It was a great chapter, just hoping to see the timeline progress a little more and arrive at modernization or even industrialization of Sarawak.
Of Rajahs and Hornbills: A timeline of Brooke Sarawak
- Thread starter Al-numbers
- Start date
That will actually be coming up in the update-after-next! But not before a certain narrative interlude. It's time for a new Power to enter Southeast Asia, and this time it's not coming from the West.
Then it's on to Sarawak and the 1890's!
I actually wanted to comment but it would have been: Cool. END. It didn't seem worthy of the thread. I have to say though this rubber tree seems quite interesting. Did the powers ever start planting it in plantations or anything like that or did they just keep hunting it to extinction? Also if this does all go tits up what is the back up plan? Just go back to the other trees or what. It would be interesting to see the tree go to the plantation and be rarefied in the wild while all aforementioned plantations are owned by a certain Sarawakian family *cough*cough*.While I am heartened to see most liking the update, I am a bit worried at the lack of comments for it. Did I made too much of an info dump?
Finally don't want to be a greedy grouch but would it be possible to see what's happening in the African native states, particularly a certain one *cough*Benin*cough*. Sorry bad cold, Benin is what I wanted to say.
The latter, almost. The gutta-percha tree was so over-exploited it actually dissappeared from a few lowland regions in Malaya, and it nearly got exterminated in Java entirely. In fact, the latex scarcity kick-started the British and Dutch to start paying attention to the rainforest, for a change. Mountains and hills were zoned into administrative sections IOTL in the early 20th century, with locals and prospectors being granted different sections for commercial / communal use. Heavy fines were imposed, new methods of latex extraction were pioneered, and new seedlings of amazonian rubber (the natural rubber the world uses today) were planted as a replacement.
But, amazonian rubber was not as suitable to insulate telegraph cables, and so gutta-percha rubber was used instead all the way into the mid-20th century. People also found out that the special poly-isoprene sap was useful in dental surgeries and healthcare (fewer rubber allergic reactions). So the British and Dutch were forced to invest in planting them and taking care of the trees, some of which still survive today.
ITTL, the scarcity will force both colonial Powers to look at other places for the sap while also investing in more efficient ways to extract it from the remaining trees. It would also force other European states to search in tropical parts of the world to find a comparable substance, with... mixed results.
As for Sarawak... you'll see.
Benin ITTL is feeling the pinch from increased contact with Great Britain, whom wants it to become a protectorate to get dat sweet palm oil. However, I'll flip a coin and say the Oba has received word of other faraway states gaining their freedom by pleading their case to the governments of Europe. He is currently vacillating on whether to go with the idea or not.
The problem is rubber. Harvesting wild rubber is (a) a nasty job that no one will do voluntarily for colonial wages; and (b) something that has to be done in the wild, meaning that the laborers can't be kept on a supervised enclosure. The only way to get people to harvest wild rubber at a profit to the colonialists is terror - paying better wages would also work, but that's not an option that profit-seeking concessionaires would consider - hence the administrators of Kamerun, French Congo and Ubangi-Shari IOTL using the same playbook as the Congo Free State.
Timber harvesting, which was also a big part of the colonial economy in part of this area, used similar methods for similar reasons.
Leopold II's level of atrocity was unique, but the French Congo and Ubangi-Shari are both potential models for the Spanish Congo, and if you consider what happened to Barthelemy Boganda's and Emperor Bokassa's families IOTL, that's more than horrifying enough.
A couple of other questions about the *Brussels Conference map: I see that a large part of West Africa is designated as neither a sphere of influence nor a disputed area. Did the powers agree to leave this region as a buffer zone? If so, I can't imagine that it would be stable over the long term - if there are continuing conflicts between the British coastal colonies and the neighboring peoples (especially, but by no means exclusively, the Ashanti), I'd assume that Britain will expand at least some way into the interior. OTOH, the Fulani jihad states in northern Nigeria might easily survive.
Also, if Ethiopia expands and if it gets into conflict with Italy over the Ogaden, a Dervish State could easily arise there in opposition to both powers as IOTL. I'm not sure what synergy it would or could have with the Mahdists in Sudan, but they'd at least know of each other and could be attractive as proxies for the Ottomans.
