WEBVTT - Part One: The Family That Stole Malaysia 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:07.400 M hmm, what kind of kind of struck out? Honestly, Uh, 0:00:07.640 --> 0:00:12.280 my Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, the podcast 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.960 where I talk about bad people. But this morning I 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:19.000 woke up like seven minutes before we started recording, and 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:24.240 so I'm I'm pounding coffee into my face and it's one. Um, 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:28.800 just for the rock, It's it's the morning, Sophie. It's like, 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:32.159 this is like nine am for you. Yeah, this is 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:34.839 like seven am for me. Um. I don't think anyone's 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:40.640 ever awoke this early, except from my guest today, doctor 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:46.159 kind of holda. Yeah, you just nailed that intro. By 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:50.159 the way, thank you, professional broadcasting at its finest. Thank you, 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:53.120 Thank you. I was we just did the Rush Limbaugh episode. 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:55.280 So I've been I've been thinking of a true professional 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:57.960 and trying to trying to really nail it down, which 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:00.760 is why I got drunk last night and slept until 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:07.200 I did not like that reference to Rush Limbaugh. L 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:16.640 Rush Bow. Yeah. Uh, you are a podcaster, one of 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:20.040 the hosts of the House of Pod podcast. Um, you 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:23.920 are are my my go to source for medical advice 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:29.560 or bastard. Um we we we got to hang out. 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:32.240 One of the last times, uh, that I got to 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:35.720 hang out with anybody outside of um my riot friends 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:38.360 in Portland right before the plague went down. That would 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:40.200 have been what when when I was on your podcast, 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:42.920 that would have been like January. It's worth noting because 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:45.880 you came and I looked this up because somebody posted 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.920 this and they posted the transcript. I don't know how 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:51.280 they did that, but they posted the transcript of the episode, 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:53.280 which we don't do, but someone else did and they 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:58.040 posted it because it was like January third, and I 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:00.640 asked you, I said, listen, how is the world gonna end? 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:03.160 And you said, here's what's gonna happen. Some kid's gonna 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:06.280 go off to China for like vacation. He's gonna come 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:09.880 back to his job at like Starbucks, and he's not 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:12.320 going to have enough insurance to cover his days off. 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:14.519 He's gonna have some sort of illness and he's gonna 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:16.360 spread it to everyone at his job, and it's gonna 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:18.920 spread throughout the country and it's gonna be awful, and 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:24.440 we're all like, alright, dude. It was a little paranoid, 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.040 and then it happened like a couple of months later. 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:29.519 I remember very distinctively, and it was I think you 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:31.799 were one of our last in studio guests too, so 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.079 early January. Don't you know, the world, don't ever ask 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:39.200 this fool to predict anything. He's a goddamn nightmare. It's creepy. 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:46.360 It's accurate that one. Well, thankfully we do seem to 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:51.359 be fingers crossed knock on wood, um, nearer to the 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:56.400 end than the beginning of this particular biblical plague. Um hopefully. 0:02:56.880 --> 0:02:59.320 Uh So I thought we'd we'd talk about a subject 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:03.600 that has absolutly nothing to do with mediciner plagues. Yeah, 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.200 but does have a lot to do with Malaysia. In fact, 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:09.799 we're talking about the family that stole Malaysia today. Um. 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:13.680 Have you ever heard of the brook dynasty? No? Are 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:18.120 they like the diamond people? No? Um, I think they 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:20.040 used to. I think they also owned a company that 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:23.400 made cookies. But no, they are a family who is 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:26.600 the only family in the history of imperialism that I'm 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.600 aware of, uh, to steal an entire country for their 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.440 own personal property, and that as like part of a country, 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:37.120 not as not steal it for the British Empire, for themselves, 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:40.680 for the Brooks. Yeah, for the Brooks. Yes, this one 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:43.600 for the Brooks. Yeah, a large chunk of Malaysia was 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:46.680 their personal property for quite for like a century. They 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:50.280 gave it up in the late nineteen forties. Oh my god, No, 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:52.480 I have not heard. I'm excited. Yeah, yeah, this is 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:54.800 a fun one. We're mostly going to be talking about 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:58.080 James brook who was the guy who actually stole Malaysia um, 0:03:58.120 --> 0:03:59.600 but which had a little bit about the rest of 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:03.560 his family at the end here. So without further ado, 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:08.080 let's talk about the Brooks. So, once upon a time 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.400 on the island of Borneo there existed a powerful kingdom 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:14.200 called Brunei. Now there's still a Brunei in Borneo, and 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:16.320 it's got a sultan and he's super rich. Everybody's heard 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:17.960 of this. Brune I used to be for a while 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:20.760 was a protectorate of of the British crown and stuff, 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:23.039 and how that happened is kind of in this story 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:26.240 as well. Modern Brunei, though, is really tiny. It's like 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:28.880 a micro state, like right, It's it's smaller than some 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:32.120 people's neighborhoods. Back three or four hundred years ago, though 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:35.680 Brunei controlled a large chunk of the island of Borneo. 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.280 It was a sizeable country and it was a big 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:42.000 part of like kind of modern Indonesia Malaysia. Um. It 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.400 was a powerful force within that area. The reason why 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:48.359 it's a micro state today lays with the actions of 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.200 a single British family called the Brooks. There why it 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:53.679 went from like a whole glass country to a tiny 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:58.119 little micro state. So today Borneo is split between several 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:01.360 Malaysian states. It's part of Indonesia and the Kingdom of Brunei. 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:04.320 So the island of Borneo part of its Indonesia, part 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:06.560 of its Malaysia, part of it's the Kingdom of Brunei. 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.839 It's a very complicated place geographically, there's a lot going 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:13.040 on with map lines there um. But back in the 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:15.719 early eight hundreds it was pretty much just Brunei with 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.200 a little bit of Dutch um. The Dutch control with 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:20.279 chunk of it for god knows what reason, mainly for 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:24.080 trading spices and ship The Sultan of Sulu, who was 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:26.760 this vassal of the Spanish owned Philippines, also owned a 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:29.280 little bit of the east part, eastern part of Brunei 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:32.240 or eastern part of Borneo. But mostly Borneo was controlled 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.560 by Brunei. Now that changed in eighteen thirty nine with 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:38.799 the arrival of a very dumb, young adventurer named James Brooke. 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:41.800 He was born on April twenty nine, eighteen oh three, 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.120 as the son of Judge Thomas Brooke and Anna Maria 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:47.960 Stewart was you might guess from the judge part, James 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:51.039 was born into enormous wealth and privilege. His father was 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.400 in Yeah, an English judge. We're talking like judges back 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:56.919 when that means something not like not like now with 0:05:57.000 --> 0:06:00.480 our fucking bullshit. Sorry, I might be going of court soon. 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:08.479 I probably shouldn't talk. They're so rad. Everybody loves a 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:13.720 good judge with the wigs man incredible look, powder and mallets. 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:17.599 Who doesn't like a mallet? This is These are judges 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.560 from the powder and Mallets era. And he's a judge 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:23.240 in um in India, so he's got to wear like 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:27.239 James's dad, Thomas has to wear like that whole judge 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:32.400 get up and like sweltering degree Indians something mallet situation. 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:34.839 They're like, I feel like I could, I could do things. 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:39.000 The past must have smelt so bad, you know, just 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.400 all the stuff they wore, lack of showers, and bathing, 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:45.880 just coding like themselves with powder on top of the 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:48.920 stenchion b O, just to try and mask it. Just 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:51.960 dousing themselves with tobacco smoke to try to dull it 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:57.040 for everyone to burn their noses out. Yeah. So Thomas 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:00.640 Brooke James Brooke is born eight oh three to a 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:04.279 judge named Thomas Brooke who lives in India. Um and 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:07.479 he ruled upon the High Court of Benares interpreting the 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.160 laws of the East India Trading Company, which ruled India 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:12.280 at this time. So he's not a judge for like 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.440 the government. He I mean, he is, but the government 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:18.040 is a corporation, like he is a corporate judge. It's 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:21.680 very cyberpunk, even though it's happening in eighteen o three. 