Somewhere in the Spratly Archipelago, 10 September 1905
The blazing sun glared from the heavens, and Officer Höhnel felt he could drown in his uniform.
Please let this be over soon.
It was planned to be a short affair, with the objective of boosting morale and relaying current events to the public back home. “See the brave men of the SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth! The lone Austrian ship fighting in Paradise! The flag of the Habsburgs flies high over the Spratlys!”[1] But then there was the delay in the assembling of the contingents, and then something came wrong about the weather and the clouds, and after that came the problems with the cameramen and their devices. One hour later, and just about every sailor and cadet on the beach were sweating in their shoes.
But just as Höhnel finally had it with the delay, an announcement came from the crew. The flag-raising ceremony would proceed.
With orders blunted by the heat of the day, the cadets and officers marched to their final positions, forming a line of honour on the soft sand. A makeshift flagpole was erected earlier in the day, and teams of cameramen and cellulographers now angled their machines to it. Once that was done, Höhnel gave the starting orders.
A team of cadets marched past, bearing the Austro-Hungarian banner. Another smattering of orders, and the flag was tied to the ropes and hoisted onto the shaft. Another command, and the strains of the Kaiserhymne filled the air, mixing awkwardly with that of the breaking waves.
With his arms in salute, Höhnel stared at the symbol of his homeland, backdropped against the azure sky. They’d probably think I’m lucky, not being in the trenches. Even with the broken communications, the Telegraph Office at Singapore received a few snippets of the goings-on in Europe, and they were anything but joyous. Ten to one they would all wish to be in our place, fighting for the empire off the coast of the Philippines.Oh how much has changed.
Still, he wondered if the theatres in Vienna – if they could even get the footage to Vienna – would mention how Sarawak and the Royal Navy did most of the heavy fighting, or how the Spratlys would be probably divided between them and the government in Manila. Not a single inch of land for the emperor. Not even an atoll or two as a consolation prize.
As his eyes surveyed the scene before him, of the pristine beach and the rustling palms and the turquoise-clear sea breaking gently upon the shore, he wondered if he could change that. A paradise on World’s End… that would be something for imperial morale. Even if the humidity is suffocating.
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Regia Marina dockyards, Sandakan, Italian Sabah, 13 September 2018
“Hand me the part.”
Cicalese grunted as he inserted the final bits of machinery to where they belonged, his arms strained from the amount of work done over… who knows how long?
Finally, he closed the hatch. Over a thousand hours had he and his men worked on the vessel, repairing the inner working through the days and weeks even as the rest of Sandakan emptied away. Once, the dockyards around the harbour were crowded full with passengers and seamen crowding around the ships; Transport vessels, patrolling ironclads, and cargo hulks that were crammed to the full with the wealth of Italian Borneo. Now, the only sounds apart from his work crew were of those catering to the warships, and even they were slipping away as the colony spiralled to oblivion.
Wouldn’t blame them. With the way the Rajah’s coming, we could all kiss our asses goodbye.
Despite the hours on the docks, Cicalese wasn’t blind to the news coming in from the west, of the colonial high command conscripting undesirable peoples against Sarawak and the fistfights this caused amongst the officers in the Residency. Cicalese was no saint himself – the things he had done back home was the main reason why he hopped off to Asia – but even he was perplexed when it came that the local pirates and headhunters were conscripted into a new fighting force. And now we’ve pissed off our neighbour for doing so. Can’t blame them either. Burning villages would make anyone mad.
But orders were orders.
And that made the repair of the Rana all the more critical. It was an experimental torpedo boat that was capable of diving and speeding near the waterline, giving enemy ships the shock of their lives. [2] But it was, perhaps, too experimental. Broke down through the main voyage, and broke down again when arrived. In fact, I don’t think you’ve done much work this past month, do you?
“Break!” The voice of the head mechanic seemed to echo in the confined space, but the thought of a meal quickly overrode Cicalese’s annoyance. He slipped from the hold, landed on his two feet, and quickly made his way through the dock with the other workers, though not before turning back to glimpse at the repaired craft.
But one shot. Just one. And you’ll be remembered forever.
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Upper Sugut basin, Italian Sabah, 24 September 1905
“Bring the food!”
The order was met with sharp replies of “Ya, Tuan Muda!” as a group of Kadazan warriors hauled sacks of rice to the beleaguered villagers at the forest clearing. The burnt-out dwellings couldn’t be seen from their distance, but the smell of charred wood hung heavy in the air, wafting deep down everyone’s noses.
Despite being the Rajah Muda of Sarawak – the declared heir to the throne - Clarke Brooke was more comfortable at the helm of a war Prahu than in delegating village matters. But his father did not raise himself or his brother to be commanding brats, and the skill of governance was instilled within Clarke since he could even remember. And besides, with what the Askari’s are doing, he was glad that food aid was flowing under his watch while his father dealt with another belligerent force further down south. Still a leader, even at seventy-six.
“Is there a leader of the village? Where is the chieftain?” he asked, and so he was brought along with his guards to an elderly man whom spoke of a white-faced figure that came to the longhouse, sometime ago. The pale man courted the warriors and elders, invoking the right of tribal honour, warrior’s honour, to fight under the banner of a foreign (albeit colourful) flag. While a few village warriors were interested, he and his elders were wary, and after an hours-long discussion, answered back: Only if traditional laws are accepted in full, only if their youngsters are not sent to the logging fields, and only if they would stop pestering missionaries upon missionaries upon them.
In truth, the longhouse has long been wary of the new peoples whom lived at the alien city called ‘Sandakan’. The foreign taxes, foreign laws, foreign religions, and foreign labour obligations imposed by them was the reason why the villagers migrated to the foothills of the Sugut River. That was why he cautiously accepted the offer of the Sarawakian emissaries that came a week before.
But no one expected the unthinkable to happen; of the groups of hard-faced men who called themselves Askari, of the requisitioning of rice, of the looting and plunder, of the longhouse being set alight. It was a true blessing that the Brooke forces were close by, for who knows what could become of them all?
“There were several of our sons whom fought with the Askaris, but we haven’t heard from them since the last few hours.” The chieftain finished.
That’s odd. “We never saw any other force besides ourselves.” Clarke said. “Could you tell us where they went – ”
“Tuan Muda!! We found something! Something you need to see!!” A courier ran into the huddled group, breathless.
Puzzled, the heir and the chieftain walked a ways off into the thick undergrowth before stopping before an unnatural mound of fallen leaves and twigs. “There were foot trails to and from this area, and we thought they were made by the Askari’s until…” the courier’s voice died as he went around the back.
It was only then that a new smell assaulted Clarke Brooke’s nose.
The smell of blood.
Oh God.
The back of the mound was littered with corpses. Muscles and limbs broken and bleeding, torsos and thighs lacerated with stab wounds and punctured with bullet holes. All of them, arranged in a hideous line around a pool of blood and gore.
But the worst of all were the heads.
There were no heads.
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Notes:
1) This is based on the real Kaiserin Elizabeth which was stationed in China during the outbreak of the First World War. In this timeline, she was able to slip past French Indochina to join the Anglo-Sarawak fleet.
2) There is no equivalent to a ship like this IOTL, but the closest relative would be the Grillo-class “jumping boats” which were designed to be akin to motorboat-tanks with torpedoes. With the Regia Marina being more funded ITTL, such experimental designs would have been pioneered earlier during the 1900’s, though as shown above, their mileage may considerably vary.
Francesco Batti, Of Sultans and Headhunters: Colonial Italy in Borneo, (Nicollo: 1997)
…If there was anything that finally forced the Italian colonial command at Sandakan of the Askari’s volatility, it was the reports coming from the Sugut River [1]. Ever since its inception, the roundtable of military heads had been fighting amongst themselves over the ethics of employing criminals, pirates, and louts. Now, the grisly news – coupled with new orders from Rome-via-Manila to disband such groups – finally disgusted enough colonels to tip the balance. A majority of commanders overruled the Italian Resident Neopolo and the Askari Sabah were officially disbanded. Unfortunately, this would result in the bloodiest phase of the war, but that was far from Sandakan’s mind when it decided to ask their other neighbour for help.
For the longest time, the Spanish Philippines provided Italian Sabah with cheap contract workers [2]. When the War broke, it became the new home for all the colonists and merchant-barons fleeing the conflict. Now, the high command sent a secret deputation to the Philippine Governor-General, Tomas Capmany Elvira, requesting him of Philippine-made weapons, bullets, and trained men whom can be used in their fight against Sarawak. Unsurprisingly, the Governor-General was hesitant; the Spanish Empire practiced open neutrality as a whole, and even then, the Great War pretty much made the Philippines filthy rich as a place where every belligerent could obtain raw resources and ready-made weapons for their battlefronts. But giving bullets or men to Sabah would stretch their neutrality to an uncomfortable degree, and not wanting to make Great Britain their enemy, Tomas refused.
So, the Sandakan command went for the next best thing: illegal recruitment. Men from Mindanao and local workers in Sabahan estates were enticed to fight (the colony alone had close to 10,000 Philippine labourers), with promises of land and status conferred to them upon victory. Even here though, the results were mixed; enough stories had filtered through of the brutal nature of jungle war, and many didn't want to be a part of it. Still, a fair number of men joined enough to create their own armed company: the Forza di Difesa Sabah, or Sabahan Defense Forces. For the weapons, illicit arms deals were conducted by contacts in Zamboanga with the coal exports of Silimpopon acting as collateral. As the business was done without Philippine approval, there was a heavy requirement of secrecy amongst the commanders; no Filipino was to send any word of their involvement to their families.
Still, the Sarawakian forces advanced, and the end of September saw Rajah Charles crossing the Sapi River and threatening Sandakan itself. Now desperate, the colonial high command seriously considered relocating to Lahad Datu for a final stand. The Regia Marina – which was mostly successful in defending the Sulu Sea from Anglo-Sarawakian naval incursions – would provide cover, while the coal mines of Silimpopon and the Dutch oil fields of Bulungan would provide the administration with fuel and capital. Lahad Datu was also within sight of the Isolo del Diavolo prison complex, where some of Italy’s worst criminals and rabble-rousers are held [3]. With colonial Sabah falling apart, a disastrous prison break was not an option.
But such a notion departure was halted by two new developments: The arrival of the Royal Navy through the Makassar Strait, and the outpouring of violence from across the Kinabatangan basin.
From their holdouts in Sandakan, the high command neglected to think of the dispossessed Askari’s. Being made up criminals, louts, pirates, and former headhunters, the group had acquired a taste for wielding power with modern weapons, and they did not take their disbandment well. Instead, massive raids to weapons stores were conducted across several forts in Italian Borneo, with the group itself migrating south to the Kinabatangan River. With this, the stage for the Bornean front’s bloodiest phase was set…
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Charlie MacDonald, Strange States, Weird Wars, and Bizzare Borders, (weirdworld.postr.com, 2014)
I don’t think I could even begin to start this with a light tone. Despite all the controversies, every academic and internet historian agrees on one thing about the Kinabatangan phase:
It was brutal.
Why? Well, does anyone have a week of spare time? Here’s an idea. To nip the multiple tangents of this topic which will surely drag this instalment down, I think it’s best if we go through the Sabahan war first, chronologically, and deal with whatever matters crop up as we go. Okey?
Still, where do we begin? How about: the murder of the warriors at the Sugut foothills?
True, the massacre of Timbang Batu unveiled the… volatility… of the Askari Sabah* to the general public, but the burning and slaughter at Sugut showed neighbouring Sarawakians a brutality they had rarely ever experienced. A tad odd, considering their history and the previous month’s battles with the Italians and French. But to the Malay reader of the Sarawak Gazette or the Barito salt-seller selling in Miri, they were foreigners, and everyone knows that foreigners are more powerful and morally different from the locals. The Brooke family notwithstanding.
But the Askaris were Borneans, veritable neighbours in the regional scope.
True, they may not speak the same language or share the same cultures, but they are all peoples of the rainforest and rivers, with cues and traditions that are shared across the land since forever. And that commonality, to say nothing of siding with the Italians, made their viciousness all the more shocking. Bornean tribal wars are never known for their bloodlessness, but there was always (generally) honoured codes that spared women, children, and the like from true harm. Only warriors and chieftains die and have their heads carved off. [4]
Small wonder then that after Sugut, many Sarawakian chieftains pressured Rajah Charles to lift the kingdom’s headhunting ban, both as revenge and to show their men “how real headhunting is done!”, because nothing says Moral Corrections of Decapitation when another group perverts said moral. We know that Clarke and Clayton Brooke refused to permit it, but the torn-off pages of Rajah Charles’ war journal leaves some doubt as to his answers, and there are still longhouses across Sarawak and Sabah whom swear that their skulls hail from the battles of the Great War…
"Don't worry! They were already dead when we took them! And we did it cleanly!"
In any case, the Askaris – warrior-warlords now, really – retreated southwards (though not without causing a few more massacres), and the initial disgust from every neighbouring longhouse allowed Sarawak to advance with surprisingly little fighting. After another round of whirlwind diplomacy, the Brooke forces crossed the Sapi River at October 1st and quickly battled against the catholicised villages of the opposite bank. For a moment, their progress seemed assured.
But then came the whispers of atrocities along the Kinabatangan. Then came the refugees.
Along the way, there was more bad news: the Italians have somehow gotten the Filipinos involved, and the Askaris have rooted themselves along the abandoned plantations of the Kinabatangan River. And the pro-Italian notables and chieftains there (there were a few, mostly Christianised) are fighting each other. And some of the traditional chieftains are also fighting each other. In fact, everyone down there was fighting each other. Did I mention the Askaris have rooted themselves along the Kinabatangan?
And the result? An absolute bloodbath. Night-time ambushes. Blowpipe assassinations. Machine-gun ambushes that ended in torn limbs and hole-ridden torsos. Artillery bombardments that sent rainforests ablaze and shrapnel through longhouse walls. Burned forests, orchards, plantations, and rice fields. Villages fighting whomever looked foreign or different. Men and warriors running away to find their own purpose.
Compounding the issue was the hardware. Rifles and Maxim guns are a lot more damaging than daggers or spears. Heck, modern artillery alone can affect more damage than plain old cannons. Then there was the software: the Askaris and local Dusun peoples know jungle tactics, and it takes forest peoples to understand forest peoples. But worst of all, it was the hunger. From Marudu Bay, rice imports from Sarawak provided the Brooke armies with a lifeline. But in the warring Kinabatangan, food quickly became a problem for everyone else, especially the Askaris. So with that, it wasn't long before villages and orchards were doorstepped by rifle-armed warrior-warlords. Should the village accept their plea for rice and men, they will be spared. To those whom don’t…
Well… you’re lucky if they just kill you.
The worst cases were the skull racks. And the headless corpses.
Even back then, fear was known as most effective weapon in war, and the Askaris took this to the very end. Taking neither side but their own, they would capture Sarawakian warriors and Italian men, recalcitrant warriors and Philippine scouts, and torture them for any information. After that, their heads will be kept on the racks, while the mangled bodies were left behind as a grisly souvenir and warning to all. A troop company may wake up one morning to see a few men missing, only to stumble on a mound of naked, headless corpses down the forest path. For a longhouse, being plundered and set alight was considered a mercy.
As psychological warfare went, it was horrifying.
A line of severed heads hung from a rack, found in an Askari camp in the upper Kinabatangan. As you can see, some of them are still fresh and rotting.
All in all, an estimated 9,000 people – Italians, Sarawakians, Filipinos, Sabahan Dayaks and Dusuns,– died at the direct hands of the Askaris. Indirectly, no one knows.
But the atrocities did produce one effect: It swayed many Sabahan tribes to the Brooke side, and I don’t think it’d take a space scientist to see why. There were a few chieftains whom didn't want to get involved in any way, though, and in fact, one local legend has it that Charles and Clarke had to hunt for wild boars and present the meat to frightened villagers as a peace offering [5]. With this, and their emissaries and spies providing intelligence reports, and with previous Dusun villages providing their own warriors as support, the Sarawak forces began their push southwards. They split up: Charles Brooke and his elder son Clarke would handle the mess along the Kinabatangan, while the younger Clayton Brooke would try marching to Sandakan.
As campaigns go, I want to say that the resulting front in southern Sabah can be compared to a cup of Turkish coffee: brief, but bitter. But I’d be lying. I won’t bog down this already overlong instalment with all the minutiae of battles and dates, and I won’t go into the Rajah’s reactions once he saw the mounds of corpses and the skull racks full of severed heads, or the discourse of the atrocities in the Sarawakian nation (that topic’s for later). But all in all, it took a full month to pacify the place. The local support of the Brookes and the horse-drawn artillery they carried (courtesy of the Sarawakian Sama-Bajau people) made for some indispensable progress. It also helped that the Askaris themselves were losing more men than they could be replaced. Only ‘round 4000 to 5500 fighters, remember?
By early November, most of the river basin was pacified. Around the same time, the Royal Navy finally broke through to the Celebes Sea after circumnavigating Borneo and swatting every last Regia Marina ambush off the Makassar Straits. With this, the Italian garrisons at Tawao, Semporna and Lahad Datu quickly fell, and the father-son army hatched a daring plan with the naval commanders once they all met: a general strike on Sandakan, from both land and sea…
Extra:
*I really don’t understand why westerners Italicize (huh, how serendipitous) this word. Yes, it’s Italian, but it’s such a hassle to check all the slanted words, so this is the only time I’m making it all slanty.
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On the hills around Sandakan, Italian Sabah, 13 November 1905
“Agi idup! Agi Ngelaban!”
The cry was met with a roar of rifle and artillery fire. The air around the ridge billowed with smoke as voices shouted out orders in different languages, only to be silenced by the weapons of war. An hour of fighting passed in a blur, but in the end, Clayton Brooke finally found himself resting on the top of the coastal ridge.
Now, he could truly see the sheer expanse of the battlefront. Behind him, he knew, lay the arduous dirt path that his forces had trekked. Over the past month, the Italian command had thrown practically everything they had on him and his forces, dotting the hills of Sepilok with forts that were commanded by foreign Philippine companies and the few locally-allied village warriors. It was a slow and arduous progress, not helped by the absence of his father and elder brother whom headed south to deal with the mess there. But at last, the ultimate prize of the Bornean war, and its end, lay within his sight. Sandakan.
It was odd, Clayton mused, looking at the capital before him, how such a city could affect so much to Borneo and beyond. Stately and ordered, Sandakan was bathed in the evening light, with its government quarters and church spires glowing yellow and orange amongst the surrounding forest green. Villas once owned by rubber barons and timber magnates peeked out of the surrounding hills, and the few fishing vessels by the docks bobbed incessantly on the dark blue of the bay.
And speaking of the bay, Clayton lifted his sights to the other battle unfolding before him. With shots and blasts, the Royal Navy and the Regia Marina were having their last battle at the centre of the bay, but the Brooke prince could see the nimble Prahus and river gunboats boasting the Sarawak flag closing in on the city, with the main flagship in full view. From what he’d heard, his father and elder brother would land at the outskirts and take care of the garrisons there first. Then, the whole family would have a reunion at the Government House with the British, finally concluding the war for Sabah and Borneo.
Finally. Clayton already had a laundry list of things to say about the colonial high command and their actions. But before he could continue, a new sight flitted into his view.
By the docks, a strange shape seemed to be moving underwater, its presence causing the waters above to swirl around its dark body [6]. Like a silent whale, it moved out towards the sea. Towards… the Sarawak flagship.
Clayton wanted to scream. He wanted to cry out and warn his family about the danger. But time seemed to set still as he saw another dark shape separating from the main body of the craft, hurtling underwater towards the landing fleet. He saw the Prahus and gunboats rain down fire upon the subsurface vehicle, but their actions were then blinded by a huge explosion that seemed to rock the entire world.
The battle of Sandakan was at an end, and Clayton Brooke saw his father and brother die before his eyes.
4. However, it should be noted that rules regarding tribal warfare aren't uniform throughout the island, or even in Sarawak. For instance, the Brooke family may be appalled by senseless destruction, but they saw no problem in plundering and cannonballing longhouses.
Headhunting was also a fluid notion, with the Apo Kayan of north-central Borneo being notorious for being indiscriminate towards their enemies, decapitating men and women regardless during tribal wars. But in most subgroups, and as a general guideline, only warring chieftains and warriors have their heads cut off.
5. Such peace ceremonies are known in Brooke-era Sarawak as Bebanchak Babi, where peace deals are hashed out which were then followed by a feast of boar meat.
6. And there goes my hint in the last narrative update.
The outskirts of Kuching, Kingdom Of Sarawak, 17 November 1905
Lily Brooke was close to breaking.
It wasn’t the fact that the present day marked the anniversary of her husband’s death, though that did crush her spirit. It wasn't the fact that her mother is still inconsolable, though that did made her anxious and frustrated as the only daughter. It wasn’t even that her two children, Walter and Elizabeth, now playing on the front verandah of the royal bungalow, were too young to understand how much they had lost.
No, it was because of the barge that would arrive tomorrow morning… bearing her late father and brother.
No, not only that. Despite it being four days since their deaths, her other brother is still avoiding her letters and telegrams. From the moment she heard the news and recovered from the grief, Lily reached out to her only surviving sibling, only to be answered with silence upon silence upon utter silence. She knew what it meant, and she knew Clayton was grieving in his own way, but she was afraid that her brother might not be sound of mind after watching her father’s…
No. He mustn’t. He can’t.
“Telegrams for Dayang Lily!” [A]
She almost jumped at the voice; the footsteps of the Malay postman halted before the gravel path and the front steps. Something about her emotions must have shown on her face, for his’ immediately turned concerning beneath his blue cap. “Dayang Lily, are you fine?”
She could her the children’s governess standing up to speak, and the Sikh garden-guards turning their heads at his outspokenness. “No, wait! it’s alright! It’s - um… alright. I’m fine.” She changed her language. “Surat saya? – My papers?”
“Di sini – here.” The postman handed over a thick sheaf of wrapped paper. Something must have still shown on her face, for he also said after a moment, in halting English, “And my deep regrets. From all of us. Know that we are all sad, with you.” Then, he turned around and walked down the gravel path. Watching the man disappear into the day, Lily then turned her attention to the papers in her hands. The undersea cables between Sundaland and the wider world must have been repaired, for the Italians and French and the Russians in Phuket had cut them all off to cripple any sort of communication with Britain and India; Sarawak had been dearth of any news about the war in Europe for the past few months.
Still, she wondered what would entail such a response to herself; usually, it was her father and brothers whom received such papers. Then, she stilled.
At the end of each passage was inscribed the name of the sender, and they were from all across her extended family and friends from Great Britain. The Crookshanks, the Bampfyldes, the Nicols, the de Windts… and some were even prefaced with titles: The former Admiral of the Fleet; the Director of the London Museum of Natural History; even the bloody Barrington viscount of Ireland! [AA]
Somehow, the last paper surfaced so quickly to her eyes.
Lily turned aside, and realized that she could barely see her son through her tears.
With all the love of a mother, she folded her knees and hugged her Walter.
“It’s nothing dear. It’s nothing at all.”
But it was something. Even as rivulets began to flow down her face, even as she shook with sobs, an iron strength began to coalesce in her core, as if the letters were transferring their hope through her skin. A new fire began to course through Lily’s veins. She would not stay silent and no nothing. She wasn’t just a Dayang, or a sibling, she was a Brooke, and she would get her brother out of his moroseness even if it meant barging into his room, console his feelings, and then slap him to his senses.
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Amarjit Kaur, Sarawak under Charles, (Lido Press, 1999)
…an estimated 60,000 people crammed the rivers and ports of Sarawak to witness the funeral procession sail back to Kuching. During a refuelling stop at Sibu, a parade of Chinese Methodists led a ceremony at the pier, praying their respects to the monarch who offered them a new home. Across the Sarawak River, scores of residents clambered up riverside palms to view the convoy, or rowed their sampans to accompany the fleet. When the bodies of Charles and his son Clarke finally arrived to the capital, an estimated 100,000 mourners – some travelling for over a week – crammed the narrow streets and shophouses of the city to the absolute limit.
With the oceans still unsafe and their body conditions degraded, it was decided that Charles Anthoni Johnson Brooke, the White Rajah and war leader who reigned for 37 years, and Clarke Willis Brooke, the crown prince whom was supposed to inherit that legacy, would be buried in Sarawak. Laid to rest in the very soil the family had ruled.
Their funerals themselves were a spectacle to behold. The wood-built cathedral of St. Thomas was packed to overflowing, with the Chinese and Dayak congregations sitting side-to-side with their European fellows. Westwards, the imam of Kuching’s Grand Mosque led a Friday funeral khutbah to a worshipping crowd that equally overflowed onto the riverside cemetery. Across Sarawak, mourning and remembrance rituals were conducted across many Dayak longhouses, honouring their fallen warriors and to the semangat-filled leaders whom upheld the values of the land. Charles Brooke did much for Sarawak, but he and his eldest son had never united it as deeply as with their own deaths.
But it wasn’t only their deaths that Sarawak mourned. Despite being a regional player in the Great War, the kingdom felt the horrific consequences of industrial conflict first-hand. From the Italian bombardment of Bandar Charles, to the conquest and reconquest of the outlying archipelagos, to the horrific Askari atrocities along the Kinabatangan, the casualty rates among Sarawakians reached untold proportions never before seen in Bornean historiography. Over 8,000 Dayak warriors and Sarawak Rangers perished in the land battles of Borneo, along with over 4,000 sailors and seamen from both the kingdom’s navy and merchant marine. The civilian casualties were just as high, with up to an estimated 7,000 men, women, and children dying at the hands of Italian soldiers, Jeune Ecole bombardments, and Askari massacres.
All in all, the Kingdom of Sarawak with her 400,000-strong population lost an estimated 19,231 souls to the Great War. 4.7% of her entire people. While seemingly paltry when compared to the astronomical death tolls of Europe and Africa, the kingdom’s largest warrior-army ever fielded by the Brookes till then (the Kayan Expedition of 1863) comprised of over 15,000 men. In short, Sarawak not only lost her Rajah and prospective heir, but also the equivalent of an entire army to slaughter. Almost every Malay village and Dayak longhouse across the lowlands were affected, losing either a sailor, a porter, a warrior, or a Ranger to the carnage.
With this, it is no small wonder why, to this day, Sarawak is one of the few nations of Asia that holds a Remembrance Day for their fallen from the War.
Photograph of a commemoration ceremony for a Great War memorial at Saratok, 1921.
But the deaths of Charles and Clarke also heralded a deeper, more subtle finality: the end of an era. Though his death saw eulogies and obituaries scrawled upon the broadsheets of the region, many newspapers overlooked how Sarawak became an awkward, near-absolutist state under Rajah Charles’ rule. Indeed, one could argue that, for a state on the cusp of the twentieth century, Sarawakian government resembled that of medieval Europe. From the Astana, chieftains and headmen made their way to see Charles Brooke, paying their respects and espousing their troubles in an altered form of paying court.
Despite the kingdom bearing a Resident-Councillor system of rule that engendered consensus among the river basins, absolute power began to accrue on the person of the monarch, with Charles having a final say in new laws, taxes, and bills across the land. The Council Negri – the assembly of chieftains, headmen, and European residents – was nothing more than an advisory body, assembled only once in three years to be nothing more than a rubber stamp to enforce Charles’ will. His position as head of the Kuching High Court also saw undue influence in law, being able to enact punishments and sentences on important cases.
But in matters of war and peace, the Rajah was truly paramount. The expansion of Sarawak saw Charles Brooke adopting the roles of general, commander, arbitrator, and envoy on both the national and international stage. Not only did he cobbled peace treaties and declare war on recalcitrant tribes on his own, but fought on the front lines with his Dayak-Malay auxiliaries and carved up the Bruneian Empire through repeated intrusions of territory, and often personally. The Italian writer Emilio Salgari was not wholly exaggerating when he noted, “…The White Rajah of Borneo personifies the saying: ‘L'état, C'est Moi’ – The State, I Am.’”