I assume that, at least for now, enough of the profit is going to local harvesters to keep them on the job, and as demand increases, some of them might even get rich temporarily. In the medium term, though, deforestation will be a huge problem, and I'd expect the colonial powers to develop a sense of crisis before long. My guess is that there will be a shift toward gutta-percha plantations before the turn of the century, both in southeast Asia and in the tropical African colonies, which probably also means more demand for imported labor in southeast Asia.
Narrative: To the Fin de Siècle & the final fifteen years
Yokohama, Empire of Japan, 19 July 1890
“Maybe we shall get to see each other down there.”
“Maybe, if we don’t die of disease or elephants first!”
The whole table laughed, and something of the atmosphere lodged itself in Tatsuki’s heart. I’m going to miss this.
It was past sundown, and the whole port is settling down for the night. Workers changing duties are awash out on the docks, moving past crates and sacks from over a hundred different cities. Nearby, taverns and drinking houses were full of boisterous sailors eating their fill after days at sea. Since the opening of the nation, Yokohama has seen itself change and change again. However, Tatsuki was sure the old daimyo didn’t expect their subjects to change as well. For a second, he briefly remembered how his father reacted when he told of his desire to move out. What an earful, but at least that got sorted out...
“Well, here’s hoping my business in Johor goes up. If the rest of you want any replacement jobs, I hear the monarch down there is needing of more workers for the mines.” His fellow dining guest, Aichi, joked.
“No. I don’t think we want to get our hands dirty.” giggled Mitsuda, sake cup in hand.
“And what, and you think trading gutta-percha in Aceh is just as clean?”
“Better than your general store.”
“But what will you do when the rubber runs out?”
“Use the money to venture in something else.”
“See!? You don’t even plan on what happens in the next ten to twelve years. You have to plan your business unless you want to become a dirt labourer down there.”
“But can you really be sure of your path? A lot can happen in just ten years.”
“Of course! I think only you would…”
As the banter of the two continued, Tatsuki breathed deeply and took it all in. More and more Japanese are seeking their fortunes abroad, and nowhere is this clear than in this very port. All around the docks, he saw many men – and a few women – going off to the large transportation hulks out at sea. The wealth of the Americas had already attracted thousands, but there was also the colonies of the far south to emigrate; the Ten-thousand Islands that lie right in the middle of the world’s trade routes.
Like everyone on the table, Tatsuki’s stint in the merchant marine has already exposed him to the cultures and resources traded there, and he clearly saw that some of the wealthiest families – especially in places like Singapore or Penang – were not only Europeans.
“So, what about you?”
“What?” he snapped out of his thoughts.
“You.” It was Kyosuke this time, and his beady eyes were uncommonly large tonight. “I wonder if you have it all fully planned. You said about liking the unknown, but I do wonder… Borneo?”
He sighed. This again.
“I told you, the place is called Sarawak. And why not? It is wild, competitors are few, and I can quickly resupply from Singapore if something goes wrong. I may the first Japanese in the capital, but I am sure I won’t be one for long.”
“But Borneo is full of head-hunters and pirates!” Aichi countered. “Other than that, will anyone even buy from you? I hear the trading families down there are forming a network.”
“Well, do you know if your general store will work out in Johor?”
“I at least know there will be some sort of customers there.”
“And so do I. Kuching isn’t the fishing hovel you have heard from sailor’s tales. I’ve been there, and it’s actually quite nice. It’s not Penang, but it’s not nothing.”
“Do the people down there know about good standards?”
“Yes. I can tell you that that the wild men down there are very good at selling salt to understand high porcelain. Maybe they would do the same for my lacquerware. Now, if you want to talk about Sandakan-“
“I told you all, the rumours all of you heard are wrong.” It was Kyosuke now on the defensive, and Tatsuki knew why. There have been rumours creeping up from the Italian half of Borneo, mostly about how the administration there are causing more trouble than they expected. While rumblings and rebellions are nothing new, the fact that the storied violence was centred on land and forest resources was making it hard for Sandakan to attract foreign traders.
“Still, we just hope you know what you are doing.” Tatsuki noted.
Kyosuke held firm. “A general store down there is no dangerous than your lacquerwares in Sarawak, or Aichi’s in Johor. I’ve been to Borneo as well, and I can tell you that Sandakan is as safe as Singapore or Batavia or any other good city. It is a risk, l’ll say it, but aren’t we all taking one nowadays?”
