Speaker 1: M what's colonizing my sop? Help me out here? How
Speaker 1: do I introduce the podcast? I'm Robert Evans and this
Speaker 1: is Behind the Bastards, podcast about the worst people from
Speaker 1: history and today. And my guest is that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like me. No one's gonna buy that. Sophie, we gotta okay, okay?
Speaker 1: Can I try? Can I try to get okay? Ready? Hitler?
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. See you know, Sophie, you gotta admit
Speaker 1: there's there's it's it's there's there's something. You know. There's
Speaker 1: a power in just screaming the name Hitler to introduce
Speaker 1: the podcast. There's a reason why I've done it so
Speaker 1: many times. It gets attention. It gets attention, It gets attention.
Speaker 1: People pay attention when you just shout the name Hitler
Speaker 1: into their ears as they're driving to work in the morning.
Speaker 1: This is of course Behind the Bastards. Bad people talk
Speaker 1: about him. Uh. Sometimes we introduced it by shouting Hitler,
Speaker 1: but this time we introduced it with a meandering discussion
Speaker 1: about how bad I am at introducing the show. My
Speaker 1: guest again, it's Dr Kvehda of the House of Pod podcast,
Speaker 1: which deals with a whole bunch of cool medical stuff
Speaker 1: are our friend of the pod. Garrison Davis was on
Speaker 1: it recently to talk about gun violence. Right That's Rights.
Speaker 1: Had him on with a gun. We had him on
Speaker 1: to ask questions of a gun violence researcher named Dr
Speaker 1: Amy barn Horse. That was a really fun episode. Good good, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm actually holding a bullet. Speak it's just
Speaker 1: one of my desk bullets, the dust bullets. Sophie's holding
Speaker 1: up blood orange cake. You know. I just got a
Speaker 1: crate of two and fifty tracer rounds of three oh eight,
Speaker 1: which is fun because you can light things on fire
Speaker 1: with them. So I'm excited to find some things to
Speaker 1: light on fire when I when I got shooting next.
Speaker 1: Sometimes if you hit a tree stump because of all
Speaker 1: the sap and there, it'll light the whole stump on fire.
Speaker 1: It's a hoot. Oh, that's a hoot. As long as
Speaker 1: it's wet enough outside. You don't want to do it
Speaker 1: during the dry summer day. So we're in the last
Speaker 1: couple of months where I can light a stump on
Speaker 1: fire and not burn down the forest. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: like doctors who are gonna you know, who follow our show,
Speaker 1: who are going to be listening to this for the
Speaker 1: first time and they're just gonna be like, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: hold on, what's going on? What's going on? He talked
Speaker 1: about Hitler in guns and what what has happened to
Speaker 1: Cave And that's okay, I'm okay, it's okay. Speaking of
Speaker 1: what's happened to what's about to happen to Cave is
Speaker 1: that he's about to hear about what happens next to
Speaker 1: James Brooke literally left off had just kind of at
Speaker 1: gunpoint made himself into the governor of a sizeable chunk
Speaker 1: of Brunei or Malaysia, whatever you want to call it. Borneo.
Speaker 1: Um so he has. He has gotten himself declared governor
Speaker 1: at gunpoint, which is the way to do it. You know,
Speaker 1: I've I've considered that for a while. I would like
Speaker 1: to be a governor. I think I'd be a good one,
Speaker 1: Gonna open up whatever state I'm in or lock it down,
Speaker 1: depending on wherever it is. I'll do the opposite of
Speaker 1: whatever they were doing before. It's a safe bet for governors. Change. Change.
Speaker 1: That's what people want, is change, whether or not it's
Speaker 1: good change or reasonable change or change. People have asked
Speaker 1: for just change things. Yes, Sophie, that doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: something I do anyway. Uh So, yeah, James had threatened
Speaker 1: himself into being a governor. Uh and this this obviously
Speaker 1: the actual leaders in in Brunei at the time, like
Speaker 1: the different royal people. Uh, most of them were not
Speaker 1: super happy with it. So the Sultan of Brunei doesn't
Speaker 1: like that he's been forced at gunpoint to make this
Speaker 1: guy a governor. Now, there is a chunk of royals,
Speaker 1: as there are kind of anywhere there's British imperialism, there's
Speaker 1: a chunk of the ruling class that likes what's happening, right,
Speaker 1: And in James's case, it's Prince Badrudine, the guy that
Speaker 1: he's got the hots for, and Russia hashim Um, and
Speaker 1: both of these guys kind of warded him because even
Speaker 1: though he was super problematic and kind of disrespectful, he
Speaker 1: also had a bunch of modern canons and they were
Speaker 1: more worried about their local rivals than they were about
Speaker 1: this British guy who they assumed was going to leave eventually.
Speaker 1: They were like, we'll put up with this guy. I mean, Badine,
Speaker 1: I think really loved him, but Raja Hashim is more like,
Speaker 1: we'll put up with this guy and he'll use his
Speaker 1: cannons to help us against our rivals, and that'll be
Speaker 1: a good deal for us. And for a while this
Speaker 1: worked pretty well. Um, But the whole time James was
Speaker 1: kind of solidifying his hold on Sarawak. His rivals, who
Speaker 1: included Prince Makota and one of the sons of the
Speaker 1: Sultan and brune I, were working behind the scenes to
Speaker 1: take back their land from this usurper. And obviously it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that none of the people fighting over sarah
Speaker 1: Wak had a good moral claim to the land right.
Speaker 1: The Sultan and Brunei and his kin are all bad people.
Speaker 1: They let raiders bribe them to rob and murder their citizens. James, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: wanted to rule sarah Walk for the sake of his
Speaker 1: ego and to live out his boyhood dreams of Eastern adventure.
Speaker 1: Nobody's nobody in charges, As is generally the case in history,
Speaker 1: nobody in charges is a good person or particularly righteous.
Speaker 1: This is often how colonial dramas would play out. You've
Speaker 1: got a shitty local leader, You've got differently shitty foreign
Speaker 1: imperialist interlopers, and you've got a bunch of normal people
Speaker 1: caught in the middle. That's kind of the story of
Speaker 1: imperialism and part of why it. Part of why imperialists
Speaker 1: get traction in places is because a decent number of
Speaker 1: locals are always willing to sign on with the imperialist
Speaker 1: because like, well, but our current leaders sucked too, you know,
Speaker 1: like that's the thing that happens a lot, which is great.
Speaker 1: Uh So, James had a decent amount of support among
Speaker 1: some folks in the area. A lot of Malay and
Speaker 1: Dyak people who rebelled against the Sultan liked him because
Speaker 1: even if he had won the war against them, he'd
Speaker 1: spared their lives and he'd done it against the wishes
Speaker 1: of some of the local powers. Meanwhile, a number of
Speaker 1: folks in the interior liked him because he'd gotten the
Speaker 1: Rash to call off that big Dyak raid. So the
Speaker 1: point is he had a bunch of local support. He
Speaker 1: was not like, it was not just him imposing his
Speaker 1: will on the local people for guns. Because of things
Speaker 1: he did. A decent number of people who lived in
Speaker 1: sarah Wak and didn't like the leaders in Brunei supported him.
Speaker 1: And honestly, if you were living in sarah Walk at
Speaker 1: the time. Given the options, especially if you're one of
Speaker 1: the people who was about to get rated by these diets,
Speaker 1: you might have supported James Brooke too, right, because it's
Speaker 1: just like the Sultans ship too, you know. And and
Speaker 1: these people aren't dumb. They get a sense of this guy,
Speaker 1: and clearly everything he's done up to this point would
Speaker 1: lead you to believe that he's probably gonna get tired
Speaker 1: at some point and go back to England and leave
Speaker 1: them alone. You would think that's what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: I think that would be a reasonable assumption. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of what's happening. They're like, everything
Speaker 1: he's done isn't shitty. He's helped us out in a
Speaker 1: couple of things we don't like about our leaders. He's
Speaker 1: a white dude. He's not going to stay here forever.
Speaker 1: He's a rich white boy. He's gonna go home at
Speaker 1: some point. Let's use him while he's here, you know.
Speaker 1: I think that's the bet a lot of people make now.
Speaker 1: At the point in which he became kind of total
Speaker 1: ruler of his own little country, James Brooke was thirty
Speaker 1: eight years old. He started using the title Raja, which
Speaker 1: was not strictly legal because he was not royal in
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form. He had been made a
Speaker 1: governor um. But he starts calling himself the Rajah. The
Speaker 1: locals called him twine Bassar, which means big lord, which
Speaker 1: is kind of a rad nickname. Again, and he started
Speaker 1: off his reign pretty well by releasing a bunch of
Speaker 1: hostages who had been taken during the civil war, so
Speaker 1: again kind of ingratiating himself with the local people. Not
Speaker 1: a bad move. Um. Now he'd come to power by
Speaker 1: defending the cooching Malaise, who were the folks in the
Speaker 1: interior that were about to get rated from their rulers
Speaker 1: in Brunei. But his territory had an equal population of Dyaks,
Speaker 1: and they were not as friendly to him on the
Speaker 1: whole because he had stopped some of them from raiding
Speaker 1: these cootching Malaise. So James knew that if he was
Speaker 1: going to hold on power, he already had the cootching
Speaker 1: people like kind of on his back. He needed to
Speaker 1: win over these Dyaks to his side, and in order
Speaker 1: to do that, he took a leaf out of the
Speaker 1: British Empire's playbook. As he later wrote, quote divide and
Speaker 1: govern is the motto, I must govern each by the other.
Speaker 1: So do you understand what that means? This again what
Speaker 1: the British Empire does in in we talked about in
Speaker 1: the in the idi Amine episode, and there were certain
Speaker 1: tribal groups that they would support an arm to control
Speaker 1: other tribal groups. Right, that's the same thing the Belgians do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's learning. That's what he figures out he's going
Speaker 1: to do. So his first step was to demolish an
Speaker 1: old system set up by both Bruneyan and Malay aristocrats
Speaker 1: called the Sarah. This gave those nobles the right to
Speaker 1: legally take any diac property they happened to. Like if
Speaker 1: they saw a diet boat they fancied, they could cut
Speaker 1: a gouge in the top and that was a legally
Speaker 1: binding signal that the boat was now their property. Nobles
Speaker 1: were also given the right to set prices for produce
Speaker 1: that they bought from peasant farmers and gatherers. So like
Speaker 1: you gather a bunch of food, or farmer a bunch
Speaker 1: of food, and the rich people get to decide what
Speaker 1: they pay you for it, which is not a great
Speaker 1: deal for the actual people making the food, you know.
Speaker 1: Um So, if these little people didn't produce sufficient quantities
Speaker 1: of food stuff, their children and spouses could be sold
Speaker 1: into slavery. So the Surah is an unpopular their system
Speaker 1: among the Dyaks, and James Brooke abolishes it as soon
Speaker 1: as he comes to power. Again, not a bad call
Speaker 1: so far. He's pretty much to two in my book,
Speaker 1: you know. Um So, he also decided early on not
Speaker 1: to mess with a local religion. I should clarify. He
Speaker 1: decided not to mess with the religious beliefs of the
Speaker 1: local Malays who were Muslim. So he sees that like
Speaker 1: a lot of the population are Muslim, in kind of
Speaker 1: an uncommon move for a British imperial ruler in this period.