The Great War heralded this end. It also trumpeted another closure; that of the patronizing way the kingdom was ruled. Though the late 19th century saw a rise in settled towns, a native merchant class, new infrastructure, and increased transport, Rajah Charles still viewed the Dayaks and Malays as not worthy of the industrial age. In short, he and his sons saw the preservation of traditional society as a moral, near-sacred duty. While this thinking averted Sarawak from the mass exploitation concurrent with colonialism elsewhere, it also left the state severely behind on development; there were no general hospitals, nor a modern naval command, or even a standing army. Education was still under the purview of churches and mosques, while railways were spare and only used to transport ore from regional mines to the docks. Past the material towns, the rainforest beyond still covered over 90% of Sarawak, wild and verdant.
It was this kingdom that Clayton Brooke found himself the ruler of, and he did not take it well. While most chieftains noted his stoicism upon receiving his father and brother’s bodies at Sandakan, Clayton became emotionally distant from his fellows and his family, not even receiving any word from family friends or his mother and sister. The open slap that Lily Brooke gave to him upon his arrival at the Astana was a shocking show of familial discord, but so was the hug she gave him after.
It was only later on, into the following year, that the true extent of Clayton’s misgivings became fully known. But in the days following his father and brother’s funeral, such matters were eclipsed by another issue on everyone’s lips: the succession….
********************
The Astana, Kuching, Kingdom of Sarawak, 1 December 1905
Clayton Brooke had felt nervousness throughout his life, but this was a new one.
“How are you feeling?” his sister asked, her hat and lipstick seeming to mask her lips shifting form.
“Like my stomach would drop out.”
“It’s only for the day-” Lil started, but a shout of “ATTENTION!!” broke off their chat. With solemnity, the pair began to walk down the Astana steps with their mother following behind, flanked all the while by a procession of Sikh guards and Sarawak Rangers. A retinue of Supreme Council members, local chieftains, and ex-Bruneian lords (“no… Sarawakian.” Clayton corrected to himself) followed behind.
The river jetty was already prepared when they arrived, with the ferry being bedecked in ribbons of yellow: the Malay colour of royalty. At the sight, Clayton held his breath. I shouldn’t be here. But with a nudging from his sister beside him, he found himself swinging his legs aboard. Then, in a seeming blink of an eye, the party found itself on the opposite bank, docking before a watching crowd by the riverfront.
I’m not ready for this, Clayton thought, and for one mad moment, he envisioned himself vaulting over his seat and swimming back to his private quarters in the royal residence. But just as quickly as the idea came, it faded, and he found himself walking into a horse-drawn carriage past a crowd of Sarawakians shouting “Tuan Rajah! Tuan Rajah!”.
I am no Rajah. I wasn’t even trained to be one. For all the twins appeared from the outside, and for all they had experienced and learnt as administrators, it was no question that Clarke Brooke was the more favoured in leadership. Daring, more headstrong, he was the one invited to the Supreme Council meetings, learning beside his father on the matters of state. Clarke was the heir who was supposed to lead Sarawak, and he was instructed on how to do so for quite some time. Not me.
But both father and brother are gone.
The carriage halted.
Clayton stepped out to an endless sea of people. The great Padang of Kuching – the open stretch of land between the High Court and the museum [1] – was brimming with souls whom came to see the unprecedented ceremony. Faces from Borneo, East Asia, Europe, and even Arabia were all mixed together in a jumble of colours, feathers, and sun-kissed parasols. It was a Friday, and the Muslim community were especially notable among the crowd, stretching out onto the local Grand Mosque. Nearby, a makeshift orchestra of Malay brassworks, Chinese strings, and Dayak reeds belted out the Sarawak anthem.
But it was what Clayton saw up ahead that truly froze him: the pavilion, stage, dais, and podium all awaiting. And beside all that, the Chief Executioner of the High Court, bearing the sword of Rajah James. [2]
Instantly, Clayton recalled his sister’s words before the Supreme Council. “The people need a symbol to show that all will be well. Something like this has not been done before, but it would go a long way to instil confidence in Sarawak. And amongst our neighbours.”
“Breathe.” His sister whispered, and the Rajah-to-be realized that he had been holding his breath. Swallowing his nervousness, Clayton let himself be moved with the ceremony, accepting the sword of James Brooke before affixing it to his waist. Then, he climbed onto the podium to face the people. His people.
And amongst them all, he saw a face. A face that showed concern, hope, and determination for the man. Clayton looked, and felt his hesitation slipping away.
When James Brooke became Rajah, there was hardly any ceremony. When Charles Brooke ascended, he swore an oath before the Council Negri from the Astana. Now, Clayton would etch a new mark in Sarawak history.
Here we go.
********************
The first sentence of Rajah Clayton’s accession oath:
“Kita, Clayton George Brooke, bersumpah diatas semua kitab suci untuk membaktikan Nyawa keatas kemakmuran rakyat sebagai Rajah negara Sarawak!”
- “We, Clayton George Brooke, swear on all the sacred scriptures to dedicate Our lives to the people’s prosperity as Rajah of the nation of Sarawak!” [3]
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Notes:
+ The picture I used for Lily Brooke is actually Kathleen Hudden, the wife of Anthony Brooke IOTL. [A]'Dayang' is an old Malay term that used to mean "servant" or "lady-in-waiting" in an esteemed household. However, the word in Brunei picked up noble connotations and was later used to denote royalty and nobility, meaning "High Lady" or "Princess". Sarawak, being a conquerer of much of Brunei, retained the term and used it for their own, both IOTL and ITTL.
[AA] The names and families in the telegrams are all connected to Sarawak in some way. Some are based in OTL and some are ITTL.
a)Henry Stuart Johnson is the brother of Charles Brooke and of John Brooke Johnson, the first crown prince of Sarawak under Rajah James (or at least until he allowed the Dutch to retake the Sentarum Floodplains). While he died in 1904 IOTL, he lives just long enough in this timeline to get some comforting words out to his niece. b) The Crookshanks are the family of Arthur Chichester Crookshank, a cousin of James Brooke who became the Rajah’s chief secretary from the 1840’s to the 1870’s IOTL. He remains mostly unchanged in this timeline (somehow, there’s no public genealogy that I could find online about him). c) The Bampfyldes are the family of Charles Agar Bampfylde, a son of a British Major whom worked in the Sarawak Civil Service and as Resident of the Kuching Division throughout Rajah Charles’ reign. After retiring in 1903, he became the kingdom’s political agent in Great Britain, a duty that he still serves ITTL. d) The Nicols are the family of James Dyce Nicol, a Scottish Liberal politician whom funded Sarawak’s early phase under Rajah James and was director of the Borneo Company Ltd, the monopolistic corporation that’s handling the kingdom’s gold mines. ITTL, the family haven’t forgotten their Bornean investments. e) The de Windts are Margaret Brooke’s extended family and siblings. While there was some friction between the parents and her due to her marriage, members of the family did serve in Sarawak as Residents, civil servants, or aide-de-camps under Rajah Charles. Indeed, Margaret’s brother Harry de Windt worked in the kingdom for a few years as aide-de-camp before becoming an explorer in his own right. f)The (Former) Admiral of the Fleet: a five-star officer rank and the highest rank of the Royal Navy. A few British admirals with this rank served in Sarawak or with James and Charles Brooke, such as Sir Thomas Cochrane and Sir Henry Keppel. ITTL, it was these men that covered for Sarawak’s naval losses and secretly aided the kingdom during the Great War. g)[the] Director of the London Museum of Natural History: The eponymous museum in London contains (even OTL) many specimens collected by naturalists in Sarawak, including from Alfred Russel Wallace, a friend of the Brooke family and a major backer of the Sarawak Museum in Kuching. Because of this history, the director and Wallace himself send their condolences. h)[even the] bloody Barrington viscount of Ireland! : aka. Walter Barrington, the 9th Viscount of Barrington of Ardglass in the County of Down, in what is today Northern Ireland. As a member of the British and Irish aristocracy, he never thought much of the White Rajahs in his life, until… i) …Hope Brooke aka. John Charles Evelyn Hope Brooke came along. He is a son of John Brooke Johnson (the first heir to Sarawak) and married viscount Barrington’s daughter, Violet Mary Barrington, in 1892, making the Barrington family in-laws to the Brooke dynasty. I decided to keep the marriage ITTL because:
aa) it’s waaaay too odd to be knocked-off, and
bb) the other aristocratic family I wanted to include (the Brooke Baronets) didn’t have any marriageable girls from the 1890’s to 1905.
1. You can still visit the open field at Kuching today, though the front portion – behind the courthouse – has been built over into today’s Plaza Merdeka shopping mall.
2. The sword of James Brooke was a cutlass that he personally used during his years at Sarawak. IOTL, it was presented to each succeeding ruler on their accession and displayed on important ceremonies. ITTL, it is one of the symbols of royal regalia that Clayton must arm for his accession. The photo of the sword was one I took myself from my visit to Kuching.
3. Incredibly, we still have the accession oath of Charles Vyner Brooke, (the OTL third Rajah of Sarawak) of which I tweaked the words around. During Vyner’s accession, he was coronated inside the Sarawak Club, a private building for the officers of the kingdom. ITTL, the pain of the Great War and the deaths of Rajah Charles and the crown prince Clarke would push the Astana for a more public coronation ceremony in downtown Kuching. This would ensure the public that Sarawak and the Brooke family would continue, no matter what. And yes, this would set a precedent.
EDIT: Okay, I did not realize noting stuff using the alphabet would embold the whole update! Also tweaked a few words and errors.
The hulking edifice of cement and brick shaded the mass of attendees as they clapped and posed for the photographers with their new-fangled tripods. But with that, Jaafar Muhammad braced himself for what was about to follow. As Chief Minister of Johor, it was his duty to stand in for the sultan whenever the monarch was unable to attend. However, that did not mean he enjoyed answering the questions chirped again and again by the gaggle of attended investors, especially regarding his old friend.
On the contrary, it was exasperating.
“Yes, he is still infirm from his stomach ailment.” Jaafar rattled. “– No, we do not know when he shall return to peak health – No, we do not know if he shall attend the next factory opening – Yes, he extends his regards to you too, Mr. Brenner – No, we are still not an official participant in this World War – Thank you all for coming. Thank you!”
And with that, the man extricated himself from the rabble and took off with his police escort, calling his shaded hansom cab to be driven through downtown Johor Bahru as quick as possible, back to the palace. A rickshaw would have been far slower, and the midday heat and wind would’ve been uncomfortable on such a vehicle. And besides, Jaafar liked the privacy.
Well, at least Abu Bakar would be happy about today, he mused. The idea of industrialising Johor was a long-running endeavour for both the sultan and himself, but the industry of Singapore and the southern island’s mass-imports have always proved a detriment to the plan. Now, with the Great War a serious local threat, and with the price of local goods rising, any industry that could improve British and Ottoman victory helps. Though I need to talk to him about our production standards. No need to sell the British and Turks improper or shoddy military kits.
But as he thought that, a new noise lifted Jaafar from his musings.
It came from up ahead, where the main road intersects with the neighbourhood where the European community held their businesses. From his position out the window, the two side-streets of Jalan Paris and Lebuh Kaisar[1] were enveloped in dust and smoke. He could hear shouts and hollering, and many street pedestrians craned their necks to see the scrum up ahead. The cab slowed to a halt.
“Is there anything wrong?” Jaafar asked the coachman, who said, “There seems to be some commotion up ahead, Tuan. Maybe a hartal ?” [2]
Impossible. But then, a scream split the air, and open flames began to rise from the district down ahead. Three Caucasian-looking men emerged from the smoke, running up the road while being followed by a rabble of surly-faced Indians, Arabs, and Malays. Jaafar only needed a second to reach a decision, calling out his escort to stop the pursuers and shouting “In here!!” to the three men. As soon as they all crammed onto the seats, he sounded another order for the coach to head back to the city’s police headquarters as fast as possible.
“As Chief Minister of this state, you all have my full protection. Can you tell me what happened?” he asked above the clattering of hooves.
“I’m Hermann, and this is Vernier and Mossé!” One replied, panting. “They are attacking all the French shops! They tried to escape to mine, and the mob began to attack mine too! I think it’s because of the recent news from Europe!”
Jaafar immediately understood. Another reason why we aren't officially in the War. Johor, unlike its Ottoman-aligned neighbour, was a sultanate of minorities. The Chinese population alone outnumbered the Malays and Indians combined, and the capital bears families that hail from Japan all the way to Scotland. But the pot has boiled over now.Looks like I’ll need to assemble the Royal Council.
But the police station was now up ahead, and Jaafar knew what to do first.
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Notes:
I’m still working on the Southeast Asia instalment, so have a mini-narrative interlude for my lateness.
1. Jalan Paris and Lebuh Kaisar: Paris Street and Kaiser Avenue, respectively.
2. ‘Hartal’ is a Gujerati word that refers to strike action, often in a form of mass protest through the closing of shops and warehouses until the demands of strikers are satisfied. Though used mostly across South Asia, the word migrated to colonial Malaya due to the British colony’s large Indian minority, leading to the word becoming embedded in some colonial and post-colonial strikes such as the Penang hartal of 1967.
Charlie MacDonald, Strange States, Weird Wars, and Bizzare Borders, (weirdworld.postr.com, 2014)
For a while, the brutal slugfest between Sarawak and Italian Borneo transfixed Southeast Asia. Then, everyone realized that Great War belligerency isn’t simply confined to Borneo.
Well, almost everyone. Talk to an Acehnese of Sarawak’s attack on Brunei, and they’ll quickly reply that their navy was the first to engage in the War by combating the nearby Russians. Since the mid-1890’s, the Sultanate of Aceh and the Russian naval station of Phuket warily eyed each other across the Malacca Strait, with the Russians distrusting their Sumatran neighbour for being buddy-buddy with the Ottomans. Conversely, Russophobia and Ottomanophilia was the main reason why many Acehnese viewed the Russians as mud (more on that later) with the whole Russo-Turkish War of ’77 colouring Acehnese optics.
So when the world collapsed into conflict that July, it seemed natural for them to fire shell-shot on Russian-flagged boats passing through their waters.
What Aceh didn’t expect was the response. The Russian retaliation quickly saw the cruiser Zhemchug swiftly attacking the port town of Meulaboh, which had ballooned into a coal hub for the sultanate’s west coast and thus protected by Ottoman gunboats. But due to misplaced orders and the novelty of such an attack, the resulting bombardment pretty much devolved into a battle that saw Meulaboh’s docks in flames and two of the Porte’s ships damaged, at the cost of the Zhemchug bearing heavy damage of its own.
In fact, the cruiser barely managed to limp away before being eventually captured by the Royal Indian Navy. The British, Ottoman, and Acehnese fleets all tried to follow up on the attack, yet the following naval battles of Kutaraja, Lhokseumawe, and Langkawi showed that conquering ‘Fortress Phuket’ was going to be an uphill endeavour.
And given that Aceh was a regional expert in guerrilla warfare, it wasn’t long till the royal court proposed sending armed guerrillas to break the island from within.
The idea was… odd. There was a cartoon I saw somewhere on the Web showing puffed-up bureaucrats in British Penang and Singapore giving each other side-eyes at the whole proposal. But the Ottoman captains at Kutaraja were receptive, and so were a number Acehnese youngsters who have heard stories of their mothers and fathers fighting the Dutch and wanted to repeat that. And so, under the cover of dusk in mid-July, the first guerrilla forces were silently transported to Russian Phuket aboard commandeered fishing vessels. [1]
To be honest, I’m actually impressed at how the men managed to weave through the patrol boats and haul mobile artillery into the central mountains. As they expected, the Russian sailors were no forest fighters, and a fair number of them succumbed to disease whilst climbing the Kathu hills before they could even engage the Acehnese (almost all the good medicine went to the gunships, incredibly). Still, it took a while before they were whittled down – Ottoman-bought mobile artillery was a tad shoddy when compared to Russian firepower – and it took a few more naval battles before the admirals at Phuket town felt the pressure. But by early August, the island was surrounded and the Acehnese were on the march.
Now, the fall of Phuket town on August 11th has been gabbed about by a lot of folks, so I won’t nauseate you readers by repeating them here. What I will say is that a few captains and admirals actually managed to escape the siege and hightailed north into the Siamese mainland, where they quickly journeyed to Bangkok to seek the protection of King Chulalongkorn.
I wonder what his Royal Majesty’s face was like when hearing the news and seeing the group of Russian-speaking men huddled before the royal palace…
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Nengka-Ampdau Vagi, Commerce and Conflict; the Great War at Papua, (Westerlands, 1999)
…The politicians at Melbourne anticipated a short campaign when they sent 7 battleships and 5,000 men to conquer Italian Papua. They did not expect half the fleet to be sunk by the Regia Marina at the battle of Sorong in early August.
For over 2 decades, the northwest portion of the island has long been an open sore to Queensland, whom shared its fear of foreign invasion with the rest of Australia upon the commonwealth’s birth. While the idea is now viewed as an overblown prediction today, it was treated so seriously then that the government literally jumped to its feet when Great Britain declared war on the Kingdom of Italy. For a new dominion with geo-territorial jitters, it was the perfect justification to wipe off the biggest thorn on their side.
What they failed to recognize was that Italian Papua was the exact opposite of Italian Sabah. Perhaps alone amongst the island’s colonies, the administration of Cavour actively sought to build bridges between themselves, the settlers, and the indigenous tribes. Many people, even today, have forgotten how the failure of the Marquis De Rays’s colony of New France was only a step from complete collapse due to the struggling Venetian settlers exchanging labour for food with the local natives. [2] Because of this, both the colonists and the local government realized that antagonizing ably-suited locals was not in their best interest.
And as a result, the highland Manikom and Hatam tribes were guaranteed lands, resources, and a place at the governing table so long as they accepted foreign rule. The arrangement was not without obstacles – not everyone accepted the idea of sharing land, religion was a perennial issue, and the legal battles between the subgroups and settlers were judicially legendary – but a peaceful-ish Papua was firmly established by 1905, with inter-group commerce becoming an effective glue to bind all the affected stakeholders, which also had the welcome side-effects of spreading missionary Catholicism and improving colonial expenses…
…When the Great War knocked on Papua, it was met with initial shock, followed by fierce resistance. Despite their issues, the settlers and natives have tolerated each other as neighbours and viewed Australian aggression as a threat to hard-earned peace. Highland towns began preparing separate militias while the Regia Marina fortified Emmanuel Bay into an impenetrable fortress. Across the coastal waters of the Bird’s Head Peninsula, groups of swift destroyers lie in wait to ambush the arriving enemies. When the first squadron of the Australian Federated Naval Forces [3] –made up of ships amalgamated together from all the Australian territories – attempted a takeover of the coaling station of Sorong, they were unprepared for the surprise attack.
The disastrous battle significantly altered how both sides saw each other. Although victorious, the high casualties on the Italian side convinced them of the impracticality of an offensive campaign; Cavour would fight on the defensive. For Australia, the sudden defeat soared the government’s invasion paranoia to new heights and saw a flood of men to local recruitment centres. Italian Papua was no longer seen as a belligerent colony. It was now an existential threat, to be completely eliminated.
But with the South China, Pacific, and Indian Ocean fronts to simultaneously deal with, the federation’s short-term goals were a tad unsystematic. A naval reorganization of the ADNF was swiftly undertaken and the shipyards of Cockatoo Island were swamped with a flood of new orders, yet there was no hiding the fact that Australia’s fleet of 14 gunships, including torpedo screws and submarines, was crippled by the Sorong debacle and by split commitments. When the second Papuan expedition left Australian waters in late August, it was a subdued and guarded one, with fewer high-gun battleships than what the admirals wanted. [4]
And so began the slow-burning, sluggish, and cautious Papuan naval campaign. The precarious makeup of the advancing fleet meant that open engagement was to be avoided when preferable. Instead of the sweeping campaign of the South China Sea, the Australians had to flush out any Italian ambush in a piecemeal manner. It wouldn’t be till mid-October that the Indian and Singaporean naval commands considered the Sarawak-South China Sea offensive a sure success and steam to Melbourne’s aid, with only the island group of Misool being the only Italian territory the ADNF managed to occupy.
The combined Royal Navy fleets did gave the Australians the firepower they needed, though, and the months of October and November saw naval forces taking the entire Raja Ampat archipelago, though not without a few biting defeats to the Regia Marina. By December 1, Sorong fell, and only the stronghold of Emmanuel Bay resisted the advance.
But unknown to the British and Australians, the administration of Cavour did not intend to go the way of Sandakan. The last several months saw the colonial government moving itself to the highland settler town of Nuovo Umbria, with engineers planting explosives onto the road and mountain railway connecting the coast to the Anggi lakes. The Australians and their British superiors may crack Emmanuel Bay, and they may even seize the coastal capital, but they will not obtain the surrender they so crave…
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Ulani Keopraseuth, The Years of Foreign Lead: Indochina (Anh Duc; 2018)
…By all accounts, the fall of French Cochinchina was dramatic, yet short. Comprising of the Mekong river delta and its environs, the colony was an important economic and political centre for the colonial French, granting them command of the great watercourse and the kingdoms surrounding her waters. As such, a valiant effort was made by the French and Italian navies to protect the river mouth and defend Saigon. But despite all efforts, no one expected the inmates of the city’s central prison to riot on the very day the British attacked. The Maison Centrale de Saigon was notoriously known by locals as an unsanitary hellpit [5], and the prison breakout of September 11th 1905 split the city’s defences at the worst possible time.
With battalions from British India pouring in and angry prisoners overpowering their incarcerators and escaping into the city centre to cause havoc, the local tirailleurs and Troupes de Marine found themselves fighting a war on two fronts. Unsurprising then that the city fell to the British by nightfall.
Cambodia was even more of a surprising affair. The protectorate, along with cobbled-together Laos, was among the more neglected/underdeveloped of the Indochina bloc and was completely unprepared for a regional tussle. Despite a valiant effort by the French and royal forces, Phnom Penh was seized later that month not by the British, but by a local mob whom kicked out the French Resident-General and sent the Cambodian puppet-king Sisowath fleeing to Siam, allowing his anti-French brother Yukanthor to take control of the streets.
Sceptical of western colonialism, Yukanthor nonetheless knew that he was militarily disadvantaged and quickly parlayed peace. He would accept British protection and allow foreign forces to travel through to Laos, but Cambodia would remain internally sovereign and reassert control over its own finances and armed forces. It was an uncomfortable bargain, but it would nip a potential antagonist for the short-term, and thus, the British agreed. Another piece of Indochina settled and scored.
It would be the last easy victory for the advancing British.
Prince Yukanthor of Cambodia (left) and Emperor Thành Thái of Annam (right).
In Annam, the Great War landed the imperial Nguyen family into abject turmoil. Being a French protectorate, many royal members were pressured by their colonial superiors to publicly oppose the British, though a fair number supported the invasion in private as a pretext for reclaiming their old powers and independence. Chief among these was the reigning emperor Thành Thái himself, who, despite his eccentric behaviour, was able to spirit himself out of the capital in secret to lead a peasant uprising. The astonished French quickly enthroned his nephew Khải Định to present a unified face, yet this failed to suppress the bushfire revolts that swept across Annam, swelled on by reports of the royal escape and the fall of neighbouring Cambodia and Cochinchina.
With the protectorate so divided, it was a surprise then that the French navy and the Regia Marina managed to hold their ground for a while. Being on the defensive, the combined naval fleet was able to utilize their Jeune Ecole strategy to hold back the British tide, allowing colonial tirailleur regiments to hold defensive positions on all major ports and roads. The amphibious landing at Da Nang and the capture of Huế were bitter struggles that sat saw hundreds and then thousands dead on both sides, but the worst news came on December 11th when the eccentric emperor Thành Thái rejected British peace overtures and sent out a proclamation from his mountainous base, proclaiming how every Annamese should fight for the total and complete independence of their homeland.
In a similar vein, Tonkin exploded to chaos as her fellow neighbours collapsed. Military revolts and local uprisings paralysed French forces in the countryside while the long-running Yên Thế insurrection caught a second wind, with new flocks of volunteers swelling the resistance group and its capacity for guerrilla warfare. The final collapse of the Franco-Italian navy near Hạ Long Bay on November 24th and the subsequent surrender of Hanoi saw little change, as many rebel groups sought to oppose their new occupiers till the very end. Intriguingly, Hanoi was also the scene of the famous Cường Để assembly of intellectuals whom chaotically left the city just before it fell. Headed by titular Nguyen prince Cường Để, the delegation of educated Annamese and Tonkinese men headed for China and Japan where they hoped to continue the fight for independence abroad…
But the biggest, most unexpected surprise of all was Laos. Cobbled together from three separate kingdoms and containing over 140 ethnic groups, the colonial territory was truly the most backward of all French Indochina, underdeveloped on a scale that made Cambodia’s Phnom Penh looked like Paris. The seizure of the royal capital of Luang Prabang was relatively bloodless; the pro-French king Sisavang Vong was deposed so easily that one British sergeant noted how, “…it was if he cared little for the royal stool in the first place.” A week later, the besieged French administrative center of Vientiane similarly fell with a whimper.
But the swift disposition belied an undercurrent of unease. For the past decade, the mountainous regions of the Mekong were awash with millenarian movements, with prophets and holy men espousing how a new enlightened age will sweep over the world while sweeping away the sinful. [6] Moreover, the regional French presence saw many socio-economic developments that affronted both the peasantry and petty aristocracy such as the abolishment of slavery, the introduction of the head tax, and corvée labor. Finally, the Hmong, Lu, and other hill peoples of the north saw the foreign changes and conflagration of war as a sign that their time had finally arrived. As innovative and fierce as the headhunters of Sundaland, they thought a new homeland for themselves could be finally within reach, altogether striking a new chapter in Laotian history:
The War of the Insane.
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Notes:
1. See post #1219.
2. See post #723.
3. The TTL name for the Commonwealth Naval Forces, the precursor to today’s Royal Australian Navy.
4. I based this from an OTL naval list of Australia from around the same year. For such a large dominion with invasion paranoia, Australia did not have much of a proper navy during her early years, especially in the very early 1900’s. What battleships and gunboats that made up the combined navy were taken from the individual colonies/territories, leading to a somewhat lopsided naval force in terms of reach and firepower. TTL Australia has tried to obtain more ships due to her Papuan paranoia, but it was still outclassed by the TL’s Regia Marina when the war broke.
5. From OTL accounts, Saigon’s central jail had prison riots occurring throughout the early 20th century, with the larger ones taking place in 1905 and 1914. Given the deplorable conditions within there (overcrowding and sanitation) and the excessive justice meted to inmates, it was easy to see why.
6. This was based in OTL. The region of eastern Thailand, Laos, and northern Cambodia were awash with syncretic millennialism in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s that mutated into sporadic revolts and insurrections, such as the Holy Man’s Rebellion.
Belawan Port, Sultanate of Deli, Sumatra (Dutch East Indies), 31 July 1905
Rasim Yusupov only had his one luggage, but he knew he was lucky to even have that.
“Passport.” The inspector droned.
The light of mid-morning casted brilliant shafts onto the wharf floor as he handed his book and documents to let them be examined. After a few inquiries and scribbles, the suited bureaucrat stamped a seal and handed the collective mass to the Russian entrepreneur in the only language they both knew, English. “Welcome to Sumatera. I hope you find your stay here welcome. Next!” Without seeing, Rasim could see the line of expelled expatriates perking their heads.
“I’ll be right behind you.” His wife Yelena said, lugging her only bag.
Walking past the makeshift counter into the opposite hall, he found himself swaying at his feet, partially from sleep and partially at his new surroundings and circumstances.
He had slept through the whole overnight journey on the steamer, and he hardly thought deeply into the implications of their hurried flight from Penang. But now, in the wood, steel, and stone edifice of the arrival hall, surrounded by Dutch signs and Malay letters, Rasim began to feel a deep undertow at his brain, of why did his ten years of business at Georgetown came to a sudden end.
“Come, I think the train station is this way.” Yelena spoke, guiding them both to the adjoining building where the morning express will take them to Medan. To his disappointment, all the first-class tickets were snapped up by the French émigrés (“of course they were.” his wife tutted), but they arrived early enough to obtain the last two second-class seats for the departing train. Settling themselves into their carriage, Rasim wondered if the snobbier displacements in his passport line would stomach a ride among the common folk at the back.
But with the comfort of the enclosed space, came the resurfacing of repressed thoughts. The fact that even the Dutch East Indies now have emergency passport controls told greatly of the regional distrust, further amplifying all that has happened in the previous days. [1] He moaned. “Everything that we have done. For ten years. Gone.”