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:25.280 You know, you have to like put in reference to 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:27.960 something I can understand, so because I have, you know, 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:31.560 the most part, a pretty awful American education. So do 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:33.440 you have to like put it in reference to a 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:36.920 game or some sort of Disney movie. Yeah, that covered 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:39.400 this the help. It's like it's like Blade Runner, but 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:44.800 everyone's dying of cholera all the time. So James had 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:47.160 a few siblings. He had an older brother, who joined 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:49.600 the army and again the army is the corporate army, 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:52.720 and died immediately, leaving James to be the sole inheritor 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:55.680 of the family fortune. He also had four sisters, two 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.160 of whom died young, not in India, but in the 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:02.080 filth Strewent Petri Dish that was nineteenth century Britain. Now 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.520 somewhat unusually for a boy boy born into his social class, 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:08.280 James spent the first twelve years of his life in India. 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:10.640 He fell in love with the country, it's culture and 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:13.000 the feeling of adventure that seemed ever present on the 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:16.200 outskirts of Empire. But he also grew up very aware 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.000 of the many failures of the East India Company. The 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:21.520 first Great Bengal Famine, which may have killed as many 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:25.440 as thirty million people accord, occurred in the early seventeen seventies, 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:28.560 about a generation before James's birth. The nars is on 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:31.120 the outskirts of Bengal, and the shock waves of so 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:33.920 much death and social collapse would have been evident even 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:36.240 in his youth. You know, twenty thirty years after thirty 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:38.880 million people die, you're going to see some of the 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:41.680 like the shock waves of that it's not. It hasn't 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:45.679 passed entirely. Um. Now we've covered that on a previous 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:47.800 episode Behind the Bastards. But the short of it is, 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:51.520 once the East India Company stole Bengal, the uprooted millennia 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:54.720 of agricultural traditions to maximize profits and wound up starving 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:58.040 the whole country to death. So, unlike many imperialists of 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:00.520 his era, James did not grow up with a rosy 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.440 idea of the British Empire. His biographer Nigel Barley notes, 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:08.040 quote India became, to the whole Brook Dynasty an enduring 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.600 and terrible example of how not to run a country. So, 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:16.320 if you've ever been to India, Benares Is includes as 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:19.160 a region that includes a modern day city called Varanasi, 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:21.280 which is where James would have spent a lot of time. 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.600 Varanasi is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:27.200 the planet and it's the city that it hosts what's 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:29.640 called the Burning Got, which is where you can stand 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:31.680 along the banks of the Ganjis every night and watch 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.560 people burn the bodies of their loved ones. Um. It's 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:36.439 a place you can actually like, I've been there. It's 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:40.000 it's a a pretty powerful place to see. It's one 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:42.480 of those intense places I've ever been, and it would 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:45.439 have been. It was that intense when when James was there, 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:48.280 and he grew up as a big kind of like 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.280 childhood event of his watching these these burnings on the 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:54.920 banks of the Ban, the Ganjis and Varanasi. Um and 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:58.760 this has an impact on him. Um So Yeah. Now, 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:02.600 obviously the year Appean dwellings in Benaras were deliberately built 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:07.000 upriver from where the actual like native Indian people lived, 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:09.160 but it would have been hard to miss this entirely, 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:12.640 and in general, James Brooke got to explore a lot 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:14.840 in his youth in India because Thomas Brooke was bad 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.520 at imposing boundaries on his son. He was not a 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:21.360 particularly bright man. He's described by a biographers as not 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:25.320 really clever, but a good talker, which in nineteenth century 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:27.640 English terms means he had a dull mind. But he 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:29.640 went to a good school, so he was a dumb 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:35.559 guy who had a good education. Yeah. Yeah, And this 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.160 is like you'll hear the people described this way a 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:40.440 lot in British imperial history. These are the kind of 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:42.920 men who build the British Empire. They are dumb men 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:46.559 who are well educated, which is a very dangerous combination. 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:48.760 Those are the kind of guys that will do genocides 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.400 for profits. Yeah. So Thomas was a doting father, which 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:54.120 is probably a part of why he allowed James to 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:57.640 stay in India so late. Normally, a kid like James, 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.199 born to the upper crust would have left India at 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:03.640 age six to go attend school in in England. Um. 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:05.480 It was that was it was uncommon for them to 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:07.280 stay in India too long, and part because Indie was 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:10.360 seen as being very dangerous, but in part because if 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:12.280 you're an upper crust kid, you want to get into 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:17.320 that British education system is as quickly as possible. Um. Now. 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:19.320 So again, the fact that he waited until he was 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:23.240 twelve was kind of odd, um and probably good for James. 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.719 When one considers all of the inhuman crimes of the 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:28.800 British Empire, it's worth noting that said crimes were carried 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:30.959 out by men who had been separated from their parents 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:33.600 at age six and shoved into a boarding school when 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:37.880 they were of kindergarten age. Well, the thing I'm sure 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:39.760 I'm going to hear more about this. But the sense 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:41.840 I'm getting is that even though he's seeing all this 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.959 bad stuff and he has the opportunity to be like 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:48.280 this shouldn't happen, or he sees the drawbacks at least 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:51.320 of this colonialism, he's not going to learn the right 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:53.120 lessons from it. That's the sense I'm gonna get, just 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:55.960 because I know the show and it bums me out already. 0:11:56.440 --> 0:11:59.439 He is not going to learn the right lessons of it. Um. 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:01.200 But he's all going to grow up to be very 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:03.560 different from a lot of the other imperialists of his 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:06.120 era because he has a different background. Right. The whole 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:09.960 British education system is geared towards producing the kind of 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:12.480 men who can who can further the empire, and he 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:14.920 doesn't really get trapped in that in the same way 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:17.880 that other people do, um, because his parents keep him 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.800 out of it for a much longer time. UM. So 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:24.920 when he's twelve, he finally uh gets sent over to 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:28.280 England to go to boarding school. Um. And the fact 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:30.760 that he goes so much later than his peers makes 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:33.120 it a lot harder for him. All the other boys 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.000 of his age group had had five or six more 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:36.960 years of formal schooling. Than him by the time he 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:39.839 arrives at boarding school. He also had to adapt from 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.320 the freedom of unsupervised life in India to being the 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.960 prisoner of a boarding school. One of his biographers, Johnson 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:49.560 Jin writes, quote, the want of regular training was of 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:52.400 infinite disadvantage to young Brooke, who thus started life with 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.600 little knowledge and with no idea of self control. So 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:58.440 he's kind of a wild kid by the standards of 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.040 you know, British this idea at this point. Um his 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:05.280 education at King Edward the sixth Grammar School in Norwich 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.240 was something of a disaster. He hated arithmetic and grammar, 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:11.559 and he much preferred doodling in his notebooks. His early biographers, 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.120 who were all propagandists of the British Empire, guys like 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:17.080 Robert Payne Well write quote, it was remembered that he 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:19.720 never told a lie and demonstrated at an early age 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:22.560 a character of the utmost nobility. Uh. They'll say that 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:24.720 he was seen by the other boys as a natural leader, 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:26.720 and these are all lies. There's no evidence in any 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:32.880 of this, like um, and he was a very good 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:36.200 liar later in life. So this this, this is just 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:40.760 kind of like traditional biographer lying nonsense. The reality seems 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:43.360 to be that he was somewhat ostracized. His one good 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.760 friend was another boy named George Western. Uh, and one year, 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:49.200 instead of going off to holiday, George announced that he 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.160 was heading to see