Speaker 1: He decides, I'm not going to let like missionaries come
Speaker 1: in and funk with the Muslims because I think people
Speaker 1: have the right to their own religion and that's great. However,
Speaker 1: the di Acts were animists, right, so they have kind
Speaker 1: of a more not it's they were. They have a religion,
Speaker 1: but it's not a Judeo Christian religion, and thus it's
Speaker 1: not a religion that James Brooke recognizes as a religion. Um,
Speaker 1: and so he is willing to let evangelists go kind
Speaker 1: of proselytize to them because he doesn't think they have
Speaker 1: a religion, because he doesn't understand exactly he's been to
Speaker 1: Islam because all the time the Indian subcontinent, So it's
Speaker 1: not foreign to him. This whatever I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know what they were following. Yeah, totally foreign to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't know what it is, and so he thinks
Speaker 1: they have no religion. His biographer writes that he considered
Speaker 1: the Diets to be quote children of nature without true religion,
Speaker 1: since their most cherished beliefs were dismissed in the eyes
Speaker 1: of civilization as mere childlike superstition. So again, not your
Speaker 1: worst case for an imperialist overlord because he respects some
Speaker 1: of the local beliefs under gentler imperialist slightly yeah to
Speaker 1: some people, I guess now. In all, Brooke championed what
Speaker 1: he considered to be a hands off approach to rulership.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to engage in the kind of full
Speaker 1: scale colonialism that he had seen in India. Instead, he
Speaker 1: only wanted to bring in a few Europeans, and he
Speaker 1: saw himself as assisting the native leaders, giving them the
Speaker 1: benefit of his big European brain, rather than taking over.
Speaker 1: He felt that this tactic had quote never been fairly tried,
Speaker 1: and it appears to me in some respects more desirable
Speaker 1: than the actual possession of a foreign nation. For if successful,
Speaker 1: the native prince finds greater advantages, and if a failure,
Speaker 1: the European government is not committed. Above all, it ensures
Speaker 1: the independence of the native princes and may advance the
Speaker 1: inhabitants further in the scale of civilization by means of
Speaker 1: the very independence that can be done when a government
Speaker 1: is a foreign one and their natural freedom sacrificed. So
Speaker 1: that's his attitude here. I'm struck well, he writes, and
Speaker 1: this is kind of some like US and Vietnam style thinking,
Speaker 1: where it's like, we can't invade this country to declare war,
Speaker 1: but we can send in advisors and that way if
Speaker 1: we if it goes badly, we're not committed, which didn't
Speaker 1: work in Vietnam and spoilers great here. But like that's
Speaker 1: the that's the thought process that he has. So critics
Speaker 1: will point out that Brooke was regularly heavy handed in
Speaker 1: his leadership, although he wouldn't admit to this personally. His
Speaker 1: years in power included numerous rebellions and brutal crackdowns on
Speaker 1: insurgent campaigns. They will also note that his enlightened colonialism
Speaker 1: may have been preferable to him because it was cheaper.
Speaker 1: James Brooke definitely had dreams of exploiting the mineral wealth
Speaker 1: of sarah Walk, but he never ever gained any kind
Speaker 1: of competence at trade or business. The land he conquered
Speaker 1: was also not rich in the kind of gyms and
Speaker 1: precious metals he wanted. He just did send back one
Speaker 1: stone that his laborers found, which he called the Brook Diamond.
Speaker 1: He sent this to like England to try to drum
Speaker 1: up like enthusiasm for his reign, but when it was
Speaker 1: appraised in London, it was found to be a worthless opal. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Brook Diamond. I wonder what if that's why I
Speaker 1: thought the name Brooke was related to diamonds. I wonder
Speaker 1: if I'd ever heard that before. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know. They may have a cookie company, yes, but
Speaker 1: not so much of the diamonds. Not so much of
Speaker 1: the diamonds. So the irony is that the land he'd
Speaker 1: stumbled into controlling held a tremendous amount of crude oil.
Speaker 1: That's why the Sultan of Brunei today as a billionaire. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's actually it's very very valuable land to control, but
Speaker 1: at the time crude oil was kind of useless. There
Speaker 1: were plenty of valuable commodities though with in sarah Wak,
Speaker 1: but through financial incompetence, James Brooke repeatedly failed to capitalize
Speaker 1: on them. When he took power in like he kind
Speaker 1: of estimated the revenue of his country at about five
Speaker 1: thousand pounds per year um and although even this sum
Speaker 1: was inflated, but as time went on, Like he would
Speaker 1: never make a profit out of this. He would eventually
Speaker 1: go broke running sarah Wak um because he just like
Speaker 1: had no head for actual business. It would not be
Speaker 1: fair to say that his motive in sarah Wak was pure,
Speaker 1: pure venal profit seeking, but neither was he particularly pure hearted.
Speaker 1: For James, ruling was about stature. He didn't want to
Speaker 1: get rich off of the wealth of sarah Wak. He
Speaker 1: wanted to be a big man who had to be
Speaker 1: respected because he was the governor of like he was
Speaker 1: the king basically of an entire country. Right to that end,
Speaker 1: he started sending home excerpts from his diary and inflated
Speaker 1: stories about the rebellion and his campaign's fighting pirates in
Speaker 1: the area. These started to pick up a leadership, in
Speaker 1: part because he had an agent back and like he
Speaker 1: has like a like a press agent who he sends
Speaker 1: back his diaries to and who pumped him up in
Speaker 1: the imagination of the local people in England. We'll just
Speaker 1: not done. He started to pick up a readership. But
Speaker 1: James was incensed because, like, while his stories were popular,
Speaker 1: the Queen didn't automatically knight him, and he wrote back
Speaker 1: to the British government, who still had not acknowledged his reign,
Speaker 1: asking for an eight barrel. So he gets frustrated, like
Speaker 1: he does all the time, this like work to puff
Speaker 1: himself up, and the British Government's like, I don't think
Speaker 1: we should recognize this guy. This seems like this might
Speaker 1: go bad, Like let's let's just let's just kind of
Speaker 1: keep quiet for now. Um. This makes him angry and
Speaker 1: he writes back to Britain being like, you guys have
Speaker 1: to support me. I'm doing the right thing in this country.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to civilize them. And by the way, would
Speaker 1: you send me an eight barreled cannon, because I I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna have to kill more of these people
Speaker 1: to civilize them properly, so I need a beggar gun.
Speaker 1: He's sad he's not immediately knighted, so he's like, can't
Speaker 1: have a cannon? And I have a cannon. Yeah, an
Speaker 1: eight barreled cannon. I mean that makes sense. One barrel
Speaker 1: is not enough to clip Clinton mother. So James's letters
Speaker 1: home this period evince a distinct sense of insecurity. After
Speaker 1: taking power, he took actions against pirates, often with the
Speaker 1: late aid of a local British naval captain and his ship,
Speaker 1: but the lack of formal recognition of his own government
Speaker 1: rankled alongside the fact that his status as governor had
Speaker 1: only been confirmed by the words of the Rajah. There
Speaker 1: was nothing written by the Sultan of Brunei that made
Speaker 1: his position clear. As the new, unchecked ruler of sarah Wak,
Speaker 1: James inherited a number of things, most notably a five
Speaker 1: year old Diak boy named Stu. This kid was a
Speaker 1: prisoner of the war that he had just fought, and
Speaker 1: in his writings, James's care for Settu comes across as
Speaker 1: genuine and frankly somewhat heroic. He wrote, quote, the gift
Speaker 1: causes me vexation because I know not what to do
Speaker 1: with the poor innocent, and yet I shrink from the
Speaker 1: responsibility of adopting him. My first wish is to return
Speaker 1: him to his parents and his tribe, and I find
Speaker 1: I cannot do that, and if I fight, I cannot
Speaker 1: do this. I believe it will be better to carry
Speaker 1: him with me than leave him to become a slave
Speaker 1: of a slave, for should I send him back, such
Speaker 1: will probably be his fate. So for a time he
Speaker 1: keeps this five year old boy. Uh. And James later
Speaker 1: wrote that he was able to make Situ content and
Speaker 1: happy um by giving him a bunch of tobacco. So
Speaker 1: that's like his to give him cigarettes. Kids love cigarettes.
Speaker 1: This will make him happy. Um. Now, Brooke did write
Speaker 1: regularly about wanting to find and return this boy to
Speaker 1: his parents, but as Nigel Barley writes, it's not easy
Speaker 1: to tell how honest he was about wanting this quote.
Speaker 1: His relations with Stu are cast in exactly the same
Speaker 1: terms of chest beating morality as his relations with the
Speaker 1: whole of poor suffering sarah Wak. He will take in
Speaker 1: the devastated orphan province, protect it, train it up, give
Speaker 1: it the means to earn a living, if only as
Speaker 1: a servant, and give it back at self respect, regardless
Speaker 1: of the cost to himself. Above all, he will give
Speaker 1: it love, And the greatest of these is love. No
Speaker 1: wonder then that it becomes a matter of deep concern
Speaker 1: whether Settu and other boys were, as claimed objects of
Speaker 1: selfless love or active lust. To James Brooke, to debauch
Speaker 1: Situ would be to metaphorically debauch innocent sarah Wak. In general,
Speaker 1: he would no longer be the founder and protector of
Speaker 1: a model state, but the abuser of innocent trust Sarawak. Indeed,
Speaker 1: is like a foundling at which you first protect with
Speaker 1: hesitation and doubt, but which foundling afterwards repays you your
Speaker 1: cost and your trouble. We will never know whether, as Rasha,
Speaker 1: James boyled daily and the clammy sheets of unrequited lust,
Speaker 1: engaged in a little vague scout masterly fumbling, sublimate a
Speaker 1: desire under a stiff rictus of a buncular benevolence, or
Speaker 1: reached a sensible standing arrangement with wondering more of his
Speaker 1: young men. So again, we don't know if he was
Speaker 1: sexually abusing this young child or if he was just
Speaker 1: like because of kind of the way things are written,
Speaker 1: it's possible that he was. He was possible that he
Speaker 1: was like engaged in perfectly consensual sexual relationships with other
Speaker 1: adult men and men that were considered adult at the time.
Speaker 1: It's also possible he's abusing this kid. And we don't
Speaker 1: really know which is going on, but Nigel Barley considers
Speaker 1: the idea that he may have been male sting this child.
Speaker 1: It's kind of symbolic of his relationship with Sarah Wak
Speaker 1: in general. So he's both portraying himself as honestly and
Speaker 1: kind of heroically taking this this boy and this province
Speaker 1: under his wing, trying to help it, trying to raise
Speaker 1: it up, and the possible reality lurking under the surfaces
Speaker 1: that he's abusing both of them like that that might
Speaker 1: be what's happening. It's definitely what's happening with Sarah walk
Speaker 1: We don't know if it's what's happening with the boy
Speaker 1: or not, but it's kind of hard I get why
Speaker 1: Barley kind of draws a comparison between the two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's tough. I mean, actually, this guy in general is
Speaker 1: not the most bastardly bastard you've covered. It's not so
Speaker 1: I kind of want to give him the benefit of
Speaker 1: the doubt. But I don't feel like that's the smart
Speaker 1: play I feel. I don't think it is something very bad,
Speaker 1: and it may not have been with Situ. It may
Speaker 1: have been that his sexual relationships were all with people.