Yelena turned her head. “It’s not your fault, dear. It’s never that. Not one of us expected the repossession laws, and we never thought the locals would act as they did. The fact that the Penang Commerce Board took the business is proof enough that you were successful!”
“But look at where we are, dear.” Rasim voiced out, looking out at the fields and palms blurred by the train’s motion. “And now we have to do it all over again.”
“Well at least now we know what to do in starting over.” Yelena replied. “And if the British over there consider us a threat because of it, then screw them. Screw them all. We have done nothing wrong in our years of stay at Penang, and whatever the Tsar does back home shouldn’t be taken as a slight against us, or any other Russians or French or whatever new hellcats the British are up against. If they don’t want us prospering and making their towns great, then we might as well kick shit at their faces and take our talents elsewhere where the people do want us. They deserve it.”
Rasim was silent in awe. For what seemed like the umpteenth time, he wondered how fortunate he was to marry such a spirited soul.
Comforted by the exchange, he turned his attention away from the repossession and engaged in small talk with his beloved, glancing now and again at the passing view of eastern Sumatra. As mid-morning led to midday, the tropical sunlight reflected scenes of mangroves and fishponds, market towns and coconut palms, orchards and plantations growing resplendent among paddy fields and river deltas. In less time than imagined, their destination was in sight, and it seemed to take no time at all before Rasim and his love walked down the floor of Medan station, a couple amidst a sea of fleeing emigrants.
There were stalls and pamphleteers taking spots by the station’s entrance, and a strong wind blew off a pamphlet onto his very feet. Picking it up, he saw that it was an advertisement of sorts, calling out for foreigners to invest in one of Medan’s outlying neighbourhoods. Above it all scrawled a series of words that seemed to convey… what?
Kom naar Medan Polonia!! // Venez à Medan Polonia!! // Selamat Datang ke Medan Polonia!!
Rasim’s face dropped. Wait. Looking at the words again, he felt a new kind of emotion well up from inside. Rereading the words, he couldn’t help a bitter chuckle to escape his lips; of all the things that could remind him of his homeland, it was something most Russians don’t want to be reminded of.
“Oh, the irony.” Yelena spoke, herself hardly amused.
Come now to (the district of) Polish Medan!
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Khairul Sanivasagam, More than Merchants: A History of the European Communities in Malaya, (Areca, 2006)
…To say that the Great War created a mess out of Malaya’s European communities was an understatement.
By 1904, decades of work by intrepid entrepreneurs and the commercial rivalry between the Crown Colonies of Penang and Singapore to see which port handled the best in trade (which was further complemented with the additional exploitation of the peninsula) had resulted in the islands possessing some of the most colourful European communities anywhere in the Malacca Straits. While British citizens did form the majority of the white population, a thriving French community blossomed in Singapore while a German group of Austrian-Swiss-Imperial businessmen formed an influential bloc in the Penang Chamber of Commerce, holding 11 out of 34 seats in the trade organization [2].
The mainland also saw change. In nearby Johor, Russian consuls were paying court at the sultan’s palace while Italian planters were establishing rubber estates across Perak and Kedah. The largest cities had Armenian Streets and Turkish Quarters, and even a microscopic Jewish presence. The world-famous Esplanade Hotel of Georgetown was run by an Anglo-Polish Ashkenazi, Joseph Przepiórka [3], while Singapore’s Waterloo Street became the site of a Hasidic nucleus and Johor Bahru’s Lorong Yahudi an Ottoman-Sephardic one. From Terang to Malacca, it seemed all the intrepid souls of the Continent, in all its faces, tongues, and faiths, would make themselves permanent here.
But then came the Great War, and all its consequences. The Russian attack on Aceh and the war in Sarawak came as a shock for the ruling British, whom immediately saw these communities as suspect subversives. With the battles for Russian Phuket making the Malacca Strait unsafe, a secret fifth column of Frenchmen or Russians preparing for attack was a stalking fear in the corridors of executives. On the street, the local Malays, Indians, Arabs, and Turks had their own opinions and fears, which lead to shocking attacks on anyone who was suspected of sowing discord during the late weeks of July.
Not surprising then that both Penang and Singapore swiftly instituted the Alien Enemies Ordinance – though it is now more infamously known as the Repossession Laws – which allowed the properties and business concerns of French, Russian, and Italian origin to be confiscated by the colonial authorities [4]. The passing of the act in July 29 coincided with street riots across Penang and Singapore as news of Ottoman defeats whipped the local Muslims into a frenzy, leading to thousands of Russians, French, and Italian residents fleeing the cities, some with only the clothes on their backs. A number of whom were residents since the mid-1800’s, but no longer will the British invite their racial co-equals with open arms.
A fair number in Singapore fled to neutral Johor, where Sultan Abu Bakar promised protection to the escapees. Indeed, the arrival of moneyed businessmen and their families was seen by the royal government as very favorable as it engaged with crash industrialization, and the nationally famous “Ayam Kacak” manufactories of Jean Clouet would find its modern roots in the city [5]. But with public opinion running the other way, and with Johor Bahru beset by rioters of its own, many more fled to the Dutch East Indies…
…As for the seized assets, they were later auctioned to British firms, whom would later use their increased capital to buy out their competitors and further increase their reach in Malaya. Slowly, but surely, the days of European competitiveness began to wane…
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Victoria Gea, Dutchmen or Not? The Other Caucasian Foreigners of Colonial Nusantara, (Keroncong: 1999)
…The Great War arrived to Batavia with all the authority of a bomb. The government had not been completely surprised – the sabre-ratting of empires at Indochina and the South China Sea were duly noted with great concern – but dealing with global tensions was a different beat than facing open war.
As the Netherlands remained neutral, so did her colonies, though the practice of ensuring that was an unenviable task for the colonial Dutch. The naval battles near Malaya and Borneo hampered regional shipping, and while the global conflagration ensured a steady flow of inflated profits for raw goods to belligerent alliances, it also inflated the price of rice in the local markets of Sumatra and Borneo, which were less welcomed. Not only that, but the neutral nature of the islands often meant that British, Russian, and even Italian and French cruisers were suddenly steaming to the nearest Dutch-controlled port to escape predatory hunts, which brought the potential of regional war to dangerous levels.
Thankfully, the Dutch navy was of a different beast when compared to her neighbours of Australia, British Malaya, and Sarawak. Comprised of dozens of speedy and hard-hitting destroyers suited for the archipelago, the authorities quickly enforced the rule of neutrality on all belligerent warships: docking rights for only twenty-four hours. When the Russian ironclad Konstantin decided to stay on at Bangka Island, the Dutch quickly made an example of the matter by interning the crew, damaging the warboat, and towing it out to open sea. It was a dangerous move, but it showed the importance of Dutch neutrality to all and served as both a reminder and warning of Dutch naval power. None dared to linger long after that…
…On another note, the Great War also brought some unexpected consequences, the most immediate of which were the exodus of French, Italian, and Russian communities that had once called Malaya home, now driven away by local riots and British repossession laws. A fair number immigrated to neighbouring Sumatra, where the burgeoning cities of Medan and Palembang quickly tried to accommodate their new residents. Java also received a part of the emigrants, though their nature as citizens of belligerent Powers also meant that they were monitored discreetly by Dutch officials for the remainder of the War.
Though small in number, the wealthy and commercial sentiments of these new communities would play a visible part in the East Indies’ development, for good and ill. Some of the mines currently operating in Sumatra were dug under French and Italian bosses and financed by French and Italian capital. Similarly, the stunning tea fields of Bukittinggi wouldn’t have existed if not for the displaced Russian entrepreneurial class and their love of the drink. Architecture was also affected, with the neighbourhoods of Batavia, Bukittinggi, Medan, Palembang, and Surabaya attaining their romantic look from their new neighbours’ taste. Indeed, the Russo-Polish Quarter of Medan is still considered as one of the most visited sites in the region today.
However, there is also a darker side to the influx as the new businesses and plantations gobbled up native lands and resources, particularly in Sumatra. The highlands of Toba in the northern part of the island was especially favoured, yet the territory was in a midst of low-grade war between the Dutch authorities and the Batak people, whom refused to submit for the last twenty years. Now, with a new entrepreneurial class making itself at home, the pressure increased for the government to settle the score and make peace with the Batak, which led to an escalation of hostilities and final death of the Batak leader, Sisingamangaraja XIII, on February 1906. [6]
Afterwards, the lands of the Toba Highlands were divided to favour the new European planters. Missionaries from these groups would also make their mark in converting local souls, hoping to create a native Christian bastion on a majority-Muslim land…
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Excerpt from the handbook: “A Guide to Polish Medan and Sumatra!” by ‘Kolektif Orang Luar’ (Grand Grafika, 2001)
…Our history here began with the great Baron Ludwik Michałowski, a poor and patriotic nobleman who joined the Polish January Uprising of 1863, seeking to free his homeland from Imperial Russian rule. Tragically, the Great Bear destroyed the will of the Polish people and forced thousands of compatriots to flee across the world, Ludwik included.
Escaping to Holland, he went into service for the Dutch government and eventually managed to not only train the troops of Sumatra’s Deli Sultanate, but also gain a concession for a spice plantation at the Dutch East Indies. The place? The growing town of Medan. In 1872, the first house was built here, and Ludwik managed to amass enough initial income to also manage the surrounding lands. He named his new home “Polonia”, the Latin name for his oppressed homeland.
Despite initial setbacks, the spice fields yielded growth, enough so that Ludwik refused to sell his plots back to the Dutch government when they asked. [7] As word of his success grew and spread back to Europe, a stream of Polish men and women decided to try their luck and begin a new life here in Medan, forming the community you see today! Our forefathers built houses and churches that reminded them of home, and cooked Polish recipes using local plants and animals, creating our famous Medan rolls and spiced rasool! (mind the hotness, though!)
From Medan, we fanned out across Southeast Asia. Malayan Penang became our second city, and Philippine Manila our third, yet Medan Polonia was always the heart of our Sundaland community. We opened our doors to our brothers and sisters that journeyed from Europe to their new home at Australia, and some stayed!
Our neighbours had a much different arrival. During the Great War, when the British forced every Russian in Penang to leave, many came over to Medan and the nearby mountains to start anew. Despite our hostilities, these people had little in hand, so we decided to let there be peace and help the Russian Quarter get itself together. In return, our extremely gracious neighbours [8a] gave us a share in their businesses and plantations, though we declined. Besides, we already have our own tea fields at Lake Toba (don’t tell the Russians!)… [8b]
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Peter O’Connell, Sarawak’s White Sarawakians; Our History, Kenyalang (2010)
…The European community in Sarawak was a minuscule one, yet it was a thriving one. Surrounded and outnumbered by Chinese, Peranakan, and Dayak tradesmen, many merchant-adventurers aided each another in times of need while discarding the feuds of their home soils. By 1900, Sarawak had not only the typical British and Dutch trading concerns, but also Italian planters, Spanish botanists, Swiss missionaries, and Danish curators scouting the land for noteworthy artefacts for the capital’s museum [9]. Around two dozen Polish merchants were recorded settling on the coastal towns while the Austro-Hungarian naval base at Miri counted at least 15 Austrians and 5 Hungarians as permanent residents. By 1905, and discounting the Brooke family and their administrative apparatus, more than 450 Whites permanently lived in a nation of over 400,000…
…The expulsion of the Italian community from the kingdom was perhaps unsurprising, given the local shock and outrage after the bombardment of Bandar Charles and subsequent invasion. But what is less mentioned, at least culturally, was how the Astana had relatively little say on the matter.
In fact, the Ranee Margaret was privately concerned over the safety of the 50 or so Italian merchants and settlers scattered across the kingdom. But despite being the titular head of royal power at Kuching for the interim – what with Rajah Charles and her children heading the fight up north – there was only so much she could do to contain the flash mobs that swept through coastal Sarawak. The state’s police force was a small one, and many able-bodied men joined the call to reclaim the northlands and invade Italian Sabah, hollowing out both the law enforcement force and the pool of potential recruits.
As such, there was little she could do to protect the Italian community besides advising the other European residents to shelter them. But after the successive riots at Kuching, Sibu, and Bandar Charles over the month of August, many of them sailed for safer pastures anyway. When the atrocities of the Askaris became known in September, the rest of the community crumbled before local fury and were seen as persona non grata. By October 1, there were no more Italians in the Kingdom of Sarawak…
…After the fall of Italian Sabah, there was much debate on whether the territory should be annexed outright as recompense for Sarawak’s involvement. However, the hurried debates at Kuching and Singapore saw consensus shift to declaring the region an ‘Occupied Territory’, as the still-raging regional battlefronts and relative inexperience of the newly crowned Rajah Clayton saw the Astana erring towards stability, though Sarawakian bureaucrats began to de jure administer the region.
Amongst the main concerns was Sandakan. Once the capital of Italian Borneo, the city of nearly 10,000 was mostly vacated prior to its downfall, leaving the new interim administration with many abandoned shops and villas. With the opportunity at hand, the navies of Sarawak, the British, and the lone Kriegsmarine battleship - the Kaiserin Elizabeth - immediately moved in, while the kingdom’s business class quickly turned the Italian-themed town centre into a riotous cacophony of Malay, Dayak, Chinese, Indian, and Peranakan streets. Soon, they were followed after by British, Dutch, Spanish, German and even Japanese and Polish entrepreneurs.
All of which, of course, was done without paying compensation or restitution for the emigrant Italians now holed up at Zamboanga…
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Plaza Hotel, Zamboanga, Spanish Philippines, 8 December 1905
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘THEY WON’T PAY’!!?”
Berenguer Tambunting shifted uncomfortably at the words. “T-t-their response was that, s-since your main property and villa was abandoned when you fled, y-your ownership to both is dissolved and thus seen as void. The Dutch-Sarawak man called it “t-the right of conquest.”
“CONQUEST!!? WHAT IS THIS, THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY!?” His employer roared. “Who do these people think they are!? Stay here! I’ll have you send my papers and deeds to the consulate.” And with that, Berenguer found himself waiting outside his employer’s study, paying full mind to calm his over-stressed heart and leaving as little thought as possible to the irritated footsteps of his former-timber magnate of an employer, who was banging the drawers to assemble his case.
When he was called back, the face behind the desk remained crimson with anger. “Punch the men there if you have to, but do not return unless you received some headway! Tell them that Lamberto Gardella wants his compensation, and that he won’t hesitate to get what he wants!”
And with that, it seemed to take no time at all for Berenguer to hold the papers and exit the luxury hotel. Out on the street, it took a while before he found himself breathing erratically and slowed his sprint; without the presence of the man, he always feel as if he could breathe easier, though he still felt as if a great weight is hanging over his head ever since he started work.
Bastard. Berenguer now regretted his acceptance of the assistant post more than ever. The recent influx of Italian emigrants from Borneo has crammed the city’s hotels, but it had also flushed the streets with opportunity, and working for the wealthiest of them seemed to suit a person of good standing as himself. A well-to-do mestizo with a weak constitution would be perfectly suited for office work, or so he thought.
“What should I do?” he murmured to himself. The men at the Sarawak consulate were firm with him the last time, and from what he’d heard of how the British acted over at Malaya, the former residents of Sandakan probably won’t be getting anything, ever. Then again, explaining that to him would probably end in Berenguer being fired. Or slapped, and then fired.
Looking around, Berenguer looked at the street before him. This part of town was where most of the richer Italians now lived. The hotels and bars were becoming alive now that the afternoon is making way for evening, and the new residents are making themselves seen on the road. Up and down the street, the air was peppered with arguments, laughter, and light conversation as townsfolks and guests jabbered on in a clashing mélange of Italian, Spanish, and Chavacano.
Well, at least there are other jobs available.
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Notes:
As can be seen, this update is focused on the foreign communities of Southeast Asia. Despite there being oceans on ink written on how the colonial minority handled themselves amongst the locals, there’s actually not a lot written on how these Europeans and Americans actually saw each other, and how faraway conflicts both united and separated them. Penang, Singapore, Batavia, and even Sabah all had colourful communities of Whites that ranged from Dutch merchants to Spanish settlers to even an American actress! There were Armenians, Germans, Jews, and Circassians all living and working across the archipelagos during the colonial era, and especially before WWI.
And yes, there really was a Polish nobleman who settled in Medan. Baron Ludwik Michałowski (also spelled as Michalski) was an actual person who settledin Sumatrain the 1870’s. His plantation of Polonia, and the name especially, was so remembered locally that it became the name of Medan’s airport until July 2013! However, good luck finding anything detailed on the internet about him in English, because I tried for weeks. So far, only the German and Polish Wikipedia’s have anything close to a biography on him. Perhaps it’s because of his short time in Sumatra, or perhaps it’s because his true name was actually Ludwik Matyasek (he changed it after getting in involved in the January Uprising).
Some of the things in this timeline are too crazy to even be imagined, if it were not that it actuallyhappened.
Notes are placed under a cut for bring too long, this time.
1. Before WWI, it was generally easy to travel across countries and colonies without a passport, although having one on hand was encouraged. A single passport with the right visas can even transport an entire family across borders. After the birth of modern war, many countries and colonies began to demand paperwork and credible proof for individual travellers. Given the nearby battles and heightened stakes ITTL for Southeast Asia and the D.E.I, the Dutch are taking no chances and have hastily assembled new passport checks for all Europeans.
2. Germans really did form such a bloc in the Penang Chamber of Commerce IOTL. According to More Than Merchants: A History of the German-speaking community in Penang, German residents made up the second-largest European community on the island by the First World War, with several Germans and German firms playing an outsized role on Penang’s development.
3. The TTL name for the Eastern and Oriental Hotel. Penang’s historical Jewish community was truly microscopic, but they did exist right up until WWII IOTL. And despite modern Malaysian anti-semitism, the most recent grave in Georgetown’s Jewish cemetery was recently dug in 2011 to bury Mordecai David Mordecai, a Penang Jewish resident of Baghdadi descent who really did work as a general manager in the Eastern and Oriental Hotel. For some more info, here’s some interesting articles on the cemetery, its caretakers, and the number of Penang’s Jews that lived throughout the centuries.
4. IOTL, they were called the ‘Alien Enemies Winding-Up Ordinance’, and it was applied to all British Crown Colonies during WWI, leading to thousands of German, Italian, and Ottoman merchants being interned and their businesses confiscated. ITTL, the authorities at least allow the ‘alien enemies’ to leave, though not without their entire wealth or possessions.
5. The alternate version of the nationally famous Ayam Brand, which was founded in Singapore by Alfred Clouet. Here, it was his TTL cousin who sailed to Singapore and started the manufactory. When the Great War arrived, he moved the business (and factory) to Johor.
6. Sisingamangaraja XIII is the TTL son of the actual Sisingamangaraja XII, who was a priest-king of the Batak peoples in north Sumatra. He engaged with the Dutch in a guerrilla war that lasted decades, seeking Acehnese help in his resistance to the point of even converting to Islam (though his religiosity is still subject to controversy). ITTL, the independence of Aceh convinced the Dutch to clamp down hard on the Batak, leading to XII’s death and his son continuing the work, sporadically creating uprisings here and there until his death 1906, one year earlier than his OTL father’s death in June 1907.
7. This is where Medan Polonia truly diverged. IOTL, Ludwik obtained a tobacco concession which he sold to a tobacco company in 1879. By all accounts, it was successful, but his wife’s death from the hot climate may have influenced his decision to leave by 1880. ITTL, his spouse lived and he obtained a concession to grow spices which raked in enough of a profit to make him decide to retain the land. Word of his success reached back to Europe, and the rest was history.
8. You know how some tourist brochures and pamphlets gloss over the dark history of controversial places to entice more visitors? This guidebook follows that. These passages are full of faff and bullshit, glossing over (8a.) deep socio-political and cultural animosity, and (8b.) the method of exactly how did the Polish planters obtained local lands, or who originally lived on it.
9. Despite the distance, the OTL Sarawak Museum had a curator that hailed all the way from Sweden (Eric Mjöberg, curator: 1922-1924), who was internationally notorious for illicitly collecting artifacts from the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. TTL, word of Sarawak has attracted a Danish anthropologist to take up the reins during the Great War.
Kung Ja-Oak, Through the Fire and Flames: The Birth of Modern Korea, (Gimm-Young, 1979)
….Japan entered the global conflict with four objectives: combat Russian influence; fold Korea under its suzerainty (and thereby enable annexation); obtain Sakhalin; and carve its own exclusive sphere of influence over China.
Only one went ahead as planned.
Besides granting a golden opportunity to kick out Russian meddling in China and Korea, many Japanese ultra-nationalists saw the Great War as a chance to finally place the nation as an equal to the established Powers, and as such, saw a Russian beating and Korean takeover as paramount issues. Several divisions and battleships were quickly sent to capture the northern territory of Sakhalin (now Karafuto), but while the northern campaign was speedily accomplished with relatively few lives lost, the Korean version turned out the exact opposite.
Though Japan’s coveted neighbour was a long way from reaching equal strength, the Korean Empire was far from being idle. The reforms of Empress Myeongseong saw a growing influence of American and European foreigners which has made itself felt across local society, especially from those of Russian origin. The palace nobility employed Russian educators and advisors to instruct them on modernization while military attachés from St. Petersburg became a common sight at Seoul as they trained the newly formed Korean Imperial Army.
So perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that Japan’s request for Korea’s Russians to return back home was met with outright refusal. While many peasants and townsfolk distrusted the Great Bear for their (correctly) assumed machinations over the peninsula, they still viewed them more highly than the Japanese, whom were instead seen as cantankerous neighbours seeking to dominate the region. This was deepened with the Ok-Gyun murder of 1904, where a Korean court official was publicly assassinated by Japanese agents for his pro-Russian leanings, infuriating both Seoul and St. Petersburg.
Still, when Tokyo fielded nearly 100,000 men to ‘pacify’ the peninsula in the name of ridding “heinous influence that has destabilized Korean order”, many thought the outcome was all but written. Landing at Busan, the troops won battle after battle against inexperienced Korean regiments while their naval counterparts locked down the Korea Strait to prevent Russian naval incursions; despite all the investment and time poured by the Russians, the Korean army was simply outmatched to the battle-hardened Japanese troops and their commanders. By the end of the month, Seoul fell, and the new occupiers immediately placed a puppet government in charge as the imperial court decamped to Pyongyang. To the ultra-nationalists, victory seemed all too easy.
But as the Japanese advanced northwards, they found themselves facing the fury of the peasantry. Seeing the invasion as a repeat of the Imjin War, anti-Japanese resistance groups began waylaying the troops and their supply lines, hampering their advances and forcing them to pacify the countryside. However, the heavy-handed response to the guerrilla fighters did nothing to endear the locals and by mid-September, the peninsula was aflame with opposition against the invading force. The court at Pyongyang declared for all Koreans to oppose the Japanese while several Russian advisors found themselves heading brushfire rebellions or commanding guerrilla cells.
Chief among these were the Righteous Armies, irregular groups of militias formed from local troops, Confucian scholars, village leaders, and peasant farmers. Filling in where established forces retreated, these militias swelled in numbers and strength as they hampered the Japanese in the mountains and fields. Soon, dissent Buddhist monks and even the radical Donghak movement joined in the fight, forming a massive force that began aiding the regular army to defend what was left. The failed Japanese attack on Pyongyang on September 25th proved a triumph of Korean perseverance as much as the seriousness of surrounding guerrilla forces whittling down Japanese operations, and the stall was noted by the imperial court of China whom debated whether to aid their close neighbour.
Realizing that superior strength would not win local hearts and minds, the puppet government at Seoul scrambled at enacting half-hearted reforms. While Japanese nationalists today claim of expediting Korean modernization through legal improvements, land redistribution, economic liberalization, and the insistence of using the hangul script, it was unquestionable that these reforms were originally meant to obtain local support, as well as wresting control from the ancient Korean imperial system and divorce the peasantry from centuries of Chinese influence. That there was some approval from the city folk and peasantry over the reforms was a sign of how incredibly outdated the old government was. That many more still opposed the Japanese showed just how much these laws were seen widely as an imposition.
By early October, the situation was turning desperate. Japan only controlled the southern half of Korea and the Tokyo Diet was becoming anxious over the stalemate. Similarly, the Korean government found itself with insufficient resources to push an offensive. Worse still, winter was approaching. In desperation, Pyongyang requested help from Qing China, placing the court of Emperor Zhangchen in a position of extraordinary importance.
For the Qing, the war arrived at a time when local discord was seemingly in retreat. Just a few years prior, parts of the empire were in open revolt as regional commanders rebelled over the government’s policies of creating a new, unified modern army, which shunted aside the former officers of the formerly semi-independent regional armies. But by 1905, the process was almost complete and almost all those who rebelled were a head shorter. Russian, Prussian, and American advisors were well-underway in shaping up a new imperial force while local factories began to manufacture modern rifles and artillery for the local market. On paper at least, the Chinese seemed firm.
But Japan knew that such facades can be broken. They themselves broke it in 1895, though the conflict inflicted more grinding pain than initially thought. Beneath the surface, tensions were mounting, both from secular and (to the surprise of all) religious forces…
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Dato’ Mustapha Shamsuddin, The flower of Pan-Asianism? Japan’s role in Asian Nationalism, (Surakarta University Press: 1991)
Though the ultra-nationalists in Tokyo knew they were playing with fire, it didn’t stop several of them to house, fund, and arm reformist and revolutionary groups across East and Southeast Asia. By the Great War, the country’s major cities concealed Philippine illustrados, Annamese and Tonkinese lycée graduates, and secular Chinese nationalists, all of which were prime potential to be used to further Japanese ambitions under the guise of liberating fellow Asian nations.
This movement, which would be later known as Pan-Asianism, would be an influential force in the decades to come. But until the Great War, the ultra-nationalists were content to let them build connections amongst themselves and their protectors while surreptitiously promising them with aid to overthrow their governments and help their new nations. With the world now in turmoil, it seemed as if the time has come for them all…
For the Chinese nationalists, their connections and gatherings formed a disparate web of cells, societies, and even triad groups that were scattered all across China and Japan. But in the Final Fifteen Years, this web spread further to encompass much of Southeast Asia and across the Pacific to Hawaii and the American coast. Missionaries, university graduates, rich merchants, and secret societies formed the backbone of this nationalist web, with many threads converging on the port cities of south China. As it was opened to the world much earlier than the north, the cities of Canton, Shanghai, and especially Hong Kong received more of the outside world, and thus, absorbed more of its ideals. Coupled with the Qing court’s watchful eye on the surrounding provinces near Peking, southern China formed a – though dangerous – base and refuge for those wishing to see Qing rule reformed, or overthrown.
And it was this inclusion of reformists and revolutionaries that was the Achilles Heel of the movement. With the Qing court moving to a reformist gear, there were many who espoused for gradual change instead of a radical uprising, and there were many debates in which these groups came to shots and fistfights. Most notably, the republican-based Revive China Society was antagonistic to the reform-royalist Chinese National Movement, with their separate quarters across Southeast Asia becoming the hubs of armed factions which engaged each other in violent incidents.
So when a plot was hatched to provoke an insurrection in the south in October, backed by Japanese funds and weaponry, not everyone was enthusiastic. But as Japan’s advance over Korea stalled into a stalemate, a new force began spin its own webs over China. Only, it was a mystical one…
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Stephanie Wong, Hogwash or Religion? The Crimson Swords under Scrutiny, (The Straits: 2002)
While most worshippers of the Society of Crimson Swords call their sacred text ‘The Edicts of Righteous Living’, most of us call it by its more common name: The Little Red Book.
Whether or not the words are divinely ordained, there is no question that they were a rallying call for a populace reeling from a changing world. Originally penned by the prefectural archivist Li Hong of Shandong Province, the contents therein is a microcosm of the millennialism and mass-anxiety that gripped the Qing Empire during the last fifteen years prior to the Great War. With food insecurity, geopolitical trouncing, internal discord, and foreign influence all awash on the land, it is no surprise that most of the texts espoused a return to a glorious age and an afterlife free of reincarnation if the faithful subscribe to certain acts and prayers.