“I guess that’s what we all are; risk-taking salesmen.” Mitsuda reflected, looking down on his sake. “Mad, but maybe just mad enough to make it all worthwhile.”
“Ah, but without tempering that madness with vision, our stores and trades are not worth the coolies in the gaijin plantations.” Aichi countered.
“Only you can combine both madness and vision and talk about it right here.”
“Well, it is nice to give advice. Besides, now that we’re here, we should at least try to help each other to keep our ventures from falling under.”
“Not unless your store fails and you come to Aceh instead.”
“Ah, but if it’s your trading business that goes down? I…”
As the two resume their drunk bickering, Tatsuki took it all in. The eatery, the street outside, even the lanterns hanging from the lintels… so much of it all will be gone in a few days’ time, including the companionable diners beside him.
I’m going to miss this.
____________________
Notes:
1. Japanese migration to Southeast Asia has been a thing for at least 600 years, and there is nothing in the timeline that changes this. However, the increased wealth and influence of ITTL Sundaland has made more traders to consider setting up shop down there.
Lovely little human update, and I've always thought that the Japanese and Chinese diasporas in SE Asia don't get enough attention.
Huh, apart from Emperor Bokassa I never really delved into his extended family tree. Yikes.
Interesting. So the profit motive was the main reason why Central Africa got the worst of the colonial era. I also think the general forms of racism and discrimination also played a role?
Speaking of which, I sometimes wondered why places like Malaya and Borneo didn’t end up like the Congo basin during the gutta-percha craze IOTL. I suspect the idea of a fully extractive colonial economy was not fully thought out yet in the mid-1800’s, as well the sheer distance Southeast Asia was to Europe back then. It's hard to control an economy that is so distant and with no boots on the ground.
Confession time: I made the French Sphere of Influence look that way because of aesthetic reasons.
But I’ll take a guess and say a buffer zone was the main reason for why West Africa was left relatively alone. As you say, there will be conflict between the native states and the colonies before long, and the colonial powers would try to gain their way inland eventually. France would consider it a bonus if they can connect Porto Novo and Grande Bassam to their Saharan holdings.On the Fulani states and the Sahel… you’ll see!
Double interesting. So there can be a semi-rouge state emerging to the east of Ethiopia as a reaction to external forces. I can see the Ottomans getting interested down there, if just to secure a small part of the region as a stopover point to Aceh, among other things.
The Dervish Caliphate is not going an attractive proxy for the Porte, though. Al-Zayn and his core ministers have lambasted Sultan Abdul Hamid and his empire to solidify their rule, and their decision to enslave fellow Muslims – some of whom were captured troops of Egyptian or Balkan origins – would go down as mud in the Mediterranean.
The local harvesters would get a minor windfall in the near-term (though most of the profits would go the trading middlemen of the sap) but you are right that the good times won’t last. There are already signs of scarcity in certain regions of Malaya and Borneo, so the British/Dutch would be forced to administer resources and control rainforest access as they did IOTL. Plantations are also being set up to counter the shortage.
The deforestation problem is going to be harder to solve. The cleared land could easily be used to raise cash-prop plantations or Amazonian rubber, so there are powerful incentives to keep cleared land cleared. The damage to local agriculture will be biting though; Places like Sarawak (where there are close to no forestry laws compared with its neighbors) would be under great pressure to reforest, or to allow Dayak tribes to migrate to untouched ground.
There wouldn’t be that much of a demand for foreign workers in gutta-percha plantations, though. Compared with Amazonian rubber, the tree is mostly known among the locals and the British/Dutch would rather have people whom are familiar with the substance to take a hand in its production. With that said, I can see the authorities importing foreign labour anyway to keep costs down.
And as for gutta-percha plantations in Africa… that is veeery interesting.
Both the Japanese and Chinese diaspora had a big role in the development of Southeast Asia, for better or worse. With imperial pretensions and a powerful economy of it's own, Japan is looking to the west and south to expand their influence, though their actions might result in some unexpected consequences.
And if anyone's curious to know how they all fared:
- Aichi's general store in Johor will be the most successful. His shop at Johor Bahru will become a local place of supplies for the burgeoning Chinese, Javanese, and Ottoman immigrant communities.