Speaker 1: We would call it pedophilia still, but fifteen year olds
Speaker 1: are kind of legally adults at this point, right, which
Speaker 1: I'm not saying makes it right, But if they like
Speaker 1: it's they're like lieutenants the military and stuff. That might
Speaker 1: be what he can find. We don't really know. Or
Speaker 1: he may have been molesting this five year old boy.
Speaker 1: We don't know. I do like the phrase vague scout,
Speaker 1: masterly fumboy. Yeah. So, as ruler, James took responsibility for
Speaker 1: enforcing the law on himself. He had a house constructed
Speaker 1: to his own specifications, and he used it as both
Speaker 1: his home and the only law court in sarah Wak.
Speaker 1: His subjects would attend mainly to gamble on the results
Speaker 1: of the proceedings. A fact James seemed largely unaware of.
Speaker 1: So like he starts he becomes like I am the law,
Speaker 1: I'll rule on all cases, and like an industry, starts
Speaker 1: up gambling on how he's going to decide. Is it
Speaker 1: because he's just so haphazard that like, yeah, because I
Speaker 1: imagine if he really was a good ruler, there wouldn't
Speaker 1: be much, you know, much don't much gambling in there.
Speaker 1: If if he was a good ruler, there might be
Speaker 1: actual professional judges. James also attempted to broke your peace
Speaker 1: with the local pirates. To this end, he held us
Speaker 1: summit with several of their leaders. He seems to have
Speaker 1: fallen in love with them, describing one pirate chief as
Speaker 1: as fine a young man as the eye would really
Speaker 1: wish to rest upon, straight elegantly, let's yet strongly made,
Speaker 1: with a chest in a neck and a head and
Speaker 1: set upon them which might serve Apollo legs far better
Speaker 1: than that of his belvidere, and a countenance mild and intelligence.
Speaker 1: He meets with these pirates because there's a pirate problem
Speaker 1: in his domain, and he's just like his thirsty as
Speaker 1: buck over these young great I don't know everyone's complaining
Speaker 1: about these guys are snacks, what's going on there? He
Speaker 1: writes repeatedly about the fact that these young pirate kings
Speaker 1: didn't cover their thighs or their torsos, which again profoundly thirsty.
Speaker 1: The pirates realized that the white Rajah was kind of
Speaker 1: hot for them, and they tried to use his attraction
Speaker 1: to them to push him to allow them to go
Speaker 1: head hunting in his domain. Brooks own writings relate to
Speaker 1: how one of these conversations went between him and a
Speaker 1: sexy young pirate named Matari. Quote, and this is Matari speaking,
Speaker 1: You will give me, your friend leave to steal a
Speaker 1: few heads occasionally, No, I replied, you cannot take a
Speaker 1: single head, you cannot enter the country. And if you
Speaker 1: were your countrymen, do I have a hundred scrying, I
Speaker 1: will have a hundred scring that's the name of these
Speaker 1: pirate people heads for everyone you take here. He recurred
Speaker 1: to this request several times, just to steal one or
Speaker 1: two as a schoolboy asks for apples. That's how James
Speaker 1: describes as pirate asking to the head people. At what
Speaker 1: point do you think like his mother was reading these
Speaker 1: letters and was like, he's really focusing on the thighs
Speaker 1: of pirates. I mean, I'm not gonna get grandkids, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think I'm gonna have grandkids out
Speaker 1: of this one. Talking a lot about the thighs of
Speaker 1: these sexy pirate boys. Paragraphs on his quads. Something's really
Speaker 1: a quad man definitely a quad man. Um. And this
Speaker 1: is part of why I think it might be less
Speaker 1: likely that he was molesting that little kid, because most
Speaker 1: of his obsession is with like his he. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them are teenagers, but older teenagers.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you can decide how you what, like
Speaker 1: what you think about James Brooke. Clearly something sketchy is
Speaker 1: going on. Um, just because a lot of these relationships
Speaker 1: are there's a huge power in balance. Like outside of
Speaker 1: the fact that some of these people are teenagers, he's
Speaker 1: also like now the governor king of the province and
Speaker 1: not just a bunch of these young local teenagers. But
Speaker 1: later on he starts bringing in young young British boys
Speaker 1: who are legally again legally adults, but are also he's
Speaker 1: taking like these fifteen and sixteen year olds into the
Speaker 1: country and like giving them positions and highly problematic problematic,
Speaker 1: you would say, yeah, but you know who won't try
Speaker 1: to molest young pirate chieftains. I really don't like where
Speaker 1: you're going here, but continue the products and services that
Speaker 1: support this podcast. I did not like that one. Well
Speaker 1: they won't, Sophie. Yeah, I think we can safely say
Speaker 1: that Audible has never thirsted angrily over a pirate attempting
Speaker 1: to take heads in their domain. Never doubt Bezos, man,
Speaker 1: I you are right, No, I don't know. We know
Speaker 1: what Jeff. We've seen Jeff Bezos's sects. We know what
Speaker 1: he's into, and it's weirder than liking a pirate kings squads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you not run into this? Oh my god, Google
Speaker 1: Jeff and all you at home who don't know what
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Speaker 1: We're back talking about talking about James brook By eighty three,
Speaker 1: it had become clear that negotiation was not going to
Speaker 1: bring a conclusion to Sarah Wak's piracy pro them. James
Speaker 1: Brooke decided he had no choice but to go to war.
Speaker 1: Lucky for him, an East India Company warship that Diana
Speaker 1: had just sailed into the area at the time. Again,
Speaker 1: this is like the second one of these coincidences that happens.
Speaker 1: James had attempted to enlist the company's warships in his
Speaker 1: military campaigns before, with mixed success. But the captain this
Speaker 1: time was a fellow named Henry Keppel, who was a
Speaker 1: very similar sort of person like James, he had been
Speaker 1: raised on a steady diet of imperialist popular fiction, and
Speaker 1: he too dreamed of fighting pirates in the Far East. Now,
Speaker 1: Keppel's actual job in the area was to fight against
Speaker 1: a group of raiders who are harassing company shipping nearby.
Speaker 1: He was not there to travel around the waters in
Speaker 1: Sarawak and fight pirates. But James made a series of
Speaker 1: very effective arguments. First, he pointed out that since water
Speaker 1: was the primary means of transport around uh Borneo, any
Speaker 1: criminals who were sailing on the water were by definition pirates.
Speaker 1: So if the company had been sent here to fight
Speaker 1: raiders who were using waters nearby, pirates are the same
Speaker 1: thing as raiders. That means that your job is also
Speaker 1: to fight the pirates and sarah Wak you could justify
Speaker 1: it this way. Now, he also pointed out that it
Speaker 1: would be profitable for the company because at the time
Speaker 1: the British Parliament offered generous bounties to officers and men
Speaker 1: who killed or captured pirates. This law was a holdover
Speaker 1: from the eighteen twenties, when the British government had declared
Speaker 1: a crusade against slavery and human trafficking. Pirates were a
Speaker 1: big part of the slave trade, and by monetizing the
Speaker 1: murder of pirates, Parliament created an underground economy based around
Speaker 1: liberating slaves. Now, of course, those freed slaves were left
Speaker 1: destitute without any kind of restitation, restitution or compensation UM
Speaker 1: and the people who killed the pirates got rich. So
Speaker 1: it was again kind of a fucked up situation, but hey,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? So James Brooke basically argued
Speaker 1: that the the raiders Kepple had been tasked to fight
Speaker 1: by the company UM and the rebels and pirates threatening
Speaker 1: James's rule in sarah Wak were one and the same.
Speaker 1: And again James frames, all of this is fighting pirates.
Speaker 1: Some of them are actual pirates, some of them are
Speaker 1: rebels who were fighting for other Brunei and princes in
Speaker 1: the area, Like He just kind of lumps them all
Speaker 1: because they're all on boats. They're all pirates to him,
Speaker 1: even though some of them are political dissidents who were
Speaker 1: fighting against his regime. For you could argue justified reasons. Um.
Speaker 1: He also points out to Keppel that if the company
Speaker 1: lets these pirate havens and sarah Wak exist, the rating
Speaker 1: of company ships will continue. Eventually, he had made like
Speaker 1: a good enough argument that this guy Keppel was like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll come fight pirates with you. And this gives James
Speaker 1: Brook access to an army of Company soldiers, one he
Speaker 1: would repeatedly used to butcher pirates and rebels. Now, best
Speaker 1: of all, the company helped him avoid maintaining a standing
Speaker 1: army or navy. This was very fortunate too, because it
Speaker 1: let him save money. Sarah Wak didn't have a formal
Speaker 1: military force. He would occasionally like raise up militaries. But
Speaker 1: that ship's expensive. If the company's coming in and fighting
Speaker 1: pirates on his behalf, and they're being paid by the
Speaker 1: British government, and he's maybe being able to argue these
Speaker 1: political dissidents are pirates, that means the British government is
Speaker 1: paying for the army. That's helping him cement his rule. Right,
Speaker 1: that kind of makes sense what he's doing here. So
Speaker 1: after working out this arrangement, James Brooke had the Company
Speaker 1: land men at his capital, where he was able to
Speaker 1: show them off to his people as a sort of
Speaker 1: veiled threat. Now in actuality, the Company soldiers spent more
Speaker 1: time traveling around Brooks new domain and showing off their
Speaker 1: guns than they did actually fighting. There were several encounters
Speaker 1: with pirates, but since any locals and boats who had
Speaker 1: weapons were to find as pirates, we don't know if most,
Speaker 1: or even any of the people killed by Company soldiers
Speaker 1: in this period were pirates. The violence quickly escalated, though
Speaker 1: largely because Brooke wanted it to escalate. Though their initial
Speaker 1: raids had led to a marked drop in pirate activity,
Speaker 1: Brooke had Pence, Prince Bodredine, and other local leaders sent
Speaker 1: him letters begging for British help with the pirate menace.
Speaker 1: This paper trail helped brook And and Kepple justify their
Speaker 1: escalating use of force. Soon he had gathered a force
Speaker 1: of more than a thousand local troops and Company soldiers.
Speaker 1: He marched them deep into the jungle, burning villages as
Speaker 1: they went. What had started as an anti pirate campaign
Speaker 1: quickly became something akin to a light ethnic cleansing. James
Speaker 1: promised his local Malay fighters the right to loot the
Speaker 1: villages of their enemies. He promised his diet soldiers the
Speaker 1: right right the right to take heads, which they stole
Speaker 1: both from corpses of the slain and from ransacked graves.
Speaker 1: We'll never know how many people were killed in this
Speaker 1: anti pirate crusade, or how many of them were actually pirates,
Speaker 1: but it did serve to kind of wipe out any
Speaker 1: resistance to him, because, among other things, first he's killing
Speaker 1: a bunch of the people who don't want him to
Speaker 1: be Raja. And second, everyone who might resist him sees, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy can command a company military anytime he wants.
Speaker 1: I don't want to fight funk with that. I guess
Speaker 1: I'm a little surprised that he even needed a paper trail.