and joined the Navy as a 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.520 cabin boy. He probably died horribly, but James thought that 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:57.120 the whole idea sounded terribly romantic, and he couldn't stand 0:13:57.160 --> 0:13:59.520 to stay at school without his only friend. So when 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:02.280 George leaves, he borrows money from a schoolmate and left 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:04.760 with a very public announcement that he too was going 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:07.880 to see. Uh. Now, the reality is that he actually 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:10.000 took the money he'd taken from a classmate and headed 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:12.480 to hide at his grandmother's yard. Uh. He camped in 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:16.400 her garden until her servants caught him. Actually, I'm sorting 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:18.760 to like him now, Yeah. No, I mean there's there's 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:23.000 parts of this kid that are fun. Yeah. So he uh, 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:25.840 he camps in his grandma's yard until her servants find him, 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:28.840 and she sends him back to his school headmaster. Um, 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.800 but the headmaster refuses to admit him because he'd proven 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:34.600 himself to be quote a rebel. Uh. This could have 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:37.960 caused great scandal, But not long after his parents returned 0:14:38.000 --> 0:14:40.880 from India so his father could retire, and being again 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:43.840 very indulgent parents, they just hired a private tutor for 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:47.360 their son. They described him as a wayward pupil. We 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:50.440 might say he had severe a d h D because 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:53.280 he went on to quote torment and terrify this poor teacher, 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:59.680 which sounds like some cousins I've had this this kid 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:02.360 is this? Is this so interesting? Like, you know, to 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:05.920 imagine what these kinds of kids would be like now, Like, 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:08.520 I think one thing that probably has not changed is 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:11.760 if you come from money, no matter how bad a 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:16.080 student you are, no matter how many social failings you have, 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:19.000 you're still gonna be okay and end up running a 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:21.880 small country. Yeah, You're you're going to, like, even if 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:24.440 you're a bad student, even if you you you can't 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.160 abide by the rules, you're gonna wind up conquering like 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:29.840 a large chunk of Malaysia. I feel like this could 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:33.280 be like George W. Bush's story, Like if this we 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.520 put this like into a different time. Yeah, I will 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:40.960 say one of the differences between him is um he 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:42.760 strikes me as one of those like you know every 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:44.760 now and then you have those like rich kids who 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.240 drop out of fancy college and just like join the 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:50.320 military or something because I just got so much fucking energy. 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:52.800 He's kind of that, that sort of kid. He really 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:55.480 has this you know, like he's bad at school. He 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:57.760 doesn't really learn any of the things he's supposed to learn, 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:01.720 but he's he's devouring all of these like cheap kind 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:04.720 of pulp fiction novels that are coming out about fighting 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:07.920 pirates and fighting bandits in India, and like, you know, 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:10.560 these stories that are written to propaganda as the men 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:12.960 who are building the British Empire. Like he falls in 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:18.440 love with that ship. Yes, that's who he wants to 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:20.800 be as Alan Quarterman. I don't know if that fiction 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:22.320 comes in at this point in time. I don't know 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:24.880 if it had been written, but like precursors to that 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:28.040 were out at least, and he he grows up desperately 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:30.280 wanting to have a life of adventure in the near 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:33.160 in the far East, you know, like that's the you know, 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:35.760 he wants to meet uh what they would call like 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:39.320 strange and foreign cultures and and find jim stones and 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:44.080 romance princesses and all that stuff. Yeah, um, and because 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:45.920 he comes from wealth and privilege, He's going to get 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:48.560 a chance to try to do all of that, which 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:54.640 is maybe why fiction should be illegal so adulthood. Adulthood 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.800 came early to Englishmen in those days. At age sixteen, 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:00.400 he was old enough to join the military. Just it's 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.000 actually not all that different now, Like I have friends 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:06.879 who joined at seventeen, so it hasn't changed a lot um. So, 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:10.280 being hungry for glory and generally unable to focus, that's 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:12.959 the path that he chose. He rose through the ranks quickly, 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:14.960 not on merit, but due to the fact that rich 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:17.439 families in those days could purchase ranks for their sons. 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:20.280 By age eighteen, he was a lieutenant, a job even 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:28.800 his most faughting biographers admit he was quote wholly unfitted for. Uh. 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.800 He was stationed in India, where Robert Paine writes, quote 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.280 James was in fact a bad soldier with a happy, 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.159 go lucky attitude towards the army. His main task was 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:40.520 drilling the native troops, and he liked to tell the 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:42.560 story of how he was once drilling them and marching 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:44.640 them across the parade ground when it occurred to him 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:46.959 to tell them to march over a neighboring hill. He 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:53.920 never saw them again. Collected scandalous story like like they 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:58.040 just laughed. Yeah, they just left there, Like you think 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:07.159 this British Empire thing's gonna go anywhere. That's true. He 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:09.719 collected scandalous stories. This is not This will not be 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:14.159 the first time that his troops run away from him. 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:17.119 He collected scandalous stories about the officers and their wives 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:19.640 and liked retelling them. The army amused him, but made 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:22.520 a few demands on him. There were occasional big game hunts. 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:24.879 There was always some pig sticking somewhere, but it was 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:27.960 altogether more pleasant to bait the senior officers. He knew 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:30.520 obscurely that something was wrong. He was bored by the 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:33.399 society of white men thirsting for action and devilment. He 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:36.399 was in a strange mood, caring and not decided, and 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:39.560 caring and not caring, decided and not decided. No woman 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:41.560 seemed to have interested him in India, and he spent 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:44.040 a good deal of time composing poems, no better and 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.760 no worse than hundreds of poems written by his contemporaries. 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:52.399 We'll read one of his poems later weirdly erotic, so 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:59.040 my favorite. He wrote constantly to his parents while he 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:02.040 was stationed in India, and his focus was rather predictably 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:04.399 self centered for a man of his age. Mostly he 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:07.399 spread gossip about different wars and conflicts breaking out across 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:09.119 the Empire and his hope that he might get to 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:11.919 participate in them. He crowd over his promotions, and he 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:14.800 repeatedly begged his father for money. For a long span 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:17.199 of time. He repeatedly requested that his father by him 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:23.600 an elephant, as he quote, simply cannot manage without one. 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:28.520 I want the teslas of the day, and considerably better 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:32.159 for the environment. If Elon Musk was just trying to 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:35.200 get everybody to write elephants, I would have an issue 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:37.760 with Yeah, that would be rad as hell. Act, everybody 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:40.760 with a how to like fucking shooting bows at each 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:43.679 other from the top of an elephant. Imagine bow hunting 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:49.000 comes back into boat vogue too, probably still guns, Yeah, 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:51.680 I mean that would also be pretty rad. I would 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:53.359 love to get into a gunfight from the top of 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:59.119 an elephant anyway, So what you know, you want to 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:01.680 get into an elephant based gun fights, Sophie, Come on, 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:05.440 I don't grant that otto. But everyone's got a fucking 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:08.679 elephant that's actually gonna make that game. Someone's got to 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:10.959 make that game. Yeah, they'll be cross fired and then 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:16.359 the elephants will get hurt. And then you made me 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:19.639 feel bad the elephant gun thing. Plus I however, I 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:21.919 think of elephant fights. I think of that really scary, 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:26.080 those evil elephants from one of the Rings. Oh the elephants, Yea, 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:29.119 they're not evil, they're just being used by evil men. No, 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:32.320 but they're so scary and they get hurt and it 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:35.240 hurt my heart. You know it doesn't hurt my heart though, Robert. 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:39.400 The products and services that support this podcast, I hope 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:49.960 one of them is an elephant manufacturer. Uh, we're back, um, 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:52.920 And I just want to thank Elephants International for sponsoring 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:57.680 this podcast. Elephants International. When you want an elephant, they're 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:01.359 basically your only choice. The only the only elephant brand 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:05.320 I know is a skincarebra, racist skincarebra and drunk elephant. 