- Tatsuki's laquerware business will suffer for a bit in Sarawak - mainly due to the Kuching locals' unfamiliarity with such objects - but will become just as prosperous after several years.
- Mitsuda's trade in Acehnese gutta-percha would become a huge windfall. But the trade would later collapse in the early 1900's from over-exploitation, whereupon he involves himself in trading spices at Kutaraja.
- Kyosuke's venture in another general store will fail at Sandakan, due to no small part to the Italian administration favoring Catholic christian merchants for their Filipino workers. He would later move to Batavia, where his general store would find better acceptance from the locals and the Dutch.
The next round of 1890-1905 updates will mostly focus on Southeast Asia, though that may change as the timeline progresses (The trajectory of the overall narrative isn't as planned as you all thought.
). Then it's off to the alt-Great War.
Last edited:
I'd argue that it was a perfect storm of several factors: (a) profit motive; (b) the effective rule by concessionaire companies in many parts of central Africa; (c) resources which require particularly hard and undesirable forms of labor to harvest; and (d) virulent racism.
Malaya and north Borneo had autonomous local rulers rather than being governed de facto by rubber or timber companies, Asians occupied a higher place than Africans (though still a highly unequal one) in the colonial racial hierarchy, and as you said earlier, there was enough of a tradition of local harvesting so that laborers could be recruited without terror. These factors probably helped to prevent them from turning into another Congo.
IOTL, the Somali Dervishes had a lot of stay to them - they had Maxim guns and it took air power to beat them. Based on what you say, they wouldn't be friendly to the Ottomans, but I wonder if they might be able to play the Ottoman Empire, Ethiopia and Italy off against each other - depending on who's fighting who, there might usually be someone willing to sell them weapons.
1890 - 1905: The Kingdom of Sarawak (Part I)
Sarawak Museum, Kuching, December 4 1891
For Rian, it was all a bit amusing.
It started with the construction, bricks and tree trunks being hauled up the river to a nearby hill every morning. Then there were the requests for dead animals and birds, with an increased finder’s fee for those who can get them fresh. Half a year later, the local Division Officer came to his village asking for any items that may be of value, “to be displayed in an exhibition at the capital.” Thinking of the matter lightly, Rian handed the man his old fire piston.
And there it was, displayed with other variations of the object in front of him.
Who on this earth would want to look at a cooking tool?
Looking around, Rian noted how the people around him were mingling. The Malay lords and local townsfolk were all walking around, looking this way and that at the exhibits without stopping. Obviously. Most of us know what these things are. Conversely, it was the smattering of Europeans and British – the Orang Barat – that were standing still, either hunched over or craning their necks at some hornbill carving or other.
If you think these are amazing, you should see what we do with the objects.
Still, Rian admitted that the idea is very sound. Months ago, the thought of a place that would contain the kingdom’s character; its wildlife, its people, its history… he would simply laugh at such a thing. Here, he saw men of different backgrounds talking to each other, and even a few of the Barat were jotting down their impressions on their books.
If it can bring us all together, that’s something good.
As he walked away from the fire piston table, two of the aforementioned Barat men strolled past, snatches of their conversation wafting through the warm air.
“…name is Sámuel Teleki, and you?”
“Ah, Theodore Roosevelt…”
*************
Philippe Correa, Foreign Rajahs on Foreign Soils: Sarawak before the Great War (Singapore Lion Press: 1991)
…Opened in December 3rd 1891, the Sarawak Museum was the very first of its kind in Borneo and an absolute improvement over the temporary exhibition site along Gambier Street. The brainchild of Rajah Charles and Sir Alfred Russel Wallace, its opening days saw hundreds of foreigners and local townsfolk flocking to the site where collections of stuffed animals were displayed alongside ethnographic findings from the Bau, Batang Lupar and Rajang regions. In time, the museum would be expanded to house the cultural findings of the kingdom, eventually growing to become the respected (and sprawling) institution that it is today and the largest ethnological institution of Southeast Asia.