Speaker 1: I feel like no one would care if he did
Speaker 1: it from the you know, the English side. That's actually
Speaker 1: not true, And this is one of the things that
Speaker 1: I think when we talk about anti imperialism is not
Speaker 1: mentioned enough. It's often kind of I think people tend
Speaker 1: to think like everyone in England was okay with this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. They were not a lot of people
Speaker 1: recognized at the time how immoral this was, um, how
Speaker 1: fucked up all of it was. And there was there
Speaker 1: were even within Parliament there was a significant anti imperial
Speaker 1: parliamentary faction and we'll talk about that later. Here he
Speaker 1: goes on trial for some of this stuff. So there
Speaker 1: was actually a reason for him to make a paper trail,
Speaker 1: and it's because he knows there are people back whom
Speaker 1: we don't support of the imperialism happening. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: it's a little reassuring. Actually, that makes me feel a
Speaker 1: little bit better. It's this and they're never successful. Really.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing with like when we talked about
Speaker 1: King Leopold in Belgium, right, there was an anti imperial
Speaker 1: movement that four years was fighting against what he was doing.
Speaker 1: They didn't succeed in stopping the genocide until it had
Speaker 1: killed thirteen million people. But I think it is important
Speaker 1: to note that they exist in part because it means
Speaker 1: this is not a everyone at the time thought it
Speaker 1: was fine. No, a lot of a lot of elected
Speaker 1: leaders in England at the time, we're like, it's bad
Speaker 1: what we're doing, right, we're committing crimes against humanity. We
Speaker 1: ought to stop um and that's important. It's the same
Speaker 1: thing as like there were Founding fathers who were abolitionists
Speaker 1: and record nice that slavery was a tremendous evil, and
Speaker 1: unlike Thomas Jefferson didn't own slaves while talking about slavery,
Speaker 1: as guys like Thomas Paine, and I think you you
Speaker 1: need to highlight those folks because it makes it clear
Speaker 1: how immoral everyone else was. Yeah, good to know, good
Speaker 1: to know. So after this quick brutal little war, Kepple
Speaker 1: sailed on Um and another company vessel entered into the
Speaker 1: area soon after his departure, and in a very another
Speaker 1: wildly lucky like strike for Um, uh for James Brooke,
Speaker 1: this next company ship that sails into Sarah Wax strikes
Speaker 1: a rock and capsizes. Now the crew and captain are
Speaker 1: rescued and James gets to take them into his care
Speaker 1: in his capital while he waits for company reinforcements. And
Speaker 1: the company sends an entire fleet of ships to pick
Speaker 1: up these guys. And this is really lucky for James
Speaker 1: because for all of the locals know for massive warships
Speaker 1: sail into Borneo and as far as they know he
Speaker 1: has some power over these ships. They're not like he
Speaker 1: doesn't make it clear to his the locals, like they're
Speaker 1: just here to pick up a crew of a boat.
Speaker 1: That's something like. It looks like, oh look, now there's
Speaker 1: a whole fleet of military ships at his beck and call.
Speaker 1: So James takes advantage of the opportunity and he convinces
Speaker 1: all of these company warships to sail with him to Brunei,
Speaker 1: which is the capital of the region where the Sultan lives.
Speaker 1: And he goes ashore to meet again with the Sultan
Speaker 1: and asked him for an official declaration confirming his appointment
Speaker 1: as governor of sarah Wak and now granting him the
Speaker 1: powers of governor. Uh, not just to him, but to
Speaker 1: his peirs, his heirs on into perpetuity. Right. So this
Speaker 1: declaration also guaranteed in writing that the Sultan could not
Speaker 1: dismiss him from his throne for any reason. This is
Speaker 1: a bad deal for the Sultan, But the Sultan signs.
Speaker 1: When I guess why he signs because there's massive warships
Speaker 1: pointing in the capital. Yeah, and he literally James has
Speaker 1: these four warships trained dozens of cannons on the Sultan's home.
Speaker 1: It is not settled. This guy like, well, he's presented
Speaker 1: with this offer and he looks out of his window
Speaker 1: and there are dozens of massive artillery guns pointed at
Speaker 1: his house. Yeah, sultan had Nope, there you go again,
Speaker 1: blitzing and every play this is this is by this
Speaker 1: time it's working. Yeah, I am not again. The Sultan
Speaker 1: is a bad person too, as pretty much all sultans
Speaker 1: in history have been. But you can't consent when someone's
Speaker 1: pointing dozens of cannons at your home. I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to say that is not like free consent, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: this is basically armed robbery. That's how he gets Sarah walks.
Speaker 1: This is a mugging, you know. Yeah, yeah, very fortunate.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, so uh the Sultan signs this declaration, um
Speaker 1: and yeah. One historian Stephen Luscomb states that Brooke quote
Speaker 1: gave the distinct impression that he could seize the entire
Speaker 1: kingdom for himself if he was so disposed to do so,
Speaker 1: and that's why the Sultan like gives him Sarah wak
Speaker 1: basically so most people. Again, we had talked about there's
Speaker 1: resistance to this, there's people who who see what James
Speaker 1: is doing is immoral. It is also important to note
Speaker 1: most people back in England see him as a hero
Speaker 1: for this right he like. He's continuing to send his
Speaker 1: diaries and dispatches back, his agent is putting them into
Speaker 1: the popular press, and he becomes wildly popular for what
Speaker 1: he's done, and most people credulously accept his version of
Speaker 1: events that the people of sarah Wak had basically demanded
Speaker 1: he take rules and uses enlightened white wisdom to fix
Speaker 1: their country. And for the next several years, Brooks settled
Speaker 1: into a pattern engaging in intermittent battle with local princes.
Speaker 1: He always described them as pirates, but their local leaders
Speaker 1: who don't like his him being in charge. Right again,
Speaker 1: these antipo He does also fight pirates, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the people he calls pirates are just local leaders
Speaker 1: that don't want him to be in charge. Yeah, um yeah.
Speaker 1: The East India Company took his words at face value.
Speaker 1: Whenever he said someone was a pirate, they assumed he
Speaker 1: was telling the truth. Uh. In eighteen forty four, they
Speaker 1: helped him depose a local Bruneian prince and annexed that
Speaker 1: prince's former territory so the the agreement he'd signed with
Speaker 1: the Sultan had included a promise that he would not
Speaker 1: act outside the borders of sarah Wak. And like a
Speaker 1: year later he conquers a bunch of land outside of
Speaker 1: Sarah Walk and annexes him. Because he doesn't like he
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like he has to actually abide by this.
Speaker 1: He sees this this agreement as like limiting the Sultan's power,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't see any of the limitations he agreed
Speaker 1: to his binding in any way. Um Now, whenever he
Speaker 1: would conquer that he does it a few times where
Speaker 1: he'll fight a war against some local leader, calling them
Speaker 1: a pirate. He'll conquer their land, and in order to
Speaker 1: make it seem legitimate, he'll arrange what he calls a
Speaker 1: conference where local leaders will come out in view of
Speaker 1: company representatives. So he has witnesses who are white and
Speaker 1: ask him to take control of the territory. His friend,
Speaker 1: it's a whole show, it's a whole thing. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing, and his friend, Captain Keppel, wrote
Speaker 1: about one such encounter. On this occasion, I had the
Speaker 1: satisfaction of witnessing what must have been from the effect
Speaker 1: I observed it to have produced on the hearers a
Speaker 1: splendid piece of oratory delivered by Mr Brooke in the
Speaker 1: native tongue with a degree of fluency I had never
Speaker 1: witnessed before, even in a Malay. Again, he's saying, oh,
Speaker 1: he speaks better than the natives. That's what this guy,
Speaker 1: who doesn't speak the local language thinks. He hears this
Speaker 1: guy saying words he doesn't understand. Was like, this guy
Speaker 1: is better at speaking their language than they are. Of
Speaker 1: course I don't speak their language. But was he actually
Speaker 1: was there any evidence that he actually spoke the language
Speaker 1: or was this just like I think he did. I mean,
Speaker 1: he ruled the country, who lived there for most he should.
Speaker 1: I believe he didn't gain a fluency, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's more fluent like neither and neither does
Speaker 1: this guy right, because he doesn't know that it's a
Speaker 1: splendid piece of oratory. He says that he thinks it
Speaker 1: is because of the effect it has on the people hearing,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't know what they're saying. It's just this
Speaker 1: is like this this guy is Captain Keppel's speech here
Speaker 1: is like unbel like the peakest white man ever of like, well,
Speaker 1: he I can tell by the way they're reacting that
Speaker 1: he must be better at speaking their language than they are.
Speaker 1: It's amazing um from these people. Many assurances were received
Speaker 1: of their anxiety and willingness to cooperate with us and
Speaker 1: our laudable undertaking, and one and all where like urgent
Speaker 1: that the government of their river should be transferred to
Speaker 1: the English. So again he doesn't speak the language, but
Speaker 1: he assumes like, oh, they all really are, they are
Speaker 1: all on lockstep that we should take over this area.
Speaker 1: How can we not They all clearly assume I'm being
Speaker 1: told by other white men that this is what they're
Speaker 1: saying to speak a little bit of another a little bit.
Speaker 1: This is all you need is a little bit, a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah. Now. In this manner, James Brooke was
Speaker 1: able to portray his gradual conquest of more and more
Speaker 1: Bruneian territory is entirely legal, and not just legal, but
Speaker 1: driven by the demand of the locals. In eighteen forty five,
Speaker 1: James executed a plan that, if successful, would have given
Speaker 1: him command of the Sultan of Brunei himself. He started
Speaker 1: by sending Prince Hashim away from sarah Wak and back
Speaker 1: to the capital along with his beloved Prince Badrudine. The
Speaker 1: idea was that Badrudine would keep an eye on Hashim
Speaker 1: and that they would back each other her up because
Speaker 1: Hashim was now second in lyne to the throne of
Speaker 1: Brunei and the Sultan was an old man, so basically
Speaker 1: he was his men in the capital. So that when
Speaker 1: the Sultan diet, Hashim can take power and James can
Speaker 1: kind of carry out a soft coup because he sees
Speaker 1: Hashim and bad Rudin is basically they'll do anything I say.
Speaker 1: So if I can put this guy on the throne
Speaker 1: and this guy next to him, all be in control
Speaker 1: of all of Malaysia basically, like that's it or all
Speaker 1: of at this point it's brune I. But that's his
Speaker 1: plan here, and this also would have been legal, right
Speaker 1: because Hashim is the legal heir. So if I can
Speaker 1: get this guy on the throne who will do everything
Speaker 1: I say, I'll be I'll be writing pretty you know.