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:11.159 Don't buy that, Oh Jesus, that I will say. From 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:13.720 the few months I spent living in India, you did. 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:15.640 I did run into in a couple of cities. Once 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:17.600 in Delhi, and a few times in Jaipur, and then 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:20.480 one or two other places people writing elephants in traffic 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:22.720 with like eighteen wheelers next to them and stuff. And 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:26.200 it's always seeing seeing like a crowded city street full 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:28.760 of traffic and just a dude sitting on an elephant 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:31.800 is just the most powerful flex I've seen in my 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:35.960 entire life. Just the look of those men writing their 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.440 elephant through town, just like, Okay, you know what, that's 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:44.000 unbelievably powerful energy. If they have like a boom box 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:46.280 with them while they're doing it, I'm all for it. 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:49.120 I think that would be amazing. That would be rad 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:54.320 as hell. So at this point in his life, newly 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:57.000 on the cusp of adulthood, Brooke dreamed of making a 0:21:57.080 --> 0:21:59.879 quick fortune in the foreign service. There was always up 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:02.680 trinity for grafton bribery in the service of the East 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:05.280 India Company. And then after he made his money, he 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:07.680 planned to make a glorious return to the comfortable life 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:10.960 of an English gentleman. He wrote home, quote, my prospects 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:12.800 are now so good that a few years hence I 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:15.120 hope to return to England with a fortune which will 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:18.840 render unnecessary my revisiting this country With what joy shall 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:20.679 I give? With what joy? I give up what are 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:23.000 termed the luxuries of India for a cottage and a 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:27.000 snug fireside. This I am determined to do. So, he 0:22:27.080 --> 0:22:29.200 seems to have initially wanted to like, well, I don't 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:31.000 really want to stay in India. I want to make 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:33.359 my money, come buy a farm at home, and never 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:36.520 leave again. You know, that's his initial goal. But this 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:40.560 changes with his first experience of action. In late eighteen 0:22:40.600 --> 0:22:43.320 ninety four, the company went to war with Burma. Now, 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:45.440 since this was a company army, much of the fighting 0:22:45.520 --> 0:22:47.520 was then with the regular units, which had been risen 0:22:47.600 --> 0:22:50.800 up and organized for profit by a corporate like entity 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:55.360 whose employees acted as militant subcontractors. James volunteered to raise 0:22:55.440 --> 0:22:57.960 up a unit of a regular cavalry locals who would 0:22:57.960 --> 0:23:01.080 act as scouts for the campaign. Nigel Barley notes quote, 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:03.639 he had found his niche a big fish in a 0:23:03.680 --> 0:23:06.679 small pond, operating on the margins of established order, and 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:08.440 this was the kind of position to which he would 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:12.120 gravitate all his life. So he finds this like very 0:23:12.280 --> 0:23:15.719 enticing and a lot better than you know, traditional military service. 0:23:16.200 --> 0:23:18.560 Uh So, once he put together this unit, he had 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:20.680 to show it off to his superiors, and his standard 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:22.679 way of doing this was to like get all of 0:23:22.720 --> 0:23:26.360 his soldiers organized out and order them to charge. Charging 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:28.840 was in fact the only drill training that he ever 0:23:28.880 --> 0:23:32.520 gave his men. Um just blitz. He was every blitz, 0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:35.159 every play kind of guy. Yeah, yeah, he just blitz. 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:38.760 Just just go rush at those guys. Then one day 0:23:38.920 --> 0:23:41.159 there's an actual battle and he orders his men to 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:44.200 charge a group of Burmese fighters, which they promptly did, 0:23:44.400 --> 0:23:46.480 but then forgot to come back and he never saw 0:23:46.520 --> 0:23:50.600 his soldiers again. He's the worst. I love it. It's 0:23:50.640 --> 0:23:58.280 the worst. It's very funny. So in January James saw 0:23:58.320 --> 0:24:02.200 his first close combat against the Burmes in Roumapur, a PSAM. 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:05.040 After shouting out what he what he described as a 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:08.640 few inspiring words to his comrades, he charged headlong into 0:24:08.720 --> 0:24:12.280 a well defended elevated position, which is what most military 0:24:12.320 --> 0:24:15.760 experts would call a bad idea. One has to say 0:24:15.960 --> 0:24:18.520 that James Brooke was at least fully willing to engage 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:21.120 in the same foolhardy acts of bravery that he demanded 0:24:21.119 --> 0:24:24.520 of his men, and on this occasion, stupid bravery worked. 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:26.760 The Burmes were so shocked to see a single man 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:29.840 charging them down, raving a saber and shrieking like a Hellian, 0:24:30.080 --> 0:24:32.879 that they broke and ran. James earned a commendation for 0:24:32.960 --> 0:24:37.160 bravery and was written up repeatedly for his raw physical courage. However, 0:24:37.280 --> 0:24:39.920 this kind of bravery tends to bite people in the ass. 0:24:39.960 --> 0:24:43.600 From the book White Raja quote. A few days after 0:24:43.720 --> 0:24:46.080 the General and command heard of a strong stockade being 0:24:46.119 --> 0:24:48.840 in front and sent out Lieutenant Brooke to reconnoiter, but 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:50.639 he was not able to return in time to prevent 0:24:50.640 --> 0:24:53.560 the advance guard from falling into an ambuscade. As the 0:24:53.560 --> 0:24:55.760 Foremost company turned a corner in the road, they were 0:24:55.760 --> 0:24:58.240 received by a volley which knocked over a number of men. 0:24:58.480 --> 0:25:00.800 In the midst of the confusion, Brooke came galloping up, 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:03.080 putting himself at the head of the men charged, and 0:25:03.160 --> 0:25:06.040 Foremost fighting fell. When the affair was over and the 0:25:06.119 --> 0:25:09.080 enemy driven from their stockades, Lieutenant Colonel Richards asked after 0:25:09.119 --> 0:25:11.320 Lieutenant Brooke, who he had seen fall, and he was 0:25:11.359 --> 0:25:13.960 reported dead. Take me to his body, was his reply, 0:25:14.080 --> 0:25:16.600 and they rode to the spot. Poor Brooks, said, the colonel, 0:25:16.640 --> 0:25:18.479 getting off his horse to have a last look at him, 0:25:18.600 --> 0:25:20.760 kneeling over him, he took him in his hand. He's 0:25:20.800 --> 0:25:23.399 not dead, he cried, and instantly had him removed to camp. 0:25:24.000 --> 0:25:27.159 So Brooks active military career had asked, like his actual 0:25:27.160 --> 0:25:29.879 time fighting had been about two days, and because of 0:25:29.920 --> 0:25:31.800 the severity of his injuries, he was spent the next 0:25:31.840 --> 0:25:36.400 five years recovering. So that's kind of the next half 0:25:36.440 --> 0:25:38.680 decade of Brooks life is he gets shipped back home 0:25:38.680 --> 0:25:41.120 because his injuries are so severe, and he spends most 0:25:41.119 --> 0:25:44.240 of it like in bed or in hospitals that the 0:25:44.359 --> 0:25:46.200 doctor and me just kind of wants to know. Maybe 0:25:46.240 --> 0:25:48.280 they didn't say it, but what do they say? What 0:25:48.359 --> 0:25:51.119 his injuries were? That brings us to one of the 0:25:51.119 --> 0:25:53.840 great mysteries over James Brooke. You're gonna like this one. 0:25:53.920 --> 0:25:58.200 So most sources at the time would note somewhat surreptitiously 0:25:58.520 --> 0:26:01.080 that he had been shot in the jump um. This 0:26:01.280 --> 0:26:03.840 rumor is common even today. I found a Daily Beast 0:26:03.920 --> 0:26:06.679 article that included the line, A painful war injury in 0:26:06.720 --> 0:26:10.320 what Victorian's delicately called his private parts probably discouraged brook 0:26:10.359 --> 0:26:14.040 from marrying. Because this guy again he conquers a large 0:26:14.119 --> 0:26:17.720 chunk of land he never has natural descendants, right, So 0:26:18.119 --> 0:26:20.879 one of the rumors that was kind of spread, may 0:26:20.920 --> 0:26:22.760 have been spread by him, was that he had been 0:26:23.080 --> 0:26:24.720 he'd been shot in the junk and so he was 0:26:24.800 --> 0:26:27.959 unable to reproduce and that's why he never had any descendants. 0:26:28.359 --> 0:26:32.320 Now more reputable modern scholarship suggests that this may have 0:26:32.400 --> 0:26:35.040 been a face saving lie, because depending on what you 0:26:35.040 --> 0:26:37.720 read and who you ask, it's likely that Brooke was 0:26:37.760 --> 0:26:41.399 either gay, a pedophile, or a bisexual man with a 0:26:41.480 --> 0:26:45.560 quasi sexual interest in extremely young men. We don't really know. 0:26:46.400 --> 0:26:48.800 We'll talk about this a lot throughout the episode, and 0:26:48.800 --> 0:26:51.800 I'll see where you land on this because one of 0:26:51.800 --> 0:26:53.119 the reasons why we don't really know if he's gay 0:26:53.200 --> 0:26:55.760 or a pedophile is a lot of times he's romancing 0:26:55.800 --> 0:26:58.520 people who are called boys, but who are also legally 0:26:58.560 --> 0:27:02.159 adults in the society that he's So there's sixteen seventeen, 0:27:02.520 --> 0:27:05.280 but that's also their adults who were like lieutenants in 0:27:05.280 --> 0:27:07.800 the military. So it I I don't know, like how 0:27:07.800 --> 0:27:11.400 he it's odd, it's very it's very uncomfortable, and there's 0:27:11.440 --> 0:27:14.240 a lot of very kind of abusive stuff in Brooks 0:27:14.280 --> 0:27:16.520 background with this, But we don't know. I don't know 0:27:16.720 --> 0:27:20.919 entirely how to characterize the man um but it seems 0:27:20.960 --> 0:27:23.399 likely that he was not in fact shot in the junk, 0:27:23.480 --> 0:27:25.920 but that was a kind of a face saving thing 0:27:26.320 --> 0:27:29.040 because he was not interested in women as a general rule. 0:27:29.080 --> 0:27:31.280 That seems accurate to say, not super interested in women, 0:27:31.480 --> 0:27:34.080 and he needed you know, you could get punished with 0:27:34.119 --> 0:27:36.800 execution for being a gay man and this, and it 0:27:36.880 --> 0:27:39.320 happened like the British like put people to death for 0:27:39.359 --> 0:27:43.240 being homosexual. So if he was, even if he was 0:27:43.320 --> 0:27:45.760 just kind of not straight like, even if he may 0:27:45.760 --> 0:27:47.280 have been sort of like more on the a sexual 0:27:47.600 --> 0:27:49.679 side of things, we don't really know. He had to 0:27:49.680 --> 0:27:51.720 come up with the reason why he wasn't having kids, 0:27:52.119 --> 0:27:54.600 and may have been shot in the junk was the reason. 0:27:54.600 --> 0:27:56.800 It's a good way to get sympathy. Yeah, good way 0:27:56.840 --> 0:27:58.960 to get sympathy, good way to have people not ask 0:27:59.000 --> 0:28:03.800 anymore about But that conversation, it's pretty much right there, somebody, Yeah, 0:28:03.800 --> 0:28:07.240 well I have a terrible injury and it's rendered me infertile. 0:28:07.280 --> 0:28:10.399 You know, people aren't going to ask much more, got it. 0:28:11.359 --> 0:28:13.159 So we don't exactly know how he was injured, but 0:28:13.160 --> 0:28:15.720 it was bad you know, five years of recovery time 0:28:16.000 --> 0:28:19.920 is a pretty severe, um, pretty severe injury, and obviously 0:28:19.960 --> 0:28:24.920 medicine mac then is mostly like screaming and mercury. But um, 0:28:24.920 --> 0:28:27.440 it's a little bit better today. I should also note 0:28:27.480 --> 0:28:30.200 that information would come over come forward in the early 0:28:30.280 --> 0:28:32.680 nineteen fifties to suggest that he had at least one 0:28:32.760 --> 0:28:35.560 bastard son that he hit away from the public eye. Again, 0:28:36.080 --> 0:28:39.160 we don't really know. It's all very muddled with this, dude. 0:28:39.160 --> 0:28:41.480 We'll talk some more about this later. So in any case, 0:28:41.520 --> 0:28:43.720 whatever the matter of his actual injury is, whatever the 0:28:43.720 --> 0:28:47.600 case of his sexuality is, Brooks spent nearly five years recuperating. 