If anything, the Sarawak Museum symbolised the new position the kingdom held upon the globe. Trade from Sundaland was at an all-time high and there were many travellers, scientists, and intrepid tourists who were intrigued to explore the so-called ‘Land of the Headhunters’. The biological wealth of the state alone already attracted famous figures; Wallace would continue collecting specimens there until the mid-1890s’s, and the famous painter Marianne North would return to Kuching in 1893 to further depict the kingdom’s flora on canvas (and thus ignite the still-fiery tussle between Kuching and the Kew Gardens for the paintings) [1]. The famous collaboration between the adventurers Theodore Roosevelt and Sámuel Teleki was born in the museum as the two met while browsing through the building’s extensive Bidayuh collection on it's first days. Afterwards, they would deepen their relationship by climbing Mount Santubong and Kinabalu before traversing the seas to conquer Carstensz’s Peak at Papua [2].
Just as importantly, the museum also offered an authoritative base for western anthropologists to start examining the nation’s myriad ethnic groups in detail. As with other pursuits, discussion of Sarawak’s indigenous peoples have attracted interest for decades beforehand, but the increased trade and communication of the late 1880’s had risen the scale and scope for anthropologists. They were particularly flummoxed by the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Dayaks – from their longhouse construction to their bamboo bridges and even to their fire pistons [3] used for igniting their kitchens – enough to assign external influences for the ethnic groups. The anthropologist Charles Evans was especially notorious for assigning the Iban subgroup to originate from 15th-century Japanese rebels, whom intermarried with local women during the glory days of the Bruneian Empire.
While he and most of his contemporaries have their studies now consigned to the dustbin of history, their results did have a paradoxical effect on the kingdom’s Dayak tribes: Western racial assessment. Their reports on the indigenous tribes, from Bidayuh poetry to Melanau tallhouses, made the Dayaks as a whole seem ‘more civilized’ than their contemporaries in the Americas or Sub-Saharan Africa. As Evans himself pointed out, “While the Land and Sea Dyaks, as a whole, are comparatively inferior to the Malays, they have a power and dignity that distinguishes them from the petty tribes of Equatorial Africa.” In an era where exploitative colonialism was running rampant in the latter continent, the sentiment was taken with both relief and distaste by Rajah Charles.
An Iban hornbill effigy from the Rajang Basin, one of the many cultural treasures displayed inside the Sarawak Museum.
Fin de Siècle Sarawak also saw the continuation of change in social life and demographic makeup. While most of the kingdom remained agricultural and underdeveloped, the coastal towns have accreted enough wealth to form a true middle-class that began to look far beyond the horizon. Foreign objects were desired among the townsfolk and displays of porcelain and lacquerware were prized among the rich trading families and the local Malay lords. Dayak traders were also becoming more prominent as forestry resources such as bamboo and rattan rose in demand, with the traders often networking with coastal Malay craftsmen to produce semi-artisanal products such as furniture and reed mats, which are then sold to more traditional families out in the villages.
Education was also coming into term during this period, although the presence of teaching was still concentrated among the most major cities. Wealthy Peranakan families continued to build schools to educate the local Malays and Chinese while foreign literature became much in demand for the coastal townspeople. This was aided by Rajah Charles’ wife, Margaret De Windt, who believed in local education and co-founded numerous hut schools for boys in and around Kuching. She also continued her all-female Malay tuition sessions in the Astana, which quickly became a haven for women’s teaching in a time where such actions were thought of as unnecessary by the Malay men [4]. The arrival of the Ottomans to Sundaland during the 1890’s further stimulated this, with Malay and Islamized Chinese and Dayak headmen sending off their sons to study abroad in Cairo or Kostantiniyye. While the number of Sarawakian men who studied abroad was far lower than the Johoreans, Javanese or Acehnese youth, their education would drastically change the direction of the state during the 1910’s…
Complementing this trend was immigration. The global Last Quarter was full of social and economic upheaval across Sundaland and Asia. Positioned right next to the world’s trade routes, Sarawak received some of the backwash. In July 1892, Batavia was engulfed in communal rioting as local Javanese clashed with the business-leading Chinese Peranakan community. In the aftermath, a fair number migrated to the surrounding states of Johor and Aceh, though a few would head to Sarawak and would later sire the kingdom’s rebirth of the gutta-percha trade. Besides this, the stable nature of the state also attracted migrants from mainland China, most exemplified by the activities of Wong Nai Siong and the subsequent renaming of Maling to New Foochow (now, Sibu) in 1901 [5].