Speaker 1: That's his that's his idea. I should note here that
Speaker 1: James sending bad Rudine away was practical because he trusted
Speaker 1: the prince and he wanted him to help him, like
Speaker 1: take over this country. But it also fit part of
Speaker 1: a pattern that Brooke had with the young men he
Speaker 1: fell in love with. The Brook The book White Braja
Speaker 1: describes this pattern quote the flattering attention, the seeking out
Speaker 1: of the company of the new young find, the selfless,
Speaker 1: selfless bestowal of patronage, a concern with his education and development,
Speaker 1: the breathy descriptions of his qualities and letters to others,
Speaker 1: and usually finally, the emotional retirement of the loved one
Speaker 1: to become a sarah Wak official. So this is kind
Speaker 1: of his pattern that when he gets over a crush,
Speaker 1: he sends them off to like control, some to take
Speaker 1: up a little would with them, and then he sends
Speaker 1: them off. Yeah, and several of these guys die doing
Speaker 1: the jobs he gives them after he sends them off. Spoilers.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, you know who never
Speaker 1: sends off their former lovers to die in Malaysia the
Speaker 1: products or services that support this podcast. All right, we
Speaker 1: are we are in fact back. So unfortunately for Prince
Speaker 1: Badru Deine, playing a part in the scheme of James
Speaker 1: Brooke to take power would cost him his life. The
Speaker 1: Sultan of Brunei was not a dumb man, and he
Speaker 1: was fully sick of English adventurers taking over larger and
Speaker 1: larger portions of his territory. He was also quite understand
Speaker 1: Annibalie still erked about the time Brooke aimed dozens of
Speaker 1: cannons at his house, so he started to plot alongside
Speaker 1: one of his younger sons about how to rid themselves
Speaker 1: of the Brook supporters in their own court, Princess Hashim
Speaker 1: and Bodredine. Now they did this in the bloodiest way possible.
Speaker 1: One night, when Boderdine and Hashim were apart from each
Speaker 1: other in their own separate apartments, the sultan dispatched several
Speaker 1: bands of armed men who attacked both brothers simultaneously. Now,
Speaker 1: Buderdine was a fucking badass. And this guy like he's
Speaker 1: got like four different retainers slash bodyguards with him, and
Speaker 1: they get attacked by like fifty men and all of
Speaker 1: his friends get killed, and bad Renine is like fighting
Speaker 1: standing in his doorway with a dagger alone, stabs a
Speaker 1: bunch of people, fights them off for quite a while
Speaker 1: until one of them shoots him in the hand and
Speaker 1: he has to flee and retreat um and he like
Speaker 1: runs back into his inner apartments and locks himself in
Speaker 1: with his um, his sister, and his favorite concubine UM
Speaker 1: and a favorite slave boy UM and they're all kind
Speaker 1: of sheltering together from this attack, and bodreu Deine tells
Speaker 1: the slave boy to go run down and grab a
Speaker 1: barrel of gunpowder, and he then tells the boy to
Speaker 1: like like save yourself basically, and he gathers his Bodrian
Speaker 1: gathers his sister and his concubine to him. He spreads
Speaker 1: gunpowder around them, and then he blows them all up.
Speaker 1: As these guys are like banging down, he's like suicide
Speaker 1: bombs his house basically. And that's yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a flex like he's a he
Speaker 1: very much goes down as kind of the like and
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, have questionably moral to take your
Speaker 1: your girlfriend and wife or your sister with you whatever,
Speaker 1: but like, right, I don't know if they were so
Speaker 1: into that plan, but it's a storybook death though, right,
Speaker 1: it's like one of those like like he he goes
Speaker 1: out kind of like the way you're supposed to go
Speaker 1: in the legends or whatever, you know, fighting until you're
Speaker 1: two wounded too, and then blowing yourself up with gunpowder. Um.
Speaker 1: Prince Hashim tries to do the same thing, but fox
Speaker 1: up and kills everyone in the room but himself, so
Speaker 1: he has to shoot himself in the head um in
Speaker 1: order to once it becomes clear that he's going to
Speaker 1: be captured. So these guys get killed a lot with
Speaker 1: a couple of other Brook supporters in the capital um,
Speaker 1: and the news eventually reaches Sarah Wak and James Brooke
Speaker 1: is said to have gone nearly insane with grief when
Speaker 1: he realizes what's happened. He writes at the time quote,
Speaker 1: violent passions and sleepless nights are hard to bear. I
Speaker 1: lay no blame on anyone. I look forward as much
Speaker 1: as I can, and backward as little. But I ought
Speaker 1: not and cannot forget my poor friends who lie in
Speaker 1: their bloody graves. Oh how great is my grief and rage.
Speaker 1: But the British government will surely act, And if not,
Speaker 1: then let me remember I am still at war with
Speaker 1: this traitor and murderer. One more determined struggle, one last
Speaker 1: conclusive effort, and if it fail, borneo and all for
Speaker 1: which I have so long earnestly labored must be abandoned.
Speaker 1: It's very dramatic about this um, and he desperately wants
Speaker 1: the British government to intervene and punish the Sultan. But
Speaker 1: the British government this is for them a step too far,
Speaker 1: because again there is a veneer of legality to this.
Speaker 1: And as long as it's like, I want you to
Speaker 1: fight pirates, this guy wants us to fight pirates. He's
Speaker 1: got letters from the local leaders asking us to help
Speaker 1: fight pirates. We have this whole crusade against slaving pirates.
Speaker 1: We can justify that. But when he's like, the Sultan
Speaker 1: has under his legal powers executed two men, I want
Speaker 1: you to murder him, the British government is like, that's
Speaker 1: that's a little bit much for us, right, like where
Speaker 1: you might draw us into a war in Brunei and
Speaker 1: we really don't necessarily want to do that. So it
Speaker 1: takes him about six months of pleading to get the
Speaker 1: British to send a fleet, and they do send a
Speaker 1: fleet eventually, which sails up to the capital and demands
Speaker 1: entrant entrance to talk about what had happened, and in
Speaker 1: a very and another stroke of luck for Brooke, the
Speaker 1: Sultan's men get kind of trigger happy and fire on
Speaker 1: the British fleet, which gives them the legal justification to
Speaker 1: burn down all of the defenses and sail into Brunei.
Speaker 1: So the Sultan flees during the fighting, and the British
Speaker 1: are able to put a puppet, Hashim's brother Mohammed, on
Speaker 1: the throne, and this is the start of the of
Speaker 1: Brunei becoming a protectorate of the British Empire. Right. That's
Speaker 1: how this happens is because there's this failed coup that
Speaker 1: the Sultan cracks down, the British senden ships to talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that he's murdered, James books his friends,
Speaker 1: and then the Sultan's men fire on the British and
Speaker 1: that lets them depose the Sultan. They had considered just
Speaker 1: making James Brooke the Sultan of Brunei, but they decided
Speaker 1: that would be a step too far even for the
Speaker 1: British Empire, and the fact that they've got a puppet
Speaker 1: sultan on the throne works out better for them because
Speaker 1: it seems more legitimate. But they're able to convince this
Speaker 1: guy to give the British Empire an island full of
Speaker 1: coal nearby that they can use as a refueling station,
Speaker 1: and the whole situation makes James Brooke and national hero again.
Speaker 1: His rule over sarah Wak was now absolutely written in stone,
Speaker 1: and all local resistance had been broken. There's no more
Speaker 1: authorities in the area who have any sort of resistance
Speaker 1: to him being in power. And so now that he's
Speaker 1: got his kind of rule settled for the first time
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty seven, he decides to travel back home
Speaker 1: to the land of his birth to bask in the
Speaker 1: glory of his fame. The Times of London, working with
Speaker 1: his agent, published a fawning piece on him just as
Speaker 1: he arrived in town. Quote much as we go, oh
Speaker 1: to guns and grape shot, we are indebted still more
Speaker 1: to the peaceful and meritorious exertions of one man for
Speaker 1: the advances which have happily been made towards civilization in
Speaker 1: peace amongst the Malay people of whom we speak. England
Speaker 1: owes a debt of obligation to Mr Brooke, Rajah of
Speaker 1: sarah Wak, which she will not easily repay. Wow. Journalism
Speaker 1: was not not fantastic at the time. They were really
Speaker 1: impressed with how peacefully he had burned down all of
Speaker 1: those diligious in the interior. What a peaceful series of wars.
Speaker 1: He's delightful. Look at him. This guy is hailed as
Speaker 1: a hero. When he arrives back home, Oxford gives him
Speaker 1: an honorary doctorate. The school he'd run away from as
Speaker 1: a boy, which had refused to take him back, announced
Speaker 1: as a dinner in his honor. He was even given
Speaker 1: a personal meeting with the Queen herself. After six months
Speaker 1: or so, though, he'd had phil his fill of the
Speaker 1: home country, and he booked passage home on a ship
Speaker 1: commanded by his friend Kepple and stalked with a significant
Speaker 1: number of teenage boys new officers. I have one request, couple,
Speaker 1: let me look at one request. How many boys will
Speaker 1: there be? Uh? And again? These these boys are all
Speaker 1: simultaneously old enough to command troops in battle and young
Speaker 1: enough that I think we should continue to call them boys. Right.
Speaker 1: These are children that said their children who are given
Speaker 1: command of army. Sometimes it's a weird time. So James
Speaker 1: is got to s this. This, this voyage back to
Speaker 1: the East, is a blissful period of his life. He
Speaker 1: gets to spend months locked on a boat with a
Speaker 1: bunch of young boys. One of his friends, who was
Speaker 1: present on the voyage, later wrote he had a nephew
Speaker 1: on board, Charles Johnson, a staid sub lieutenant who endeavored
Speaker 1: to preserve order, but it was of little avail. The
Speaker 1: noisy ones were in the ascendant, led by a laughing,
Speaker 1: bright faced lad who, when he was a midshipman on
Speaker 1: the Agincourt in eighty seven, had become acquainted with Mr Brooke,
Speaker 1: and whose fondness for cherry brandy was only equalled by
Speaker 1: his love of fun. No place in the cabin was respected.
Speaker 1: Six or seven would throw themselves on the bed, careless
Speaker 1: of whether Mr Brooke was there or not, and skylock
Speaker 1: over his body as if he were one of themselves.
Speaker 1: In fact, he was as full of play as any
Speaker 1: of them. This is, of course, in reality, what's happening
Speaker 1: is there's probably a bunch of these guys there that
Speaker 1: just have no choice, but the fond over him because
Speaker 1: he has so much power over them. And this guy
Speaker 1: is this quote this he's quomoing it at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it is. Also there are references made
Speaker 1: in his biography and other books at the time of
Speaker 1: like if you were a young British boy on a boat,
Speaker 1: like a naval aid or one of these things. You
Speaker 1: got molested, that was and in some cases it would
Speaker 1: be like because obviously some portion of these these folks
Speaker 1: like that that they wind up being into it, which
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's not abusive, it's complicated. The navy is
Speaker 1: kind of one of those few places where people who
Speaker 1: are homosexual, like you can have gay relationships in the
Speaker 1: navy and they're kind of there. No one considers it
Speaker 1: gay because you're on a boat, you know, Like that
Speaker 1: is that is a factor in all this. That said,
Speaker 1: James is also clearly he is the powerful young he
Speaker 1: has the power for king, like a rich king, and
Speaker 1: he like these are not you can't really be consensual relationship.
Speaker 1: There's a lot going on here. These are the complicated
Speaker 1: relationships that Herman Melville left out of Billy Bud in
Speaker 1: Moby Dick. You know. Yeah, and this is like again
Speaker 1: like the cabin boy gets buggered, right, that's the that's
Speaker 1: the fact of naval life in this period of time.
Speaker 1: And it does kind of seem though, like what goes
Speaker 1: on in this voyage is beyond what naval men are
Speaker 1: familiar with, and naval men have a lot of tolerance
Speaker 1: for this kind of thing, because again it's that's how
Speaker 1: the Navy works at the time. But they like other officers,
Speaker 1: like people who are on board. Note that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of coolness from the older officers to James Brooke
Speaker 1: because of his relationship with these boys, because it's so
Speaker 1: scandalous and so shameless, right, there's an expectation of some buggery.