0:28:47.880 --> 0:28:50.760 He was better by eighteen thirty, but his journey back 0:28:50.800 --> 0:28:53.000 to India to resume his service with the company was 0:28:53.080 --> 0:28:55.920 dogged by bad weather and worse luck. He didn't arrive 0:28:55.960 --> 0:28:58.960 in Madras until twelve days before his deadline to return 0:28:59.000 --> 0:29:02.280 to service. Out his dad, being like an influential person 0:29:02.320 --> 0:29:05.200 within the company, was able to kind of pull some 0:29:05.280 --> 0:29:09.080 strings to get him more leave time. Um, but Brooke 0:29:09.320 --> 0:29:11.800 like didn't want to. Basically, what happens is he winds 0:29:11.840 --> 0:29:14.480 up arriving late, realizes he's not going to get to 0:29:14.600 --> 0:29:16.720 India in time for his deadlines. So he applies for 0:29:16.760 --> 0:29:19.719 a position to serve the company in Madras and that 0:29:19.800 --> 0:29:22.920 was refused and this made James Brooke very angry, so 0:29:22.960 --> 0:29:26.080 he resigned rather than get dismissed from the company. This 0:29:26.160 --> 0:29:28.600 was his public claim, at least now, the reality seems 0:29:28.640 --> 0:29:31.680 to be that his journey back through company controlled Southeast 0:29:31.760 --> 0:29:34.120 Asia had really like he'd seen a lot of things 0:29:34.120 --> 0:29:36.440 that made him angry at the way the company did things, 0:29:36.440 --> 0:29:39.200 and he no longer wanted to serve them. Um and 0:29:39.240 --> 0:29:41.160 I'm gonna quote from a rite up by the University 0:29:41.160 --> 0:29:45.080 of Canberra here. Brookes subsequent musings in his journal suggest 0:29:45.160 --> 0:29:47.840 a growing divergence between the company's activities in India and 0:29:47.840 --> 0:29:50.560 his own emerging ideas about Britain and its role in Asia, 0:29:50.720 --> 0:29:53.480 which might have motivated him to seek new opportunities. He 0:29:53.520 --> 0:29:55.960 continued on in Castle Huntly to Chi that's the ship 0:29:56.000 --> 0:29:58.600 that he's traveling on to China via Penang, Malacca and 0:29:58.640 --> 0:30:01.560 Singapore with him on board, where James Templer, whose brother 0:30:01.640 --> 0:30:04.520 John would become his close friend and supporter, and Arthur Crookshank, 0:30:04.560 --> 0:30:06.840 who would also later become one of Brooks protegees and 0:30:06.880 --> 0:30:09.520 Borneo the ideas Brooke began to set down in his 0:30:09.640 --> 0:30:13.240 journal June. In Pain's view, bemoaned the deterioration of the 0:30:13.320 --> 0:30:16.920 native character arising from their intercourse with the whites. So 0:30:16.960 --> 0:30:19.720 you see what he's saying. This is interesting because it 0:30:19.880 --> 0:30:22.360 talks about the kind of racist that Brooke is becoming. 0:30:22.520 --> 0:30:25.479 Because you have different kinds of racists in the British Empire. 0:30:25.560 --> 0:30:29.000 You have the people these non white people's are inferior 0:30:29.040 --> 0:30:31.360 to us and we need to rule them. And you 0:30:31.440 --> 0:30:36.720 have these these non white people's um are being hurt 0:30:36.840 --> 0:30:40.320 by us. Uh, and so I need to like I 0:30:40.400 --> 0:30:43.400 need to uh fix them right. And then you have 0:30:43.480 --> 0:30:45.320 the idea that like I need to like raise up 0:30:45.360 --> 0:30:48.320 these people who are who are not inferior inherently but 0:30:48.360 --> 0:30:50.480 have an inferior culture. I mean to make their culture 0:30:50.480 --> 0:30:52.400 of it. There's a couple of different kinds of racists, 0:30:52.440 --> 0:30:54.880 like so close to getting it, but then just takes 0:30:54.880 --> 0:30:57.520 that left turn when you should just kept going with 0:30:57.560 --> 0:31:01.120 that thought. Yeah, and and book is I don't know 0:31:01.160 --> 0:31:03.160 if you call this the least offensive kind of the 0:31:03.240 --> 0:31:05.600 racist that you could be in the British Empire. Service 0:31:06.000 --> 0:31:08.720 but he rather than being kind of the standard sort 0:31:08.720 --> 0:31:12.560 of white supremacist, he's the noble, savage kind of white supremacist, right, 0:31:12.840 --> 0:31:15.800 and he felt that the decadent values of modernity were 0:31:15.840 --> 0:31:20.600 responsible for ruining the noble natives of India. Now interspersed 0:31:20.640 --> 0:31:23.400 within this bigotry was a morsel of troop truth. Brooke 0:31:23.440 --> 0:31:26.120 had spent his early career stumbling into a subcontinent that 0:31:26.160 --> 0:31:28.680 had seen its cultural substrate torn apart in the name 0:31:28.720 --> 0:31:31.760 of short term profits. Inter Village crop and water sharing 0:31:31.840 --> 0:31:34.520 arrangements built up over centuries to mitigate the shifting tides 0:31:34.560 --> 0:31:37.560 of climate had been ripped apart by venal corporate administrators 0:31:37.560 --> 0:31:39.160 who wanted to suck as much money out of the 0:31:39.200 --> 0:31:42.080 area as quickly as possible. This had reduced many people 0:31:42.120 --> 0:31:45.280 who had once been independent farmers two beggars on the street. 0:31:45.640 --> 0:31:47.760 The introduction of hard liquor had also had a visible 0:31:47.800 --> 0:31:50.800 negative impact on many of the now urban poor. James 0:31:50.840 --> 0:31:53.360 Brooke did not entirely blame his fellow English for the 0:31:53.400 --> 0:31:56.440 state of affairs um which is again part of his racism. 0:31:56.480 --> 0:31:58.720 As he reached the Malay Peninsula, he had his first 0:31:58.720 --> 0:32:02.080 close contact with Chinese people, many of whom ran businesses 0:32:02.120 --> 0:32:04.720 and carried on trading operations in the region, and he 0:32:04.760 --> 0:32:06.719 blamed a lot of what he was seeing in India 0:32:06.800 --> 0:32:10.560 on the Chinese. He wrote, quote, their habits are most filthy, 0:32:10.600 --> 0:32:13.680 their dress in the most unbecoming, their faces the most ugly, 0:32:13.720 --> 0:32:16.160 and their figures the most ungraceful to any people under 0:32:16.200 --> 0:32:17.960 the sun. They appear cut out of a log of 0:32:18.000 --> 0:32:20.640 wood by the hand of someone skillful savage. Their mouths 0:32:20.640 --> 0:32:22.800 are wide, their noses snub, and their eyes small and 0:32:22.840 --> 0:32:24.920 set and crooked in their heads. When they move they 0:32:24.960 --> 0:32:27.480 swing arms, legs and body like a paper clown pulled 0:32:27.480 --> 0:32:29.560 by a string. And to sum it up, all their 0:32:29.560 --> 0:32:33.320 color is a dirty yellow. So he is a really 0:32:33.440 --> 0:32:35.800 racist against Chinese people. So he has this view that like, 0:32:35.840 --> 0:32:40.280 Indian people are inherently noble and we've corrupted them, and 0:32:40.280 --> 0:32:43.080 they've also been corrupted by these like by the Chinese 0:32:43.160 --> 0:32:47.200 right um who he is super racist against like and 0:32:47.200 --> 0:32:49.800 this will continue to be a major factor in his life. 0:32:49.840 --> 0:32:54.480 He is a huge anti Chinese bigot um and as 0:32:54.480 --> 0:32:57.240 a huge anti Chinese bigot, James and a group of 0:32:57.280 --> 0:32:59.200 these guys that I mentioned are on the boat with 0:32:59.240 --> 0:33:02.000 him the world. This is yeah, yeah, the guys described 0:33:02.000 --> 0:33:04.520 as his protege. These are his friends. They might also 0:33:04.560 --> 0:33:08.560 be his lovers. Um, it's kind of hard to tell. Um. 0:33:08.600 --> 0:33:12.240 But at one point, while they're in Southeast Asia, Um, 0:33:12.400 --> 0:33:19.640 they dress up in yellow face. Uh yeah man. Yeah. 0:33:19.800 --> 0:33:23.240 A jape involved him and shipmates disguising themselves as Chinese 0:33:23.320 --> 0:33:25.400 at the Feast of Lanterns in order to penetrate the 0:33:25.400 --> 0:33:28.480 city declared out of bounds to Europeans. Being once in 0:33:28.600 --> 0:33:30.800 the whole party threw off disguise and broke some of 0:33:30.840 --> 0:33:33.920 the lanterns, which were accounted precious. They barely escaped with 0:33:33.960 --> 0:33:36.320 their lives. And how escape was possible is the marvel. 0:33:36.880 --> 0:33:39.960 James would always have it just it cracks me up 0:33:39.960 --> 0:33:42.080 because if they really did that, it cracks me up 0:33:42.080 --> 0:33:44.360 because it's like they do they really believe that they 0:33:44.440 --> 0:33:47.800 fooled anybody, did they Actually, we're getting away with this. 0:33:47.960 --> 0:33:50.920 They don't even know. They don't even know. We're dressed 0:33:50.960 --> 0:33:54.560 in local garb. Look at us, we're nailing it. We're 0:33:54.680 --> 0:34:00.280 nailing this. They don't even know. Yeah, they're they're they're 0:34:00.280 --> 0:34:03.880 bad at this and they do get caught. Um. So 0:34:04.160 --> 0:34:06.880 James would later learn to work with Chinese traders in 0:34:06.920 --> 0:34:09.040 the land that he eventually conquered, but he never got 0:34:09.080 --> 0:34:11.320 over his bigotry against them, which would eventually lead to 0:34:11.360 --> 0:34:14.439 horrific bloodshed. But at this point Brooke had been kind 0:34:14.440 --> 0:34:18.440 of He recognized the evils of the East India Company 0:34:18.520 --> 0:34:21.279 and some of the evils of colonialism. He knew there 0:34:21.320 --> 0:34:24.360 was something immoral going on in all of this um 0:34:24.400 --> 0:34:27.720 but unfortunately his reaction to this was to invent ways 0:34:27.760 --> 0:34:31.120 that he might do colonialism but nicer. Right. His solution 0:34:31.160 --> 0:34:34.680 to this is obviously an an unethical system, is I 0:34:34.719 --> 0:34:36.920 can do it better, as opposed to maybe we should 0:34:36.920 --> 0:34:42.040 get the funk out of here. Yeah. He even picked 0:34:42.040 --> 0:34:45.120 out a spot, Penang in Malaysia, that he thought was 0:34:45.239 --> 0:34:48.759 ripe for his kinder sort of colonialism. And I'm gonna 0:34:48.800 --> 0:34:51.800 quote from the University of Canberra again. He towed with 0:34:51.840 --> 0:34:54.120 the idea of Penang as the spot on which the 0:34:54.160 --> 0:34:57.200 experiment should be made for a permanent British colony in 0:34:57.239 --> 0:34:59.920 which individuals could reap the rewards of their own effort, 0:35:00.400 --> 0:35:03.560 unlike under the company's monopoly. Later, his interest grew to 0:35:03.600 --> 0:35:06.839 include Sumatra. Brooke and his companions soon developed a plan 0:35:06.880 --> 0:35:10.480 to return to the Eastern Archipelago for and seek for adventure. 0:35:10.680 --> 0:35:13.920 They called it the Schooner Plan, awaiting only the financial 0:35:13.920 --> 0:35:19.160 means to implement it. So this dude, like, he's not likable. 0:35:19.239 --> 0:35:22.279 There's no qualities I've seen that are redeeming. He's just 0:35:22.360 --> 0:35:25.920 like a fucking piece of ship. I mean, they all 0:35:26.120 --> 0:35:29.040 they all kind of are like. It's he's he's a 0:35:29.080 --> 0:35:31.360 he's a young he's a man who was raised to 0:35:31.400 --> 0:35:33.960 believe that he and people like him ought to rule 0:35:34.000 --> 0:35:39.799 the world, and he recognizes people actually ruling are bad 0:35:39.840 --> 0:35:42.360 at it, and the solution is for me to do 0:35:42.440 --> 0:35:48.040 it better. You know. Yeah, it's not great. He's he sucks. 0:35:48.280 --> 0:35:51.799 I don't like, yeah, this is behind the bastards. You 0:35:51.880 --> 0:35:55.000 might have heard of it. Yeah, why, thank you, Robert, 0:35:55.040 --> 0:35:56.480 thank you so much. No, but I'm just saying a 0:35:56.560 --> 0:35:58.320 lot of times when you're when we do these episodes, 0:35:58.360 --> 0:36:00.399 and it's like you can find like one thing where 0:36:00.400 --> 0:36:05.960 you're like, okay, well, the one redeeming thing. I mean, 0:36:06.040 --> 0:36:08.279 this is such a small thing. But he does seem 0:36:08.320 --> 0:36:12.120 to have a genuine affection for India at least, which 0:36:12.160 --> 0:36:15.960 is very little, and it's a slightly more mellow form 0:36:16.000 --> 0:36:19.000 of racism. But that's I guess something for the time. 0:36:19.880 --> 0:36:24.440 I don't like him saying it. Now. I'm still on defense. 0:36:24.560 --> 0:36:26.560 I'm still a defense about this guy. I'm not I'm 0:36:26.600 --> 0:36:28.319 gonna wait till the ends I make up my mind. 0:36:28.480 --> 0:36:32.360 I'm like forty minutes in not into him. Him he 0:36:32.400 --> 0:36:36.360 could still pull out of this tail span. He does not. 0:36:37.160 --> 0:36:40.160 The schooner plan, and a schooner is a type of boat, 0:36:40.680 --> 0:36:44.280 was very much the dream of an upper class English schoolboy. Basically, 0:36:44.560 --> 0:36:47.400 his idea was that, like he and his best buddies 0:36:47.400 --> 0:36:48.960 that he'd like met and hung out with on this 0:36:49.040 --> 0:36:51.560 boat and traveled around Southeast Asia with, we're going to 0:36:51.600 --> 0:36:54.399 like learn how to navigate and sail together under get 0:36:54.400 --> 0:36:56.760 his ship and sail to get away under his leadership, 0:36:56.800 --> 0:37:00.239 to have like adventures and participate in glorious bad goals 0:37:00.280 --> 0:37:04.120 and get rich. It was. His biographer describes it as 0:37:04.360 --> 0:37:07.760 quote an all boys adventure written large upon the real world. 0:37:08.080 --> 0:37:11.160 So again it's the kind of ship that he reads 0:37:11.160 --> 0:37:13.680 in these in these fantasy books that are very popular 0:37:13.680 --> 0:37:16.120 among young English boys of this day. He just wants 0:37:16.160 --> 0:37:18.160 to do it for real, and because he's a rich kid, 0:37:18.320 --> 0:37:20.360 he's going to get a chance to how old is 0:37:20.400 --> 0:37:25.600 he at this point, He's like early twenties of this. 0:37:26.640 --> 0:37:29.319 So it was always unclear how the schooner plan was 0:37:29.320 --> 0:37:32.799 going to lead to wealth and influence, for especially how 0:37:32.840 --> 0:37:36.160 it was going to lead to them creating colonies in Malaysia. UH. 0:37:36.239 --> 0:37:38.560 When James returned home to England and broke the news 0:37:38.560 --> 0:37:40.759 to his doting dad that he'd resigned his commission with 0:37:40.800 --> 0:37:43.359 the East India Company, he tried to convince the old 0:37:43.440 --> 0:37:46.319 judge to invest money in this scheme. He assured his 0:37:46.360 --> 0:37:49.640 father that with the vehicle quote equally capable of fight 0:37:49.960 --> 0:37:51.800 or flight, he and his friends would be able to 0:37:51.840 --> 0:37:54.520 make a fortune trading through Southeast Asia and having adventures 0:37:54.560 --> 0:37:58.719 in between deliveries. Now this is have you seen Stepbrothers. 