But it is also these messages that aroused the most controversy among both worshippers and non-believers, as well as religious scholars. While folk beliefs and syncretism are common amongst the mass peasantry, several Crimson Sword edicts are uncannily similar to passages and practices derived from ‘Western faiths’.
This isn’t to say that eastern thought is relegated to the wayside; indeed, the aspect of Confucianism that stresses humaneness and authority is paramount in the Little Red Book – with the caveat that a worshipper’s true obligation is to China itself (Zhungguo) than to the emperor (Huangdi). Unsurprisingly, this tweak is seen by several people – and especially amongst Japanese nationalists – as a corruption of the beliefs of Bakumatsu-era Japanese samurai who saw their nation as sacred, though this is uncertain.
More radical are some of the cosmological and theological groundworks of the Edicts. While the heavenly bureaucracy of mythical China is continued, special authority is given to the Jade Emperor who was re-conceived into that of a great celestial mentor, periodically ordaining select sages and holy men throughout history to improve the character of humanity. Their acceptance – or rejection – by the world is the reason for much of the rise and fall of China’s dynasties itself, with the Mandate of Heaven being applied accordingly. Furthermore, the Edicts profess that each new sage reveals part of the ultimate Truth of Heaven, with the contemporary era being a creation of all their teachings being used – and abused – by the empire and the wider world.
But the most eye-popping texts were those related to war and change. In the eyes of the Crimson Swords, internal and external discord are seen as part of a struggle (Douzhung) by evil forces to alter the state of balance throughout the physical and spiritual world. To combat this on an individual scale, worshippers must conduct daily rituals of purification and prayer for three times a day. Every dawn, noon, and dusk, worshippers must cleanse parts of themselves with water before performing their prayers, which brings some uncanny comparisons with Japanese Shinto rituals and the Islamic Salat.
On a societal level, Douzhung should be faced with peace and firmness, within the letter of the law whenever possible. However, should the discordant forces be too strong for peace, then it is righteous to arm and defend the faithful to preserve harmony and the well-being of not just the people, or the emperor, but also to Zhungguo and the world. Indeed, it is through armed defence that the Crimson Swords are named as they were. Whomsoever does this shall not only be seen as virtuous by the Jade Emperor, but also gain the possibility to be free from the trials of purgatory and be reincarnated into a better life. The most good-hearted, sacrificial, and meritous might even ascend beyond the cycle of death and rebirth, casting off their earthly chains and become, as Li Hong wrote it, “…transcendent beyond life on earth, beyond physicality, and achieve harmony with nature and the universe.”
Unsurprisingly, the Edicts of Righteous Living is seen by a fair number of religious and atheist scholars to be an admixture of sorts; a cross-syncretic soup of traditional beliefs combined with strains of Shintoism, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the Abrahamic faiths. However, such explanations dismiss exactly why the Crimson Swords exploded in popularity in the lead-up to the Great War; in a changing world where nothing is certain, the faith offered answers to a populace whom felt that their old beliefs, and their gods, had failed them in their time of need. The Edicts’ syncretic nature maintained a partial continuity of traditional folk beliefs while its radical message offered a push to the unwelcome intrusions into daily life.
And given that northern China was exposed to more recent wars and Manchurian exploitation, it is no surprise to see the faith gaining popularity in the provinces surrounding the Yellow Sea and around the capital, Peking. When Japan decided to attack for the emperor’s answer to the Korean conflict, many Sword worshippers decided that their time had come…
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Fu Wei Han, The Imperial Sunset: Twilight of the Qing Empire, (Penang Nanyang: 2013)
…Japan’s invasion of Korea sparked nothing more than a roaring debate in the Forbidden City. Many nobles support a military intervention to help the Koreans combat the Japanese. Equally as many argued that the empire’s military isn’t reformed enough to take Japan head-on. Even the court conservatives were split over what to do.
The arguments dragged on until early October, when the plight given by the Korean ambassadors finally swayed the emperor to send military supplies and aid to Pyongyang, which infuriated Japan enough to demand a 72-hour ultimatum: expel all foreigners and halt any aid to the peninsula, or face war. With that, the Second Sino-Japanese War was all but inevitable.
But Japan’s first moves were a surprising one. While another 100,000 troops sailed from the Japan to take the cities of Tientsin and Port Arthur – in the hopes of striking a knockout blow and further occupy resource-rich Manchuria, supplies and aid were also sent to Canton where a sudden anti-Qing uprising erupted amongst local troops and triad gangs. The convenient timeliness of the event is now confirmed to be a result of Japanese machinations to divert Qing attention, and it nearly worked; the provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangxi were overrun and the local viceroy had to flee for his very life.
But in this, the Japanese overestimated their chances. Nearby loyal garrisons quickly moved to contain the revolt while another 120,000 northern troops were sent to meet the Japanese at the main battlefronts up north. In addition, the supposed Russian advisors whom Japan claimed “were destabilizing the region”, found a surprising common cause with the Chinese as both sides sought to halt Japan’s advance. While no alliance treaty was ever signed, Qing-Russian cooperation became an unspoken policy from here on out, and in effect, the arriving Japanese troops suddenly found themselves facing a much more united force than initially anticipated.
And with that, the subsequent battles of Tientsin and Port Arthur became an incredibly violent affair. Japanese cruisers bombarded coastal forts while German and Russian-bought shore batteries pummelled whomever came too close to land. Any landings at nearby un-gunned coasts saw pitched battles arising from the experienced Japanese soldiers and the newly-reformed imperial battalions. Out at sea, minesweepers and mine-lacers engaged in cat-and-mouse hunts while Qing and Russian battleships tried to defend themselves from enemy attacks, though the language barrier often hindered the fleets from committing any united offensives. For 6 days, battle raged, until news came out that the Japanese had surrounded Port Arthur and had neutralized the naval operations there.
The response throughout the Yellow Sea was nothing but fury. Farmers donated massive amounts of rice to imperial battalions while army recruitment centres found themselves swamped with youngsters willing to fight. As in Korea, the local peasantry formed resistance groups and cells to ambush unsuspecting soldiers. And like Korea, several of these groups were founded by members of heterodox sects and syncretic orders, and most notably, the Crimson Sword Society. Devoted and fanatical, the Crimson brethren were quickly noticed for the brilliant and brutal ambushes on the Japanese, especially in the biting chill of November and December. As such, the syncretic faith exploded in popularity as tens of thousands joined in the hope of both spiritual salvation and martial victory.
In Manchuria, too, the arrival of the Japanese changed things. A place of refuge for over 100,000 Chinese Christians and their families, the landing of Japanese troops also saw the formation of martial brotherhoods across dozens of mines and market towns, especially in the Liaodong Peninsula. To the converts, whom have suffered harshly by the wider empire for their faith, the imperial army was seen as an untrustworthy protector, and thus felt strongly towards self-defense. For the Russian mining concerns operating therein, the Japanese arrival also signalled a possible end to their very existence in the region, and so didn't disallow nor hinder such groups from forming amongst their workers.
As December rolled and the Sinosphere became engulfed in snow and ice, fighting slowed to a crawl. The front lines in Korea barely moved, the southern uprising was contained, and Tientsin remained an impenetrable fortress supplied by a devoted army and a fanatic peasantry. However, the Qing and Russian navies were beginning to feel exhausted over the Yellow Sea and Port Arthur was on the verge of collapsing. Even in the snow, Japanese companies began to move into Lower Manchuria, where they faced an assortment of government troops, peasant groups, and religious brotherhoods of all stripes…
A rare photograph of a Righteous Army militia, taken at the Korean border with Qing Manchuria.
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Notes:
First off, to any Cao Dai worshippers, I apologize.
Building an alternate faith that’s based in syncretism was a part of my plans regarding China, but I didn’t expect the result to be similar to Caodaism. Perhaps it was inevitable for there to be similarities, but I want to make this clear the Society of Crimson Swords and their Edicts of Righteous Living are not this world’s version of Cao Dai. In fact, the pacifism of the latter would be revolting to TTL’s Sword brethren, and the Edicts’ stance on reincarnation and Zhungguo-ness would be seen as imperialist and patronizing to any professing Caodaist (universalism is a key trait in the latter faith).
Also, full credit to the images in the Pan-Asian segment belongs to Extra Credits. Despite their errors and glossing of certain historical parts, these people deserve a lot of thanks for trying to explain the less known and more esoteric parts of world history.
And in a first, just about everything in the above installment can be referenced back to post #1141, just in case you’re all curious.
Adanze Ayeni, When The Elephants Fight: The Great War in Africa (Abayomi; 1997)
While the campaigns of Sundaland and the Pacific Ocean turned many public heads in Europe and the Americas, it was Africa that truly formed much of our modern view of the Great War in the colonies. Far from the depressive and hellish tribulations of Europe, the African theatre was a campaign of empires under the blazing sun and savannah, fought across exotic jungles and waterways of imaginative (and exaggerated) nature. Instead of the drudgery and cynicism of political leadership back home, the African front – or rather, fronts – were accompanied with extraordinary tales of native kingdoms fighting for a side, or even for a right to just exist. While this view is somewhat accurate to an extent, it also glosses over the complexity of the ground situations that were faced by the combatants themselves…
…The first colony to fall weren’t those of North Africa or near the Ethiopian borderlands, but a tiny sliver of British-ruled territory surrounded by a voluminous chunk of French West Africa: the Gambia Colony. Comprised of nothing more but the banks of the Gambia River, the local garrison lasted less than 72 hours after the British declaration of war. Sierra Leone was next, but the invading Armée Coloniale found the colony a tougher nut to crack as British authorities began smuggling goods and supplies from the neighbouring (and neutral) state of Liberia, helping Freetown to withstand its long siege. The Royal Navy’s prioritisation of West Africa also lent support in the form of armed convoys battling the French navy to relieve Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, which also suffered from a besieged capital and an unruly hinterland.
The Horn of Africa also witnessed some early skirmishes for the French-led colonial force as British Somaliland came under attack from both its French and Italian namesakes. While the territory fell just as quickly, the presence of both the British and Ottoman navies on Suez and the Red Sea meant that the Somaliland coast was never fully pacified, and the nearby colonies of Aden and Oman halted any notion of a complete Franco-Italian sea. In fact, an attempted naval takeover of Perim and the Majerteen Sultanate in mid-August was repulsed barely a week later by a combined Anglo-Ottoman force with (distant) Indian support, securing the strategic capital of Alula and the naval bases there.
In short, what promised to be a quick colonial war devolved into tit-for-tat attacks from the Suez Canal to the Gulf of Aden which lasted for a large portion of 1905. Stymied on land and sea, both sides began to play-off the local Somali and Yemeni clans to fight one another or to switch sides, dangling the prospect of advancement and better treatment for their peoples once they’ve won...
…North Africa, given its proximity to Europe proper, received some of the more notable fighting. Ottoman Tunisia was particularly favoured by both France and Italy, with the latter having long-shelved plans for the region for the past two decades [1]. Hoping to pre-empt the inevitable, orders were quickly given from Kostantiniyye for Tunisia’s troops to invade the local French and Italian-held seaports. Instead, this only brought the wrath of the two nations on the African Vilayets; Tunis quickly fell to a combined Franco-Italian assault while divisions of askaris, tirailleurs, and the French Foreign Legion plowed through the Vilayet of Tripolitania. Further west, the war breathed fresh attention to the ongoing Trans-Sahara railroad project as engineers raced to complete a now-strategic military route from Algiers to Timbuktu. Protecting this endeavour were companies of Méharistes (French camel cavalry), whom streamed out into the vast wastelands of Ottoman Fezzan, aiming for Egypt and to link up with another colonial division that moved northwards from the French Congo.
Image of a French company receiving the surrender of a Bornu troop commander (left) and french soliders disembarking near British Gambia (right), circa 1905.
But here, too, rose resistance. The central and eastern Sahara have long been a bulwark of the Senussi order, a Sufi fraternity that controlled the mountains and oases of the vast expanse. The religious brotherhood have long been held in contempt by the Ottomans and their doctrines are considered somewhat wayward, but the advance of French forces did a lot to bridge the divide. The Algerian camel cavalries found itself attacked by Senussi and Toubou guerrillas as they reached the Tibesti Mountains, leading to costly operations of taking disparate oases and defending them against outside attacks, all in the midst of avoiding hit-and-run raids accentuated by the harsh and craggy terrain.
Similarly, the Sahelian states of Ouaddai and Kanem-Bornu saw the advancing French as a sure sign of peril and threw themselves into the fight, if not for the Ottomans than for themselves and the entrenched Senussi fraternity. The ruler of Ouaddai, kolak Muhammad Salih, was a prominent Senussi member himself and rallied his state to fight the new threat that would surely trample the Sahel, diverting resources and weaponry that was previously used against the Dervishes (mostly in the form of incursions). But while the Saharan frontier was manageable, the French forces coming from the Congo were much better armed and prepared, and though both states managed to slow the advance considerably, they couldn’t stop it. By December, parts of Bornu and southern Ouaddai had fallen and both states seemed to be on the edge of collapse…
…Many have noted how the Royal Navy could have turned the tables earlier if it weren’t for Madagascar, and they were correct. The island formed a solid base for French forces in the Indian Ocean and checked the Royal Navy from going past the Cape Colony, as well as allowing the French to use Jeune Ecole tactics to harass British Zanzibar. From shipping raids to surprise attacks, the British navy found itself massively overstretched across the African east coast as it tried to protect the commerce routes stretching to and from India and the Red Sea. Given the exporting nature of the Cape Colony and her neighbours, these actions provoked nothing less than outrage and alarum as the local economy floundered, and it wasn’t long before an expeditionary force was quickly hashed out from Cape Town.
However, the settler-comprised September Expedition would become an unambiguous catastrophe. Surrounded by French cutters and hampered by undersea banks, the attempted landing at Toliara become a bloodbath with over 7,000 South Africans dead and nearly 5,000 wounded before the force staged an ignominious retreat. So profound was the defeat that it would effectively kick-start the region’s political maturation, yet before the Cape Colony and her neighbours could cobble another white-led force, the cyclone season struck. Stretching from October to April, the choppy seas and rough weather forced both sides to hunker down and lull the fighting as a default, yet many knew that the bloodshed will resume once the southern summer ends…
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Muhammad Yahaya bin Mahmud, Sokoto: Our History, (MPH Asa: 2016)
…Of all the conflict theatres, the Sokoto Caliphate formed the most surprising battlefront of 1905. Already under pressure from European ambitions, the empire’s emirates were alarmed by the onset of world war which would undoubtedly turn the caliphate into a massive stomping ground by their British and French neighbours, regardless of local protests. But being more numerous and populated than the Sahelian states, and possessing invaluable manpower that could be trained and directed, the French and British decided on a more devious tactic for Sokoto: getting the caliphate’s emirates to fight for them.
And indeed, the summer of 1905 was filled with foreign emissaries shunting to and from the capital and the surrounding polities, imploring them to fight for their side and offering sweet incentives for involvement. Both France and Britain offered acknowledgment of the caliphate’s independence, as well as preferential trade deals and an infusion of cash to facilitate internal development. Sokotan laws shall be upheld and there were even proposals to relax certain measures on anti-slavery, which had become a sore spot for the empire. Unsurprisingly, Sokoto’s many emirates bickered long and hard over the merits of involving themselves over the matter, with several even undergoing localised civil wars as prospective heirs fought for a right to involve themselves in the diplomatic squabble.
It was one such local conflict that finally tipped the pot. The emirate of Gwandu had always maintained an arm’s length of distance with the main metropole, with its emirs possessing a rather independent streak and being suzerain of several (smaller) emirates of its own. However, the preceding decade was unkind to Gwandu as French forces began peeling off polity after polity from under the state’s oversight. Now, France is offering to return them back and give a recognition of independence if Gwandu turns against Sokoto and fight the British down south. Highly controversial, the offer would lead the state to a month of turmoil as the emir’s family fought for their say, with a pro-French prince finally winning in mid-September.
This turnabout shocked Sokoto. That one of her emirates could break off is one thing, but to turn traitor and side with a colonial power to stomp on the caliphate? That was outrageous. It was this that precipitated the British intervention that halted a Franco-Gwandu force outside Sokoto’s very capital, leading to sultan Muhammadu Attahiru plunging the empire to war on the British side. Still, the following months saw massive casualties on its part as the caliphate’s emirates struggled to defend its borders against the Armée coloniale, with probing attacks from the north and west costing precious armaments and thousands of lives. Despite being a military recipient of the Ottomans, the empire’s modern weapons were in desperate supply and whatever that was given from the British south was barely enough to maintain defensive positions.
But as the Royal Navy braved the dangerous Atlantic to offer fresh aid, and as British forces cut through French Dahomey to prevent a new front from arising against Lagos, and with Beninese runners carrying food and weapons up the Niger in record time, the caliphate held its ground. And in December, the first victory was tasted as Anglo-Sokotan forces stormed the northern French-toppled town of Zinder, which would be later added as the caliphate’s newest emirate…
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Petru Nuñez, A History of Pacific Wars; The Great War, SW Cornellia: 1989)
…When news of the war declarations reached New Caledonia, it was met with shock and bafflement. Compared with the rising tensions over at Sundaland, life in the Pacific showed little of heightened tensions, save for the clunky and ever-quarrelsome neighbours that were Australia and… whatever was the New Hebrides. But even then, there was nothing that could ever merit a full-blown war.
And for weeks afterwards, it seemed the island would remain at peace. But that all changed with the arrival of the French and Italian gunships in early August. While the bulk of the belligerent navies roamed in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Sundaland theatres, a few managed to steam through to engage the British colonies in the vast southern ocean. Operating from Noumea, they would scour the surrounding straits and seas for British shipping, requisitioning their cargo before commandeering the vessels from the interned crews. The New Hebrides became a particular target, with the island chain quickly falling in a matter of days. In a twist, much of the British planter class was comparatively left alone, albeit after they swore allegiance to the new French administration – the threat of property confiscation was good enough an incentive to toe the new line.
This set the tone for much of the Great War’s Pacific theatre: speedy gunships raiding commercial vessels while claiming atolls and islands for the major alliances stuck in Europe. From the Solomon Islands to the shores off Hawaii, the British and French navies would try to bring each other to heel through cargo grabs and fast bombardments, nabbing whatever ports and facilities that were not under neutral protection to advance further. As colonial fronts went, this was the most annoying of them all, as the vast archipelagos of the equally cast Pacific rendered conventional sea battles into a game of cat-and-mouse hunts with accompanying hit-and-run attacks. Many cargo ships tried to form convoys to protect themselves, though such actions only served to slow them down and thus expose themselves to the warring belligerents.
For Australia and New Zealand, the arrival of the Great War to their front doors brought immediate anger. But with the newly formed Australian navy bearing so few gunships, the dangerous presence of Italian Papua, and the ongoing situation in the Indian Ocean, there wasn’t much room for anything to be done by the Australian parliament [2]. In the end, it fell on Wellington to deal with New Caledonia with its own paltry fleet of ships against Franco-Italian firepower. Unsurprisingly, the latter remained triumphant throughout the southern winter.
The rest of the British and French Pacific territories remained in a state of flux, with some island chains changing status over a number of times. The Ellice Islands swapped hands at least twice in 1905, while any ships traversing from Fiji became subject to commerce raids. Further east, the Cook Islands effectively became an administrative part of French Polynesia, along with the Pitcairns. As with the New Hebrides, local British residents were encouraged to swear allegiance to the new administrators lest they suffer punishment, yet local life for the most part remained unchanged.
But amidst all this, New Zealand tried again. In November 3rd, a takeover of Fiji’s largest island, Suva, by the French navy was only repelled due to another expeditionary force embarking from Auckland, just before the cyclone season. As with southern Africa, the choppy seas and stormy weather halted the war temporarily on both sides, yet the arriving forces did not stay idle. A new strategy was planned between the dominions in which Fiji would become the new hub for British operations in the Pacific Ocean, a counterweight that could bring the attack to both New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
As the southern hemisphere welcomed the arrival of 1906, it was clear that the game of cat-and-mouse would continue on the Pacific azure…
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Notes:
Apologies for being late! The Africa part of this update took some time to put together, and it was hard to write a piece that wasn’t too complicated or too simple to understand. Even now, I feel like there were several potentially important places that were ignored for the sake of brevity (Benin and Egypt, just to name a few), which I’ll try to rectify in future updates. Same goes for the French-governed kingdom of Tahiti, as well.
Nearby the village of Timbang Batu, Kingdom of Sarawak, 21 December 1905
Even with the new plant growth, Clayton could see the mounds.
Despite the cleansing smell of recent rains, he could almost detect the whiff of charred wood and decomposing flesh all around. His coronation tour was supposed to be an act of placation for Sarawak and the people, and the planned Christmas dinner in Sandakan would herald the process of reconciliation in the far north, especially with communal wounds being so raw from all that has happened.
But this… how can I reconcile this?
Walking into the field, he couldn’t help but see how some of the mounds were so small. They were spaced unevenly, seemingly haphazard on the somewhat bare earth. From what he’d heard, there wasn’t enough time to give them all a proper burial. There were three great mounds whose size indicated a mass of… what lied beneath, but the most depressing were the smaller mounds, some of which were only as long as Clayton’s knees, their heights no taller than the neighbouring weeds. Many were unmarked, but a few had scraps of cloth, sticks, and stones placed on top; a reminder by the survivors of where their dear ones were.
The fields and forests surrounding him were somewhat better, but the marks of war were still visible through the undergrowth despite three months of relative peace; the bushes and tree trunks still show bullet holes encased with hardened sap. Nearby, the charred frame of longhouses and single dwellings rose like dead fingers, striking black against the rain-filled grey sky.
“About 400 people lived here, once.” The Ranger beside him, Maraun, said, gazing sadly at the scene. [1]
Clayton could only nod. From what the local-born Ranger told him, the people of his village, the Rungus, believed in souls influencing on the world after their bodies passed and decayed. But with that, there was always the one thing they fear most for death: decapitation. Such an act breaks the taboos of peace and offend the land, even cursing the village if it disgusted the native spirits. For the victim, a broken body would release a bloody soul, and such a mutilation ensured it would never be accepted in the afterworld by their ancestors.
They would be horrified at the deceased. [2]
Clayton jumped when he heard his companion’s bitter swears. “May their families beyond curse the Askaris. Fuck.” Usop cried out. “Are there any rituals done since to appease them?”
Maraun replied, “We have done some, but without our bobolizan – our high priestess, we’re going about it half-blind. Come, Tuan Rajah. The survivors are waiting at the fort.”
“Wait. I think I need a moment.” And with that, Clayton walked out from his security detail and wandered towards the piled field. Looking at them – some of the smallest ones had flowers laid – he wondered how reconciliation could even begin; some of the savages that did this came from the village itself, and the Sarawak Ranger clammed shut when mentioning what happened to his close family. Or his brother.
The shuffling of feet reached him after a while.
“We are still here.” Usop said, comforting. “And they would want us to live. We have to try.”
The Melanau companion said nothing more. His presence, and eyes, said enough.
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Charlie MacDonald, Strange States, Weird Wars, and Bizzare Borders, (weirdworld.postr.com, 2015)
So... how ‘bout that 1905, eh?
Okay, I think we can all agree that so far, the Great War is a bit of a fustercluck (okay, a LOT of a clusterfuck) and plenty of future generations have every right to curse their grandparents for making their history essays a mindbender to learn. But in it all, the Great War is perhaps a triumph of the adage that history is a story of humanity’s prides and sins, providing a cornucopia of examples that show how far we can shock, terrify, and outweird our opponents. And ourselves.
To some, the Great War was a mess that intruded into their already messy lives. Consider the Algerians of New Caledonia, for an example. Much like late-colonial Spain and her penchant for exiling uppity illustrados to the scandal-ridden Congo, France witnessed that and pondered “can we copy that?” Henceforth, some of the biggest rabble-rousers of Algeria that were arrested from the 1870’s onward – and especially during the boringly-named ‘Final Fifteen Years’ – quickly found themselves boarding a one-way ticket to being interned at the farthest place they could conceive from Algeria: the Pacific Ocean.
Now, you may wonder why couldn’t the French authorities simply cast them off in their South American territories? Well, let’s just say great distances settle more than just rattled nerves.
Life for these people was pretty drudgery-ish, all things considered. There was the typical prison deprivation and discrimination which were concurrent for the time, along with harsh labour at what was basically a penal colony (the nickel mines of Houailou had a particular knack for swallowing new arrivals) But the biggest deal was that these prisoners weren’t allowed to return home after their sentences, which created a new class of people on this island in the south Pacific. Thing is, New Caledonia was also a dumping ground for mainland France’s own rabble-rousers, ranging from thieves to socialists, women included. [3]
And… yeah. Now, there were many that didn’t intermarry due to religion and culture. There were also many that married anyway. In the end, around 25,000 former French Empire convicts made themselves a new home by 1905, with around 5,000 Algerians and around half of whom in families. And being who they were, many of them have… less than warm opinions on the French. So perhaps it wasn’t exactly a surprise that some of the first intelligence gathering for the British began with these people.
“And how can we be sure the British won’t just keep us here?”
“Do you have a better idea, Rachid?”
And that was just in the western Pacific. Hop over to South America and you’ll find the madness that was the Marseille-Antofagasta nitrate route. When you’re fighting a modern war, you want to make sure your weapons are powered by the best chemicals available. Chief of these are nitrates, which were commonly deposited and found as (and I am not joking here): salt and bird poop. Otherwise known as guano. [4]
And take a guess which region in the world has variable mountains of it. If you are guessing the Chinca Islands or the Atacama Desert, you are exactly either a French spy planted there to make sure production runs smoothly, or a British admiral circling off the Chilean coast to strike at any French-bound shipments of bird excrement (while praying that your British-bound salt poop doesn’t get blasted to Poseidon’s birthplace. Or Millalobo’s residence, if you’re Mapuche). Also, most French and British salt-poo hulks flew other nations’ flags to divert attention, so good luck wondering if that Mexican-flagged freighter steaming southwards is actually Mexican. And good luck dealing with the diplomatic fallout if it is and you just blasted them.
There are entire comedies that could be written on the cat-and-mouse hunts over this route; one ridiculous example HMS Resolute which fired on what was supposedly a French cargo hulk in dense fog, only to be met with a furious – and drunk – Venezuelan captain screaming about how he would try and sway his nation to war for bombarding his ship. All the while ignoring the actual French freighter – draping the Venezuelan flag, of course – chugging off near the horizon.
Thankfully, neither Venezuela nor Mexico went to war participation, though it is best if you avoid their British consulates if you’re a time-traveller hopping to 1905.
Man on horseback on salt field: “I am the richest bastard in the world!!”
But jokes and flag aesthetics aside, all this madness belie a sick fact that this war, the Great War, was a brutal conflict on a scale the world had not seen. From the Strait of Magellan to the jungles of Phuket, from the war-torn city of Lemberg to the blinding shores of Lake Chad, this was a war that consumed nations, chiefdoms, kings, and empires. An ordinary London paper would describe how Sarawak’s White Rajah fell in battle as Ottoman troops streamed west of Egypt to be obliterated themselves by unfeeling machinery, while also noting the hundreds of thousands of combatants already dead and dying across the Balkans and eastern Europe.
The war saw the largest movement of humans and materials ever seen. From Halifax to Hanoi to the train stations of Budapest, hundreds of thousands of men, millions of men, from volunteer teenagers to aged veterans, would converge to fight in whatever way for a promise(s) from their leaders that seemed to make sense. You would have German volunteers defending the Carpathian alpine trenches with Hungarians and Bukovinans, British seamen bottling Sevastopol with their Ottoman counterparts, all the while seeing that reason for war slip away with every mutilated corpse. Many of them wrote letters back home, and some of their contents slowly tore away the façade of bravery and honour to their distraught families, despite the work of censors.
Some of those letters would end up knocking history askew, and nothing exemplifies this better than the colony most Westerners don’t think much during these years: India.
As a colonial part of the British Empire, India joined the war without the say of millions of her citizens. It also supplied a fountain of soldiers from which the 1905 Indochina campaign would have been otherwise literally impossible. These men would write down what they’ve seen, and their initial words spoke pretty richly of the old temples and gabled cities of the Mekong. Of the peoples and cultures they are now overseeing. But by December, there were already a few that spoke of the dense Tonkinese jungles and Laoatian mountains. Of the sickness and humidity. Of how the smiles of locals slowly turned to frowns.