Speaker 1: He's like cavorting with a half dozen young men in
Speaker 1: his room loudly at all hours of the night, and
Speaker 1: that's not considered to be okay. Um. And James was
Speaker 1: noted as being particul reularly friendly with Charles Grant, a
Speaker 1: boy he had met at age fourteen and immediately showered
Speaker 1: with expensive weapons, clothing, and jewelry. James wrote an erotic
Speaker 1: poem for this boy, which he framed as it's it's
Speaker 1: about sex, but literally the poem is about a bunch
Speaker 1: of young boys eating a plum pudding. Um, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read you. I'm gonna read you. An excerpt from this
Speaker 1: rotic pudding poem. So stands Doe Citadel, a virgin post
Speaker 1: and captured, though begirt with many a host like other
Speaker 1: virgin places that I want and captured. Yet because a
Speaker 1: sailed not smoking, it stands and seems to dare the
Speaker 1: worst the storm of strife, not Cara when it burst.
Speaker 1: And youthful Dottie Dotty is his nickname for this boy
Speaker 1: fairly firmly stands his ground, unflinching. Still he's swallowed full
Speaker 1: of pound. What I like about this poem is how subtle.
Speaker 1: It is, very subtle, very subtle, No, not at all.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's tough here is it's very
Speaker 1: hard to define when you're talking about a lot of
Speaker 1: the relationships in this period. A lot of them are
Speaker 1: profoundly abuse of A lot of them would be considered
Speaker 1: pedophilia today. There's also a lot of these young men
Speaker 1: for whom like they consider this to be like kind
Speaker 1: of their homosexual and this is like the only kind
Speaker 1: of relationship they get they get to have that is
Speaker 1: that is not going to get them in trouble. So
Speaker 1: it's really fucking complex, Like the dynamics of sexuality in
Speaker 1: the British Navy in this period is a complex story
Speaker 1: that we're not doing enough justice too. I think it
Speaker 1: is fair to say that it definitely seems James Brooke
Speaker 1: is more on the pedophile end of things, right, he is.
Speaker 1: He has a marked preference for fourteen to seventeen year
Speaker 1: old boys, and while they may be considered adults at
Speaker 1: the time, there's a massive power and balance and what
Speaker 1: he's doing is very sketchy and I would heart you abusive,
Speaker 1: although a number of these boys right very positively about him,
Speaker 1: which is not unheard of an abusive situations, especially given
Speaker 1: the socio dynamics at the time, and he's grooming all
Speaker 1: these kids, you know, he's grooming exactly very complicated situations.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's fair to say it seems
Speaker 1: likely he was sexually and emotionally abusing these kids, even
Speaker 1: if some of them went on to think fondly of
Speaker 1: him because he showered them with gifts. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: starting to think he's not a great guy. Yeah, scout,
Speaker 1: masterly fumbling, you know that that's what's going on here.
Speaker 1: James dedicated another poem entirely to Charlie's pimple's um and
Speaker 1: actively it's pretty bad. I'm wanna put this to a song.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to hear the lyrics. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I wanna make a song out of it. I
Speaker 1: did not come across that poem, and I don't really
Speaker 1: want to. The pudding one was uncomfortable enough. Um. He
Speaker 1: encouraged the boy to join him in Sarah Wakin serve
Speaker 1: in the colonial government, and Charlie did eventually do this.
Speaker 1: To try and win over Charlie's parents, James Brooke gave
Speaker 1: his mother a golden bracelet and his father promises that
Speaker 1: he would put away five thousand pounds in a trust
Speaker 1: for the boy. He never actually did this, but Charlie
Speaker 1: went to join him in the administration of Sarah Wak
Speaker 1: Corneyway didn't do it. He's such a fucking piece of ship.
Speaker 1: Is a giant piece of ship. For the next twenty years,
Speaker 1: James Brook faced few threats to his sovereignty. One of
Speaker 1: the most serious was a parliamentary inquiry and a trial
Speaker 1: conducted in Singapore over the massacre of pirates during his
Speaker 1: his his rule. And the story here is complex because
Speaker 1: the specific series of events, the specific massacre of pirates
Speaker 1: that James has tried for, is actually one of the
Speaker 1: cases which he was probably justified. He and he and
Speaker 1: his men are attacked by pirates. They killed like a
Speaker 1: hundred of them, but they let the rest go and
Speaker 1: choose not to capture or massacre them because he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to. He knows that that will like incite more
Speaker 1: of an insurgency against him, which is in the broad
Speaker 1: strokes of his time ruling Sarah Wak one of the
Speaker 1: less unethical things he did. Um. But a group of
Speaker 1: kind of anti colonial activists in the Parliament decided to
Speaker 1: try him for this and basically claim that he was
Speaker 1: massacurring civilians and in the guys of fighting piracy, which
Speaker 1: he absolutely did in his career, but probably not in
Speaker 1: the specific case they tried him over. Right. It's a
Speaker 1: very it's a frustrating situation of like, you're right about
Speaker 1: this man, you picked the wrong specific incident to get
Speaker 1: angry about him over you know, um, And yeah, uh
Speaker 1: it was, And a lot of it's mixed up also
Speaker 1: in there's genuine anti colonialists who rightly see James Brooke
Speaker 1: as immoral and what he's doing as immoral and want
Speaker 1: to fight him. There's also a lot of selfish people involved,
Speaker 1: like he he fires his agent at some point and
Speaker 1: his agent gets involved in the campaign against him to
Speaker 1: like get revenge against him. So it's there's a lot
Speaker 1: going on here and his his fired agent creates something
Speaker 1: called the Aborigines Protection Society to drum up public outrage
Speaker 1: about James Brooks crimes and a lot of what this
Speaker 1: says our lies, but their lies that are like, he's
Speaker 1: making up things that James Brooke did for real and
Speaker 1: they just didn't get evidence of over there. So it's again,
Speaker 1: it's very messy. It's like the Project Lincoln of the time. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's that's exactly the the Lincoln project of
Speaker 1: colonialism that you guys aren't wrong. You're also not doing
Speaker 1: this for the right reason. Yeah, and one of you
Speaker 1: was probably also a pedophile, as was the case with
Speaker 1: the Project Lincoln guy. So James survived the trial and
Speaker 1: was eventually acquitted, but the process was brutal and savaged
Speaker 1: his reputation back home. It seems fair to say that
Speaker 1: both the specifics of the outrages he was accused of
Speaker 1: in Parliament were often inaccurate and unfair, and that the
Speaker 1: actual terrible things he did and wasn't tried for more
Speaker 1: than justified the public outrage he he finally received. So
Speaker 1: I guess that's good. I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to classify that public turns against him for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yes they do, um so, But this doesn't he he
Speaker 1: doesn't get convicted and the last great challenge to Brooke
Speaker 1: rule in sarah Wak would finally turn the public back
Speaker 1: on his side. Unfortunately it came in eighteen fifty six.
Speaker 1: As I noted last episode, James had always hated Chinese people,
Speaker 1: but he had recognized at they had a lot like
Speaker 1: they He brought them in. He encouraged their immigration into
Speaker 1: sarah Walk, which fundamentally changed the ethnic dynamics of the country.
Speaker 1: Because he wanted them to improve the local economy, he
Speaker 1: wanted to tax them, and he knew that they would
Speaker 1: like if he invited these Chinese people who owned businesses
Speaker 1: and wanted to set up trading businesses in his country,
Speaker 1: it would improve his tax base. Um And, because he
Speaker 1: was so constantly short on money, even though he was
Speaker 1: very racist against the Chinese, James came to rely on
Speaker 1: them entirely for his like the taxing that funded his reign.
Speaker 1: He mainly did this by taxing opium heavily, which led
Speaker 1: to the smuggling of opium into sarah Walk, which led
Speaker 1: to a thriving population of the Triads and sarah Wak,
Speaker 1: so he creates the space for organized crime by bringing
Speaker 1: all these people in and then taxing opium heavily, which
Speaker 1: creates a market for untaxed i legal opium, which brings
Speaker 1: gangs in, you know, like that. Like that, that's the
Speaker 1: process that occurs here. Unrest built and built, and since
Speaker 1: by the geopolitical situation at the time, there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of conflicts between the British and Chinese government rents and
Speaker 1: the fact that a British man is governing and sarah
Speaker 1: Wak makes a lot of these particularly these Chinese folks
Speaker 1: who connected the Triads angry, and eventually a plan starts
Speaker 1: to form within a segment of the Chinese community to
Speaker 1: murder the Rajah and his officers and to take control
Speaker 1: of sarah Wak for themselves. And part of why they
Speaker 1: think they can do this is they watch James do it,
Speaker 1: you know, like it doesn't seem like give me that
Speaker 1: hard to kill you, like you don't have a standing mill.
Speaker 1: They we can just kill you take power like you did. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: Brooks had an intelligence agency basically had like people keeping
Speaker 1: an ear to the ground, and they hear about this
Speaker 1: plan to coop him before it could be executed. He's
Speaker 1: actually away um in in a Brunei at the time
Speaker 1: when they find evidence of this plot, and one of
Speaker 1: his officers orders the garrison called up, gets like a
Speaker 1: bunch of soldiers called into action, hands out guns to them,
Speaker 1: and man's a bunch of forts around the capital and
Speaker 1: for a little while, this forces the plotters to delay
Speaker 1: taking action because they don't want to attack a bunch
Speaker 1: of fully armed forts and stuff. So James comes back
Speaker 1: from Brunei in eighteen fifty seven and he finds all
Speaker 1: of these four manned and his soldiers on high alert,
Speaker 1: and this makes him furious because it's expensive to keep
Speaker 1: a garrison active, and he basically yells at his officer,
Speaker 1: what the funk are you doing? This Chinese threats thing
Speaker 1: sounds like bullshit. Send these guys home and lock their
Speaker 1: guns back up. As soon as this happens, six hundred
Speaker 1: armed Chinese rebels attack, so his luck finally ran out.
Speaker 1: H Yeah, and this makes it clear that it had
Speaker 1: been more luck than brilliance, because this is a bad call.
Speaker 1: So the rebels came in the night, and when the
Speaker 1: attack started, James panicked and hid in his room. A
Speaker 1: servant who realized that like they were under attack, tried
Speaker 1: to rescue him, and James strangled the man. Then he
Speaker 1: watched through the window while one of the eighteen year
Speaker 1: old boys he'd collected and made an officer. This is
Speaker 1: an English boy that he liked, you know, one of
Speaker 1: his boys who he brought to Sarah with him. They
Speaker 1: the Chinese catch this kid and mistake him for James,
Speaker 1: and he watches from his room while this kid beheaded
Speaker 1: and has his head shoved on a pike in the
Speaker 1: front yard of his of his capital. So James abandons
Speaker 1: his servant and everyone else and escapes through his bathroom
Speaker 1: window and runs away to go hide in the jungle.
