the
Speaker 1: British Empire, since he was dressed in his ship bore
Speaker 1: the flag of the Royal Navy. James Brooke told the
Speaker 1: Raja that he was just a private person, but he
Speaker 1: also presented the ruler with official documents that he claimed
Speaker 1: from British authorities. As a result, everyone there assumed he
Speaker 1: as in fact an agent of the British government. He
Speaker 1: told them his plan in the country was just to
Speaker 1: survey the coasts and collect specimens of the local fauna,
Speaker 1: but no one believed this either. When they got to talking,
Speaker 1: the Rajah told Brook that he was in an air
Speaker 1: in the area to put down a rebellion by the
Speaker 1: local Malaise, who were laying siege to the local capital,
Speaker 1: and we're purported to be allied with a nearby unfriendly sultan, Rajah.
Speaker 1: The Rajah's forces were not well armed, or well trained,
Speaker 1: or particularly numerous, and neither were the rebels. In practice,
Speaker 1: this meant that this war was mostly just a bunch
Speaker 1: of inconclusive street fights, with neither side able to really
Speaker 1: bring things to a close. The Rajah initially tried to
Speaker 1: downplay the rebellion, framing it as more of a mild
Speaker 1: squabble between children. James offered to help him anyway, and
Speaker 1: this sort of led the Rajah to believe that he
Speaker 1: was doing this on behalf of the British Empire. Nigel
Speaker 1: Barley writes quote, they, being the authorities in Brunei, had
Speaker 1: no idea they were entering into a political alliance not
Speaker 1: with a government, but with a spoiled young man from
Speaker 1: Bath squandering his inheritance. So within hours, this oiled young
Speaker 1: rich kid with a yacht had turned himself to the
Speaker 1: ostensible commander of a foreign military and their efforts to
Speaker 1: crush an insurgent rebellion. If he understood the gravity of
Speaker 1: the situation, James did not show it. When he landed
Speaker 1: on Sarah Wak, Sure, he convinced himself that he was
Speaker 1: the first white man to set foot there, and so
Speaker 1: he went barefoot through the jungle. This proved to be
Speaker 1: a bad idea, and his feet got horribly infected, which
Speaker 1: rendered him unable to walk under his own power, and
Speaker 1: he would have to be carried around for the next
Speaker 1: several days. So stupid, He's doing so great life though
Speaker 1: he's nailing it upward, fails upward every turn. He has
Speaker 1: failed upward into commanding the royal effort to fight an
Speaker 1: insurgency in Malaysia. I mean, just like the like scam
Speaker 1: of it all, and then like he does all these
Speaker 1: unnecessary things. I don't I don't like it. I mean
Speaker 1: he's just having a good time, He's just having oats.
Speaker 1: The injury did not dim brooks instant enthusiasm for the
Speaker 1: wilds of sarah Wak. He took his boats sailing to
Speaker 1: the interior, where it was immediately attacked by pirates made
Speaker 1: up of a knuckle of another local people, the Dyaks Uh.
Speaker 1: These Dyak pirates killed several Malays before being driven off,
Speaker 1: and James considered this all to have been very exciting.
Speaker 1: When it was explained that the Dyaks had a pin
Speaker 1: shot for taking and preserving heads, he was even more excited.
Speaker 1: With very little knowledge of either group, Brooks started stereotyping them,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote from the book White Rajah again.
Speaker 1: His infatuation with adolescence was being fully extended to to
Speaker 1: include the whole supposedly childlike people's. They were all becoming
Speaker 1: midshipman under his especial care, and already he was leaping
Speaker 1: to judgment, forming the stereotypes that would anchor brook rule.
Speaker 1: The Malays were natural gentlemen, but when bad could be
Speaker 1: sinuous and duplicitus, and they were lazy. The Dyaks were
Speaker 1: naturally honest, chased, passionate, and faithful people of the land,
Speaker 1: not the town. It was like the difference between cats
Speaker 1: and dogs repeatedly. The DIACs are explicitly compared to hunting
Speaker 1: dogs with a bad master. The master may be changed
Speaker 1: for a good one, but the dogs will take time
Speaker 1: to learn to not not a snap and bite, but
Speaker 1: they were a good breed and they would eventually be
Speaker 1: won by kindness. Yeah, yeah, real. And again this all
Speaker 1: he starts coming up with these ideas about people because
Speaker 1: he convinces this local ruler that he's a great military mind.