Chinese puppeteers holding a show in Kuching, circa 1903.
All these groups influenced local culture, and none of this is seen more clearly than in the Bangsawan theatre [6]. Since its introduction, Bangsawan plays have become a constant for Kuching and the northern towns, with performance troupes being hired from Singapore to entertain local weddings and celebrations. Young Malay men and women also began to join the wandering troupes, seeking the high pay and better life that it offered to performers. The mid-1890’s also saw the rise of the first local theatre groups, which were mostly made up of young men who tried to copy their foreign cousins, though supplementing regional stories and music with local fare. Performances by these local groups would often involve animal fantasies, Dayak stories from cross-cultural interaction, and meetings with supernatural beings, all peppered with the local slang of Sarawak Creole. With the popularity of regional Malay epics, these local ensembles were shunned by the city folk and were socially relegated to perform to piddling crowds in the villages, where their tales were more palatable. Regardless, from these inauspicious beginnings would rise the syncretized fare of Sarawakian pop culture…
____________________
Notes:
1. Marianne North is an English biologist and botanical artist who visited Sarawak back in 1877 to paint its diverse species of plants. ITTL, she would live past her 59th birthday and conduct one more botanical tour, travelling across the world (and to Sarawak) documenting and painting along the way.
2. …I couldn’t resist. Theodore Roosevelt exists in this timeline and is as boisterous as his OTL self, though he will not be President. Instead, the world sees him more as a celebrated adventurer and mountaineer who is friendlier with other explorers than anyone else. Don’t worry if he is side-lined here; he won’t be in other updates.
3. A fire piston is a compressive air piston made out of wood that could light kindling from air pressure alone. Such devices were used extensively in Malaya and Borneo and became an important tool for smoking and cooking before the introduction of matches and modern stoves.
4. As per post #783, Margaret did conduct teaching in the Astana with the local Malay women IOTL.
5. This will be explained in the next installment.
6. As per post #794.
Extra note: I wanted to make a full one-piece update for Sarawak, but the installment became so long that I had to split this in two. Oops.
Gotta say I'm loving the little nuances you always manage to swing into TTL! Keep up the excellent work!
Have the Japanese been as expansionist towards China TTL? Or is that still in the future?
Have the Japanese been as expansionist towards China TTL? Or is that still in the future?
One little consequence of Anglos thriving in the tropics to a greater extent than OTL is that Australian race theory may be somewhat difficult. Instead of being based around the idea that white men inevitably died close to the equator you may see an even nastier development- that Europeans could live so long as there was a scientific aristocracy.
OTL Australia always had an ambivalent relationship with its plantations in Queensland and New Guinea, because of how many... let's call them indentured servants... from the Pacific Islands were needed to make them profitable. There was always a fear that migrant labour would gradually outgrow the Europeans.
Here, I worry that the example of the Kingdom of Sarawak will make Queenslanders think that it is possible to thrive in the north so long as even stricter social controls are put in place, to ensure a "scientifically balanced" society that allows every racial group to thrive in its supposed proper sphere.
OTL Australia always had an ambivalent relationship with its plantations in Queensland and New Guinea, because of how many... let's call them indentured servants... from the Pacific Islands were needed to make them profitable. There was always a fear that migrant labour would gradually outgrow the Europeans.
Here, I worry that the example of the Kingdom of Sarawak will make Queenslanders think that it is possible to thrive in the north so long as even stricter social controls are put in place, to ensure a "scientifically balanced" society that allows every racial group to thrive in its supposed proper sphere.
No Teddy Roosevelt as POTUS?! Then who will be the badass crazy awesome president Americans can think of when having to endure the current officeholders?
What will become of America without this:
What will become of America without this:
Very cool indeed...quite the melting pot it's becoming
More of a fruit salad than a melting pot, though ITTL Sarawak will be seen that way by its more ‘traditional’ neighbours in the future. The region has always attracted immigrants since the days of Brunei, but the White Rajahs have made it even more so through their policies. Cash crop cultivation and labour for the mines triggered the first waves, but now the coastal/riverine towns are commercially vibrant enough to attract foreign traders too.
The Malay Peninsula and ITTL Aceh will be even more mixed.
Haa ha!