0:37:58.840 --> 0:38:01.360 This is the scene where they show the stepdad the 0:38:01.480 --> 0:38:03.719 video boats and hose, boats and hose and they're they're 0:38:03.719 --> 0:38:07.799 trying to build their media company and they're like, check 0:38:07.800 --> 0:38:10.280 it out. We need a boat where it's gonna be awesome. 0:38:10.360 --> 0:38:14.960 Boats and hose that's all he needs. And that's so 0:38:15.120 --> 0:38:20.359 it's like, um, it's it's like that's what's happening. But 0:38:20.640 --> 0:38:23.200 he's saying, we need to buy us a warship, like 0:38:23.320 --> 0:38:25.440 we we need we need to get like a battleship 0:38:25.520 --> 0:38:28.000 so that we can sail around and have adventures and 0:38:28.040 --> 0:38:30.960 that will be profitable somehow, Dad, trust me. So it's 0:38:30.960 --> 0:38:33.440 more like boats and guns and boys as opposed to 0:38:35.440 --> 0:38:38.040 now being a practical man. James's dad told him that 0:38:38.080 --> 0:38:40.279 his plan was nonsense, warned him that he had no 0:38:40.400 --> 0:38:42.520 head for business, and that even if he was good 0:38:42.520 --> 0:38:44.960 at business, working on a trading vessel was one of 0:38:44.960 --> 0:38:47.680 the most dangerous and miserable jobs that a person could get. 0:38:48.000 --> 0:38:50.399 But James kept badgering his old man, and as he'd 0:38:50.400 --> 0:38:52.680 done with the elephant, his dad eventually threw down the 0:38:52.719 --> 0:38:56.239 money to buy a two ninety tons slaver brig. It's 0:38:56.239 --> 0:38:58.160 called a slaver big because it used to be used 0:38:58.160 --> 0:39:01.400 for transporting slaves. You know, um no, we got that, 0:39:02.000 --> 0:39:06.040 yeah yeah, yeah, so yeah. So Iphi's liking this guy, 0:39:06.120 --> 0:39:09.440 less and less. Less and less. Dad also not it. 0:39:10.440 --> 0:39:14.440 He's This is the era where slavery has been outlawed 0:39:14.480 --> 0:39:17.800 and the British Empire is fighting a crusade across the 0:39:17.840 --> 0:39:21.280 world against slavery that allows them to do more colonialism, 0:39:21.320 --> 0:39:24.080 like they're conquering land and subjugating people in the name 0:39:24.120 --> 0:39:26.399 of ending the slave trade. That's a lot of what's 0:39:26.440 --> 0:39:30.640 happening in this period. So, um, that's why, like this 0:39:30.680 --> 0:39:32.279 is in the news right now. Like, but there's been 0:39:32.320 --> 0:39:35.400 a couple of cases recently where it was some fucking 0:39:35.680 --> 0:39:37.920 I think it might have been pierced more than somebody, 0:39:38.160 --> 0:39:40.360 some British person was, Like, nobody has done more to 0:39:40.480 --> 0:39:44.520 fight against racism than the British Empire. Um. And what 0:39:44.560 --> 0:39:47.399 the referring to is all of these different anti slavery 0:39:47.400 --> 0:39:50.160 wars and crusades that the British Empire fought, and what 0:39:50.200 --> 0:39:52.680 they neglect to mention is that they were always used 0:39:52.719 --> 0:39:56.600 to subjugate people. They were used as justifications to militarily 0:39:56.640 --> 0:40:01.440 occupy places and and the denying pe their sovereignty. Like 0:40:01.480 --> 0:40:04.839 that was the only reason for these crusades. Um, it was. 0:40:04.920 --> 0:40:07.960 It was I don't know, a modern Americans can't imagine this, 0:40:08.000 --> 0:40:11.480 but imagine seeing a real problem and your government uses 0:40:11.480 --> 0:40:14.439 that real problem to justify conquering of people and taking 0:40:14.480 --> 0:40:20.600 their stuff. Again, very hard to very hard to visualize. Yeah. Yeah, 0:40:20.840 --> 0:40:23.200 So James had only been home a few months when 0:40:23.239 --> 0:40:25.359 he convinced his dad to buy the boat, and by 0:40:25.360 --> 0:40:27.520 all accounts those few months had been much more than 0:40:27.600 --> 0:40:29.680 enough for him. He wrote to a friend that quote, 0:40:29.960 --> 0:40:33.080 I feel the irksomeness of civilized society greater than ever, 0:40:33.160 --> 0:40:35.680 and it's bonds shall not hold me long. My own 0:40:35.719 --> 0:40:37.400 families speak to me of the years we are to 0:40:37.440 --> 0:40:39.719 pass together, and that it always makes me sad to 0:40:39.760 --> 0:40:41.880 think that in my innermost heart, I have determined to 0:40:41.880 --> 0:40:44.840 plunge into some adventure that will bestow activity and employment. 0:40:45.640 --> 0:40:48.480 So he's he comes home and quits the company, and 0:40:48.520 --> 0:40:50.319 his family is happy to have him back and be like, Oh, 0:40:50.360 --> 0:40:52.040 We're all going to get to live together in England, 0:40:52.280 --> 0:40:55.480 and James kind of feels bad because he has again 0:40:55.680 --> 0:40:58.160 the kind of the shot of adrenaline that he had 0:40:58.160 --> 0:41:01.400 participating in that war. His experience traveling around is convinced 0:41:01.440 --> 0:41:03.200 him like, I'm not gonna stay in England, Like I'm 0:41:03.200 --> 0:41:07.080 gonna go get into dumb adventures in Southeast Asia. Um. 0:41:07.120 --> 0:41:09.440 And he knows that um. And so in early eighteen 0:41:09.480 --> 0:41:12.440 thirty four, James finds himself with the giant boat purchased 0:41:12.480 --> 0:41:14.680 by his dad, which had a half dozen cannons and 0:41:14.680 --> 0:41:16.680 a hold for full of merchandise that he was going 0:41:16.719 --> 0:41:19.520 to trade in Singapore. He hired a crew in a captain, 0:41:19.560 --> 0:41:22.200 and he brought along some friends who again probably were 0:41:22.320 --> 0:41:24.960 romantic interests, and he set sail for the Far East. 0:41:25.400 --> 0:41:28.520 The trip was almost immediately a disaster jamesknew. James knew 0:41:28.600 --> 0:41:30.960 very little about boats or the nautical life, but he 0:41:30.960 --> 0:41:33.600 insisted on being in command over the venture, even though 0:41:33.600 --> 0:41:36.879 he'd hired a perfectly good captain. That said, his main 0:41:36.960 --> 0:41:39.320 issue with the captain he hired is something most of 0:41:39.400 --> 0:41:42.720 us will find sympathetic. Back in the early eighteen hundreds, 0:41:42.760 --> 0:41:45.000 British naval discipline was held up with what I think 0:41:45.000 --> 0:41:48.920 Winston Churchill later described as room sodomy and the lash. 0:41:49.239 --> 0:41:52.439 So basically, the reason that like our boats are able 0:41:52.480 --> 0:41:55.040 to function is that we get our crews drunk at night, 0:41:55.320 --> 0:41:57.239 they get to funk each other, and we beat them 0:41:57.239 --> 0:42:00.239 when they break any rules. Right like that in the 0:42:00.320 --> 0:42:04.080 beatings were vicious, like the kind of whipping sailors would 0:42:04.080 --> 0:42:06.960 receive from minor and flat fractions of discipline are not 0:42:07.400 --> 0:42:09.800 unsimilar to the kind of whippings you would hear about 0:42:09.800 --> 0:42:12.520 slaves getting like people would get sentenced to sometimes hundreds 0:42:12.560 --> 0:42:15.040 of lashes with a leather whip in the back like 0:42:15.160 --> 0:42:19.160 people sailors died getting whipped. It was pretty pretty ugly 0:42:19.280 --> 0:42:23.520 naval discipline in this period of time. Um. Now, this 0:42:24.000 --> 0:42:26.759 uh was seen as necessary because obviously, when you're on 0:42:26.800 --> 0:42:28.920 a boat, especially the kind of boats they had back then, 0:42:29.120 --> 0:42:32.359 fucking up can get hundreds of people killed. Right, Which 0:42:32.400 --> 0:42:34.279 is not to say that it's cool to whip people 0:42:34.320 --> 0:42:36.000 for a problem like that, but that's why they saw 0:42:36.000 --> 0:42:39.000 it as necessary. If you don't have strict naval discipline, 0:42:39.239 --> 0:42:41.960 you're going to get everyone on the boat killed. James 0:42:42.040 --> 0:42:45.120 was not comfortable with cruelty. He preferred kindness, and he 0:42:45.160 --> 0:42:47.359 felt that sailors could be kept in line just as 0:42:47.360 --> 0:42:50.160 well by a loving attitude. He later wrote on the 0:42:50.200 --> 0:42:53.239 subject of discipline, quote, it was necessary to form men 0:42:53.280 --> 0:42:55.440 to my purpose, and by a line of steady and 0:42:55.560 --> 0:42:58.600 kind conduct, to raise up a personal regard for myself 0:42:58.600 --> 0:43:01.399 and an attachment for the vessel. Now we don't really 0:43:01.400 --> 0:43:03.880 know if this worked on board his first voyage, but 0:43:03.920 --> 0:43:06.000 it definitely piste off the captain and made for a 0:43:06.000 --> 0:43:09.600 tremendously unpleasant trip. Now, to make matters worse, James was 0:43:09.640 --> 0:43:12.320 as horrible as trade as his father had expected. He 0:43:12.400 --> 0:43:15.360 eventually sold their cargo for a massive loss in Macau 0:43:15.480 --> 0:43:17.880 and sailed back to England of failure. But he was 0:43:17.920 --> 0:43:20.239 still a rich failure because his parents are rare rich, 0:43:20.320 --> 0:43:22.680 and his parents also had no desire to chastise him 0:43:22.719 --> 0:43:25.399 for his funk ups. Soon after he landed back at home, 0:43:25.560 --> 0:43:27.880 his dad died and left all of his surviving children 0:43:27.960 --> 0:43:32.240 a considerable inheritance. James received some thirty thousand pounds sterling, 0:43:32.239 --> 0:43:34.480 which is the equivalent of about four or five million 0:43:34.520 --> 0:43:39.960 dollars today. So now he's independently wealthy. His first voyage 0:43:39.960 --> 0:43:42.120 has been a massive failure, but his dad dies and 0:43:42.160 --> 0:43:44.480 he's rich. He doesn't have to ask his family for 0:43:44.520 --> 0:43:46.759 anything else. So as soon as he gets back, he 0:43:46.840 --> 0:43:49.160 sells his old boat and he buys a new one. 0:43:49.440 --> 0:43:51.960 And this one is a yacht. Uh And when I 0:43:52.000 --> 0:43:54.680 say yacht here, I'm not talking about like just a 0:43:54.800 --> 0:43:57.080 rich guy boat. A yacht in this period of time 0:43:57.400 --> 0:43:59.600 is a military vessel. This was actually one of the 0:43:59.640 --> 0:44:02.960 old royal yachts that he buys um and it has 0:44:03.000 --> 0:44:05.080 a full complement of cannons. It's got something like a 0:44:05.120 --> 0:44:08.080 dozen big guns. And because of how British naval law 0:44:08.160 --> 0:44:11.400 was at the time it legally counted as a military vessel. 0:44:11.719 --> 0:44:14.200 This gave James the right to fly a special naval 0:44:14.239 --> 0:44:16.640 flag and to wear a special naval uniform, and to 0:44:16.719 --> 0:44:21.080 receive salutes from British naval vessels. While English sailors would 0:44:21.080 --> 0:44:22.840 know that this was not really a ship of the 0:44:22.920 --> 0:44:25.719 Royal Navy anymore, these perks meant that, as far as 0:44:25.760 --> 0:44:29.680 any foreigners knew, James was captaining a British Royal Navy 0:44:29.760 --> 0:44:33.040 vessel and representing the British government. And he will never 0:44:33.080 --> 0:44:36.040 go out of his way to disabuse them of this notion. Right, 0:44:36.280 --> 0:44:38.319 that's going to be important for what comes later. So 0:44:38.440 --> 0:44:40.080 the British are just okay with this because it's like, 0:44:40.120 --> 0:44:41.759 this is a super rich guy and this is how 0:44:41.760 --> 0:44:43.959 we treat our rich people. They can do whatever they want. 0:44:44.000 --> 0:44:46.279 Is that? Is that what's happening Again, A lot of 0:44:46.320 --> 0:44:49.280 the British kind of military apparatus at this point is corporate, 0:44:49.440 --> 0:44:51.960 so they're not against the idea of people of private 0:44:52.080 --> 0:44:56.840 entities representing the empire with military vessels. He buys a 0:44:57.000 --> 0:44:59.640 naval vessel that is still part of the navy, and 0:44:59.680 --> 0:45:02.680 because because of what this vessel is, he retains the 0:45:02.800 --> 0:45:06.040 right to represent himself as kind of like UM, almost 0:45:06.040 --> 0:45:09.360 like a naval national guard sort of thing, right, And 0:45:09.400 --> 0:45:10.799 I think that is part of the idea. If there's 0:45:10.800 --> 0:45:13.680 an emergency, all of these guys who own these different votes, 0:45:13.719 --> 0:45:16.839 we can call on them to serve UM. But yeah, 0:45:16.880 --> 0:45:20.560 that's kind of the situation. Yeah, it's it's gonna get 0:45:20.600 --> 0:45:23.799 it's gonna get funds. So, with his yacht, which was 0:45:23.800 --> 0:45:26.600 called the Royalist, loaded with firepower, and of course a 0:45:26.640 --> 0:45:29.040 bunch of new friends, some of whom were probably lovers, 0:45:29.320 --> 0:45:32.200 James Brooks sets off on a new adventure, and again 0:45:32.320 --> 0:45:35.319 the goal was Malaysia, this time a place called sarah Wak, 0:45:35.520 --> 0:45:38.359 ruled over by the Sultan of Brunei. They left Port 0:45:38.440 --> 0:45:42.880 on July thirty nine. Upon arrival, their first task was 0:45:42.920 --> 0:45:45.040 to carry out a series of gun salutes, which means 0:45:45.080 --> 0:45:48.200 firing cannons wildly into the air. This was how Brooke 0:45:48.239 --> 0:45:51.080 decided he was going to signal his peaceful intentions to 0:45:51.160 --> 0:45:57.960 the locals. Yeah, I see this going wrong. As you 0:45:58.080 --> 0:46:02.600 might expect, there's a couple of I mean, cannon salutes 0:46:02.640 --> 0:46:05.919 are common things at this time, so it's not necessarily 0:46:05.960 --> 0:46:08.840 an aggressive act. But it's also not for nothing that 0:46:08.880 --> 0:46:11.080 he does this, because it lets everyone in sarah wak No, 0:46:11.320 --> 0:46:13.719 this guy's got a bunch of giant cannons right like that. 0:46:13.800 --> 0:46:16.160 It's it's, it's, it's It makes it clear that if 0:46:16.160 --> 0:46:20.719 you funk with this guy, he's got he's got some shit. Um. 0:46:20.760 --> 0:46:23.120 So you know, James fires his cannons and then he 0:46:23.120 --> 0:46:26.280 sends a boat ashore to meet the local ruler, Rajah 0:46:26.320 --> 0:46:30.000 Muda Hashim. Now, this guy Hashim is basically the local 0:46:30.120 --> 0:46:33.160 governor under the command of the Sultan of Brunei. Um, 0:46:33.200 --> 0:46:36.000 he's one of the Sultan's uncles, I think. So he 0:46:36.080 --> 0:46:38.640 and Hashim smoked tobacco from foot long cigarettes, and they 0:46:38.680 --> 0:46:40.719 drink tea. They listened to a band, and they do 0:46:40.760 --> 0:46:43.120 all of the polite stuff you'd expect from a royal welcome. 