In the following years, the change would be more severe. And gory. By the war’s end, many of them would be writing back to stop their neighbours from going into recruitment.
India’s local politics also changed. Nationalism in the subcontinent has already been rooted, but the Indian National Congress that was formed from the botchedness* of the Lambert Law – to oversimplify, a veeery controversial law that could allow Indian judges to convict Europeans [5] – was still mostly a middle-to-upper-class thing. Sure, they were reaching out to the general population and nationalist ideas were brewing, but Indian self-rule was still a thing for intellectuals.
Not anymore. While some nationalists advocated resistance, the majority of the Congress actually encouraged locals to be recruited for Indochina, hoping that participation with global events could hand them future political power as recompense. And yeah, you’d think it is a bit of putting the cart before the horse, but the British viceroy did say something along those lines, promising that India would be better-off after the War than before it. And plus, a lot of these men could make India more known to the world, helping the case for the Indian people!
…Which it did, but not in the way the Congress or the British would have wanted.
Looking at their photos, I kinda wonder what happened to their families who never saw them again.
But while some empires wared and some nations grumbled, a few saw the Great War as a fountain of wealth. Just look at the Spanish Philippines, which saw industrial development rising by as much as 120% percent in some regions! Why? Because the Spanish Empire was neutral, and openly neutral at that. Meaning, if you were a warring belligerent who wants rice or tinned food or, I don’t know, weapons, you could just hop in for 24 hours and buy as much as you need. Couple that with some timely investments and a not-caring attitude for work safety, and it’s no surprise the Philippines bloomed during this era.
Unsurprisingly, there were some salacious tales for the time that called the Spaniards and Filipinos slimy cowards and greedy bastards.
Philippine culture and society also grew; In the early 1900’s, many westerners were amazed at how open Philippine society was toward intermarriage, even amongst Peninsulares and Criollos. The Austro-Hungarian consul to Manila, Gustaf Falkenberg, remarked in his stays how: “The lines separating entire classes and races appeared to me less marked than in the Sundaland colonies, save perhaps Sarawak. I have seen on the same table Spaniards, Mestizos, Indios, priests, and military, all dining as family. Spaniards and natives lived together in great harmony, and I do not know where I could find a colony in which Europeans mixes as much socially with the natives.”
But progress and wealth can be a double-edged sword. Peel back the numbers and the economy and the new mines mushrooming across the archipelago, and you’ll see a lot of ugly. Happy intermarriages? The Peninsulares are still somewhat racist towards the locals. [6] War industrialization? Hope you like a skewed economy focused on resource exports and not domestic consumption. New factories and mines? Don’t look too much into the deplorable wages and working conditions. You’re a farmer and want the profits from agricultural exports? The Franciscan and Augustinian friars that run the haciendas would like a word (and your land).
But aren’t the Philippines a dominion now, with an elected house and all? [7] Not if you’re the governor-general and tinker constantly with the Manila Cortes to produce conservative majorities. New universities and schools? Oh great, new uppity illusrados. Feeling like making a pro-independence group? Don’t mind the foreign friars tattle-tailing. Hope you enjoy prison! (Before the war, it’s ‘hope you enjoy Congo!’ but the high seas aren’t exactly safe nowadays).
And it’s even worse if you’re from the marginalized groups! You’re an indigenous tribe? Get ready to face eviction by greedy businessmen (and haciendas) for your people’s lands. You’re a poor farmer from the Visayas wanting a factory job? See the previous paragraphs on such work. You’re a Muslim from Mindanao or Sulu? WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.
Hardly surprising then that by 1908, even the local clergy stopped acting against revolutionary groups.
A study in wealth: the rich ladies of Manila, and the poor miners digging for the gold and copper that they wear (or export).
And in some regions, the Great War sowed the seeds of future discord that would upturn entire societies. You can just look to the semi-independent empire of Benin in West Africa and see how much that came about; their northern neighbour of Sokoto was hammered hard by French colonial forces, so a fair number of Beninese quickly acted as porters and middlemen, hauling armaments and supplies from the sea to the northern fronts via the Niger river. Trouble is, if you’re hauling and heaving from Lagos to the Caliphate, you’re going to be exposed a lot of outside faiths. And… yeah, it wasn’t long before Christianity and Islam began taking hold inside the empire. Also, while the Benin court could curtail British missionaries from entering their land, a clause in their ‘inclusion deal’ allowed local Africans to travel freely across borders, which pretty much resulted in African priests and imams freewheeling and proselyting. [8]
Across the Atlantic, the nation of Chile was having a money bath over their nitrate boom. If you’re a farmer scraping a living in a neighbouring nation in 1905, you’d try your luck going to Antofagasta to seek a (possibly) higher-paying job in the mining industry, damn the odds! In fact, Chile was one of the few nations that saw increased immigration during the Great War. But no one in the capital ever thought what would happen once the war ended, and few ever thought to care for the masses of miners now living in squalor up north.
In all, the first year of the Great War saw an incredible movement of peoples and materials across the world to do one thing: advance the cause of a side, by whatever lives necessary. The death toll rose so high in some places – 600,000 men across Lemberg and the Carpathians, 300,000 at the Caucasus – that some governments stopped reporting on them just to preserve public morale. Abroad Europe, the war laid the seeds of future discontent from Africa to the Americas, and in some places, turned native states into hell on earth.
And even with all that, there hungs the unsaid question: what will you do once it is all over?
********************
The Astana, Kuching, Kingdom of Sarawak, 31 December 1905
The study looked exactly as her father left it.
Lily entered the space, the silence of the air seemingly muffling her already soft steps. The rattan, softwood, and chintz furniture looked just as inviting as it always had, and the venerable desk stood just as always with the usual assortment of pens and papers sorted neatly on top, as if expecting their master to come home soon, ever ready.
But what if there is a new penner? One who is unknowing of his tasks?
And that was why Lily was there. The slip of paper clutched in her hands weighed as light as a feather, but the contents therein seemed to feel elephantine in heaviness. She looked at the desk, at the small stack of papers detailing the various happenings of Sarawak, and for a moment imagined what her father would have said of her, slipping in advice and topics of discussion to help his second son rule.
He’d probably call me imprudent and smile at the same time.
But father is gone. And so is dear elder brother. With Clayton on tour in the far north, the day-to-day handlings of the kingdom in Kuching now fall on the Supreme Council. But for all they are, their powers aren’t absolute, and there are certain things only a Rajah can decide.
Going around the desk, Lily opened the side-drawer and slipped in her note on the major topics her brother must focus on.
Looking at her writing for a second, she pushed the space closed with a final thunk.
____________________
Notes:
Okay, I lied about making a first-year summary. After looking back at the scope of the conflict and its complexity, I decided to fold my cards and table that topic for another time. Instead, I tried to focus on the occasionally-mentioned, kinda-important, but less-explored regions of the world that had been languishing in inattention for far too long. There was a lot to cover, and there are some places that are still not receiving enough scrutiny for their importance (India: like, where are the regiments to Africa!? Which I’ll cover later). But for now, I really want to close-out the worldwide view so that we can return to Sarawak and the happenings there.
[1] We have seen Maraun and Timbang Batu village before, on post #1335.
[2] Rungus cosmology and burial beliefs are a fascinating topic to explore, and I don’t think I could do it justice in just 540 words; here is a really good – though somewhat dated – article that goes into it in full detail. In a nutshell, they believe that a person has multiple souls and spiritual counterparts, and proper rituals are done after their deaths to ensure these souls would travel to the afterworld, minimize their negative effects on the longhouse, and help the family and community.
But one of the community’s biggest fears is headhunting, since it would alter their bodies beyond repair. This, in effect, is perhaps the greatest atrocity the Askari inflicted on their community: through their decapitations, not only would they render their victims’s mutilated souls unrecognizable in the afterworld – and to their predeceased families, it would horrify them into rejecting their kin.
[3] Yup. New Caledonia was really used as a place to dump France’s rabble-rousers IOTL, whether they be Algerian or Frenchmen. Women criminals were also sent there, though they were mostly shut-up in convents to induce morality until their sentences were up.
[4] The Haber process for producing nitrates is still a few years away, though many of Europe’s warring nations ITTL are experimenting hard for a suitable alternative to bird poop. The Cyanamide Process has been unlocked by this time, but its large requirements of electricity (for the time) has also make it somewhat hard to produce. As a result, South America is still a major export player in the game of resources.
[5] A TTL name for the Ilbert Bill, which followed along the same lines of Indian judges having the capabilities to convict Europeans. The controversy arosing from this formed the Indian National Congress IOTL.
[6] Spanish Philippine racism is an evolving issue throughout the centuries, and the last hundred years saw a fair amount of softening of racial laws and prejudices. Still, locals were expected to take off their caps to any passing Peninsulares or kiss their hands when offered. This deference goes even into the clergy, where the high archbishops and friars are selected from Europe to hold plum jobs while local parish priests were denied advancement. The reasons the church establishment gave ranged from the understanding (a fair number of local priests weren’t fully educated) to the racist (priests with “dark skin colour” were deemed unfitting for high offices).
[7] See post #1067 regarding the Spanish Empire and the Philippine situation.
[8] See post #1090 regarding Benin’s autonomy within the British Empire.
Well, it’s just my luck that I am now hospitalized for a pneumothorax on my right lung. In fact, most of what’s written here was typed on my hospital bed. Needless to say, Of Rajahs and Hornbills will be somewhat slowed down for the next few weeks. Thanks for reading!
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Limbang town, Sultanate of Brunei (Occupied), 19th January 1906
“We must ensure the light of Islam to shine upon the natives!”
Salahodin was going up to his rhythm, now. The timber surau was packed with worshippers, and he wanted his Thursday kuliah to be remembered by all. “My brothers and sisters, if we do not care for our Dayak neighbours, the time shall soon come where they will spurn our words and the sultan’s! We have seen how Sarawak exploits our forest peoples into choosing their rule instead of ours! Who’s to say they won’t do so again?
As such, before the White Rajah can do as such, we must make sure our Dayak neighbours shall stand beside us in unity, and true brotherhood can only come with faith!”
To his pleasure, the congregation murmured, and some even nodded their heads. Good. But one middle-aged man in the front piped up. “But what if they don’t want to be converted?”
“They shall. We will show them how life can be better if they accept Islam and when we all work together. We can learn from them, and they can learn from us.”
“But… why should they?” Another wizened man responded, his voice rising. “They have lived in their ways for generations, and they never needed our help for it. The Lun Bawang and Bisaya accepted our sultan as their ruler, and he in turn accepted that their lives are different from ours. [1] It is why they helped our Brunei in our time of need, and are at peace with Brunei when… at peace.”
“But that time is over!” Salahodin was fuming now. How do they still not see? How? “The Omputeh have cleaved the land apart because we are different! The only way to stand against them is to be united, and the most united we can be is by following the one true faith! Already I hear the sultan shall send word to Aceh for guidance. Their ustaz’s can help us a lot in this judgement.”
The man now rose up. “But the Lun Bawang has stood with Brunei for generations! To force them to accept Islam would repel them from us! Our relations are already strained, as they are! And why? Because the Orang Itali tried to force the Christian faith on them and they hated that! This is the time we should heal those wounds, not make them more painful!!”
With irritation, the preacher now heard murmurings of assent from the assembled, but nothing prepared him for one woman’s retort. “…Pak Kadil has a point. And brotherhood unity didn’t save your Sulu.”
Salahodin was enraged. As he stood to berate the speaker, for daring to insult his homeland, he barely noticed the breakdown that his sermon had become. [2]
********************
Seria oil fields, Sultanate of Brunei (Occupied), 20 February 1906
“I don’t think this is right.”
“Oh, what else can they do?” Albert Bennet retorted, his humour breaking through the morning air.
Beside him, Fritz Eckhart couldn’t help but furrow his brow. To take over the petroleum operations at Seria is one thing – that was all but written in the days following the Italian ouster at the capital. But to claim the fields and make them a part of the existing corporations at Miri, to propose them to be included in the Oil Policy enclave… that’s another. From their morning walk, he could see the iron derricks standing beside them like tall sentinels against the morning sky, a testament to the power that lies beneath their feet.
Especially now, with the War.
“Brunei won’t be happy with you, you know?” he countered. “They would want these fields to be overseen by them, and reap the rewards. I think, even if the court and their sultan allows us, the only way they would get off your back is to give them a piece of the profits.”
“Don’t worry. We will give them a cut, and the British and Sarawak will handle their complaints.”
“And you think that would pacify them?”
“No, but I do have confidence in their neighbours to sort it out-” Albert stopped at a peculiar sight. High overhead, two black shapes moved at a fast pace against the wispy sky. Though the distance is far, Fritz could spot two distinct forms silhouetted against the blue and white, flying to the farthest horizon, towards Bandar Brunei.
A brahminy kite and a rhinoceros hornbill.
“…Would you look at that... What do you think drove them out here this morning?” Albert chuckled, walking again down the earthen path.
Fritz stayed silent, contemplating whether he should tell his partner what those birds meant in local myths.
********************
Somewhere in north-central Dutch Borneo…
“Are you alright?”
“The spirts still protect me. Yes.”
“What did you see?”
“Yes, yes. What did you see?”
“…Villagers. Women, children, men. They are trudging through the mountains, I saw them. I spoke to a few, and they spoke of being attacked.”
“By who?”
“It’s different to each group. One said their neighbours fought and made them flee. Another said a group of strange-faced men forced them so. Another said of escaping some group called the ‘Askari’.”
“…This must be the Dutchman’s doing! I hear they are forcing the people downriver to serve them and accept their terms of tribute! I even hear that these people are forcing their strange faith on the coasts and low forests! We cannot allow them to gambol any longer! This is surely their doing!”
“Peace with you! The villagers I talked are from the northeast, and I hear the Dutchman have no presence there! They are not the ones forcing these people to flee! Something else did.”
“Still, what do we do with all these new people? Are there enough in these mountains for everyone?”
“And above all, this means the outsiders are closing in.”
“So what do we do?”
“…”
“What do we do?”
“I think… there is only one thing we can do.”
“And what is it?”
“...”
____________________
Notes:
*For clarity' sake:
Surau = Small prayer building common across Islamized villages in Southeast Asia. Smaller than a mosque, they are places of worship for villagers and are supported in a grassroots level. Kuliah = Sermon or lecture. Traveling imams sometimes do this in exchange for food and shelter. Omputeh = White Person. Ustaz = religious teacher.
I don't think I need explaining what Orang Itali means.
1. The Lun Bawang and Bisaya are two indigenous groups that lived in close proximity to Brunei throughout its history, with their chiefs sometimes becoming ennobled into the Bruneian court for helping the state or defending it against invaders. Due to their closeness, some Lun Bawang and a fair number of Bisaya tribes have converted to Islam, but the majority of both (especially the Lun Bawang) remained somewhat animist during the 19th to early 20th centuries.
2. Salahodin’s journey from Sulu to Brunei (and his anger) is echoed somewhat from the end of post #1067.
3. In some Dayak folklores, a brahminy kite is a representation of the god of war.
Paul Padan, Sarawak’s 20th Century, (Sibu Taikoon: 1989)
Upon taking stock, the Kingdom of Sarawak seemed to have lucked out.
Although the Natuna, Anambas, and Spratly archipelagos were heavily contested, the main Sarawakian core remained virtually untouched from heavy fighting, with only the farthest north suffering any sort of wartime devastation. Most towns and ports remained active and peaceful, with only the harbour of Bandar Charles suffering major damage from Italian bombardment – whose aims of crippling the city were all for nought as local sailors quickly utilized their sampans and boats to deliver supplies in record time. While Italian forces did occupy the coasts of Sarawakian Sabah, they were unable to penetrate deep inland and were hounded off after only several months of fighting. All in all, Sarawak seemingly got through the Great War mostly whole and stable.
But to the locals, the damage wrought by the conflict outclassed all previous conceptions of war and destruction. True, the kingdom lost only around 19,000 citizens, but that was still around 4.7% of the entire population, which included their Rajah and the prospective heir. There was hardly a village or town across the land that didn’t lose somebody of note, and entire towns in Sarawakian Sabah were destroyed or virtually wiped off from the map by marauding Askaris. Economically, the Franco-Italian takeover of the South China Sea posed a chilly risk to the kingdom’s export economy and rice supplies, and the easy trouncing of the navy ripped apart the façade of guaranteed safety to many traders and businessmen. The last time Sarawak suffered in such a manner was during the tumultuous decade of the 1850’s, a time half-remembered inside living memory. [1.]
Over in Sabah, the destruction reached horrific proportions: Much of the general infrastructure – as rudimentary as it was – was ruined, and the burning of forests and farmlands was matched with the inadequate or non-existent apparatus of government to heal them. It does not help that the rivers so crucial for transportation were clogged full with the wrecks of sunken gunboats. Preliminary reports suggested a local death toll of 9,000 people with the figures rising by the day, with many tribal longhouses burnt to the ground whilst the ones still standing suffered massive casualties that ripped entire communities apart. To the still-living, the shame and scarring took a personal turn as suspected combatants found themselves shunned by their families and tribal structures.
Unsurprising then that Sabah became the first priority for the new Rajah, Clayton Brooke. In fact, one of his first acts as monarch was simply to acquire emergency supplies of rice from the Dutch and Spanish Philippines just to keep the region fed.
Although the colony was declared an ‘Occupied Territory’ by the Singaporean Governor-General, there was no hiding which nation would oversee its reconstruction, especially with British interests too occupied in roiling Indochina. Sarawakian officials were quickly placed to administer the region, with Sandakan operating as the regional administrative and commercial centre (much to the chagrin of exiled Italians). Civil servants and local doctors fanned out across the land, making contact with disparate tribes and tabulating observed damages. At times, these people had to face situations beyond their grade; One such doctor, Richard Connolly of Kuching, noted in his letters how his work with a group of ‘tabulators’ earned him the respect and ire of two Dusun villages – both of which were uprooted by Askaris – whom each wanted him to take care of their sick and injured first.
Indeed, it was such altercations and the reports of revenge killings up north that quickly convinced the new Rajah to personally oversee Sabah’s peace and reconciliation ceremonies…
********************
Catherine Margare Tonek, Clayton Brooke: The Rajah of Transition, (Bimasakti Press: 2000)
…To many Sabahans, it must have seemed strange to see a white foreigner taking part in traditional ceremonies to foster peace. More so for him to be a White Rajah, at that.
Most never realized how strange it also was for said monarch to be White Rajah in the first place.
When Clayton Brooke ascended on his father’s throne, no one was particularly surprised at his initial discomfort at being thrusted on a seat that wasn’t expected to be his. For all that Rajah Charles Brooke prepared his children for a life beyond him, it was clear just which son he favoured most as his successor. While both boys learned the craft of Sarawakian kingship from a young age, life in the late 19th-century kingdom required certain needs and expectations to which Clayton’s Brooke’s elder twin brother, Clarke, particularly excelled in fulfilling.
When both boys became old enough to administer the kingdom’s Divisions, the elder twin showed a strong bent towards initiative and daring-do while the younger son preferred prudence and counsel. It was also Clarke whom sat in Supreme Council meetings alongside his father to learn the intricacies of ruling, as well as accompanying him more times on punitive expeditions to understand tribal relations. [2]
And with that, young Clayton Brooke grew up in his brother’s shadow, and it perhaps was this that drove him to head north during his first months as Rajah; to be suddenly thrusted into a position of absolute authority must have been bewildering. Still, his decision – and his uncertain promises of returning back – raised a fair number of eyebrows, and there were a few rumours circulating on how, besides a desire for communal peace, Clayton’s sojourn was an attempt to escape from his new responsibilities in Kuching.
But other historians have also posited something much darker.
Since the final conclusion of Sarawak’s war, many contemporaries noted how Clayton’s personality took a sombre turn. He became melancholic, distant, anxious, and refused to answer letters even from his own friends and family. His sister Lily Brooke’s public slap of him when he finally arrived in Kuching was a shocking act of familial discord, but it came from a position of anxiety and distress after weeks of discordant communication. As she herself said in later life, “something altered him at Sandakan.”
From the reports, letters, and observations of the time, several historians have since diagnosed Clayton with some mild form of shell shock, otherwise more known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Undoubtedly, his personal witnessing of his father and twin brother’s death may have deeply affected him, though some have also pinned it to the terrifying results of marauding Askaris across Italian Sabah. Given the brutality of Bornean warfare and the non-existence of Sarawakian psychiatry in 1905, it is more impressive that he only suffered mild trauma from the event.
Nevertheless, this might more fitly explain his journey to war-torn Sabah. The peace and reconciliation ceremonies were meant to piece together destroyed communities, but it may also have been a way to process bereavement for the new Rajah. From the settlement of new communities, to talking to separated chiefs and elders, to the overseeing of spiritual ceremonies that honoured the dead, to the sharing of rice wine and boar meat to survivors, and the retelling of stories old and new, the work may have been – if not therapeutic, than at least, perhaps, allow Clayton Brooke the space and time to come to terms with his late father and brother.
In the meanwhile, his work as Rajah was helped somewhat by a somewhat unexpected pillar: Lily Brooke, the Dayang of Sarawak. While not trained in the art of ruling, the eldest daughter of the Brooke siblings was not far behind in observing the language and basics of governance, and she herself inherited some of her father’s headstrong personality. At the time, there were no codified laws of succession for Sarawak; it was expected instead for the current Rajah to handpick his successor, and the culture of the time did not allow women, however respectable, to hold high office.
That is, until the Great War. With Rajah Charles and his sons waging war with warriors in the far north, the exercise of governance was transferred to the Supreme Council, with Ranee Margaret holding office as the ceremonial interim ruler of Sarawak. While an emergency measure driven by unexpected circumstances, this marked the first time ever of a woman occupying the kingdom’s highest post, and it may have played a role in Lily’s decision to dabble in government. During the first weeks, she offered advice to her anxious brother and slipped in notes detailing her opinions on certain issues. [3] When Clayton Brooke took off to oversee Sabah, it was Lily who relayed some of the happenings in Kuching that were unmentioned in the official missives.
This unnatural influence raised eyebrows in the eclectic Astana court. Ex-Bruneian nobles and Dayak chieftains whom waited hours to have the Supreme Council’s ear were unamused at the notion of a woman having a direct line to the Rajah. “It was not a woman’s way to be so involved in the running of this kingdom.” Recalled Syarif Supan, an ex-Bruneian descent of Laksamana (noble admiral) stock a few decades afterwards. “And to see someone like her, with so much influence, while we were trying to get the Rajah our time, was improper. What does she know about local troubles and triumphs?”
Nevertheless, this line of influence played a part on steering Clayton in policy in his most vulnerable time, and it may have played a part in his reaction to the happenings brewing in Brunei….
********************
Fatimah Ebrahim, British Brunei, (Macmillan Workshop: 1991)
…The fall of Italian Brunei was intended to sweep away the old guard in favour of a British-allied protectorate. Instead, the collapse of the old overlordship left more questions than answers.
For one, there was the matter of the sultanate’s status. As a formerly Italian protectorate captured through allied force, there were many questions as to Brunei’s future. Should it remain a protectorate? An allied independent state? An occupied polity with an interim administration, to be resolved later? The nearby Kingdom of Sarawak was particularly keen on its right to be involved in the issue… before events in Sabah shifted their attention.
For the sultanate’s court, this was a consequential decision. While they did rebel against the incumbent administration out of a dislike for Italian rule, the spark that triggered it was the threat from Charles Brooke before his forces reached the city: that the neighbouring Kingdom of Sarawak would swallow Brunei whole unless they completely surrendered. Given the Brooke family’s past actions in carving up the Bornean Empire, it was a grievous threat too dangerous to ignore. The fear of annihilation, not grudging subservience, was what tipped the sultanate to expel their former protectors in favour of the British.
But with Sarawak and the British distracted on more dire issues, a compromise was ultimately chosen: the Singapore administration placed the polity as an ’Occupied Territory’ and shunted a functionary there as a British ‘Advisor’, but the sultan and royal court could act as per their former powers and only had to give up their prerogative on foreign affairs.
However, such a path was complicated by another quibble. During the opening days of the Great War, the royal court sent secret delegations to the Ottoman consuls in Aceh and Riau-Lingga [4] , requesting the Sublime Porte to place them under their protective umbrella. However, the swiftness of the War flat-footed everyone and quickly rendered the attempt moot, yet there was still no official reply from the delegates at Kutaraja and Penyengat Inderasakti. The fact that both the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea became naval battlegrounds, coupled with regional undersea telegraph cables being cut by the Franco-Italian armadas, hampered communication with the outside world. As the weeks passed, the palace court had no idea if any Ottoman aid would arrive, if at all.
In fact, it was only in late September that oceanic conditions were calm enough for the delegations to return. Their received answer was disheartening: though the Ottoman representatives were receptive, and while extra caches of weapons could be secretly shipped to Brunei from Aceh if the court wished so, no formal help would arrive. The Ottoman Empire has too much on their plate to care for Borneo. Because of this, both Sultan Aqamaddin and his heir finally swallowed their pride and, in late 1905, requested to Singapore’s Governor-General to accept Brunei as a British protectorate. The royals would retain their internal power while relinquishing foreign affairs, and Sarawak would be denied the annexation it so craved.
But the devil lay in the details.
As talks began, it became clear that the court had a vested interest in the petroleum wells of Seria. Brunei supported itself in more recent decades through generous stipends from Sarawak and Italy, but now they demanded a great cut from the petroleum profits to prop-up courtly expenses. This clashed heavily with the newly-administered oil barons – almost all of whom were from the Oil Policy enclave of Miri – whom were unwilling to give away control. In fact, the last months of 1905 saw multiple petitions from the oil corporations to Sarawak and Singapore, imploring them to expand the corporate enclave into Bruneian territory and thus, expand their production and profits. But with both sides too busy with other matters, the issue simmered.
Four things would change this impasse. The first was the death of Charles Brooke and his son and heir, Clarke Brooke during the battle of Sandakan. The second was the death of Sultan Aqamaddin in the following January at the age of 81, shocking the court and depriving it of a steady hand [5]. The third was the whispers of disturbances deep in Sabah and north-central Borneo, while the fourth came in the person of a firebrand imam from the Sulu Sultanate…
____________________
Notes:
Blarg, I initially imagined seeing this installment written out within a week of my recovery, but personal stuff coupled with a job offer delayed this for a while. Enjoy! Also, since this might be my last update before Eid week, I'll say it here while I still can: Happy Hari Raya Aidilfilri, everyone!
Also, the photo I used for Clayton Brooke is actually that of OTL Charles Vyner Brooke, with a teeny bit of photoediting.
1. See post #166 for the rebellions of the 1850’s.
2. For more info on the Brooke twins, see post #1153.
3. For one example of this, see the end of post #1506.
5. Sultan Aqamaddin died in the 10th of May 1906 IOTL, but the circumstances of the region has given enough stress for his lifespan to be shortened by a few months.
On the banks of the Limbang River, Brunei Sultanate, 4 April 1906
“So…are the higher taxes true?” The chieftain Gamit asked, worried.
“…Yes.” Came the reply, and the visitor’s brow wrinkled further in distaste. “The sultan is now asking for more than what we can earn. There are already fights on this over in Belait and Tutong, and it will not be long before the local Pengirans travel up here to seek your share.”
The gathering of the Lun Bawang village grew agitated at the words. Gasps and murmurs filled the longhouse’s verandah, the high roof doing its work splendidly in keeping out the midday sun at the expense of reflecting back the mass of words spoken beneath them; the sour emotions of the crowd infusing the air with anxiousness and bad faith.
Gamit rubbed his forehead at the downstream visitor’s implications. “And here I thought it was the crazy preacher’s the problem. The Orang Itali were trouble enough, and our rice is still not yet in full bloom. Paying taxes is an impossibility for us at this point.”
“Actually,” continued Akid the Malay trader. “I think the crazy preacher might be connected with all of this.”
The gathering fell silent. Outside, a light wind rustled the canopy trees.