Speaker 1: And the ruler sends him to the interior and he
Speaker 1: gets a bunch of people killed in an ambush. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's just the worst, these guys murdering all of my
Speaker 1: these guys murdering all of them that I were sent
Speaker 1: out with. They're like good dogs with bad rulers. He's like,
Speaker 1: as long as Crookshanks is okay, I don't care that.
Speaker 1: It really is the attitude. No one white has died yet,
Speaker 1: So no one has died yet in his right, you
Speaker 1: know who won't get a bunch of a bunch of
Speaker 1: Malaysian volunteer soldiers murdered in an ambush and then right
Speaker 1: racist propaganda about them. We are back. So with his
Speaker 1: adventure done, and only some of them and the Rajah
Speaker 1: had lent him dead. Brooke considered his visit to sarah
Speaker 1: Waka's success, which again included him going into the jungle
Speaker 1: briefly and getting a bunch of people killed. He promised
Speaker 1: to return in a few months and then sailed off
Speaker 1: to funk around in other parts of Southeast Asia. This
Speaker 1: one up not being as fun as he expected, so
Speaker 1: he headed to Singapore after a few weeks, where stories
Speaker 1: of his pirate fighting exploits had spread. Now, local merchants,
Speaker 1: who long had to deal with direct pirates, praised him
Speaker 1: for bringing the might of the British Empire against those
Speaker 1: dastardly bandits. Being recognized by a couple of dudes absolutely
Speaker 1: ignited James's ego, and he went home to his and
Speaker 1: he wrote home to his mother quote, I really am
Speaker 1: becoming a great man, dearest mother. The world talks about me.
Speaker 1: The rulers of England make threatened to write me. Newspapers
Speaker 1: call me patriotic and adventurous. The geographical society pays me compliments.
Speaker 1: Am I not a great man? No, bitch, you are
Speaker 1: not a great man. His adventures include getting some guys
Speaker 1: killed in the jungle and then briefly firing a bunch
Speaker 1: of cannons that pirates and news like that, that's what
Speaker 1: he's done, completely up his feet and completely this is amazing.
Speaker 1: Am I not a great man? Mommy? Am I great? Yes? Mama?
Speaker 1: So the British Governor of Singapore did not think that
Speaker 1: that James Brooke was a great man. In fact, he
Speaker 1: yelled at James for inserting himself into politics with a
Speaker 1: sovereign nation. He's basically like, you're just a guy with
Speaker 1: a boat. How dare you like stick yourself in the
Speaker 1: middle of a civil war? Like? What is wrong with you?
Speaker 1: So there is at least a single rational person in
Speaker 1: this story so far. Brooke was so offended by this
Speaker 1: that he left Singapore straightaway and sailed for sarah Wak,
Speaker 1: where he could hang out more with his new friends,
Speaker 1: only some of whom he had gotten killed the first time.
Speaker 1: Now the Rajah was happy to have him back, or
Speaker 1: more accurately, was happy to have his cannons back, and
Speaker 1: James was introduced to the Raja's younger brother, Pince Badrudine,
Speaker 1: who was hot as fuck. Let me like this, this
Speaker 1: dude smoking. You have to assume smoking because of the
Speaker 1: very thirsty letter that James writes back to his mom,
Speaker 1: interesting quote. I wish you could know the panjarin bud Rudine, who,
Speaker 1: with the amiable and easy temper of his brother Muda Hashim,
Speaker 1: combines decision and abilities quite astonishing in a native prince
Speaker 1: and a directness of purpose seldom found in an Asiatic.
Speaker 1: As a companion, I found him superior to most of them,
Speaker 1: to most about me. And there is something particularly interesting
Speaker 1: in sounding the depths and shadows of an intelligent native
Speaker 1: mind and examining them freed from the trammels of court etiquette. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's amazing how even the dumb people back then could write. Well,
Speaker 1: it is right, like like he's so dumb, but he
Speaker 1: can actually actually put together words in the way they sounded. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the values of a classical education. I get.