I wanted to do something different with our famous Bull Moose, and unfortunately ‘making him gay’ was already taken by Malê Rising. He would still be athletic after being picked on as a kid, and you wouldn’t want to be in his way unless you have a black belt in Judo. Or boxing.For the most part, history ITTL would see him more as an explorer and mountaineer than as a politician, which he would get involved into when he gets older. With that said, I can see Teddy becoming quite the socialite (of the ‘he slighted my friend, so I uppercut the bastard’) when he returns to the States, and his boisterous personality could influence many people to vote for whichever party during the election years.
And the cartoon… wow.
Though, I wonder who will be the Trustbuster ITTL.Thanks! It’s often the little things that really underscore how much has changed, and nuance helps to flesh out the world a little bit more.
Oh, they’re trying. At this point, ITTL Japan would have already launched several (abortive) attempts to snag Korea. Conditions between Peking and Tokyo are different due to butterflies, but I wouldn’t count out an alternate Sino-Japanese War before the decade is over. Tokyo needs all dat coal and rice.
Not in OTL. Besides the fact that most of Southeast Asia was being colonized by then, the 19th and early 20th century Olympic Games were primarily seen as a Western sporting activity and thus not worth applying by the sultanates/kingdoms. Conditions ITTL would mostly stay the same, especially with some of the surviving states being Ottoman-aligned and against European influence.
However, Johor and Siam surprisingly participated in the World Exhibitions of Europe and the United States back then (we know them today as the world Expo). The sultanate sent their products to British representatives in the 1862 event and even and even built a few pavilions of their own in the 1887 and 1893 events. And if the Chicago Tribune is right, the state also got involved in some other Expositions as well.
ITTL, this could be ramped up by Johor and the other Southeast Asian states to garner respectability and awareness to the western public. Their pavilions could be a showcase for how developed the nations were and how much they could contribute to global commerce. Sarawak though would probably vacillate on joining due to the penny-pinching attitudes of Rajah Charles; I can only see the state getting involved under his successor.
Also, it seems sultan Abu Bakar also tried to meet with esteemed guests during the World Fairs IOTL, such as Civil War generals. Here, I can see him and the Acehnese sultan either coming to the Fairs or sending representatives to meet with various socialites, which opens… all sorts of possibilities.
Didn’t he almost die from attempting to build a diesel piston? Given the nature of butterflies, its likely Rudolf’s experiments turned fatal and delayed the diesel engine for a few years at least.
In any case, the fire piston would retain a more solid place in Malaya and Sarawak ITTL, instead of being near-forgotten today. I can see peddlers trying to market the tool by selling cheap, shoddy versions to unsuspecting tourists.
Nah, the Kingdom of Sarawak is a tad too ‘native’ for Queenslanders to take it as a role model. The rulers are white, yes, but they also did a lot of things that are considered ‘unwhise’. The Rajah is more comfortable at the helm of a native war canoe while his wife likes to dress in a sarong and drink tea with the local women while learning how to write in Jawi. While the Brooke family is notable for living in tropical Sarawak, there are more Anglo-Saxons living long in Penang than there are in Kuching.
On another note, social control in Sarawak is not as deep and divisive as it is in Java or Malaya. Malays, Chinese and Dayaks do live in separate villages, but they also mix and mingle in Kuching and the coastal towns and marry into each other’s families (though it was uncommon back then). I distinctly remember reading an article about a Chinese Muslim gravedigger working in the Rajang since the 1920’s.
If the Queenslanders want to take inspiration, they may take it from Malaya, where the British did impose divide-and-rule strategy among the local populace. With Malays in the paddy fields, Chinese in commerce and mining, and Indians in the rubber plantations, the administration was able to place themselves on the top and prevent a unified political front from developing until after WWII.
On a final note, I forgot to put a video link in the update showing how a traditional fire piston works, so… double oops:
On another note, does anyone know of any good names for baby Qing emperors? Future China updates depend on this!
And since this page is almost entry-full, I would like for one more comment so that the upcoming update wouldn't fall on the end of this page.
And since this page is almost entry-full, I would like for one more comment so that the upcoming update wouldn't fall on the end of this page.
Will we see more of Hawaii? Their king made a cameo earlier. It would change so much in thePacific if the Kingdom survived as a buffer against the American imperialism.