Akid spoke further. “I may be wrong here, and Allah help me if I am in error, but ever since the imam from Sulu came into Bandar Brunei, things have been… odd. Different, lately. Some nobles are being replaced, and so are some of the holy people; the Syarifs and Syariffas. From what I have heard, our new sultan seems to be quite taken with our newcomer, and the imam has preached vehemently about uniting this land under my faith to resist foreign rule-”
(“Yes-yes-yes, and now the Orang Itali are now replaced by the Orang Ingris.” An elderly Lun Bawang man beside Gamit whispered in his ear. “So much for that.”)
“-and he has requested the sultan to raise enough money so that prayer houses can be built, that weapons can be bought. So that learned men can be enticed from afar to teach the...” Akid looked around “…unbelieving. I think the imam has more power than you think, and I think our higher taxes are going to make his dreams come true.”
Gamit prodded on. “But hasn’t he known of our ancient pact? Or has the sultan forgotten to tell Ecik Imam who exactly protects the hinterlands of Bandar Brunei? We who still guard the Limbang River when everyone else has left for Sarawak or stood down or turned away from their faiths? I refused to accept the faith of the Itali people, nor the Ingris. I am not disrespecting you, but what makes this man think I shall now accept his?”
For all its worth, Akid was not offended. He looked unsure.
********************
Nita Julaihi , Salahdodin: The Man and The World, (Brunei Press: 1979)
…The Sultanate of Sulu was an unequal realm.
While this was true of all traditional polities in Southeast Asia, the court of Sulu held social views about the region that were dimmer than most. Despite the recent attempts by their historians to whitewash the past and say their neighbour peoples were ‘different, not less’, the many texts and tales scattered across the Sundaland archipelago speak a different story. While the state did engage in peaceful international trade, ‘different and less’ formed the pillar of her naval reach, whether it be loot taken from regional pirate raids or indigenous slaves taken from Sabah and the Philippines.
Along with this rapaciousness came a racial and religious prejudice that was baked into the ruling class and – to a lesser extent – the Tausug people of Jolo as a whole. The biggest example of this was their relations with the Sama-Bajau people; while trade, relations, and marital relationships did occur between the subgroup and the Sulu polity, they were never seen as fully equal in the eyes of the latter unless the subgroup settled, practiced ‘true’ Islam, and become acculturated into the dominant Tausug group. To the largely settled, orthodox-minded Sulu administration (though still syncretic to outsiders), the seafaring peoples of Borneo were ‘lesser Muslims’. Shouldn’t proper Muslims be dissuaded from venerating oceanic spirits? Shouldn’t proper people settle down instead of travelling with the waves? And shouldn’t proper Muslims be less merciful to the animists that live amongst themselves? [1]
Their views on the indigenous peoples of Borneo and Mindanao were just as nuancedly dim: good to trade with (in the best of times), or to take with (otherwise), but never seen in the same level as themselves.
It was in this mind-set that Salahodin Abulkayr grew up in, but his incendiary worldviews also came from another source: that of his turbulent adolescence.
Born to religious parents in late 1876, Salahodin grew up in a dying Sulu Sultanate. He was only a few months old when the Spanish Philippine navy bombarded Jolo Island and the capital therein, igniting the wooden city of his birth into a blazing inferno [2]. The subsequent capitulation and occupation saw his family relocating to Maguindanao, seeking a more peaceful existence. Unfortunately, Salahodin’s teenage years saw the Spanish pacification of Mindanao and his family bore some of the violence first-hand. His father, Salo Abdulwahid, was interned thrice by colonial authorities for “inciting severe opposition”, while their village of Parang was overrun repeatedly by Spanish troops, Philippine recruits from the north, and indigenous auxiliaries – known later as the Lumad peoples.
Photograph of a captured Muslim Moro undergoing a conversion to Catholic Christianity, circa 1897. Such actions would have been seen as outrageous for the young Salahodin.
And it was the latter group that struck a chord with the adolescent Salahodin. Up until then, he regarded the natives of the land with the same indifference as most others from Sulu, so the appearance of Bukidnon and Manobo groups holding rifles to aid the Spanish must have been a shock to him [3]. The fact that some of them were converted to Catholicism was even more so for it added a religious bite to local conflicts, forcefully severing local ties between various communities. Unsurprisingly, the several other Mindanao tribes allied with local Muslim lords were quick to repay their foes in kind. Because of all this, Salahodin quickly kept his head low to avoid arrest or suspicion from either side. But the idea of native, religiously-allied auxiliaries never truly left him.
In 1902, the 26-year old imam (religious teacher) returned back to Jolo to set up a madrassa or religious school. It wasn’t long till the Spanish were aroused when word spread of a radical preacher who advocated racial and religious unity to resist their ‘conquerors’. Later hopping from island to island to avoid capture, Salahodin espoused resistance across the archipelago, orating his ideas of forming bonds with indigenous tribes and convert them into the Islamic faith to fight the Spanish. His message was somewhat controversial, not least because it was spoken in a land where indigenous acceptance was a sordid issue. But it was also a land where anti-Spanish guerrilla attacks still occurred and where radical ideas were being searched about by the common-folk and the incensed Datus. By 1905, his khutbahs became well-known throughout the Sulu archipelago.
1905 was also when the Great War arrived to Borneo. Despite their distance from global politics, the Spanish Philippines were alarmed at the prospect of world war and feared the chance of a conflict spillover from the ruckus in Sabah. Unsurprising then that Manila immediately sent multiple battalions south to safeguard Sulu and Mindanao from getting any ideas. In October, Salahodin was finally captured whilst sailing to Mindanao, where he would be later sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment at the lakeside town of Dansalan [4]. He escaped the very next month with local help.
The stint in prison changed him. Now wary of the Spanish, he squirreled away to Sulu and hunkered down for a while, or at least he tried until the local garrisons there began looking for him. With foes nipping on his heels, Salahodin made a desperate choice and sailed northwest to Paragua [5], landing on a town that bared a hallmark of the changes in nearby Borneo: Brooke’s Point. The port had once been a sleeping village until a certain adventurer-Rajah named James Brooke sailed there to strike a peace deal between the locals and pirates [6]. From then on, the village slowly grew as it traded with the ever-expanding kingdom, especially with the Sarawakian-Sabahan hub of Bandar Charles. By the time Salahodin Abulkayr landed in November 29th, it was among the largest towns in southern Paragua.
The locals told just as much to him, as well as how Sarawak was born and how they named the town out of respect for the Rajah. However, that simply rekindled Salahodin’s sense of injustice; one tale recounts how he publicly swore that the White Rajahs would fall and Borneo be returned “to the faithful and the righteous”. In all, he barely stayed a fortnight in Brooke’s Point before departing for the one state that could be receptive to his message; that was hit the most by the Brooke family’s imperious expansionism: Brunei…
********************
Fatimah Ebrahim, British Brunei, (Macmillan Workshop: 1991)
…March 1906 dawned with a gigantic surprise to many Bruneians when they were told that produce, coin, and rice taxes would be more than doubled, compared to last year’s. [A]
Officially, Bandar Brunei espoused that their exit from being an Italian protectorate has burdened the state to fund itself, especially to improve local roads and ports. Many dismissed the statements as lies; such infrastructural needs were already maintained by British and Sarawakian aid over the last few months, and besides, if Brunei were in such dire straits then shouldn’t the palace court increase taxes the moment the Italians left?
Indeed, the arrival of Salahodin to the Bruneian court was akin to flinging a match on a lake of petrofluid. The palace was stung by the death of their long-time sultan, at the rejection of their protection pleas by their Ottoman aspirants, by the overwhelming presence of the British and the powerful Brooke family, and above all, by the indifference of the world when the tiny sultanate was trampled in a global war. [7] Once, Bandar Brunei ruled sovereign over all of coastal Borneo and beyond. Now, it could not even defend itself in the Great Game of Sundaland geopolitics.
So it may not be a surprise that the new Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin IV found the Sulu imam’s words of social and religious unity a powerful one. Salahodin held a fiery core of anti-colonialism from his days in Sulu and Maguindanao, and he used it in full force to influence the court. In Friday khutbahs, he espoused how Brunei could no longer give up more land without wiping itself from existence, and that a powerful show of strength through religious unity could, at least, “make the great nations see that we are not dust under their feet.” For this, he advocated the Islamization and purification of Brunei’s indigenous peoples, arguing that their history of switching sides and foreign support, “is a powerful threat to Brunei until they are included into the ummah.”
Alongside this, Salahodin also pushed the royal court to deepen diplomatic links to Aceh and acquire armaments from there, positing how an armed Brunei would be tougher to be pushed around. This was when first signs of courtly friction appeared, as many older nobles argued that such aggression would only induce Sarawak and the British to see Brunei more as a threat to be eliminated. Sadly, the recent turmoil has convinced many more that strong action was needed for the sultanate’s protection, and so Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin IV raised taxes on March 1906 to fund the endeavour – the issue of oil royalties from Seria was still deadlocked with the inflexible petroleum corporations.
To say that the locals were unamused was an understatement. The increase in taxes led to heated fights between villagers and local lords, while the Dayaks of the Limbang River were incensed that their steadfast loyalty to the sultanate – throughout the turbulence, colonialism, and carving-ups – was being repaid by Islamization and the encouragement to abandon old folkways. It was not for nothing that the chieftain Gamit Datan of the Lun Bawang people described the situation as “the biggest motivation to side with Sarawak than anything else.”
But in all this, neither the local Malays, Dayaks, the fractious palace court, or even Salahodin and Omar Ali Saifuddin expected the simmering tensions deep within north-central Borneo…
********************
The highlands of north-central Borneo, mid-May 1906
“…so that’s one more longhouse within this valley now-”
“This is insane!! This place can no longer hold any more new groups, and yet we hear more are coming in from the northeast by the season! We cannot accept any more settlements, lest there be war over what is left of the lands!”
“So what do we do then, let them all starve!?”
“Fight, you idiot!! We have lived in this valley for generations, and our ancestors would cry for us to defend our rice and our streams! How would they say if we simply say ‘oh yes, you-and-you can take the far side of the hills and all the game and beasts that lie there?’ Our grandfathers would have struck the entire longhouse the moment they have heard of such!’
“You are mad!”
“Says the man who hasn’t lopped off a single head!!”
“QUIET, BOTH OF YOU!!! Unless you want to be sent and meet your ancestors early!! Balang, no matter how generous we are, this valley can not hold anyone and everyone who is fleeing from whatever lies beyond the northeast! Ipoi, even if we win one battle, the number of people coming in shall ensure such war that we shall all be whittled down and be destroyed by the following harvest!”
“Again, so what do you think we should do? Nothing?”
“-Perhaps it is time.”
“…’’
“What are you saying, O augur?”
“…I am sure we have all heard of the strange new foreigners who now rule the place where the land meets the saltwaters. I have observed many changes in the birdsongs and the stars, besides the tales our newcomers have brought with them. The Askari and their weapons are fearsome, but they are not without their foes. I feel it is time to ask the lowlanders to the west for guidance and aid.”
“Wait! Do we even know that they know of us? And even if we may seek their aid, who among us can actually understand them?”
“...perhaps no one. But we must try.”
“Why?”
“... This has become more than just us now.”
____________________
Notes:
Recovery. New Job. New hours. Not enough time to write as much as I did. I’m not entirely happy with this update, as I was planning on writing out the climax between the Sarawak-Brunei-mountainfolk tensions here. But with my long day work and the timeline now weeks behind schedule, it’s better to have it simply finished-up rather than be perfect.
A. Old Brunei’s system of taxation would be right at home to people studying the European and Asian medieval era. There was the typical coin taxes on international trade, but if for say, you’re a person in a region of Brunei that is famous for pearls, then the state would exact a tax in the form of a set amount of pearls to be sent to the capital. Whatever product or resource that a region has in abundance, it would be that that would be demanded as taxes to Brunei.
During their glory days, the central palace sent out officials and nobles throughout the entirely of coastal Borneo and the Philippines, exacting taxes in everything from rice, wild rubber, pearls and coral, and forestry resources, giving the sultanate a level of wealth and sophistication that was envied throughout the post-Malaccan Malay world. Bruneian Kuching/Sarawak used to actually be famous for its hill rice (grown by the Bidayuh people, no less) and was taxed in such before the discovery of antimony in the 1800’s.
[1] The prejudice and difficulties of the Sama-Bajau in being accepted by Sulu were learnt from thesepapers. In general, there seemed to be a trend in settled peoples being distrustful of their nomadic counterparts, whether in Borneo or elsewhere. In fact, Brunei was actually more accommodating of the subgroup than Sulu, with some Sama-Bajau ascending into the state nobility. The latter’s influence has also laid its mark today with the many settled Bajau communities of western Sabah, which was started under Bruneian rule.
[2] See post #527 for the circumstances regarding the Spanish bombardment of Jolo.
[3] See post #954 for more detail on the conflict between the Spanish Philippines and Sulu-Maguindanao.
[6] Oh yes, Brooke’s Point is a real town in Palawan today, and it was named so because James Brooke brokered a deal with the local people. In OTL, it was the Americans who named the place as such. ITTL, the townsfolk chose the name by themselves.
Alena Bulan, Ancur: The Bloodshed in the Heart of Borneo, (University of Bandar Charles Press: 1999)
When the Askaris began their campaign of looting and killing across Sabah and northern Sarawak, they also launched one of the most fractious migration episodes in Bornean indigenous history.
The story of migration is often a long process in local historiography; One of the most traditional examples were the journeys of the Iban people from their homeland in the Sentarum Floodplains into the riverlands of south-central Sarawak; a process that took generations and recounted across multiple oral epics that spanned generations. However, the Great War unleased another, much darker, version of this process. The interior Kadazan-Dusun and Orang Sungai peoples of Italian Sabah had long held their grievances while under Italian rule, but the disintegration of colonial order uneased the most fearsome manifestation of Bornean colonialism to date: the marauding Askaris.
Made up of pirates, thieves, and the bottommost sector of tribal society, these groups stoked fear into the hearts of many communities, whom quickly scrambled to defend themselves against the rifle-armed warrior-warlords. When the Askaris began shooting at longhouses to obtain food, many decided to head for the hills. While there are no official numbers of those who fled, most common estimates counted to around ~11,000 to ~14,000 people, mostly of the Kadazan-Dusun subgroup. With north and east Sabah now a conflagration of war, some decided to head west to the Kinabalu Mountains and the safety of the Kingdom of Sarawak. But the mountains were already full of people – the result of over 25 years of slow migration from Italian rule – and the residents there were wary of newcomers from a belligerent nation to boot. Hence, many decided to trek on foot to the next directions: south and southwest.
But south of Italian Sabah lies the Pensiangan highlands of Dutch Borneo, a barely-controlled and barely-explored region of hills and mountains populated mostly by the Murut people. As community after community of Kadazan-Dusun and Orang Sungei refugees began pouring into the region, it wasn’t long before tensions begin to flare. The Muruts quickly accused the arrivals of stealing their lands and rivers, while the arrivals accused the Muruts of being too arrogant to share. By the end of 1905, tribal war flared across Dutch Pensiangan as compromises broke down, overwhelming the meagre Dutch authorities whose presence consisted of little more than isolated river forts scattered sparingly across the lands, each manned by a dozen or so ill-suited men. [1]
As the tribes fought for a stake in the hills and valleys, a fair number began heading further south and west to avoid bloodshed, and even a number of uprooted Murut villages decided to seek better lands. These treks would take many to new grounds, a fair number of which were already populated by existing locals. Some meetings would prove peaceful. Others, conflict. The Great War that had enveloped Borneo’s north is slowly filtering its way across the mountainous rainforests.
Through the long days and cold nights, across months of sun and rain, these treks would take the uprooted Murut, Kadazan-Dusun, and Orang Sungei far deeper into Borneo than ever before, to the deepest heart where mountain spires touch the skies and where trees towered as tall as canyons. And with these landforms came enclosed isolated valleys and vales where the mountainfolk of north-central Borneo call home – the Kayans, the Kelabits, and the many disparate peoples the Kingdom of Sarawak would (later) collectively call as the Orang Ulu: the People of the Headwaters…
********************
Charlie MacDonald, Strange States, Weird Wars, and Bizzare Borders, (weirdworld.postr.com, 2015)
You know how it’s a bit of a cliché to sum up certain parts of world history as “it just got worse?” Well, Brunei wasn’t done with the phrase yet.
Let’s crack open the nuance.
Why did Salahodin became as he did? Because of the injustices he saw and felt in his early life.
Why did he hop to Brunei? He thought the sultanate needed saving.
Why did the sultan of Brunei listened to him? He didn’t want the state to be a pawn. Again.
Why did he agree to Islamize the Bruneian Dayaks?
… Because he didn’t want any more of them to turn traitor and side with Sarawak.
A fair number of them switched sides anyway. Wait. This isn’t nuance. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH-
Okay, let’s try this again.
-----
Salahodin the imam was… right in diagnosis, wrong in prescription.
For one, he was correct in his assessment of the fickle nature of Bornean power and allegiances. Since time immemorial, Brunei had used the largesse of her empire to cement loyalty amongst regional lords and tribal chieftains. Managing a clientalistic hinterland stretching from West Borneo to the Philippines, this “granting wealth, produce, resources, and sweet loot” worked wonders for the sultanate during her golden era, but it also meant that the web of power was only as strong as the central government’s ability to conduct international trade and reward restless patrons; if trade stagnates, the hinterlands shall form their own states. Once trade plummets, the whole system falls like a spider’s web before rain.
Salahodin was also correct for noticing Brunei’s Dayaks and the key role they played in the state’s partitions. The interior indigenous peoples may be willing to bend their knees to the coasts, but they also have their own issues regarding tribal life that can complicate matters. By a lot. Sarawakian expansion was due to many factors, but it couldn’t have gone as far as it did if it weren’t for the Brooke family’s attention for tribal matters, which factored a lot to regional peace. Because of this, Sarawak’s pacification of the rowdy interior and the diplomatic manoeuvring of their Rajahs regarding local issues pretty much ensured the kingdom an ocean of loyalty and support, which showed pretty clear in the Sabah war theatre.
All this, in a century where Brunei was lax in her tribal policies and where the palace court could not keep up with the pace of a changing world, pretty much doomed the sultanate.
But what Salahodin got wrong was the solution.
You see, he has a… patronizingcondescendingracist? negative view of rainforest peoples, and he squished it into his vision of a pure, strong, Islamic Brunei through a seemingly progressive idea for the time: indigenous land trusts. Salahodin wasn’t a complete dumbass (he was mostly a complete dumbass) and he learned enough about Dayaks to know that semi-nomadic tribes stayed semi-nomadic to find good lands to farm, fish, and hunt.
In his writings that would later form the infamous book, Pandangan Orang Asli – Views on the Original People, he elaborates: “…Several hills and valleys would be entrusted by the negara (state) to the care of such forest peoples for now and forever. They would move, hunt, fish, and farm wherever within, with no fear of being driven-off from these lands, for it would be their Orang Kaya (Rich Men, another term for chieftains) whom would own these soils together. Shura (consultation) would decide their matters and quarrels, replacing warmongering. With this, who among them would side with any conqueror who could offer more than complete freedom?”
Lest things get too rosy, he writes in the very next paragraph: “The areas would be overseen by two representatives of the state, one of which must be an imam, whom would teach the forest peoples the ways of permanent settlement and the one true faith.Should problems arise that are too much for tribal shura, the state should intervene.”
Not so freedom, then.
In the end, the ultimate aim of these tribal trusts was not to maintain traditional lifestyles or even to halt them fraternizing with Sarawak (though that was a big plus for Salahodin). No. The real aim was to turn the Dayaks into Muslim, pro-Brunei auxiliaries. He continues: “The problem of agriculture and livestock shall be remedied by using the farming ways of the Westerners. With such plentiful food, what need would they to fight? Or move? The abandonment of their warlike and jahil (ignorant) ways would be as natural as the setting sun, further opening their hearts to the beautiful faith of Islam. As it should be.”
Not could. Not would. Should. It’s really something to see and hear someone describe a more theocratic version of America’s reservation system and see it as a good thing.
“How can I make this suckier?” Should never be a question asked when dealing with cultural suppression. At all.
Can you see the paradoxes up there? The loopholes? The stupidity? The man didn’t even write anything about, say, how the state will entice these people into reservations! Also, he’s damn clueless on tribal matters regarding war and headhunting, and he’s practically silent on the issue of self-made weapons that, I don’t know, almost every Dayak subgroup can make!? I can say much more on the matter, but I’ll just quip the Ranee Margaret Brooke when she was asked about Salahodin years later: “The man has plentiful words. So do our Dayaks’ parangs.” Parangs, by the way, are jungle-cutting, head-lopping machetes.
Not surprisingly, this plan was veeeeeery controversial. A sizable minority of the court rejected it outright and a few nobles even packed their bags and moved to Sarawak and Malaya to flee from the stupidity of it. Many locals also thought so. I’m not going to even describe exactly how the Brunei court tried to court their Dayak peoples, but it was simply amazing. You can search it yourself on the Net, but to sum up: it involves a slew of imam recruitment from the Sulu Islands, giving them a “preaching pay” for conversions, and enticing Dayaks to move by bribing them with actual free chickens!
And with that, Brunei’s rainforest peoples didn’t stay for long. Some tribes living near Sarawak simply crossed the border, while ones living by the Limbang River moved deeper into the central highlands. 1905 in general saw a slow migration across Brunei as nobles, locals, and Dayaks slowly streamed out to get as faaaaaaaar as they can from Bandar Brunei and her high taxes and plans.
Thing is, the interior of north-central Borneo was in a bit of a tribal… blaze… for the moment. All those uprooted Muruts and Kadazan-Dusuns from Sabah and Pensiangan have themselves uprooted other tribes there to gain land. In fact, almost everyone in north-central Borneo were uprooting each other as a consequence of the Sabahan war theatre and her production of refugees. From Dutch Pensiangan to the Upper Limbang, the interior mountains were aflame with tribal wars. And the Bruneian Dayaks are heading straight for it.
…Now, you might be wondering “I get that we might need to understand this loon’s thinking and all, but aren’t you taking a lot of time to a policy that wouldn’t even work in Borneo today?” In which my answer would be: True, I am taking obscene hours to type this all down. But it is important to notice this, because ol’ Salahodin’s Pandangan Orang Asli became a very widespread book upon printing, with copies spreading across Southeast Asia and beyond.
And for better or worse, the work made its readers think: “Is this what we’re going to do with all our indigenous natives?”
____________________
Notes:
Whew! It is done! If you’re all wondering “but you promised a final conclusion to the whole Brunei-Sarawak-tribal stuff updates!” Calm down. I began work on the final portion two weeks ago, but the resulting work was so long and winding that I decided to split it in two for easier editing and posting. The second half (and conclusion) of the current Sarawak-Brunei-Dayak arc is already finished, but I want to stagger the release by a few days to make some final checks and edits.
EDIT: And to those who feel miffed that I used Tuanku Imam Bonjol as the face of Salahodin, don't hate me! I couldn't find any other image that 'fit' someone of his character.
1. IOTL, the Pensiangan region was nabbed by the British North Borneo Company and was thus administered as a part of Sabah – today the region is now renamed as the Nabawan District. ITTL, the Dutch managed to get a few explorers up there via the Sembakung River during the establishing period of Italian Sabah, and thus claim the area as part of Dutch Borneo. But after that, there isn’t much in the way of Dutch activity or exploitation there, partly because of Pensiangan’s faraway distance from the coast and partly because there are much easier places to exploit than north-central Borneo. As a result, the only presence of Dutch control is a few forts here and there, which were grossly unprepared for any sort of conflict spillover.
Catherine Margare Tonek, Clayton Brooke: The Rajah of Transition, (Bimasakti Press: 2000)
The first sign of crisis came to Sarawak with a bamboo tube.
To this day, the mountainous interior of Borneo and north-central Sarawak are widely known for their naturally-occurring salt springs, which are considered near-magical for the mountainfolk. For centuries, the Kayan, Kelabit, Lun Bawang, and other mountain tribes have extracted, evaporated, and bartered salt from these places for themselves, and the gifting of a bamboo tube filled with evaporated spring salt was (and still is) considered a great present to any chieftain or young bridegroom, ready to begin their adult lives. [1]
So when a small group of Lun Bawang tribesman – with interpreters in hand – canoed down the Limbang River to explain their fears to the Bruneian court in October 1906, asking for royal protection, they also carried around 20 tubes full of valuable mountain salt as tribute. Creating such gifts were feats of labour; to create even one tubefull required days of boiling salty springwater to enable salt crystallization, so such a quantity was incalculable in worth to the Lun Bawang emissaries. Their pleas piqued interest, but they were mostly met with a palace that was veering towards Islamic purity, and Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin IV requested the interior tribe to accept an adventurous Imam to return with them. Disgusted by the implications, the Lun Bawang group canoed out of Bandar Brunei in fury, their 20 bamboo salt-tubes thrown to the sea.
In the following months, the emissaries’ fears came true. The uprooted Murut and Kadazan-Dusun refugees were themselves uprooting other tribes in their wake, which then uprooted even more tribes and villages in their own search for new pastures. A domino effect had occurred, bringing war and displacement from Dutch Pensiangan to the Bornean central highlands. Roving groups scoured the mountains for new valleys to settle, bringing diseases, death, and destruction to all who wouldn’t accept them. Streams ran red with the bodies of men, and longhouses were full with the corpses of their families. The chaos of the era would be later known by many names; Ngedaluh, Kate’, Ngajau, Zumazad, but one term would rise to encapsulate the war of the rainforest: The Ancur – The Crush.
By 1907, the flames reached the then-inaccessible border between Brunei, Dutch Borneo, and the Kingdom of Sarawak. The Crush reached its bloodiest pitch. In avoiding the rule of neo-conservative Brunei, the tribes whom had migrated inwards now faced a fight for their lives. Newly-established longhouses quickly found themselves fighting for their existence between existing villages and armed refugee groups, displacing many into the hinterlands of Sarawak. North of Brunei was Murut territory, highly populated and armed to the teeth. Southwards lie the headwaters of the mighty Baram, which flow downstream to oil-rich Miri.
And because of thus, in March 1907, 5 different villages (3 Lun Bawang and 2 Kelabit) decided to form a pact of mutual defence. A group would be assembled, with each village supplying 3 men, who are tasked to canoe downriver and search for the “Chief of the Coasts”, to request aid and protection. The formation of Sarawak had reached even some parts of the deep interior, but the news of the modern era were distorted through retellings and distance, leaving the mountainfolk with garbled images of what lies at the great saltwaters. Some imagined the Chief as a pale monster, while others heard of a tough yet benevolent ruler. In any case, a simple sign language was taught amongst the men to ensure some communication with whomever they meet, for they were unsure if the mountain tongues were even spoken downriver. That the mountainfolk were still determined in their expedition showed how desperate they were for help.
And to ensure of their seriousness, the five villages pooled their labour for weeks on end to create their greatest gift: 30 bamboo tubes, corded and protected with layers of leaves, full of mountain salt.
a) Photograph of a tributary river to the Baram watercourse, with a group of Kenyah tribesmen boating downstream. It would be rivers like these that would bring the emissaries (and Ancur refugees) into Sarawakian attention.
b) Old photograph of a bamboo salt-tube wrapped in the traditional Kelabit style, stored in the Sarawak National Archives, circa 1950. Such tubes would have formed the gift of the mountainfolk to Brunei and Sarawak.
And so, on March 23rd, the Peja’ Alud – the Boat Brothers – set off [2]. Instead of trekking directly north to Brunei – the whispers of the ‘Mad Sultan’ had reached even their ears – they would head west until reaching the Magoh River, which will flow into the great Baram, and to the sea. For over a week they trekked and canoed to where the two rivers met, through scorching sun and biting rains, and it is a testament to their jungle skills that not a single Boat Brother died or fell ill in their new environment. When they were finally discovered by a Sarawak riverboat patrol around 70 kilometres from the river mouth, their gifts of 30 bamboo salt-tubes were still sealed dry.
Upon their arrival to Kuala Baram, the Peja’ Alud were a sensation. Local Malays and Dayaks whispered incessantly on their origins, while the European class of Miri held excursions to simply see the rarely seen inhabitants of the deep mountains. The tribes’ assessment of the language barrier was proven correct; not a single person understood the Sarawak Creole of the coasts, nor they of the Lun Bawang and Kelabit tongues – but their sign languages were enough to convey what their concerns. Three days later, Rajah Clayton Brooke arrived at Miri.