Speaker 1: But he's I mean, that's an incredibly horny letter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's thirsty. That's what the kids say. Bud Rudine was
Speaker 1: very young, and at this point James had both the
Speaker 1: wealth and worldliness to seem very impressive to an inexperienced
Speaker 1: young prince. He adopted James as a mentor and started
Speaker 1: drinking wine and copying the way the Englishman dressed. James
Speaker 1: rewarded this behavior with lavish attention and constant praise. When
Speaker 1: it came time for James to go help the Rajah
Speaker 1: with his war, there was no question that Bodredine would
Speaker 1: stay behind. The Rajah had phrased the rebellion as less
Speaker 1: of a war and again more of a petty squabble
Speaker 1: between children. This was not quite accurate, but it certainly
Speaker 1: was not war as James had known it. In Burma
Speaker 1: and Sarawak, both sides sides tended to fight by building
Speaker 1: fortifications and engaging in short skirmishes in which people rarely died,
Speaker 1: and then ran back to build more fortifications. There was
Speaker 1: not much willingness to charge headlong into decisive battle, and
Speaker 1: this frustrated Brooke, who again only knew how to charge
Speaker 1: headlong into the enemy. He wrote, quote, we found the
Speaker 1: Grand Army in a state of torpor, eating, drinking, and
Speaker 1: walking up to the forts back and again daily. But
Speaker 1: having built these imposing structures, and their appearance not driving
Speaker 1: the enemy away, they were at a loss of what
Speaker 1: to do next. James took it upon himself to break
Speaker 1: the stalemate. The only way he knew how from the
Speaker 1: book White Rajah quote. The solution was as always that
Speaker 1: they should charge, even if this had to be on
Speaker 1: foot rather than on horseback as an India, and it
Speaker 1: was Boddine's overawing presents that would make them but the
Speaker 1: Malay's wrong footed James turned things around and refused to attack,
Speaker 1: urging that they dared not risk Bodredine's precious royal life.
Speaker 1: Bud Redine insisted that if I went, he would likely
Speaker 1: likewise go, and the Malaise insisted that if he went,
Speaker 1: they would not go. So Boderdine and James retired and
Speaker 1: directed the artillery from a place of safety. All went
Speaker 1: well until the surreptitiously advancing assault troops betrayed themselves by
Speaker 1: making the mistake of praying too loudly, attracting the attention
Speaker 1: of three old muskets in the hands of the defenders,
Speaker 1: at which they prayed still more loudly and swiftly retired
Speaker 1: at the front. Everyone built more forts, and James looked
Speaker 1: for more things to charge. So this is I realized, now,
Speaker 1: why why why he likes boats? Because that's like the
Speaker 1: one place his soldiers can't run for him. You know,
Speaker 1: they're on a boat. They can't leave him because it
Speaker 1: sounds like everyone must soldiers must think he's an idiot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they think he's danger endangering their lives because again,
Speaker 1: the only tactic he has his run headlong at the
Speaker 1: enemy's guns. Um. He's very zapp Brannigan energy here. Uh So,
Speaker 1: eventually the fighting came down to James taking the field
Speaker 1: with his fellow Europeans, all combat veterans charging. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: time he wears shoes and they do charge the enemy
Speaker 1: who breaks and runs. Um. And after this, James decided
Speaker 1: continued battle would be tedious. He he called a parlay
Speaker 1: and he told the rebels that if they quit, he
Speaker 1: would guarantee them their lives, and he'd stopped the soldiers
Speaker 1: he was with from looting their villages. James had no
Speaker 1: authority to promise any of this, and in fact, one
Speaker 1: of the other local rulers, a prince named Akoda, had
Speaker 1: already promised his men that they were about to get
Speaker 1: to loot all of these enemy villages. But James declared
Speaker 1: the formal rebels under his personal protection and insinuated that
Speaker 1: taking vengeance on them would be crossing the British Empire,
Speaker 1: and so as a result, this little war ends peacefully
Speaker 1: with a number, but with a tremendous amount of anger
Speaker 1: on Prince Makoda's part. The Raja, however, was overjoyed to
Speaker 1: have things over. Finally, he declared James a permanent residence
Speaker 1: of sarah Wak and gave him the right to trade
Speaker 1: within the country. James briefly tried to set up living
Speaker 1: as a merchant, bringing goods from Singapore to the isolated kingdom,
Speaker 1: but he proved to be as bad as trading as
Speaker 1: he had you know, as he'd always been. He's never
Speaker 1: any good at business or making money. So in short order,
Speaker 1: he decided to go back to the only thing he'd
Speaker 1: ever really wanted to do, having adventures while pretending to
Speaker 1: represent the Royal Navy. When he'd left sarah Wak, the
Speaker 1: Rajah had promised to build him a house as a
Speaker 1: sign of gratitude. Hashim had also promised to have a
Speaker 1: large shipment of antimony or which was mine in the
Speaker 1: area for him, like ready for him to go trade
Speaker 1: in Singapore. Um Now. When he landed, though, he found
Speaker 1: out that none of this would be done. There'd been
Speaker 1: no ore gathered, there had been no house built, and
Speaker 1: he was really angry. He was even more furious when
Speaker 1: he learned that, in accordance with ancient custom, the rulers
Speaker 1: in Brunei, which included the Raja's nephew, the Sultan, were
Speaker 1: about to allow a hundred Dyak war canoes to row
Speaker 1: down the river and raid Malay villages on the interior.