Speaker 1: The insurrection was initially successful. Chinese fighters took over the
Speaker 1: courthouse and most of the capital. They butchered many of
Speaker 1: Brooks officers and local loyal leaders. James Brooke hid terrified, well,
Speaker 1: a brave gup group of his Malay followers fought back,
Speaker 1: launching an insurgent campaign against the Chinese occupiers. European writers
Speaker 1: would later give James Brooke credit for this, saying he
Speaker 1: inspired the resistance even though he was again hiding in
Speaker 1: the jungle. At this point of time. The truth is
Speaker 1: that he did nothing. Were an alliance of Malays Di
Speaker 1: x and some European evangelists. There's like a church leader
Speaker 1: who picks up a bunch of guns and goes to
Speaker 1: fight against this. Uh insurrection actually fought back and forced
Speaker 1: the Chinese forces out of the capital. A general massacre followed,
Speaker 1: and this was probably incensed by a lot of the
Speaker 1: racism that James Brooke had inculcated against the Chinese during
Speaker 1: his reign, and about fifteen hundred of sarah four thousand
Speaker 1: Chinese citizens were massacred in an orgy of blood letting
Speaker 1: in thievery. So that's cool. Yeah, Well I don't cool.
Speaker 1: I mean it's not great. It's not great. Not great. Um. So,
Speaker 1: this insurrection didn't succeed in destroying Brooke ragin over Sarah Walk,
Speaker 1: but it did break James. The experience aged him rapidly,
Speaker 1: and within a few years he was all but unable
Speaker 1: to handle the demands of Raja hood. In eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: James handed over formal control of Sarah Walk, who his
Speaker 1: adopted heir, a guy named Charles Brooke. Now Charles was
Speaker 1: not actually James's son, as James had little interest in breeding,
Speaker 1: but he this is the young boy basically starts as
Speaker 1: a young boy who he gives control over two and
Speaker 1: and James or Charles adopts the name Brooke and becomes
Speaker 1: like his adopted son. Um. James would technically remain the
Speaker 1: White Raja for the last five years of his life,
Speaker 1: but in reality he fled sarah Wak for England, where
Speaker 1: he lived out his last days doing the thing he
Speaker 1: did best, obsessing over young boys. Nigel bar Early writes
Speaker 1: quote in eighteen sixty six, he read in the newspaper
Speaker 1: of a thirteen year old youth, Samuel Bray, who had
Speaker 1: saved a friend from drowning in Devonport, and he became
Speaker 1: unhealthily excited. He traced the lad sent him half a
Speaker 1: sovereign and tried to open a correspondence with him. Oh man,
Speaker 1: he never never gives up. God, this guy he just
Speaker 1: you know what it does. He does the stuff that like,
Speaker 1: you know, that cramping feeling you get in your gut
Speaker 1: when you hear or see something so douchey, like these
Speaker 1: douche cramps. Like that's like what I get from a
Speaker 1: lot of this guy's actions. It's just like he's just
Speaker 1: goes a little extra and he's just such a creep
Speaker 1: with these young guys. He's a he's real creep. It's
Speaker 1: not good. It is what happens. Um on Christmas Eve,
Speaker 1: this is the best part. In Christmas Eve of eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, James Brooke has a stroke. Uh. This leads
Speaker 1: to a series of strokes which ends his life in
Speaker 1: June of eighteen sixty eight. So that's good. That's the
Speaker 1: first thing he's done that I fully approved of. I'm
Speaker 1: torn is a radical doctor. I never approve of strokes,
Speaker 1: but I mean, if you're you know this in this case,
Speaker 1: and it's not the worst stroke, that the worst stroke.
Speaker 1: How old was he? Jesus, he would have been like
Speaker 1: sixty's for the age just a long time. And especially
Speaker 1: considering the ship. This guy gets wounded a bunch of times,
Speaker 1: he said, the tropics. You know, he gets a bunch
Speaker 1: of illnesses. Um. So this is the end of James Brooke,
Speaker 1: but not, of course, the end of the Brook dynasty.
Speaker 1: Charlie Brooke, otherwise known as Raja Charles, lost no time
Speaker 1: in going to war to expand brooke control of brune I.
Speaker 1: He justified his conquests as a crusade to end the
Speaker 1: barbaric practice of head hunting. Now, if you remember, James Brooke,
Speaker 1: his predecessor, had encouraged head hunting and had used like
Speaker 1: he had paid his diet soldier by being like, you
Speaker 1: guys can take as many heads as you want, because
Speaker 1: like having access to a bunch of heads like you
Speaker 1: would like give them off in marriages and stuff. They're
Speaker 1: a symbol of your virility in this culture. So James
Speaker 1: takes advantage of that so he doesn't have to pay
Speaker 1: them in money. And Charlie then uses like, there's all
Speaker 1: these head hunters here for some reason, we have to
Speaker 1: fight a bunch of wars to get rid of the
Speaker 1: head on Dinga and that's how he expands his domain.
Speaker 1: So weird, this thing happens over and over in the
Speaker 1: British and you'll find people today who will kind of
Speaker 1: whitewash British crimes of imperialism with stuff like, well, but
Speaker 1: they stopped the barbaric practice of women throwing themselves on
Speaker 1: the funeral pyres of their husbands in India, which is
Speaker 1: a horrible thing. It's bad for it to be the
Speaker 1: norm for women to commit suicide when their husbands die.
Speaker 1: I would agree. The British weren't fighting that because it
Speaker 1: was the right thing to do. It was used as
Speaker 1: a justification for power graps, just like head hunting is
Speaker 1: used by Charles, and just like the anti slavery crusades,
Speaker 1: where uses the justification for a bunch of fucked up shit. Um. So,
Speaker 1: Charles blamed head hunting on the local women because it
Speaker 1: was kind of a sign of your virility if you
Speaker 1: captured heads. So he uses that to blame the women
Speaker 1: for basically what he he He not only conquers a
Speaker 1: bunch of land to stop headhunting, he orders sexual violence
Speaker 1: against Dyak women in order to punish them for like
Speaker 1: supporting head hunting. Yeah, he's He's worse. He's much worse.
Speaker 1: He's very bad. In his last years of ruling, after
Speaker 1: the Chinese Insurrection, Rasha James had repeatedly attempted to convince
Speaker 1: the British government to annex sarah Wak and incorporated into
Speaker 1: the Empire. Officially, the government had never quite bitten on
Speaker 1: this offer, and once Rossa Charles took power, he made
Speaker 1: it clear that the Brook dynasty had no further desire
Speaker 1: to sell out to the Motherland. Instead, Charles pursued expansion
Speaker 1: at the expense of the Sultan of Brunei, which is
Speaker 1: again now a British protectorate. This led to a conflict
Speaker 1: with the newly established British North Borneo Company, which was
Speaker 1: kind of running Brunei and was not interested in letting
Speaker 1: the Brooks take over. Now through a series of military campaigns,
Speaker 1: Raja Charles took over a region called the Limbang in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety, but he failed to conquer Brunei itself because
Speaker 1: of the British, like the north Borneo Company um. And
Speaker 1: this really frustrated Charles because he wanted to control Brunei.
Speaker 1: He wanted to conquer everything, but he can't because of
Speaker 1: this British company and the fact that the British north
Speaker 1: Borneo Company had stopped him from taking Brunei leads Charles,
Speaker 1: who was an imperialist Raja of a conquered land, to
Speaker 1: become an anti imperialism crusader. Rebranding Yeah, he publishes well
Speaker 1: he is again the White Raja of Sarah. He publishes
Speaker 1: a pamphlet um titled Queries Past, Present in Future, in
Speaker 1: which he critiques the specific sort of imperialism that ran
Speaker 1: counter to the kind of imperialism he supported. It's a
Speaker 1: remarkable document because in eighteen ninety this guy, who literally
Speaker 1: ruled a conquered Asian nation based on the power of
Speaker 1: Western guns, accurately diagnoses the problems of imperialism. Quote. It
Speaker 1: is something dreadful to contemplate, and yet too true that nearly,
Speaker 1: if not all, of our magnificently built colonial towns and
Speaker 1: colonial developments of every description have their foundations upon the
Speaker 1: bones of the aborigines of the soil. One asks if
Speaker 1: the benefits bestowed upon their success are sufficient to justify
Speaker 1: such sacrifices. I am fully aware that there are many
Speaker 1: occasions when bloodshed cannot be avoided, and that a certain
Speaker 1: amount of severity is necessary in governing all races, white
Speaker 1: or dark. But as we rule at present, I fail
Speaker 1: to see any hope of improvement respecting the real elevation
Speaker 1: of the natives by intellectual culture. If we look upon
Speaker 1: the sad side of the picture of the making of
Speaker 1: our immense empire, we should pause a moment and ask
Speaker 1: if there will not be a day of reckoning in
Speaker 1: the near far and the not far off future. Do
Speaker 1: all them yet so like that, that's not unreasoned, that's
Speaker 1: very accurate. Actually he doesn't see that, you're just as
Speaker 1: much a part of this as the British North Thornio Company.
Speaker 1: But it's accurate. Russia. Charles goes on to list British
Speaker 1: imperial possessions that had been won by conquest and aptly
Speaker 1: diagnosed the evils perpetuated, perpetuated in those places, quote New Zealand,
Speaker 1: years of warfare to subdue as finer races ever on
Speaker 1: trod God's Earth. What are they now? Australia Mostly he's
Speaker 1: talking about the Aboriginals here Australia mostly killed off by
Speaker 1: native police raised for this purpose, the Aborigines being found
Speaker 1: somewhat dangerous to Europeans gold workers and farmers. India, frequent
Speaker 1: collisions and battles occur, the interior still being much unsubdued,
Speaker 1: and its inhabitants very strong, Burma fighting occasional battles, and
Speaker 1: the natives put to the sword when the country was annexed.
Speaker 1: So he's again very accurately calling out the genocides of
Speaker 1: Aboriginal people, thing about this, that's weird. Yeah, while order
Speaker 1: ordering campaigns of sexual violence against the women of the
Speaker 1: country in order to stop a cultural practice that his
Speaker 1: direct successor had. Man, I want this to have I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say this as a doctor, but I want him
Speaker 1: to stroke too. Yeah, yeah, you do, you do? You
Speaker 1: want them all kind of a couple of more Strokes
Speaker 1: could have really handled things well from Malaysia here. So,
Speaker 1: after again very accurately describing the evils of imperialism Russia,
Speaker 1: Charles botched the diagnosis of their cause in a profoundly
Speaker 1: self lagrandizing way. The problem, he said, was not imperialism,
Speaker 1: it was the fact that quote, the right men to
Speaker 1: deal with the natives are not chosen, and such men
Speaker 1: should be very carefully picked. So Charles Brooke was not
Speaker 1: against white men ruling foreign lands for profit, but they
Speaker 1: had to be the right white men him. He got
Speaker 1: that from James. From James, Yeah, yeah, he did. Now.
Speaker 1: Raja Charles replaced the courtroom chairs his adopted father had
Speaker 1: set up with an iron bench, which he considered a
Speaker 1: symbol of the immutable power of his law. And he was,
Speaker 1: in general a more toxic version of everything his adopted
Speaker 1: father had been. And while Raja James had failed to
Speaker 1: actually spawn, and he recognized descendants Russia. Charles took seriously
Speaker 1: his royal imperative to make heirs to the throne. Three
Speaker 1: of his children survived to adulthood, including a man who
Speaker 1: would succeed him as the third Brook, Raja Charles Viner
Speaker 1: Brook and I'm gonna quote from the Daily Beast here.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eleven, Charles's son Viner married Sylvia Brett, who
Speaker 1: would eventually embraced the crude title. One headline writer gave
Speaker 1: her the Queen of the head Hunters. When Sylvia first
Speaker 1: arrived in sarah Walk with her brother, he found the
Speaker 1: place very different from what I had anticipated. Far safer,
Speaker 1: far more advanced, far happier, far more civilized, a very
Speaker 1: happy country, guided by European brained, but untouched by European vulgarity.