To explain what happened next would only bloat this book beyond publishing, but it is enough to say that Clayton, while initially baffled by the tribute of 30 salt-tubes, quickly understood their significance and accepted them. The sign language was also enough to infer a horrible catastrophe deep upriver, prompting a flurry of interpreters and messages to all Resident-Councillors and chieftains for any interior news. Sure enough, they quickly returned and confirmed the Boat Brothers’ pleas: while most of Sarawak laid in relative peace, north-central Borneo was aflame.
And so launched the first post-war war expedition of the Kingdom of Sarawak. A retinue of nearly 10,000 men and Sarawak Rangers, armed with rifles and headed by the Rajah himself, trekked up the great Baram to make war and peace in the interior mountains. The kingdom’s Resident-Councillors would themselves be active in later months as the bloodshed, the Crush, spilled northwards into Sarawakian Sabah, prompting new alliances between the Malay, Murut, and Kadazan-Dusun residents as they all combated and rehoused their co-ethnic refugees.
These wars would take the Rajah and his people into unknown lands. Despite being a part of Sarawak, the deep mountains of north-central Borneo were still unexplored as of 1900, and the sheer isolation has left the places and inhabitants therein as much as myth as they were real. Stories abounded of rivers that flowed salt water, of caves that can swallow cities, of majestic valleysthat grew endless rice, and mountain spires that housed protector gods. And indeed, exploration of these places would follow in the decades after first contact.
The journey would also lead them to cross uncharted Dutch and Bruneian borders, but no one knew that yet.
Amongst all punitive expeditions of Sarawak, this one – the 1907 Bario Expedition – is often cited as the last great interior journeys of the Brooke family. This is untrue; such war voyages would continue well into the 20th century, but this was the first expedition conducted after the conclusion of the Great War’s Sabah theatre. The bloodshed and horror of the far north had coloured everyone’s perception of honourable conflict, and there were many voices from both local tribesmen and downstream administrators to “spare the conflicters, wherever possible.”
And above all, it was the first war voyage conducted by Clayton Brooke as the sovereign. He had lead war parties in his youth, but no one was sure if the man was mentally ready for a large-scale undertaking, given his peculiar shell shock (now posited as mild PTSD) [3a]. But what few realized that his condition has been somewhat lessened by the months of overseeing the reconstruction of Sabah [3b]. While debate is still ongoing on whether Rajah Clayton’s overseeing of the dead and the reconciliation ceremonies of the local Sabahans was therapeutic, few were left un-shocked when they saw their leader taking the helm of a local gunboat, the Star of Borneo, leading a force of nearly 250 canoes and war Prahus.
But war-weariness was still in many minds, and perhaps it was that which coloured the Bario Expedition to be seen as a melancholic ‘last hurrah’. The troupe of Westerners following behind them certainly added to the change – local British, Dutch, and Austrian-German men; Photographers, botanists, and anthropologists – all wanting a peek from European-swilled Miri into what lies within the deep rainforests. The fellow explorers shall make mountains of observed information, yet they also ended the mystique and old valour of Sarawakian tribal war, once half-hidden from the world.
Now, the old ways of Sarawak are exposed to the world, naked.
Though there were still regions of Borneo where westerners hadn’t yet set foot, from then on, there shall be few hidden corners left of Sarawak.
As such, the expedition itself was an adventure unto itself. Following river valleys and with the help of advance scouts, the mighty force travelled deep into the rainforests where trees grew taller than the tallest oil derricks, and where the Malay language no longer holds onto local minds. Many of the mountainfolk were astonished to see such an army, and many villages surrendered outright or parlayed peace upon sight, but just as many – especially those from Dutch Pensiangan – decided to stand their ground. All did not last long before surrendering.
Smirking at the camera, the chieftain Jangan of the Sebop tribe (a branch of the Kenyah subgroup) inspects the repairs on his partially-destroyed longhouse. In his words, Jangan and his men defended their homes thrice from marauding newcomers before Clayton Brooke’s arrival. Taken circa 1907.
But the biggest change came from contact itself. Many of the Kayan, Kenyah, Kelabit, and Lun Bawang had heard of the ‘Chief of the Coasts’, and many were – although somewhat confused – similarly impressed at this foreign, pale-skinned and bright-eyed man and his nonchalance of living rough. As the chieftain of one highland Kenyah village, Oyong Turing, recalled to an accompanying anthropologist, “Your chief can walk along with his men for hours! He eats from the same cooking pot, and help those and be helped in cleaning legs infected with leeches. When the rains fall and the nights rise, he aids in making shelter and sleeps with a blanket on a mat on the ground. Where you found such a man, I do not know, but I can see why everyone looks to him as leader.” [4]
Perhaps the greatest show of this was when Clayton Brooke and his force arrived in the interior valleys. The plundered-yet-golden rice vales of Bario, Ba’Kelalan, Long Tanid, and Long Bawan (though the last valley was in Dutch Borneo at the time) would have been an astounding sight to the men whom have trekked and canoed for weeks across jungles and mountains. [5] In these high valleys, Clayton quickly held some of the greatest diplomatic overtures to the mountainfolk, redistributing his supplies to help the starving and injured, as well as repulsing invaders from Pensiangan whom were intent on ransacking the valleys for food.
This contact would have profound consequences for the mountainfolk in the future, but for now, it was in these valleys that the Ancur, the Crush, was halted. Though violence would wreak across north-central Borneo for some time afterwards, the bloodshed would mostly be on Dutch-held lands. The Sarawakian interior was now at peace.
…Decades later, on death’s door, Clayton would breathe out, “I left my heart there, in the rice-valleys. I want to go back.”
But as the Rajah and his administrators waged war and forged peace in the Bornean interior (while all the foreign hangers-on gasped at what they saw), as local Sarawakians tried to stand together against the new flood of peoples entering their lands, and as Lily Brooke and the Astana court tried to see eye to eye in maintaining their hard-won peace from the Great War, the old sultanate of Brunei finally ruptured…
Celluloid still of the Bario Valley from the Russian documentary ‘The Heart of Borneo’, filmed in 1977.
********************
Charlie MacDonald, Strange States, Weird Wars, and Bizzare Borders, (weirdworld.postr.com, 2015)
…According to one account, when the first Bruneian charter boats arrived at Aceh, one customs official remarked, “Wouldn’t the British and the Brooke family see all this as dangerous?” A Bruneian sailor answered thus, “They shall, but we shall not stand still to be laid down and rot.”
Okay, that is a bit badass and courageous. But it also highlights the desperation and “screw it” attitude that exemplified those who still believed in the Bruneian Empire.
Remember ol’ Salahodin’s horrible plan for Dayak resettlement? [6] Well, what if I told you that that was actually part of an even greater, more incredible plan? While the Bruneian court was truly thinking about how to stop semi-nomadic tribes from being semi-nomadic, that’s all just a sideshow. The main thing, the most pressing thing for the 500-year old Brunei Sultanate, above all things that lie before and around them, was the preservation of itself.
Thing is, that very sentiment may have been manipulated by an imam who may be good in critiques, but horrible at solutions.
Don’t believe me? Well here’s the declassified 10-step plan that ol’ Salahodin and Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin IV had for a reborn Bruneian Empire, paraphrased from the original documents in the Brunei State Museum:
Procure rifles and artillery from Aceh. Those extra taxes will help to ‘grease the wheels.’
Gain re-independence through negotiation from Sarawak and the British. In short, lie that you will neveeeer retaliate or attack either.
Partially modernize. This may be tricky, so gain Acehnese, Johorean, and Ottoman investment.
Islamize the interior Dayaks. Make them loyal to Brunei and only Brunei.
Foster a Brunei=Aceh-Johor-Ottoman alliance.
Wait till the right moment.
When above comes, sneakily grab & control some border territories. To not alert Sarawak, take the deep interior bits. Extra points if can nab strategic areas.
Exploit a crisis in Sarawak to finally go to WAR!! Use boats for rapid movement across river basins. Expand as much as can be defensively possible.
Defend long enough for that sweet Aceh-Johor-Ottoman intervention.
Party!! The Bruneian Empire has expanded for the first time since 1846!!!!!
Um… I have so many questions.
Like, what’s the timescale for these things? How will Brunei keep this all a secret? What will happen if the locals get testy from high taxes? Wouldn’t the Dayaks just… move? What sort of trouble would Sarawak be in to qualify as a crisis? And above all, how long would Brunei have to wait for the “right moment”?
It’s ambitious, I’ll give it that. But I can see why it all crashed and burned.
“You want us, the Penans, the rainforest people who are famous for being fully nomadic, to settle down?
How 'bout no?”
Surprisingly though, the first point went relatively smoothly. Given the chaos of the oceans, no Great Power had the eye or foresight to check on a few fishing vessels criss-crossing the seas between Aceh and Brunei. The weapons too were quickly kept hidden due to said vessels docking at out-of-the-way villages and kept in secret stashes. Brunei also got lucky in timing; Sarawak just lost their most absolutist Rajah in their history, and Charles Brooke could have sniffed out this conspiracy easily just by planting a few informants and spies in Brunei. Or by checking out the financial records.
But Charles Brooke is dead. So is his heir. The new Rajah Clayton was too busy dealing with Sabah and PTSD to care for Brunei (for now…) and the Dowager Ranee Margaret was too busy in Kuching with her search for marriage matches for her surviving children, which also divided Dayang Lily Brooke’s time and attentiveness. The informal spying ring orchestrated at the Sabahan front was disbanded, making the British the only force that really watched Bandar Brunei. But with Indochina being… Indochina, even they weren’t keeping full tabs on the sultanate. Besides, how can such a teeny-tiny state even be a threat?
And it might have stayed that way, if it weren’t for the aforementioned Dayaks. Turns out, they have legs! That can move! And arms! That can hold weapons!
So when they found themselves the subject of preachers coming up the sultanate’s rivers asking to convert to Islam, that was it. Some trekked to Sarawak, but a fair number just went inwards and upwards into central Borneo. But central Borneo was under its mini-version of the Mfecane = the Crushing, so the new Dayak arrivals quickly found themselves battling for their lives against old locals and displaced refugees. In fact, the conflict peaked especially at the headwaters of Brunei’s Limbang River, where many tribes and villages fought for control of the especially fertile valleys there.
Sensing an opportunity, the Bruneian court quickly tried to speed up their 10-step plan by asking the British “can you just, with all politeness here… leave?”. Then the sultan just threw away their 10-step plan altogether by ordering a few expeditions inland to see just what the ruckus was all about, and to see if there were no objections to some “defensive exploration” as he put it. The explorers quickly came back with reports of massive tribal fighting in the interior with the surrounding Sarawakian borderlands in disarray, which was good news for Salahodin. Over massive court opposition, he quickly espoused a punitive expedition to reassert Bruneian control in the interior and to entice the Sarawakian borderlands back into the fold.
Unfortunately, Brunei’s luck ran out by then.
“Did you forget us, dear Brunei?”
Besides the incredibly obvious, remember those ex-Bruneian Dayaks we’ve heard about? They finally met up with Clayton Brooke and his forces deep in north-central Borneo, and to say that everyone in the interior was disturbed at their tales was an understatement. Meanwhile, the British Consul at Bandar Brunei became suspicious at all the “independence, please…” proddings by the royal court and decided to make his own digging; where exactly were the sultanate’s finances going? – with all the increased taxes, why was the state still dependant on British and Sarawakian aid? Further westward, whispers of rifle caches and stored maxim guns began filtering past the border into Miri, and local Bruneians are beginning to grumble about their high taxes going nowhere.
By August 1907, the whole plan fell apart. After some prodding from the Astana and some clerical data-mining by Brunei’s British Consulate, the whole scheme was uncovered. You can imagine the shock and anger at all this, but this was nothing compared to the surprise on August 15 when the Bruneian towns of Limbang and Bangar publically rebelled against the capital. And when I say ‘rebel’, I mean that the locals there literally and publically punched and stomped on their tax collectors, because they have been paying high taxes for over a year with little to show for it. [7]
By then, Rajah Clayton was already heading back to the sea, but he and his men intended to go north via the Trusan River, as the journey there was quicker. But the route took on a new purpose for the Rajah after those ex-Brunei Dayak meetings and Clayton now wanted to check just what in the world was going on in Brunei. So you can imagine their surprise when they found the neighbouring Bruneian villages in chaos and the headmen there asking if they could please be a part of the Sarawakian kingdom? As one villager put it, recorded in Clayton’s journal, “You have lesser taxes.”
Fast forward by 6 days, and a combined Anglo-Sarawakian army and navy was headed for the capital. For the nobles, that. was. It. For over a year, they have housed, fed, and accommodated an Imam who has been nothing but a nuisance to some and a danger to others. For over a year, they have listened to ol’ Salahodin espouse for higher taxes, call for a re-armament, be denigrating to the sultanate’s oldest tribal allies, and now arguing for all-out war. Now, his actions may lose them literally everything. The only reason the fool wasn’t gone yet was because he was protected by the order of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin IV. The man even slept in the sultan’s room.
By day 7, the sultan was gone.
When Clayton Brooke, his army, the British, and the Sarawakian forces assembled from Kuching arrived at Bandar Brunei, the throne was sat on by the man’s younger brother, Muhammad Jamalul Alam III, surrounded by a regency council. To their surprise, the old sultan was still alive! But was rather… kept under house arrest for the moment. Salahodin pretty much fled. So much for being valorous himself.
The subsequent investigations by both Sarawak and the British uncovered the full scope of the plot, and the findings directly influenced the final Brunei Agreement of September 4th 1907. The districts of Belait (the oil region), Limbang (the state’s money-spinner), and Temburong (‘cause the locals had enough of Brunei) were all ceded to the Kingdom of Sarawak, as was most of the Tutong District (though not Tutong town itself. The place remained loyal). The idea was to sap Brunei completely from making any sort of wealth, and thus nip any funding of an insurrectionist movement. The state shall thereafter become a British Protectorate, a tiny Malay state that is nothing more than an appanage of British Malaya.
This would be the last partition Brunei shall ever face. But is also the one that stings the most in local culture; Had Salahodin not arrived, Brunei might have retained all her existing lands. The state may be colonized but at least it wouldn’t be really dirt poor or dependant on her neighbours as much. Plus, the old Brunei might have made something from all that oil in Seria, which was now added to the Oil Policy enclave of Miri along with most of the coast. For the Kingdom of Sarawak, they now have not only two towns rich in petroleum, but a money-spinning river basin that can be a boon during peacetime.
And so the dance of the two nations continue, only now with one side pretty much eclipsing the other in power. But hey, at least now Brunei is sorta-immunized from the religious radicalism that shall grip other parts of the world. They have experienced what it’s like.
.....
One last thing. Well, two last things. Salahodin. The man escaped Bandar Brunei dressed as a peasant on a fishing boat, but if you think this is the end of him, oh no, he’s far from done. He hightailed back to Philippine Paragua, then to Sulu, and then disappeared into the thousand-islands of the Dutch East Indies. The experience in Brunei taught the man a few new things, and it is from that that he shall pen his most famous books and anti-colonial screeds.
This decade shall also see a change in how people would call him. Once, he was named Salahodin Abulkayr. But in Brunei, worshippers – and especially the Sultan – would call him by another name: Imam Salah. This name would be synonymous with him for the rest of his life.
I must note though that in Arabic, Salah usually means Piousness, or Righteousness. In the Malay language, however, Salah has an altogether different meaning, and the very opposite of righteous at that: Wrong. Or False.
Guess which nation means the second them when they refer to Salahodin Abulkayr.
____________________
Notes:
And now ya’ll can see why I had to split this update in two. What was originally planned to be a four-part conclusion to the current Sarawak arc became more and more unwieldy as I wrote on and on, especially in regards to the final portions regarding the Bario Expedition and the Bruniean partition. On another point, I also discovered a new treasure trove of early 1900’s photography of the Sarawakian interior and the peoples living therein, and all I want now is to cram as many as I could find on here. But as doing so would further increase the update’s length, that was why I created yesterday’s post to put this instalment in a new page.
Now, to those who are wondering “Why couldn’t just Clayton Brooke follow the Limbang River right to the highland valleys?” It’s because standing smack at the Limbang’s headwaters is MountMurud, the tallest mountain in Sarawak today (discounting ITTL’s Kinabalu). The peak and the nearby Tama Abu Mountains will form a major barrier to any interior expedition for the early 1900’s, so the only way to avoid them is by going around the headwaters. Clayton Brooke and his forces did that, battled and made peace with more tribes on the new route, and stumbled into the highland valleys.
1. Bamboo salt-tubes packed with highland salt are still sold in Sarawak today. In fact, the very photograph of the salt-tube I used is taken from my own pantry!
Salt-making has a long history in the Bornean highlands, and many believe them to have special health and medicinal properties. In truth, the process of making one are very laboursome, even today; After boiling all the springwater, the crystallized salt is packed into a bamboo tube and then burned in a fire or charcoal for hours, in order to purify the crystals from any sediment or organic material. The resulting product is a hard salt cake that is than put into another bamboo tube before being wrapped with leaves. Today, the boiling process alone takes around 23 hours, so making these salt-tubes back then was a truly significant thing, to say less of actually getting one!
Today, some of the salt springs have this process modernized, though there are a few places that still use the old methods of extraction and packaging, like this spring at Pa’ Umor (video).
2. I based the words on BorneoDictionary. Please forgive my Kelabit, if I did an error. Side note: Alud means "boat", while Peja’ means roughly, “to establish an in-law relationship or a brotherly relationship with a stranger”.
3a. and 3b. Refer to post #1573 on Clayton Brooke’s PTSD.
4. This may sound Gary Stu’ish, but the Brookes really did live rough when the times needed so. While sleeping in gunboats and longhouses was the norm for them in lowland tribal wars, those in the interior hills required them actually foraging for food and sleeping in the rainforest, often under a makeshift shelter of some sort. Margaret Brooke wrote in her journals of her boys sleeping beside Dayaks during expeditions, and she herself once slept in a makeshift ‘cabin’ made up of upright sticks and leaf-walls during an inland sojourn. Needless to say, this also helped them gain acceptance by the locals, but it also shows that the First Family of Sarawak was really serious about ‘walking the walk’.
5. IOTL, the first ever expedition to reach one of these valleys (Bario) was conducted in 1911, headed by the Resident of the Baram basin. Here, the discovery happens nearly half-a-decade early. Keen-eyed Sarawakian readers may also note the absence of a plague that decimated the Lun Bawang during this time too, making their numbers high and healthy enough to partially repulse the flood of refugees ITTL.
6. I don’t think I need to point out which update this was.
7. Recent-ish readers may note that I once said that Bruneian taxes during this period were so high, villagers murdered their tax collectors right out in the open. Here… they are a little bit more merciful.
Valley of Ba’Kelalan, Kingdom of Sarawak – deep in the interior highlands, 18 May 1907
“…We could stay here. Forever.”
“Hmm.”
A smile. “That did not sound like a ‘no’.”
A kiss. “I did not say ‘yes’, either.”
A cool wind rustled the golden fields, and Usop had never seen a sight more beautiful. In all his life, he had seen incredible things – the dawning sun off the Natuna islands, the soaring peaks of Kinabalu at midday – but never thought the deepest highlands of Sarawak would shelter the loveliest valleys, resplendent with fields of burgeoning rice. Two months ago, he never thought such a place even existed; the coming harvest has turned the fields into rippling carpets of living gold, as if some god had unfurled the most exquisite cloth on the rain-blessed ground. Despite some parts of the valley being plundered and burned, the local villagers had successfully fought-off arriving marauders for their food and waters, and the Melanau man could see why. Nothing on this world could be more stunning.
Well, except for the man beside him. “That kiss says otherwise, I say.”
Usop turned his head, and his companion never looked more peaceful than before. His lips and eyes crinkled a quiet smile. “What do you think?”
Usop gazed at him, expression turning fond. The pair had snuck out from the longhouse, taking advantage of a day’s respite from battle to settle down and enjoy what little time they have. Although treated as honoured guests, Usop and his lover found the attentiveness of the local Lun Bawangs a detriment to their personal time, and a sleepy mid-afternoon devoid of war provided the perfect cover to be themselves under the shade of the trees.
His gaze shifted slightly downwards, across the man’s scarred-full arms. He wondered why they haven’t twined their hands yet. He did that now.
“Us. Here. Forever.”
“Yes.”
Usop ‘hmmed’ in soft exasperation. “Do you know how to farm?”
His companion did the same. “No. But I know how to hunt.”
“Do you know these mountains?”
“No. But I can learn.”
“The locals will spot you easily. You are different.”
“Who knows? By some years, I may be as familiar to them as any villager.”
Usop laughed. By their twined hands alone, he could see just how different was his significant other. “There will be rumours about you all across Borneo!”
At that, the man’s soft smile disappeared. Usop realized what he had just said.
“Oh. Oh no. I’m…”
“Please don’t.” His eyes closed shut, as if trying to unsee a sight only he could. Usop knew exactly what. Down his arm, he could feel his lover’s twined fingers tightening their grip on his own.
“Please. Let’s just… let’s just stay here… and forget the world.”
Usop stayed silent, kicking himself in his head for the friendly jibe. Another light wind blew across his face, and the golden paddy before him rustled with the sound of a million voices. The Lun Bawang believe that every grain of rice has a spirit, and he wondered if they were whispering on the pair’s hideaway. At his mistake of words. Of his partner’s wish to be invisible.
Slowly, Usop took his other arm and placed it on his companion’s shoulder. Then, he pushed them both on the ground, lying on-side. He embraced him. Through the well-worn shirt and scent of earth, Usop could breathe another smell; A smell that was truly different from all those whom he knew. Beneath that, he could feel his companion’s heart thumping deeply and madly like an old and worn drum. Just a few uses away from breaking apart.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I know.”
“I wish we could do that. I really do. To be in a place where no one will look at us like that… I want that more than anything.”
Usop tightened his embrace. “But… I know who you are. You will try and make sure you’ll make things right, and you’ll want to hear the happenings here and there, across the island. And I know that one day… not now, not soon, but one day… you will hear what has happened at home in your absence… and you’ll feel… guilty.
His love sighed. A sob wretched out. “For once, I just want to be selfish. Just once. It’s unfair.”
Usop held him tighter. “I know. I know.”
For how long he embraced him, Usop didn’t know. The dappled shadows of the trees cast patterns of light on the earth, and around them, but Usop was more concerned with soothing his significant other. O trees, please keep our secret a secret.
After sometime, the heart-thumpings subsided. Usop slowly relinquished his embrace, though not before entwining their hands again. The forearms of their limbs were pattered with scars, reminders of why they were both in the deepest of Borneo. Usop wondered if they could also tell another story.
His companion’s face was streaked with tears, his eyes closed. But Usop knew he was still seeing in his mind, gazing beyond the fields. Beyond the mountains. Beyond the forests and rivers and falls of Sarawak. He knew what his partner is thinking of: Kuching. The Astana. The throne. And his mother, concerned for her widowed daughter and unwed son.
And maybe, perhaps, of his elder brother’s face when he discovered them, so many months ago.
Usop’s words came from the heart. “I’ll always love you, Ayang. Forever.”
His companion opened his eyes. Tears and anger. Sadness and determination.
His words came from the soul. “I’ll never stop loving you.”
The wind blew, and the trees and paddy fields whispered back their kept secret.
********************
Catherine Margare Tonek, Clayton Brooke: The Rajah of Transition, (Bimasakti Press: 2000)
…To be more precise, when Clayton Brooke breathed his last, surrounded by friends and family, he rasped out; “I left my heart there, in the rice-valleys. In the fields of living gold. I want to go back.”
Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt (Ottoman Empire), 17 December 1906
“So, what do think of the coffee?”
Faris sighed, exasperated at the quizzing. Despite initial misgivings, his friend’s pestering on the newly-discovered coffeehouse was unfortunately well-deserved. “Fine! It was great! The coffee over there was better than our usual spot! There! Are you happy now, Bello? Are you satisfied?”
“Delightedly,” replied Bello, smirking. The curl of his lips was vexing to Faris in the best of times, but now it was just infuriating. “So will you believe me now of what I said about the barber we saw yesterday? Or the carpet merchant at Sekat-al-Badstan?”
Faris frowned. “I still don’t think they are spies working for the French.”
“Says the person who has just said I was right.”
“And so say the person who wants definite evidence before making any conclusions.”
“And so said the person who has done so, and is now agreeing with me on my good taste.”
“You are impossible.” Faris sighed again, though without any bite. Since his arrival in Cairo, he never expected his fellow roommate would be so… Bello, with his crooked smile and joking demeanour filling up the spaces between the academic and religious life of Al-Azhar. More than once, Faris wondered how his studious family would react to such a person vising the household. Though they and everyone back home may be more surprised at his skin.
At that moment, the rough surface of worn pavement revealed itself as the sun’s rays shone past the walls and obstacles that characterized Cairo’s Old City. The main road already? I thought it’d be farther off. Squinting their eyes at the sudden glare, both he and his friend turned their strides to follow down the thoroughfare back to the university. All around him, Faris could see the city’s life and colour swarming chaotically around the street; evening is settling, and the dusky light of the hours basked the high minarets and innumerable apartments with a golden glow. All around, shops and coffeehouses brimmed with choosy shoppers and tired workers; A few ways down the road, a group of street boys with baklavas in their hands sprinted off into an alleyway, followed closely after by a harried baker whom shouted after them in accented Arabic, “You insolent children!”.
What a city.
Despite staying for over a year, Faris still found himself feeling unmoored at his new surroundings. He once thought he had braced himself fully to expect the unexpected, especially since he was the first from his town to actually journey from Sarawak to Cairo to further his Islamic education. But preparing oneself and experiencing oneself are two very different states; nothing in the books or travelogues described to Faris just how different Cairo was. His childhood was filled with trees that stretched to the skies; Cairo was surrounded by bone-dry landscapes. Up close, the city seemed like an endless labyrinth of roads and neighbourhoods, pell-mell with obstacles and overflowing with uncounted centuries of history. In any other place, the remains of the Fir’auns[1] standing close to saintly tombs and centuries-old houses would look unnatural, but here it seemed they all somehow fit amongst each another, like differing forms of life melding to form a living forest.
The people, too, were as different from his homeland of Sarawak as they could be: Bedouins and Arabs and dark-skinned Africans all milling about. There were the Cairenes whom navigate the dizzying roads and pathways like scrambling ants, the Khedives and Turkish officials whom seem to place themselves above the crowd, and the Europeans and Americans that looked as if they had plopped in from a different world altogether.
And the heat! And the cold! Why did no one ever mention the blasting heat and cold!?
“Now that’s settled,” His partner’s voice interrupting Faris’ musing, “Would you please consider what I asked this morning?”
Oh. “The Hajj or the Umrah?”
“Both.”
“Bello…” Now Faris was exasperated, but for a different reason. “You know I said I have to think about it for a while–"
“Well, is there any chance you can think sooner? All us Sokotans are already starting to think about food and accommodations, and the papers already report how the Suez and the Red Sea are safe enough for pilgrim travel again. I really want you with us, Faris. It’ll be the pilgrimage of a lifetime!”
“But…” the Sarawakian’s heart was now beating along with their footsteps. “It’s not that I don’t want to go, but–” But how could everyone see…? And as he thought that, he could almost feel again the sharp pricks on his upper arm, and how his shoulders are marked with a permanent sign of home.
But Faris’ words stopped upon a large shout that came from down the street. “Did you hear that?”
“What’s going on?” Bello craned his neck. A small commotion was forming near the Al-Hussein mosque, and it seemed to be centered around…
“…Oh no.” Not him…
********************
Zaghoul was becoming furious.
It was one thing to see that man again, after weeks of trying to avoid him and his tiresome cohorts for the sake of his sanity. Now, the person of his anger was not just delivering a speech in front of a crowd, but the man was doing so in front of his favourite coffeehouse! The gall of him!
“…and that is why, no matter what, we must support the Turks through and through in this war. If not for them, then for ourselves–”
Zaghoul barked out, “How many times do we have to tell you!?” Pushing his way through the throng, he focused his glare on the Acehnese student. “The Khedive and the Turks don’t give a stinking damn about improving our livelihoods! Have you not seen the state of our public services? Or the poverty out in the fields?”