Speaker 1: This was in fact brutal, but it was a crutal
Speaker 1: crucial source of revenue for the Bruneians who ruled sarah
Speaker 1: wak Um. So basically, you've got the Sultan of Brunei
Speaker 1: who runs this country, and whenever you have kind of
Speaker 1: like a small group of people running an entire country,
Speaker 1: they're gonna do the same ship the British Empire always did,
Speaker 1: which is play different ethnic groups off of each other.
Speaker 1: And the way that Bruneians do this is they have
Speaker 1: an agreement with the Dyaks where they they'll let them
Speaker 1: go and raid and murder and like take slaves and
Speaker 1: and steal from villages in exchange for the day as
Speaker 1: paying bribes to the rulers in Brunei. And this is
Speaker 1: part of how the government perpetuates itself, right, this is
Speaker 1: kind of what they have instead of taxes on the
Speaker 1: day as is, they let them raid and they get
Speaker 1: some of the money that they get from raiding. And
Speaker 1: it's also how they stopped the Dyaks from rebelling and
Speaker 1: fighting against them. The safe the regular raiding season was
Speaker 1: seen as kind of like a safety valve for diet aggression.
Speaker 1: And this all made James furious, Like again, he comes
Speaker 1: into this system that has been set up for a while,
Speaker 1: and as brutal as it is, is the system that
Speaker 1: things work by in Sarah Wak, and he thinks it's immoral,
Speaker 1: so he demands the whole thing be canceled. So he
Speaker 1: was ignored in this. The Rajah was like, this is
Speaker 1: how we do things here. You're just some like white
Speaker 1: dude who came in. I'm not going to I'm not
Speaker 1: going to change our entire system of government for you. Um.
Speaker 1: And when this happens, James Brooke gets angry and he
Speaker 1: sails his warship inland and he basically trains his cannons
Speaker 1: on the Capitol and threatens the Raja into action. So
Speaker 1: the Rajah is like, well, I don't have any cannons.
Speaker 1: You have a warship, So I guess I'm going to
Speaker 1: call off the raid. But after his little stunt, James
Speaker 1: could tell the local leadership was no longer amenable to
Speaker 1: his presence. So he had been like the Rajah had
Speaker 1: been happy to make him a permanent resident and give
Speaker 1: him like some official status here after he threatens the
Speaker 1: Rajah with cannons. This is kind of no longer the case,
Speaker 1: as you might expect, So James decides that since things
Speaker 1: have become unfriendly, he's going to make some more threats,
Speaker 1: pointing out that he has the power to bring the
Speaker 1: British Navy down on Brunei, which is the capital of
Speaker 1: the entire region. Now at just this point, purely by coincidence,
Speaker 1: a company steamship entered the port to trade this served
Speaker 1: and again, because James isn't a navy vessel, when the
Speaker 1: company's steamship goes in, they have to salute him. So
Speaker 1: they do this whole salute and makes it look to
Speaker 1: the people on the ground like this boat is coming
Speaker 1: in to support him, and it makes it seem more
Speaker 1: credible than like, oh shit, he really can bring the
Speaker 1: entire Royal Navy down in our assets. If not fortuitous,
Speaker 1: that has happened at the exact moment. This happens like
Speaker 1: four times to him the luckiest dumb guy. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this obviously serves to make James is boasts more credible
Speaker 1: and knowing a moment when he sees one, James sails
Speaker 1: to Brunei and marches on the on the Sultan's palace
Speaker 1: with a company of heavily armed men. So basically, after
Speaker 1: scaring the local rulers in Sarawak, he sails to the
Speaker 1: capital of Brunei and comes ashore with like a hundred
Speaker 1: dudes strapped with rifles. So he comes to the Sultan
Speaker 1: with a bunch of armed mercenaries and a list of
Speaker 1: green princes bramming blaming Prince Mkota for trying to kill
Speaker 1: him and trying to capture English soldiers. This was mostly nonsense,
Speaker 1: but it gave James a justification for what he What
Speaker 1: he was about to do next. Makota, James said, was
Speaker 1: a destabilizing influence in the area. The Raja was not
Speaker 1: safe with Prince Mcoda around, and in order to make
Speaker 1: things safe for the Sultan and Brunei, the Sultan needed
Speaker 1: to make James Brooke the governor of sarah Wak for life. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: James couldn't guarantee the Rajah or the sultan safety. So
Speaker 1: and again he's saying that, like, I'm here, I wanted
Speaker 1: you need to do this so I can protect you
Speaker 1: from Prince Mkoda. But he's doing this while pointing a
Speaker 1: bunch of cannons at the Sultan and with a company
Speaker 1: of armed mercenaries at his back. So this is actually
Speaker 1: pretty smart of him. This is like one of the
Speaker 1: smarter things he's done. Yeah, he he figures out how
Speaker 1: to be how to be a white guy in this period.