Speaker 1: The magic of it all possessed me. Sylvia would recall
Speaker 1: sites sounded sense there was in this abundant land everything
Speaker 1: which my heart had yearned for. Now. Eventually, Sylvia's self
Speaker 1: dramatizing streak eclipsed her aesthetic sense, playing up in eleven
Speaker 1: books and countless headlines. The exotic anomaly of these British
Speaker 1: blokes running a jungle kingdom, The rainy Sylvia ended up
Speaker 1: downplaying the progress that Rasha's in their country made. She
Speaker 1: and her husband had also had numerous affairs and encouraged
Speaker 1: their daughters to be equally libertine. The three princesses, Leonora,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth and Nancy, nicknamed Gold Pearl and Baba by reporters,
Speaker 1: dressed like quote tarts, had flamboyant escapades with numerous men
Speaker 1: and married eight times, including to a band leader and
Speaker 1: a boxer. Thank God I haven't had four daughters, Byner claimed,
Speaker 1: what a family? So yeah. One of his daughters, Mary's
Speaker 1: a jazz musician, the other Mary's a wrestler, um and
Speaker 1: the daughter who marries a wrestler. Princess Baba travels to
Speaker 1: Hollywood to try and sell screenplay based on the life
Speaker 1: of James Brooke. Princess Baba also repeatedly floated a plan
Speaker 1: to buy land next to the Sarah Walk and turn
Speaker 1: it into a rival kingdom called Baba Land. Fun people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Brooks of the twentieth century enjoyed little of the
Speaker 1: positive pr that had turned James Brooke into a celebrity.
Speaker 1: Much of this had to do with their libertine natures.
Speaker 1: They're kind of sucking around and getting wasted constantly. At
Speaker 1: one point, Rainey Sylvia was found dancing with two prostitutes
Speaker 1: in a nightclub and then taking them back to her
Speaker 1: palace to have their portraits painted. A visiting MP from
Speaker 1: Westminster wrote that, quote a more undignified woman, it would
Speaker 1: be hard to find. It was obvious to even casual
Speaker 1: observers that the Brooks had turned sarah Wak, a land
Speaker 1: with more than half a million citizens, into their private playground.
Speaker 1: One critic noted with disgusted that quote everything in this
Speaker 1: obscure little country bears the stamp of slackness and hopeless disorder.
Speaker 1: The brook dynasty's end began with World War Two. One
Speaker 1: of the benefits of being ruled over by the Brooks
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the fact that sarah walk would
Speaker 1: received the protection of the English Crown. British ships and
Speaker 1: soldiers had regularly fought in sarah Wak to put down
Speaker 1: internal rebellions and fight pirates, after all, but as soon
Speaker 1: as the country was menaced by a real foreign threat
Speaker 1: the Japanese Empire, British guns were nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 1: When sarah Wak was liberated at the start of the war.
Speaker 1: The destruction it had suffered was too extensive for the
Speaker 1: Brook family to afford to rebuild. They finally handed over
Speaker 1: control of their domain to Great Britain, who paid the
Speaker 1: family two hundred thousand pounds for the Kingdom Sarah Wak
Speaker 1: would mark the very last colonial acquisition of the British Empire.
Speaker 1: The country finally received its independence in nineteen sixty three
Speaker 1: and joined a federation with Malaya, North Borneo and Singapore.
Speaker 1: The last white Rajah and Rainey had an uncomfortable retirement
Speaker 1: in England. Sylvia hated being quote short of our glory
Speaker 1: and faced with the necessity of adjusting to a world
Speaker 1: in which we were no longer emperors but merely two ordinary,
Speaker 1: aging people, two misfits in the changing pattern of modern times.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this family sucks. They suck, and they
Speaker 1: would rule from more than a century god well into
Speaker 1: based on dumb luck. So annoying. Yeah, all this stuff
Speaker 1: with this family, I mean, has this has this guy
Speaker 1: been popularized? The original James Brooke? Was he ever popularized
Speaker 1: in like popular culture? Was there movies made of him
Speaker 1: or anything? I'm assuming still to this day people probably
Speaker 1: only the more common popular cultures speaks of him. Well right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean, even like the stuff you'll
Speaker 1: find written recently, articles will point out that like he
Speaker 1: was a relatively benevolent ruler and he did this and
Speaker 1: he did that, um, which I don't think is fair.
Speaker 1: You could argue more benevolent than the East India Trading Company,
Speaker 1: which perpetuated a genocide that killed thirty million people. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: a very low bar. Oh there is um. Edge of
Speaker 1: the World stars Hollywood actor John Rice Myers as Brooke,
Speaker 1: Dominic Monahan as Colonel Arthur Crookshank and Hong Kong actress
Speaker 1: Josie Hoe as Brooks, former of Madeline Limb. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the movie Raja. Oh I guess Raj is the movie?
Speaker 1: Um god? Oh it was retitled The Edge of the World. Okay,
Speaker 1: oh this is being made in Oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is yeah, that that February. This is not Oh my god,
Speaker 1: what are you people doing? Stop? They've given they made
Speaker 1: a Hong Kong actress his his love interest, the love
Speaker 1: interest of a man who was almost undeniably at least
Speaker 1: engaged in questionable sexual relationships with teenagers. And it worst
Speaker 1: a a straight up pedophile predator, like desperate for they
Speaker 1: had to go to this, I mean the hot God
Speaker 1: damn it. Wait wait, god damn who who's starring? Is him?
Speaker 1: What's his name? Dominic Monahan, John Rice Myers, John Rice Meyers. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's yeah, I mean they made him hot. God damn it.
Speaker 1: I'll put I'll put a picture in here. Fucking hell.
Speaker 1: Why did they they did this? I mean, it was
Speaker 1: okay when they did this for um, for um David
Speaker 1: Koresh because he was hot. But this is just No
Speaker 1: one questions that, No one questions, No one questions how
Speaker 1: hot David Koresh was. But I guarantee you fucking James
Speaker 1: Brooke was not this hot. Look at it, look at
Speaker 1: and they get hired an Irish actor when in reality, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not fair. Oh no, God damn it. They okay.
Speaker 1: The synopsis on IMDb is at the epic tale of
Speaker 1: Sir James Brooke, the British adventurer who became King of
Speaker 1: sarah Look in the eighteen forties and embarked on a
Speaker 1: lifelong crusade to in piracy and head hunting. This is
Speaker 1: going to be awesome. Can we just get together, Let's
Speaker 1: let's do that. Fuck this movie and fuck James Brooke
Speaker 1: the British Empire. Yeah, agreed. Also check out the song
Speaker 1: Fuck the British Army if you're if you're feeling feeling
Speaker 1: more of those vibes. Um, oh, there's some good news.
Speaker 1: The family of George Floyd reached a twenty seven million
Speaker 1: dollar settlement with the City of Minneapolis in a wrongful
Speaker 1: death suit. All right, that does kind of speak well
Speaker 1: for what I hope will happen to Derek Chauvin in
Speaker 1: the trial. Um, well, got it. You've got some plug
Speaker 1: doubles to plug before we write out. Yeah, I should
Speaker 1: promote our show a little bit better than I did
Speaker 1: last time, or my co host will hurt me. So
Speaker 1: we have a podcast called The House of Pod. It's
Speaker 1: like a medical podcast, but it's like pretty relatable and
Speaker 1: it's not just for doctors. So, um, we talk we
Speaker 1: cover medical topics, but we also talk about things, um
Speaker 1: like you know, systemic racism and medicine, sexual harassment in medicine.
Speaker 1: We try to cover a lot of different topics that
Speaker 1: we think are important, and we have guests ranging from
Speaker 1: like the world expert physicians, like the best doctors in
Speaker 1: the world, to you know, Robert Evans so you should
Speaker 1: check it out. I think you'll like it. Um find
Speaker 1: this at the House of Pod, at Twitter and anywhere
Speaker 1: you do your podcasting. Yeah, check it out. Um Uh,
Speaker 1: yell at the people making the movie about James Brooke, um,
Speaker 1: because it seems like a bad idea. What the world
Speaker 1: needs now is for us all to idolize a man
Speaker 1: who conquered an entire country for his own self aggrandizement,
Speaker 1: paid his mercenary local soldiers in the heads of their enemies,
Speaker 1: and then gained a reputation as fighting head hunting. Um
Speaker 1: that's great. I mean he did, like he had a
Speaker 1: couple of anti head hunting like crusades and stuff throughout
Speaker 1: his career, But when he needed the people who were
Speaker 1: head hunting to fight for him, he paid them in heads.
Speaker 1: So I don't I'm not gonna call him an opponent
Speaker 1: of head hunting. Um. I just I just don't see
Speaker 1: how in this day and age, people are still buying
Speaker 1: the story. You know, Yeah, you know it's because, like
Speaker 1: funck Man, I I it's hard. Not like I was
Speaker 1: raised on a lot of impre like I read a
Speaker 1: lot like King Solomon's minds and stuff. I've talked about
Speaker 1: this someone episode, these books about like the the age
Speaker 1: of exploration and adventure, and like there's always been like
Speaker 1: I've made some of the decisions I've made in my
Speaker 1: life because I wanted to have, you know, adventures in
Speaker 1: places that that seemed exotic and strange and unfamiliar to me.
Speaker 1: It's a powerful impulse, particularly within our culture. So you
Speaker 1: there's a lot of desire for these guys to have
Speaker 1: actually been heroes for what they did do have been heroic. Um.
Speaker 1: And in part because it justifies further colonial adventures, and
Speaker 1: in part because just people like a good adventure story.
Speaker 1: But I think it's pretty harmful. I think it's pretty harmful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not mad at everyone who contributes in
Speaker 1: a tiny ways to Orientalism, you know. I mean sometimes
Speaker 1: it leads to people learning more about these cultures and
Speaker 1: you know, more about like you know, Iron for example.
Speaker 1: So it's not always bad, um, but it kind of
Speaker 1: gets it does get so easy for it to go bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it can in some cases be so of
Speaker 1: the seed that leads someone to an actual nuanced understanding
Speaker 1: of both like a different culture and and that can
Speaker 1: be positive. Um. But more often I think it leads
Speaker 1: to James brook You know James Brooke. Um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not great. He's not great, but yeah he's not hot,
Speaker 1: not as hot as they're making him, not nearly as
Speaker 1: hot as David Karrett. Um. So yeah, I guess if
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask my listeners to do anything, it's
Speaker 1: think about David Koresh's unbelievably cut abs, just shredded abs.
Speaker 1: Then check out the House of hod Um, or do
Speaker 1: both at the same time. You can do both at
Speaker 1: the same time. We may talk about his abs on
Speaker 1: the show. We may talk about his abs. Abs are
Speaker 1: an important part of health um And here's at the
Speaker 1: end of the show.