0:46:43.400 --> 0:46:46.000 Hashim and his people assumed Brooke was there representing the 0:46:46.000 --> 0:46:48.520 British Empire, since he was dressed in his ship bore 0:46:48.560 --> 0:46:51.239 the flag of the Royal Navy. James Brooke told the 0:46:51.360 --> 0:46:53.680 Raja that he was just a private person, but he 0:46:53.680 --> 0:46:56.520 also presented the ruler with official documents that he claimed 0:46:56.600 --> 0:46:59.840 from British authorities. As a result, everyone there assumed he 0:47:00.040 --> 0:47:02.520 as in fact an agent of the British government. He 0:47:02.600 --> 0:47:04.440 told them his plan in the country was just to 0:47:04.520 --> 0:47:07.640 survey the coasts and collect specimens of the local fauna, 0:47:07.840 --> 0:47:10.320 but no one believed this either. When they got to talking, 0:47:10.360 --> 0:47:12.200 the Rajah told Brook that he was in an air 0:47:12.280 --> 0:47:14.480 in the area to put down a rebellion by the 0:47:14.520 --> 0:47:17.320 local Malaise, who were laying siege to the local capital, 0:47:17.360 --> 0:47:21.880 and we're purported to be allied with a nearby unfriendly sultan, Rajah. 0:47:21.960 --> 0:47:24.480 The Rajah's forces were not well armed, or well trained, 0:47:24.520 --> 0:47:28.080 or particularly numerous, and neither were the rebels. In practice, 0:47:28.120 --> 0:47:30.439 this meant that this war was mostly just a bunch 0:47:30.480 --> 0:47:33.279 of inconclusive street fights, with neither side able to really 0:47:33.320 --> 0:47:36.360 bring things to a close. The Rajah initially tried to 0:47:36.400 --> 0:47:38.880 downplay the rebellion, framing it as more of a mild 0:47:38.920 --> 0:47:42.200 squabble between children. James offered to help him anyway, and 0:47:42.200 --> 0:47:44.040 this sort of led the Rajah to believe that he 0:47:44.080 --> 0:47:47.320 was doing this on behalf of the British Empire. Nigel 0:47:47.320 --> 0:47:51.000 Barley writes quote, they, being the authorities in Brunei, had 0:47:51.040 --> 0:47:53.640 no idea they were entering into a political alliance not 0:47:53.719 --> 0:47:55.880 with a government, but with a spoiled young man from 0:47:55.920 --> 0:48:00.400 Bath squandering his inheritance. So within hours, this oiled young 0:48:00.520 --> 0:48:02.400 rich kid with a yacht had turned himself to the 0:48:02.640 --> 0:48:05.880 ostensible commander of a foreign military and their efforts to 0:48:05.880 --> 0:48:08.880 crush an insurgent rebellion. If he understood the gravity of 0:48:08.920 --> 0:48:11.600 the situation, James did not show it. When he landed 0:48:11.600 --> 0:48:13.920 on Sarah Wak, Sure, he convinced himself that he was 0:48:13.960 --> 0:48:15.839 the first white man to set foot there, and so 0:48:15.920 --> 0:48:18.320 he went barefoot through the jungle. This proved to be 0:48:18.360 --> 0:48:20.879 a bad idea, and his feet got horribly infected, which 0:48:20.880 --> 0:48:23.000 rendered him unable to walk under his own power, and 0:48:23.000 --> 0:48:24.560 he would have to be carried around for the next 0:48:24.560 --> 0:48:30.520 several days. So stupid, He's doing so great life though 0:48:31.400 --> 0:48:37.239 he's nailing it upward, fails upward every turn. He has 0:48:37.280 --> 0:48:41.080 failed upward into commanding the royal effort to fight an 0:48:41.080 --> 0:48:45.560 insurgency in Malaysia. I mean, just like the like scam 0:48:45.560 --> 0:48:47.080 of it all, and then like he does all these 0:48:47.160 --> 0:48:51.080 unnecessary things. I don't I don't like it. I mean 0:48:51.239 --> 0:48:54.640 he's just having a good time, He's just having oats. 0:48:55.000 --> 0:48:58.040 The injury did not dim brooks instant enthusiasm for the 0:48:58.080 --> 0:49:00.840 wilds of sarah Wak. He took his boats sailing to 0:49:00.880 --> 0:49:03.560 the interior, where it was immediately attacked by pirates made 0:49:03.640 --> 0:49:07.040 up of a knuckle of another local people, the Dyaks Uh. 0:49:07.080 --> 0:49:10.399 These Dyak pirates killed several Malays before being driven off, 0:49:10.719 --> 0:49:13.160 and James considered this all to have been very exciting. 0:49:13.440 --> 0:49:15.239 When it was explained that the Dyaks had a pin 0:49:15.320 --> 0:49:18.320 shot for taking and preserving heads, he was even more excited. 0:49:18.680 --> 0:49:22.000 With very little knowledge of either group, Brooks started stereotyping them, 0:49:22.000 --> 0:49:24.000 and I'm gonna quote from the book White Rajah again. 0:49:24.920 --> 0:49:28.600 His infatuation with adolescence was being fully extended to to 0:49:28.640 --> 0:49:32.240 include the whole supposedly childlike people's. They were all becoming 0:49:32.239 --> 0:49:35.120 midshipman under his especial care, and already he was leaping 0:49:35.160 --> 0:49:38.200 to judgment, forming the stereotypes that would anchor brook rule. 0:49:38.480 --> 0:49:41.239 The Malays were natural gentlemen, but when bad could be 0:49:41.320 --> 0:49:44.640 sinuous and duplicitus, and they were lazy. The Dyaks were 0:49:44.680 --> 0:49:48.320 naturally honest, chased, passionate, and faithful people of the land, 0:49:48.400 --> 0:49:50.800 not the town. It was like the difference between cats 0:49:50.800 --> 0:49:54.400 and dogs repeatedly. The DIACs are explicitly compared to hunting 0:49:54.440 --> 0:49:57.120 dogs with a bad master. The master may be changed 0:49:57.120 --> 0:49:58.959 for a good one, but the dogs will take time 0:49:59.000 --> 0:50:01.200 to learn to not not a snap and bite, but 0:50:01.239 --> 0:50:03.239 they were a good breed and they would eventually be 0:50:03.280 --> 0:50:08.919 won by kindness. Yeah, yeah, real. And again this all 0:50:09.000 --> 0:50:11.720 he starts coming up with these ideas about people because 0:50:11.760 --> 0:50:15.239 he convinces this local ruler that he's a great military mind. 0:50:15.280 --> 0:50:16.880 And the ruler sends him to the interior and he 0:50:16.880 --> 0:50:20.560 gets a bunch of people killed in an ambush. Oh, 0:50:20.560 --> 0:50:23.680 he's just the worst, these guys murdering all of my 0:50:23.840 --> 0:50:25.520 these guys murdering all of them that I were sent 0:50:25.560 --> 0:50:28.680 out with. They're like good dogs with bad rulers. He's like, 0:50:28.719 --> 0:50:32.360 as long as Crookshanks is okay, I don't care that. 0:50:32.800 --> 0:50:36.319 It really is the attitude. No one white has died yet, 0:50:36.360 --> 0:50:39.640 So no one has died yet in his right, you 0:50:39.719 --> 0:50:42.359 know who won't get a bunch of a bunch of 0:50:42.920 --> 0:50:49.239 Malaysian volunteer soldiers murdered in an ambush and then right 0:50:49.520 --> 0:50:58.480 racist propaganda about them. We are back. So with his 0:50:58.520 --> 0:51:00.760 adventure done, and only some of them and the Rajah 0:51:00.760 --> 0:51:03.240 had lent him dead. Brooke considered his visit to sarah 0:51:03.239 --> 0:51:06.200 Waka's success, which again included him going into the jungle 0:51:06.200 --> 0:51:08.840 briefly and getting a bunch of people killed. He promised 0:51:08.840 --> 0:51:10.759 to return in a few months and then sailed off 0:51:10.800 --> 0:51:13.279 to funk around in other parts of Southeast Asia. This 0:51:13.320 --> 0:51:14.920 one up not being as fun as he expected, so 0:51:14.960 --> 0:51:17.560 he headed to Singapore after a few weeks, where stories 0:51:17.560 --> 0:51:21.120 of his pirate fighting exploits had spread. Now, local merchants, 0:51:21.120 --> 0:51:23.560 who long had to deal with direct pirates, praised him 0:51:23.560 --> 0:51:25.719 for bringing the might of the British Empire against those 0:51:25.800 --> 0:51:29.920 dastardly bandits. Being recognized by a couple of dudes absolutely 0:51:29.960 --> 0:51:33.040 ignited James's ego, and he went home to his and 0:51:33.080 --> 0:51:35.719 he wrote home to his mother quote, I really am 0:51:35.760 --> 0:51:39.200 becoming a great man, dearest mother. The world talks about me. 0:51:39.560 --> 0:51:42.759 The rulers of England make threatened to write me. Newspapers 0:51:42.760 --> 0:51:46.880 call me patriotic and adventurous. The geographical society pays me compliments. 0:51:47.000 --> 0:51:50.520 Am I not a great man? No, bitch, you are 0:51:50.600 --> 0:51:55.880 not a great man. His adventures include getting some guys 0:51:55.960 --> 0:51:58.640 killed in the jungle and then briefly firing a bunch 0:51:58.680 --> 0:52:01.120 of cannons that pirates and news like that, that's what 0:52:01.280 --> 0:52:07.840 he's done, completely up his feet and completely this is amazing. 0:52:07.880 --> 0:52:12.360 Am I not a great man? Mommy? Am I great? Yes? Mama? 0:52:13.480 --> 0:52:17.520 So the British Governor of Singapore did not think that 0:52:17.520 --> 0:52:19.800 that James Brooke was a great man. In fact, he 0:52:19.880 --> 0:52:22.520 yelled at James for inserting himself into politics with a 0:52:22.560 --> 0:52:25.600 sovereign nation. He's basically like, you're just a guy with 0:52:25.680 --> 0:52:28.480 a boat. How dare you like stick yourself in the 0:52:28.520 --> 0:52:30.839 middle of a civil war? Like? What is wrong with you? 0:52:31.200 --> 0:52:33.799 So there is at least a single rational person in 0:52:33.800 --> 0:52:37.799 this story so far. Brooke was so offended by this 0:52:37.880 --> 0:52:40.719 that he left Singapore straightaway and sailed for sarah Wak, 0:52:40.760 --> 0:52:42.680 where he could hang out more with his new friends, 0:52:42.840 --> 0:52:44.959 only some of whom he had gotten killed the first time. 0:52:45.680 --> 0:52:47.880 Now the Rajah was happy to have him back, or 0:52:47.920 --> 0:52:50.920 more accurately, was happy to have his cannons back, and 0:52:51.000 --> 0:52:54.560 James was introduced to the Raja's younger brother, Pince Badrudine, 0:52:54.760 --> 0:52:58.440 who was hot as fuck. Let me like this, this 0:52:58.560 --> 0:53:01.960 dude smoking. You have to assume smoking because of the 0:53:02.120 --> 0:53:06.000 very thirsty letter that James writes back to his mom, 0:53:06.560 --> 0:53:11.600 interesting quote. I wish you could know the panjarin bud Rudine, who, 0:53:11.600 --> 0:53:15.160 with the amiable and easy temper of his brother Muda Hashim, 0:53:15.200 --> 0:53:18.720 combines decision and abilities quite astonishing in a native prince 0:53:18.880 --> 0:53:21.799 and a directness of purpose seldom found in an Asiatic. 0:53:22.040 --> 0:53:25.040 As a companion, I found him superior to most of them, 0:53:25.080 --> 0:53:28.280 to most about me. And there is something particularly interesting 0:53:28.520 --> 0:53:31.480 in sounding the depths and shadows of an intelligent native 0:53:31.520 --> 0:53:37.080 mind and examining them freed from the trammels of court etiquette. Wow, 0:53:37.160 --> 0:53:39.960 it's amazing how even the dumb people back then could write. Well, 0:53:41.080 --> 0:53:44.960 it is right, like like he's so dumb, but he 0:53:45.000 --> 0:53:51.160 can actually actually put together words in the way they sounded. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:53:51.200 --> 0:53:53.640 that's that's the values of a classical education. I get. 0:53:53.800 --> 0:53:56.560 But he's I mean, that's an incredibly horny letter. Yeah, 0:53:56.600 --> 0:54:00.239 he's thirsty. That's what the kids say. Bud Rudine was 0:54:00.520 --> 0:54:02.640 very young, and at this point James had both the 0:54:02.680 --> 0:54:06.400 wealth and worldliness to seem very impressive to an inexperienced 0:54:06.440 --> 0:54:09.640 young prince. He adopted James as a mentor and started 0:54:09.719 --> 0:54:12.960 drinking wine and copying the way the Englishman dressed. James 0:54:12.960 --> 0:54:16.640 rewarded this behavior with lavish attention and constant praise. When 0:54:16.640 --> 0:54:18.680 it came time for James to go help the Rajah 0:54:18.719 --> 0:54:21.279 with his war, there was no question that Bodredine would 0:54:21.280 --> 0:54:24.319 stay behind. The Rajah had phrased the rebellion as less 0:54:24.320 --> 0:54:26.160 of a war and again more of a petty squabble 0:54:26.200 --> 0:54:29.400 between children. This was not quite accurate, but it certainly 0:54:29.440 --> 0:54:31.920 was not war as James had known it. In Burma 0:54:32.000 --> 0:54:35.200 and Sarawak, both sides sides tended to fight by building 0:54:35.200 --> 0:54:39.239 fortifications and engaging in short skirmishes in which people rarely died, 0:54:39.320 --> 0:54:42.080 and then ran back to build more fortifications. There was 0:54:42.160 --> 0:54:45.440 not much willingness to charge headlong into decisive battle, and 0:54:45.480 --> 0:54:48.400 this frustrated Brooke, who again only knew how to charge 0:54:48.440 --> 0:54:52.120 headlong into the enemy. He wrote, quote, we found the 0:54:52.120 --> 0:54:55.000 Grand Army in a state of torpor, eating, drinking, and 0:54:55.040 --> 0:54:57.480 walking up to the forts back and again daily. But 0:54:57.600 --> 0:55:00.319 having built these imposing structures, and their appearance not driving 0:55:00.360 --> 0:55:02.400 the enemy away, they were at a loss of what 0:55:02.520 --> 0:55:05.560 to do next. James took it upon himself to break 0:55:05.560 --> 0:55:07.920 the stalemate. The only way he knew how from the 0:55:07.920 --> 0:55:11.239 book White Rajah quote. The solution was as always that 0:55:11.280 --> 0:55:13.400 they should charge, even if this had to be on 0:55:13.440 --> 0:55:15.759 foot rather than on horseback as an India, and it 0:55:15.800 --> 0:55:19.000 was Boddine's overawing presents that would make them but the 0:55:19.040 --> 0:55:22.280 Malay's wrong footed James turned things around and refused to attack, 0:55:22.440 --> 0:55:25.520 urging that they dared not risk Bodredine's precious royal life. 0:55:25.800 --> 0:55:28.320 Bud Redine insisted that if I went, he would likely 0:55:28.480 --> 0:55:30.799 likewise go, and the Malaise insisted that if he went, 0:55:30.840 --> 0:55:33.640 they would not go. So Boderdine and James retired and 0:55:33.680 --> 0:55:36.279 directed the artillery from a place of safety. All went 0:55:36.320 --> 0:55:39.719 well until the surreptitiously advancing assault troops betrayed themselves by 0:55:39.760 --> 0:55:43.000 making the mistake of praying too loudly, attracting the attention 0:55:43.040 --> 0:55:45.120 of three old muskets in the hands of the defenders, 0:55:45.360 --> 0:55:47.800 at which they prayed still more loudly and swiftly retired 0:55:48.000 --> 0:55:50.520 at the front. Everyone built more forts, and James looked 0:55:50.520 --> 0:55:55.080 for more things to charge. So this is I realized, now, 0:55:55.120 --> 0:55:57.960 why why why he likes boats? Because that's like the 0:55:57.960 --> 0:56:00.719 one place his soldiers can't run for him. You know, 0:56:00.920 --> 0:56:03.160 they're on a boat. They can't leave him because it 0:56:03.239 --> 0:56:07.040 