Speaker 1: So again, and the Sultan at this point is not
Speaker 1: just staring at a bunch of guns. He's staring down
Speaker 1: a bunch of guns held and controlled by a guy who,
Speaker 1: as far as he knows, speaks with the authority of
Speaker 1: the queen of a land. So the Sultan submits. James
Speaker 1: Brooke was made the governor of sarah Wak and in
Speaker 1: his mind he James kind of believed that he was
Speaker 1: doing all this for selfless purposes, or at least that's
Speaker 1: how he portrayed it to other people. I don't know
Speaker 1: if i'd say he believed it, but that's how he
Speaker 1: He kind of writes home about this. Uh. Nigel Barley,
Speaker 1: his biographer writes, quote, James always considered his actions to
Speaker 1: be genuinely for the benefit of locals, whether the locals
Speaker 1: realized it or not, so that his interests in There's
Speaker 1: would naturally coalesce. It was a fundamental tenant of his
Speaker 1: rule that the Brooks governed only by consensus, Bruneyan's by
Speaker 1: unprincipled oriental oriental despotism. But this was hardly the free
Speaker 1: entreaty or election by grateful natives that Brooke history would record,
Speaker 1: so he would kind of he becomes the governor of
Speaker 1: sarah Wak through threatening a guy with guns. But he
Speaker 1: justifies this by saying the Bruneians are dictators right there,
Speaker 1: and they're they're ruling by terror and fear and violence,
Speaker 1: which is true. But he also is kind of ignoring
Speaker 1: the fact that he became the ruler by reatening to
Speaker 1: get gunned down. The existing pretty slick, though I'll give
Speaker 1: him credit for that. It is slick. It is it'll
Speaker 1: get sick because he's not He's not what he wants
Speaker 1: to be. At this point, he has been made the
Speaker 1: governor of a region of Malaysia for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life, and he's been made it through like a
Speaker 1: handshake agreement. He doesn't have any paper that like signifies this.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have his descendants don't have any right to
Speaker 1: the position. So his next tasks are going to be
Speaker 1: finding out how to turn himself from like governor of
Speaker 1: this island to basically king. So that's the journey we're
Speaker 1: going to cover when we go to part two of
Speaker 1: the James Brooks story. But for right now, it's time
Speaker 1: for part two of the coma story where you plug
Speaker 1: your plugables. Oh that was really good again, thank you.
Speaker 1: I am a professional broadcasting I'm learning a lot um.
Speaker 1: You can find us at the House of Pod on
Speaker 1: Twitter and you can listen to our podcast pretty much
Speaker 1: in all the same place as you listen to your
Speaker 1: other podcast called the House of Pod. It's a medical podcast,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think you might enjoy it if
Speaker 1: you're not a doctor. People seem to do that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of relatable and if you want to hear
Speaker 1: how doctors actually talk when they're like, you know, talking
Speaker 1: to each other, uh, in non front of like you know,
Speaker 1: like a lecture hall or something like that. This is
Speaker 1: the show for you. You like it, try it, you
Speaker 1: don't you know free that was a great pitch. Check
Speaker 1: out the House of pod Uh and I don't know,
Speaker 1: check out buying a naval vessel and conquering chunk of Malaysia. Um,
Speaker 1: keep it a shot, you know it might work out
Speaker 1: for you. Always that probably isn't a good way to
Speaker 1: end this episode. I can almost go the music in
Speaker 1: the background, which, yep, here we go. Let's let the
Speaker 1: music uh, distracting the fact that I just endorsed imperialism.