sounds like everyone must soldiers must think he's an idiot. Yeah, 0:56:07.080 --> 0:56:10.800 they they think he's danger endangering their lives because again, 0:56:11.000 --> 0:56:13.319 the only tactic he has his run headlong at the 0:56:13.440 --> 0:56:22.640 enemy's guns. Um. He's very zapp Brannigan energy here. Uh So, 0:56:22.719 --> 0:56:25.880 eventually the fighting came down to James taking the field 0:56:25.880 --> 0:56:31.080 with his fellow Europeans, all combat veterans charging. Yeah, this 0:56:31.239 --> 0:56:33.960 time he wears shoes and they do charge the enemy 0:56:34.160 --> 0:56:37.600 who breaks and runs. Um. And after this, James decided 0:56:37.640 --> 0:56:40.720 continued battle would be tedious. He he called a parlay 0:56:40.760 --> 0:56:42.920 and he told the rebels that if they quit, he 0:56:42.960 --> 0:56:45.720 would guarantee them their lives, and he'd stopped the soldiers 0:56:45.719 --> 0:56:48.400 he was with from looting their villages. James had no 0:56:48.480 --> 0:56:50.680 authority to promise any of this, and in fact, one 0:56:50.719 --> 0:56:53.600 of the other local rulers, a prince named Akoda, had 0:56:53.600 --> 0:56:55.799 already promised his men that they were about to get 0:56:55.800 --> 0:56:58.600 to loot all of these enemy villages. But James declared 0:56:58.640 --> 0:57:01.719 the formal rebels under his personal protection and insinuated that 0:57:01.760 --> 0:57:04.560 taking vengeance on them would be crossing the British Empire, 0:57:05.160 --> 0:57:07.839 and so as a result, this little war ends peacefully 0:57:08.120 --> 0:57:10.240 with a number, but with a tremendous amount of anger 0:57:10.280 --> 0:57:13.680 on Prince Makoda's part. The Raja, however, was overjoyed to 0:57:13.680 --> 0:57:17.200 have things over. Finally, he declared James a permanent residence 0:57:17.240 --> 0:57:19.080 of sarah Wak and gave him the right to trade 0:57:19.120 --> 0:57:22.080 within the country. James briefly tried to set up living 0:57:22.080 --> 0:57:25.480 as a merchant, bringing goods from Singapore to the isolated kingdom, 0:57:25.520 --> 0:57:27.200 but he proved to be as bad as trading as 0:57:27.200 --> 0:57:29.280 he had you know, as he'd always been. He's never 0:57:29.320 --> 0:57:32.280 any good at business or making money. So in short order, 0:57:32.320 --> 0:57:34.200 he decided to go back to the only thing he'd 0:57:34.200 --> 0:57:37.480 ever really wanted to do, having adventures while pretending to 0:57:37.520 --> 0:57:40.360 represent the Royal Navy. When he'd left sarah Wak, the 0:57:40.440 --> 0:57:42.320 Rajah had promised to build him a house as a 0:57:42.360 --> 0:57:45.000 sign of gratitude. Hashim had also promised to have a 0:57:45.080 --> 0:57:47.600 large shipment of antimony or which was mine in the 0:57:47.640 --> 0:57:50.200 area for him, like ready for him to go trade 0:57:50.200 --> 0:57:53.160 in Singapore. Um Now. When he landed, though, he found 0:57:53.160 --> 0:57:54.600 out that none of this would be done. There'd been 0:57:54.600 --> 0:57:56.640 no ore gathered, there had been no house built, and 0:57:56.680 --> 0:57:58.920 he was really angry. He was even more furious when 0:57:58.920 --> 0:58:01.840 he learned that, in accordance with ancient custom, the rulers 0:58:01.840 --> 0:58:04.880 in Brunei, which included the Raja's nephew, the Sultan, were 0:58:04.880 --> 0:58:07.560 about to allow a hundred Dyak war canoes to row 0:58:07.640 --> 0:58:10.480 down the river and raid Malay villages on the interior. 0:58:10.920 --> 0:58:12.920 This was in fact brutal, but it was a crutal 0:58:13.040 --> 0:58:15.800 crucial source of revenue for the Bruneians who ruled sarah 0:58:15.800 --> 0:58:19.640 wak Um. So basically, you've got the Sultan of Brunei 0:58:19.720 --> 0:58:21.760 who runs this country, and whenever you have kind of 0:58:21.800 --> 0:58:24.680 like a small group of people running an entire country, 0:58:24.720 --> 0:58:27.000 they're gonna do the same ship the British Empire always did, 0:58:27.040 --> 0:58:29.200 which is play different ethnic groups off of each other. 0:58:29.400 --> 0:58:31.280 And the way that Bruneians do this is they have 0:58:31.320 --> 0:58:33.960 an agreement with the Dyaks where they they'll let them 0:58:34.040 --> 0:58:36.800 go and raid and murder and like take slaves and 0:58:36.800 --> 0:58:40.080 and steal from villages in exchange for the day as 0:58:40.200 --> 0:58:43.560 paying bribes to the rulers in Brunei. And this is 0:58:43.600 --> 0:58:46.160 part of how the government perpetuates itself, right, this is 0:58:46.240 --> 0:58:47.800 kind of what they have instead of taxes on the 0:58:47.880 --> 0:58:50.240 day as is, they let them raid and they get 0:58:50.280 --> 0:58:51.840 some of the money that they get from raiding. And 0:58:51.840 --> 0:58:54.280 it's also how they stopped the Dyaks from rebelling and 0:58:54.320 --> 0:58:58.280 fighting against them. The safe the regular raiding season was 0:58:58.280 --> 0:59:01.000 seen as kind of like a safety valve for diet aggression. 0:59:01.360 --> 0:59:04.360 And this all made James furious, Like again, he comes 0:59:04.360 --> 0:59:06.960 into this system that has been set up for a while, 0:59:06.960 --> 0:59:08.840 and as brutal as it is, is the system that 0:59:08.920 --> 0:59:12.080 things work by in Sarah Wak, and he thinks it's immoral, 0:59:12.160 --> 0:59:15.000 so he demands the whole thing be canceled. So he 0:59:15.080 --> 0:59:17.080 was ignored in this. The Rajah was like, this is 0:59:17.120 --> 0:59:18.919 how we do things here. You're just some like white 0:59:19.000 --> 0:59:20.760 dude who came in. I'm not going to I'm not 0:59:20.800 --> 0:59:24.000 going to change our entire system of government for you. Um. 0:59:24.040 --> 0:59:26.600 And when this happens, James Brooke gets angry and he 0:59:26.640 --> 0:59:30.000 sails his warship inland and he basically trains his cannons 0:59:30.080 --> 0:59:33.200 on the Capitol and threatens the Raja into action. So 0:59:33.240 --> 0:59:35.600 the Rajah is like, well, I don't have any cannons. 0:59:35.640 --> 0:59:37.440 You have a warship, So I guess I'm going to 0:59:37.520 --> 0:59:40.520 call off the raid. But after his little stunt, James 0:59:40.560 --> 0:59:43.240 could tell the local leadership was no longer amenable to 0:59:43.280 --> 0:59:46.360 his presence. So he had been like the Rajah had 0:59:46.360 --> 0:59:48.320 been happy to make him a permanent resident and give 0:59:48.400 --> 0:59:51.320 him like some official status here after he threatens the 0:59:51.440 --> 0:59:54.400 Rajah with cannons. This is kind of no longer the case, 0:59:54.440 --> 0:59:57.880 as you might expect, So James decides that since things 0:59:57.920 --> 1:00:00.320 have become unfriendly, he's going to make some more threats, 1:00:00.520 --> 1:00:02.120 pointing out that he has the power to bring the 1:00:02.120 --> 1:00:04.680 British Navy down on Brunei, which is the capital of 1:00:04.680 --> 1:00:08.720 the entire region. Now at just this point, purely by coincidence, 1:00:08.720 --> 1:00:12.120 a company steamship entered the port to trade this served 1:00:12.120 --> 1:00:14.560 and again, because James isn't a navy vessel, when the 1:00:14.600 --> 1:00:16.840 company's steamship goes in, they have to salute him. So 1:00:16.880 --> 1:00:18.720 they do this whole salute and makes it look to 1:00:18.720 --> 1:00:21.280 the people on the ground like this boat is coming 1:00:21.280 --> 1:00:23.320 in to support him, and it makes it seem more 1:00:23.360 --> 1:00:25.360 credible than like, oh shit, he really can bring the 1:00:25.520 --> 1:00:28.280 entire Royal Navy down in our assets. If not fortuitous, 1:00:28.320 --> 1:00:31.040 that has happened at the exact moment. This happens like 1:00:31.080 --> 1:00:36.520 four times to him the luckiest dumb guy. Yeah. So 1:00:37.040 --> 1:00:39.840 this obviously serves to make James is boasts more credible 1:00:39.920 --> 1:00:42.720 and knowing a moment when he sees one, James sails 1:00:42.760 --> 1:00:45.720 to Brunei and marches on the on the Sultan's palace 1:00:45.720 --> 1:00:48.760 with a company of heavily armed men. So basically, after 1:00:49.000 --> 1:00:51.280 scaring the local rulers in Sarawak, he sails to the 1:00:51.280 --> 1:00:53.640 capital of Brunei and comes ashore with like a hundred 1:00:53.720 --> 1:00:57.640 dudes strapped with rifles. So he comes to the Sultan 1:00:57.720 --> 1:00:59.720 with a bunch of armed mercenaries and a list of 1:00:59.720 --> 1:01:02.880 green princes bramming blaming Prince Mkota for trying to kill 1:01:02.960 --> 1:01:06.280 him and trying to capture English soldiers. This was mostly nonsense, 1:01:06.320 --> 1:01:08.640 but it gave James a justification for what he What 1:01:08.720 --> 1:01:11.760 he was about to do next. Makota, James said, was 1:01:11.800 --> 1:01:15.040 a destabilizing influence in the area. The Raja was not 1:01:15.160 --> 1:01:18.240 safe with Prince Mcoda around, and in order to make 1:01:18.320 --> 1:01:21.240 things safe for the Sultan and Brunei, the Sultan needed 1:01:21.280 --> 1:01:24.840 to make James Brooke the governor of sarah Wak for life. Otherwise, 1:01:24.920 --> 1:01:28.640 James couldn't guarantee the Rajah or the sultan safety. So 1:01:29.360 --> 1:01:31.439 and again he's saying that, like, I'm here, I wanted 1:01:31.480 --> 1:01:32.920 you need to do this so I can protect you 1:01:32.960 --> 1:01:35.600 from Prince Mkoda. But he's doing this while pointing a 1:01:35.600 --> 1:01:37.800 bunch of cannons at the Sultan and with a company 1:01:37.840 --> 1:01:40.760 of armed mercenaries at his back. So this is actually 1:01:40.760 --> 1:01:42.040 pretty smart of him. This is like one of the 1:01:42.080 --> 1:01:45.000 smarter things he's done. Yeah, he he figures out how 1:01:45.000 --> 1:01:47.160 to be how to be a white guy in this period. 1:01:49.880 --> 1:01:52.120 So again, and the Sultan at this point is not 1:01:52.200 --> 1:01:54.040 just staring at a bunch of guns. He's staring down 1:01:54.080 --> 1:01:56.919 a bunch of guns held and controlled by a guy who, 1:01:57.000 --> 1:01:59.320 as far as he knows, speaks with the authority of 1:01:59.360 --> 1:02:03.520 the queen of a land. So the Sultan submits. James 1:02:03.560 --> 1:02:05.960 Brooke was made the governor of sarah Wak and in 1:02:06.040 --> 1:02:08.920 his mind he James kind of believed that he was 1:02:08.960 --> 1:02:11.360 doing all this for selfless purposes, or at least that's 1:02:11.360 --> 1:02:13.520 how he portrayed it to other people. I don't know 1:02:13.560 --> 1:02:16.080 if i'd say he believed it, but that's how he 1:02:16.080 --> 1:02:19.200 He kind of writes home about this. Uh. Nigel Barley, 1:02:19.280 --> 1:02:22.960 his biographer writes, quote, James always considered his actions to 1:02:23.000 --> 1:02:25.480 be genuinely for the benefit of locals, whether the locals 1:02:25.520 --> 1:02:27.800 realized it or not, so that his interests in There's 1:02:27.800 --> 1:02:30.720 would naturally coalesce. It was a fundamental tenant of his 1:02:30.840 --> 1:02:34.200 rule that the Brooks governed only by consensus, Bruneyan's by 1:02:34.240 --> 1:02:38.200 unprincipled oriental oriental despotism. But this was hardly the free 1:02:38.320 --> 1:02:41.600 entreaty or election by grateful natives that Brooke history would record, 1:02:42.240 --> 1:02:44.320 so he would kind of he becomes the governor of 1:02:44.360 --> 1:02:48.120 sarah Wak through threatening a guy with guns. But he 1:02:48.280 --> 1:02:52.160 justifies this by saying the Bruneians are dictators right there, 1:02:52.200 --> 1:02:54.800 and they're they're ruling by terror and fear and violence, 1:02:54.840 --> 1:02:58.160 which is true. But he also is kind of ignoring 1:02:58.200 --> 1:03:00.360 the fact that he became the ruler by reatening to 1:03:00.360 --> 1:03:06.840 get gunned down. The existing pretty slick, though I'll give 1:03:06.920 --> 1:03:10.360 him credit for that. It is slick. It is it'll 1:03:10.400 --> 1:03:13.200 get sick because he's not He's not what he wants 1:03:13.240 --> 1:03:14.960 to be. At this point, he has been made the 1:03:15.000 --> 1:03:17.560 governor of a region of Malaysia for the rest of 1:03:17.600 --> 1:03:19.840 his life, and he's been made it through like a 1:03:19.880 --> 1:03:23.320 handshake agreement. He doesn't have any paper that like signifies this. 1:03:23.560 --> 1:03:25.840 He doesn't have his descendants don't have any right to 1:03:25.880 --> 1:03:28.920 the position. So his next tasks are going to be 1:03:28.960 --> 1:03:32.360 finding out how to turn himself from like governor of 1:03:32.480 --> 1:03:35.760 this island to basically king. So that's the journey we're 1:03:35.760 --> 1:03:37.800 going to cover when we go to part two of 1:03:37.880 --> 1:03:42.479 the James Brooks story. But for right now, it's time 1:03:42.480 --> 1:03:46.200 for part two of the coma story where you plug 1:03:46.200 --> 1:03:49.280 your plugables. Oh that was really good again, thank you. 1:03:49.520 --> 1:03:52.840 I am a professional broadcasting I'm learning a lot um. 1:03:53.160 --> 1:03:55.240 You can find us at the House of Pod on 1:03:55.320 --> 1:03:57.800 Twitter and you can listen to our podcast pretty much 1:03:57.840 --> 1:03:59.440 in all the same place as you listen to your 1:03:59.440 --> 1:04:03.120 other podcast called the House of Pod. It's a medical podcast, 1:04:03.200 --> 1:04:05.120 but you know, I think you might enjoy it if 1:04:05.120 --> 1:04:07.280 you're not a doctor. People seem to do that. Uh, 1:04:07.400 --> 1:04:09.520 it's kind of relatable and if you want to hear 1:04:09.520 --> 1:04:12.880 how doctors actually talk when they're like, you know, talking 1:04:12.880 --> 1:04:15.320 to each other, uh, in non front of like you know, 1:04:15.480 --> 1:04:17.680 like a lecture hall or something like that. This is 1:04:18.040 --> 1:04:20.440 the show for you. You like it, try it, you 1:04:20.480 --> 1:04:24.680 don't you know free that was a great pitch. Check 1:04:24.720 --> 1:04:28.080 out the House of pod Uh and I don't know, 1:04:28.480 --> 1:04:33.600 check out buying a naval vessel and conquering chunk of Malaysia. Um, 1:04:33.800 --> 1:04:35.280 keep it a shot, you know it might work out 1:04:35.320 --> 1:04:40.160 for you. Always that probably isn't a good way to 1:04:40.200 --> 1:04:42.240 end this episode. I can almost go the music in 1:04:42.240 --> 1:04:47.760 the background, which, yep, here we go. Let's let the 1:04:47.840 --> 1:05:03.480 music uh, distracting the fact that I just endorsed imperialism.