“Oh, you again.” The man known as Hasan di Tiro remarked, looking as if Zaghoul was some insolent pet that needed a scolding. “Then I wonder how you cannot see the canal works near Alexandria, or the new railways from here to Khartoum and to the Holy Cities, or the–“
“What! And you think a few ditches and railroads are good enough reasons to follow our dear Ahmad Rifaat and glorious Abdulhamid? [2]” Zaghoul would have laughed if he weren’t so frustrated. In all his past arguments with Hasan, he had a feeling that the student had a one-track mind. “I can’t believe I am repeating this again, but haven’t you wondered exactly what is paying for all these new things? Foreign loans! The pashas are so defunct they can’t even deign to use their purses to help us all!”
But with that last line, the Cairene instantly saw his opponent’s face twisting into a snarl. “Liar! Almost every railroad and canal that is recently built is funded from Egypt itself! I suppose someone like you is too proud and hard-headed to actually ask the government on whether they are spending correctly to help local Egyptians. You know, Zaghoul Effendi–” Hasan di Tiro seemed to spit out that particular Turkish-derived word. “–if it weren’t for the fact that you oppose the Italians now pushing into Egypt, I would have thought of you as the perfect example of something truly vile: a traitor.”
Around him, the crowd murmured and gasped, but Zaghoul couldn’t hear them above the pounding of blood now pushing through his ears. “YOU SON OF A WHORE!! Me, a traitor!? I want this land of Egypt to prosper and bloom! I want this city to be the ornament of this world! I want us, the actual Egyptians of Egypt, to stand tall and hold our heads high! And if you think chaining ourselves to the roiling Turkish empire is our path to that, than you. are.insane!”
And speaking of which… “Considering that you came from Aceh, why do you care so much for the damn Turks anyways!?”
“Because this roiling Turkish empire is the reason I am here!” To his surprise, tears were falling down Hasan’s anger-masked face. “Can you and your nationalists, for one single second, stop thinking about yourselves and Egypt and see just how much the Turks and this Ottoman Empire gives hope to us foreign Muslims!? When the Dutch took over my Aceh, Abdulhamid was the only person who cared enough to act! When no one else came to help us, he ordered his navy to protect our home! [3] The reason why I am here, shouting to you, is because Abdulhamid gave funds to promising students to study here to help my nation! This Empire of Islam is the reason why my family isn’t in the Afterworld, and every day I thank God and our Prophet that they stood up for us when no one did!”
Realizing how his voice was breaking, Hasan took a few deep breaths before wiping off the tears. “I don’t understand why you want this hopeful force to perish, Zaghoul Effendi, and I don’t think I ever will.”
The crowd murmured again, and Zaghoul realized that, for all their past encounters, only now have they come to heart of the matter. And he found it… uncomfortable. “I can see that, so let me say now that I wish I could share your sentiment. I really do. But I can’t. This Empire of Islam may have been kind to you, but what about the Serbs? The Greeks? The Armenians and Bulgarians and our own Copts? These people have suffered and starved and are killed by all that is happening! Have they seen any of the compassion that fucking Abdulhamid has for you and your Aceh!? I’m sorry, I really am, but I cannot see how the Turks and their empire can be anything but hopeful.”
“But that is why we must stand beside them now!” Hasan di Tiro seemed to recover fast from his emotional outburst. “I have never said that they are perfect, but that’s why we must now make our voices heard! This empire needs reform, not revolution! And you ask about the Christians, so let me ask back on one thing: how do you feel about the Russians and what they have done to the Caucasian Muslims?”
Murmurs of agreement filtered through the crowd, and despite the anger rising within him again, Zaghoul could hear a nearby Circassian muttering, “He has a point.” A point? Have none of them all ever seen how incompetent are the officials are when dealing with complaints!?Some reform!
“It is times like these that we, the Ummah, must stand together and unite against foreign threats!” Hasan now addresses the crowd. “And internal foes, too. Whomsoever who seeks a break with the Turkish order must be revealed for the hard-hearted hypocrites that they are!”
HYPOCRITES!?
Zaghoul didn’t answer Hasan’s bite this time. His fist did it for him.
********************
“Are you still thinking about what happened?”
“…No.” But from the tone alone, Bello knew his companion was lying.
The student from Sokoto checked the flow of the gaslight and settled in. Night has fallen, and ancient Cairo now shone with lights streaming from a million windows and doorways. The two had avoided the chaotic fight that ensued, but the words of the arguers seemed to follow the pair for the rest of the evening. Faris in particular seemed more affected by the argument; the creases on his forehead remained visible to Bello for a long while afterwards.
Now, in their rooms, the spectacle of the Acehnese student and the Egyptian nationalist seemed to cloak the very air. With the bathroom door open, Bello saw this friend standing bare-chested before the mirror, curiously fingering his upper arms.
Though not meeting his eyes, he knew whom the next sentence was concerned to. “I sometimes wonder, you know… that student from Aceh always liked to argue. About Islam, the Ummah… but also for reform. For purity.”
Bello looked on. On Faris’s upper right arm was a scrawling pattern, inked black onto his skin. Curved spikes and rounded whorls snaked across the limb, with the design of a flower colouring the area of skin near the collarbones. Despite the dim lighting, Bello could see the same pattern was repeated on his friend’s left arm, permanently signifying his true heritage as a son of the jungle. [4]
Bello had never seen anything like it.
“I wonder if Hasan, or his friends… or even that Egyptian man. I wonder what they would think of… people like me?”
Many months ago, he had stumbled upon Faris in an emergency, and so saw his partner without any shirt on. After the initial surprise, Faris took him to the chairs and slowly explained, haltingly, of where he truly came from. Unlike the Arabs of Egypt, he and his community grew up on a faraway island, near the eastern end of the world. He once lived near an unending forest so green and watered and alive, a single tree could have a thousand shrubs and trees growing on its branches. [5] Then he explained the significance of … skin-inking … that his people scrawled all over his upper arms – “protection,” Faris said, “From the harms of life. These flowers? They mark the moment I am journeying to the wider world.”
From his quivering tone and halting actions, Bello realized his dear companion was actually afraid of how he would react to such a sight.
He silenced that doubt by embracing the man afterwards.
He pretended not to hear the small sob that came out of Faris’s lips.
Now, Bello wondered whether this is why his friend is so hesitant to perform the pilgrimage with him. [6]
“What do you think would they say?” Faris’s eyes seemed to hold an abyss of uncertainty.
Bello wondered, then said the first thing that came to mind. “I think you’ll make them so speechless, we all can stuff rags down their throats to stop them shouting their mouths off.”
That brought out a smile. “Do you think there’s room in their pipes for something bigger?”
But as Bello returned to bed, he wondered on the nature of his companion. With the Great World War being as it is, more and more students across Cairo are having their own thoughts on what should be done about it. The Acehnese students under Hasan di Tiro are getting louder and louder, espousing how everyone must support the Ottoman sultan and caliph in the name of Islam. Meanwhile, a growing group of Egyptians are adamant that such events shouldn’t be Egypt’s problem, and that total freedom is a right to all peoples, even under their arch-empires.
But… what would that mean for Faris?
What do caliphs and unities and purities and Islam would mean for a man like Faris Rahun? Someone who lived in a place where rains are eternal, life is boundless, faith is fluid, and where the trees grow taller than the tallest minarets of Cairo? [A] Or he himself, Ahmadu Bello, who comes from a land where many peoples have their own ways of culture and faith that skirt Islamic purity, and whom are also under threat from European ambitions. And we have our own caliph, as well. I wonder how Hasan and that Cairene man will feel for another Commander of the Faithful.
As sleep crept up to him, Bello wondered if the Ummah of the radical Acehnese or Egyptians have room for people like them.
____________________
Notes:
And here we have one of most important updates in this timeline, for it confronts everyone with the paradox of the Muslim world and how should they all proceed. All in all, I’m not… exactly happy with this update, if only because I feel it’s not polished enough when compared to my previous interlude. But in any case, it’s better to have something be finished than rather be perfect.
If there is one thing I wish more Islamic timelines delve deeper into, it’s the interaction, discussion, and confrontation between different Muslims whom all share the same faith, yet are wildly diverse in how they lived, understood, and practiced it, as well as how politically different they are. There have been a number of mentions before regarding Sarawak’s syncretic brand of Islam, but never a comprehensive dive into the faith. And there was once a discussion regarding whether foreign Muslims are more aligned to the Grand Turk, but there wasn’t a deep dive into the subject either.
Well, we’re slowly diving into both topics in the future.
[A] An interesting side-note here: the tallest minarets of medieval Cairo are those of the Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan, which rises to a height of 68 meters. This puts them around the same average height of the Borneo rainforest’s upper canopy (60-75 meters). However, not even Sultan Hassan’s minarets can compare to that of the Yellow Meranti tree in Sabah, which can grow to an astonishing height of 100 meters, greatly overshooting Sultan Hassan’s minarets and making them the world’s tallest known flowering plants!
And yes, there will be a juxtaposition in this timeline’s future between Arabia, Islam, and the desert, and to Borneo, syncretism, and the tropical rainforest.
EDIT: Made some changes after a dive into the lunar calendar for 1906. Whoops.
1. Fir’auns= Pharaohs.
2. “our dear Ahmad Rifaat and glorious Abdulhamid?” = The current Khedive of Egypt is Ahmad Rifaat Pasha, whom survived the car float accident of 1858 and became khedive, though he is getting very old and might not make it till the end of the decade. Same goes for Abdulhamid (II).
3. See post #853 for the Aceh War and Sultan Abdulhamid II’s reaction.
4. I’ll try to link up the source if I can find it, but I distinctly remember reading somewhere that early accounts of Sarawak revealed how many Islamized Dayaks still continued practicing traditional customs that contravened the faith, such as fermenting rice wine and even raising and eating pigs! Faris Rahun is a creation of this syncretism; a youth who’s family is both Muslim in faith and Dayak in culture. To visualize Faris’s tattoos, here’s an example of a Dayak student bearing them while being taught in school.
5. Today, we call these plants epiphytes. Found most abundantly in tropical rainforests, a single tree can house dozens of different plant species along its trunk and branches.
6. Anyone who has performed the Umrah or Hajj knows this, but in a nutshell: when conducting a pilgrimage in Makkah, the pilgrim must only wear unknotted and unstitched cloth that is wrapped and draped around the body, especially on the upper half. When circumambulating the Kaa’ba, male pilgrims must expose their upper right arm and shoulder, align the unexposed left limb to the Kaa’ba in greeting, and walk counter-clockwise seven times.
For Faris Rahun, this poses a problem, because doing so would expose his upper arms – and thus, his tribal tattoos – to the world, and as anyone whom has been on the receiving end of a scolding from some religious conservative could attest to, there’s a chance Faris would not be received warmly by the Makkans or the other pilgrims.
André Barnard, “When the Politicians Fight”; the Diplomatic Dance of the Great War, (Tully Street Press: 2001)
On January 9th 1906, the Greek city of Patras played host to an unusual gathering. Steaming onto the large harbour that exported the wealth of the Peloponnese to the world, there arrived an eclectic assortment of French, Italian, Greek, Serbian, and Russian diplomats all arriving on the city docks – the latter making their way through neutral Romania, allied Serbia, and occupied Ottoman territory before arriving via Montenegro (equally neutral).
Over the next seventeen days, these diplomats would wine and dine in a stark contrast to the melancholic mood of the times. While the conscripted masses of their home nations bled and died, the assembled delegations sipped the finest liqueurs and watched fantastical dramas held at the city’s Apollon Theatre. Indeed, while Russian men by their hundreds of thousands shivered at the Carpathian mountains, the Russian diplomat Boris Nikolayevich sat through three nights of plays in the Apollon’s heated auditorium, remarking in his journal on how the theatre’s production of The Odyssey (ironically … and presciently), “…Impacted me so, for the journey of tragic Odysseus brought a terrible thought of my own self returning to a changed homeland. What a fright would that be!”
Alongside these enjoyments, Boris and the other delegations would discuss how their respective nations fought in the Great War, which was the true aim of the Patras Conference. By the month’s end, multiple agreements were signed that included, among other things, a commitment of mutual loans, joint-strategy of war fronts, and a shared goal of advancing each other’s diplomatic claims. Until then, the Franco-Russian and Italo-Greco-Serbian alliances never intersected each other, despite the mutual enemies they all shared. Now, it is the opposite: The Patras Pact was born.
For the delegates, Patras surely seemed to represent the culmination of the Great War, especially with regional conditions as they were. True, the French and Italian colonies in Sundaland were falling like flies, but the primary fronts in Europe seemed to tilt greatly in their favour; Great Britain was too concerned for her own imperial defence to strike a land invasion of Europe, the Mediterranean Sea has become the Pact’s near-private lake, Imperial Austria-Hungary was being hammered from the Russian northeast, and the Ottomans are barely hanging on to Rumelia and North Africa.
And in fact, the Patras signatories were having better progress down there! Tunisia was now practically a Franco-Italian condominium and so was nearly all of Tripolitania; only a surprise defeat at Tobruk halted the combined force from entering Egypt, and for that matter, the khedivate was riven by spies from their governments as well as their enemies’, intent on swaying the Pashas to their side while weaving all sorts of chicaneries for their equally-shadowy adversaries. Above all, Russia was still sending forces down the Balkans and Caucasus while the Great Bear’s industry was heavily churning an endless river of ammunition. In the halls of Patras, the mood was uncharacteristically jovial.
Perhaps it was because of that mood that the attended men did not look at the death toll. Given all their nation’s papers being heavily censored, perhaps they did not want to...
********************
Žemyna Liaudanskaite, The Grass is Trampled: The Great War on Humanity, (Tiesa: 1997)
…But the biggest blot on the Mediterranean Sea was not Malta nor Gibraltar.
It was Crete.
Already plagued with communal tensions, the island was dry tinder for the unleashed inferno that swept the world. Given the island’s past history [1], the spirit of union – Enosis – was heavy in the air, and many Athenian maximalists aimed to follow that wind to the bloodiest end. Within the Great War’s first month, Greek and Italian troops quickly landed on Crete’s western half while the Ottomans assumed control of the eastern portion, all while the autonomous civilian administration dissolved within the chaos.
To the local Muslim and Christian Cretans, Greeks, and Turks, the turmoil quickly gained an ethnic and sectarian edge. Not only did the Greco-Italian and Ottoman forces used inflammatory language to shore up support – mainly appealing to religious and ethnic ties – but the more prickly folks saw the conflict as an opportunity to settle old scores. Both before and behind the lines, a tsunami of communal violence ruptured throughout the land, with horrific massacres of men, women and children whose only crimes were to live in the wrong ‘place’ and being the ‘wrong’ people. Despite all sides later on pleading restraint and the lurid atrocities making the neutral (and belligerent) nations queasy, the bloodshed would not stop throughout the war – the Cretan theatre would see sporadic mass-killings up until the armistice, with emigration following long afterwards.
No wonder then that most Cretans today call the period as ‘The Bloodbath’.
When the dust settled by the winter of ‘05, the Greeks and Italians held the western one-third of Crete while the Ottomans (with British naval aid) occupied the eastern two-thirds. From this, both sides would see little in territorial gains or losses…
…If anything, the Balkans were even more of a mess. The Greek advance into Thessaly and Epirus was so quick that many pro-Enosis newssheets touted the thrust as ‘…a thing of near-miraculousness’. Entire towns would welcome incoming Greek troops with flowers and song as the local Pashas fled for the hills with whatever they could take with them. In a similar vein, the local Ottoman garrisons were soundly crushed as the surrounding countryside rose up in rebellion, with scores of volunteers running headlong to join the now-proclaimed ‘Army of Liberation’.
But as the main force reached north-westwards into Albania and to mixed Greco-Albanian lands, trouble brewed. Despite some half-hearted platitudes (or perhaps because of them) the locals there were a lot more sceptical and unwelcoming of the potential of being brought under the Athenian thumb. Albania itself was now under a puppet regime installed by the Italians, yet the administration still sought to claim every Albanian-inhabited land as their own, leading to a souring of Greco-Albanian relations by April 1906. On the ground, these issues were becoming tinder for mass-shootings and communal fights, which further alienated both governments and local troops. Despite the promises of freedom, the drums of war are beating harder...
Lithograph of the Greek and Ottoman armies engaging near the Scutari Vilayet (Albania). The battles there would later prove to be poisoned victory for the Greeks, whom suffered enormous losses.
Similarly, the Greek advance to Salonika and Macedonia/Monastir ran into unexpected problems. Bulgarian partisans have wreaked havoc across the region since the War’s beginning, yet they were doing so out of the idea of a future Bulgarian state, which also happened to include lands the Greeks claimed. Unsurprisingly, many promises were made and broken between the Greeks and guerrillas, further fractalizing the conflict into a long and bloody mess. As usual, the civilian population bared the brunt of it all, with atrocities rising just as fast as the newsprint censors hushing any word of them.
Salonika itself was a city unlike any other, for her modern amenities reflected her unique character with over half the population consisting of immigrated Jews, with some descended from the families of old Iberia whom fled abroad after the collapse of Muslim Spain. As one of the economic centres and crown jewel of the Ottoman Empire, the surrounding sanjak was heavily invested which led to a surprise loss for the Greek advance, whereas Salonika’s harbour gave the Anglo-Ottoman fleets a base to attack any naval forces claiming the town and the nearly holy mountain of Athos. Indeed, while parts of the region were eventually held by the Greeks and Bulgarians, for the vilayets of Salonika and Adrianople, the Ottoman rule was firm. When crown prince Mehmed made a visit to the city that spring, the Jewish and Turkish populace poured out in celebration and support.
Few openly questioned on the empty side-neighbourhoods, once lived by the Bulgarian minority.
Lithograph of the French gunship Guadalquivir burning on Salonika harbour after a failed attack, and an archway installed on the main street to welcome the arrival of crown prince Mehmed.
It was less so for the rest of Rumelia. While the Black Sea coast and the lower Danube delta was firmly in Ottoman hands – no less so for the large amount of Circassians and other Caucasian Muslims resettled there – it was less so for the interior. By the end of 1905, Bulagrian-majority Sofia and most of the surrounding countryside was practically a nation unto itself, with guerrilla groups and partisans controlling territory up to Serbian-held Niš and southwards to Plovdiv. Such progress however was halted by the next year as an Ottoman resurgence and internal disputes fractured the new ‘Bulgarian Free State’ as monarchists and republicans go to bat with one another. Of particular note was the largest of these partisans, the Internal Bulgarian Revolutionary Organization (IBRO), which saw massive infighting between their nationalist, communist, and anarchist wings. [2]
This violence gave the Ottomans and opening and pacify parts of Bitola and Kosovo, and thus, by April, approach the land of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Made up of Serbs, Croats, Muslim Bosniaks, and even some Albanians, the land was the most coveted of Ottoman Rumelia. Partisan activity arose even before the Great War began, and this only intensified as 1905 went on as Serbia and Italy (along with a puppet Albania) sought to carve up the land. Locally, peasant Serbs rebelled against Bosniak landlords while Ottoman Croats sought to carve their own state at the expense of everyone else, leading to widespread looting and violence. However, all this was overshadowed as Italian troops advanced deeper inland, with the hope of expanding Italian Dalmatia to include all Croatian-populated lands.
But in doing this, Rome swallowed the poison pill. Whatever quarrels Bosnian Croats had with their neighbours, they were all in no mood to join an Italy that has tried (forcefully, at times) to assimilate Dalmatian Croats into their society and ‘dilute’ Croatian-majority lands with Italian settlers. To that end, guerrilla warfare exploded behind Italian lines even as the front pushed closer and closer to Sarajevo. By early 1906, the capital of Bosnia was under siege, yet an increasing number of Italian troops are being diverted just to hold the countryside. Inside Sarajevo itself, the future prospect of being forcibly swallowed and popular revulsion against the War’s excesses elsewhere led to an astonishing concord with the city’s multi-ethnic inhabitants: no arms against their neighbours. Only against foreign invaders. Led in arms by Merjema Ahmetović (a Muslim Bosniak woman) and Milan Mihajlović (a Serb man), the Free City of Sarajevo was born [3]…
Photochrome of Sarajevo in 1905, just before the Great War. Despite the surrounding madness, here humanity prevailed.
…For Serbia, the government gained some quick victories and its army even nabbed Ottoman Niš, yet they falsely perceived Vojvodina as an easier place of conquest, and so directed more troops there than to the Bosnian or Thracian theatres. Whether Serbia expected the Royal Hungarian Honvéd to retaliate is an interesting unanswered question, as the royal archives in Belgrade were burned in 1908. Ironically, one of the chief proponents for war against Serbia, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, caught a Serbian bullet to the skull upon his first week in the field near Novi Sad… [4]
But this does not mean all was well for the Ottomans. On the contrary, their Caucasian frontier was home to some of the biggest bloodbaths of the war yet, save for Crete. Despite all their efforts and the Anglo-Ottoman bottling of the imperial armada at Sevastopol, the Russian invasion through the Caucasus has slowly inched forward. By the spring of 1906, Kars was under siege again and a separate Russian front nudged closer and closer to Trabzon. More darkly, the army command began to utilize spies – mainly of Armenian ethnicity – to scout out the region, leading the military Pashas to formulate another dark mark of the Great War: Vandakner; the Cages…
…Yet of all the empires, it was Austria-Hungary that fared the worst. With a mass of minorities, four major armies, and with one foot in the 19th century, the Dual Monarchy suffered the worst of the global conflict so far. Despite repulsing the Serbian thrust into Vojvodina and answering with a thrust of their own, the theatre there saw the loss of over 100,000 soldiers and civilians. In the Alps and Fiume, Italian forces continuously probe through the lines for a weakpoint, costing local troops thousands of lives in each attempt. To the northeast, the Russian army has penetrated so deep that by March 1906, all of Galicia was taken from Habsburg rule with most forces now engaged in the Carpathian Mountains. Overall, almost 600,000 Austro-Hungarians were either maimed, captured, and killed by that spring, or as one contemporary journalist later summarized, “Over one-third of the Common Army is now gone.”
Contemporary photograph of a ruined Austro-Hungarian trench near Kraków, circa late 1906
It was this, above all, which captured the interest of Austria’s neutral (and mostly German) neighbour. Though support in Germany for their ‘southern cousins’, was more subdued now than in last summer, there was still broad sympathy for Austria-Hungary amongst both the locals and the imperial government. However, the previous summer’s horrific military purge brought about by homophobic hysteria [5] has also left many commanders wary of German troop strength and capabilities. Nevertheless, it was this army and government that a delegation from Vienna presented themselves to in March 30th, pleading for Berlin to intervene or, at least, to send military and food aid.
All this, of course, did not go unnoticed by both Paris and St. Petersburg. A German intervention would have cataclysmic consequences, so to keep the German Empire out of the Great War, a notice of discussion was passed through the diplomatic channels for all three sides to meet…
********************
Somewhere in Paris, French Third Republic, 6th April 1906
“Woah, woah!”
“André!!”
“I’m alright! I’m alright! This table is just really wobbly.”
“Quiet, you two! Everyone inside might hear us!”
“Well you try balancing yourself on this spindly thing, Armand!”
“Shh, they’re starting again… talking about some… sort… of concessions…”
“…”
“…”
“You all do realize that you are now lawbreakers for eavesdropping on a private diplomatic summit?”
“Well, they’re not really meeting now, are they? It’s lunch. And I don’t see you coming around to put us under arrest, dear Commissioner.”
“Well, someone has to keep watch on all you bastards, and on the opposite doors. You are all lucky for being stuck with me and not that Jean-Pierre; he would have struck all this in an instant.”
“Shh… they’re starting again… and keep still, Murat!”
“Then stop budging on my legs!”
“…they really need to get new cushions here…”
“…”
“…”
“…Ubangi-Shari?”
“Isn’t that in Africa?”
“Wait, did I just hear the Germans can keep Alsace and Lorraine? And by God, those loans!”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…was that a ‘yes’… or a ‘no’?”
____________________
Notes:
Well, at least now we all know what Europe’s been up to! And a reminder to all old and new readers that I suck at writing wars, and with a conflict like the Great War, there are too many variables and events that – if they were all written down and taken to account – would bloat any description of conflict beyond reading comprehensibility. So, I decided to cut down to the most straightforward of narratives for this piece, though from the looks of it I failed.
Any important WWI-ish equivalent events that are unmentioned are either knocked-off from existence, or happened off-screen. Bear with me!
1. See post #1116 for the last update that mentioned Crete (and her troubles).
2. The IBRO is a semi-alternate analogue of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, a guerrilla group which also suffered from massive infighting between the left-wing and right-wing factions. Here, the split occurred in the worst possible time.
3. Hee hee… only those who know that story know the people here. I just had to put them in. Full credits and permission granted by @Jonathan Edelstein.
4. And there goes one person who’s absence will impact the survival of Austria-Hungary, for better or worse.
5. Remember the Unger Accusations? I remember the Unger Accusations.
Lê Quang Ngạn, Castles and Knights: An Asian’s Guide to European History (Discourse: 2001)
…Taken in 1871, the French border regions of Alsace and Moselle and the cities of Strasbourg and Metz were carved up by the victorious German Empire, eventually becoming the latter’s latest territorial addition under the name ‘Elsaß-Lothringen’ – Alsace-Lorraine.
This act, done in the name of defensive and ethnic reasons, secured decades of French enmity towards their German neighbour, whom tried its best to make sure no other Great Power could ally with Paris to act on their claims…
********************
André Barnard, “When the Politicians Fight”; the Diplomatic Dance of the Great War, (Tully Street Press: 2001)
…But in short, Alsace-Lorraine was never placed on the bargaining table to begin with. The closest the French delegates did was to suggest that the region be considered as a point of negotiation, a suggestion that was swiftly rebuffed by the German diplomats. That being done, the matter was barely brought up again throughout the negotiations of late March and early April. What was on the table was the colonial territory of Ubangi-Shari and Dahomey – which was packaged with some extremely generous loans and a partial demilitarization of the Rhine border – to entice the Germans. This was far more consequential than what most of their citizens realized; a handover of French Ubangi-Shari would not just destroy Paris’s efforts to subsume the Sahelian sultanates, but entail the German colonial empire to control an eye-watering girdle across Africa, from Kamerun in the west to Wituland in the east, from sea to shining sea. The resources contained therein would propel Germany to compete (in resource extraction) with France and Great Britain.
But all that was immaterial when the Petit Parisien published the leaks with the headline “SHOCKING!! GOVERNMENT BETRAYS ALSACE AND STRASBOURG IN PERPETUITY!!!”. The fact that the eavesdroppers misheard quite a number of terms was immaterial, for the mere idea of giving up French revanchism in the east spewed a tsunami of anger. The Parisien’s headquarters were swamped with angry letters from readers while the delegates were pelted with rotten fruit when spotted on the streets. To the public, the affair was disgusting; the nation was on the march, and their allies are advancing despite the high human cost, so by what idiotic reason should the government abandon their claims to the ancestral lands of France? Indeed, the former French Minister of War, Charles de Freycinet, dubbed the talks as, “stinking of cowardice to the highest level.”
The reaction was similar across the Rhine and was, perhaps, even more consequential. While German patriotism was still floating in the air, the homophobic hysteria of last summer and the sobering news from battlefield correspondents has cast a pall over the empire in respect to supporting Austria-Hungary. Indeed, many diplomatic observers reported how the social climate was gripped, as one noted, “…by a sense of malaise and indecision”. Given the prickly status of the imperial army and the mass-slaughter of modern war now splashed across morning newspapers, many non-volunteering Germans were content in supporting their Austrian neighbours financially and materially, but not physically.
The leaks from France changed all that, re-energizing the lull of interventionism through the peal of ‘Austrian abandonment’. One contributor of a Berlin broadsheet summed the electrifying effect thusly: “Whatever happened to German bravery? German unity? Was the brotherhood of empires so weak as to be severed by mere coins and colonies?”. Public rallies mushroomed in major cities for the first time in months while interventionist politicians held howling speeches in the Reichstag, lambasting their peers for being complicit or staying silent over the affair. A new wave of volunteers left their homes to enlist in the Austro-Hungarian armies while illicit aid flowed to Vienna under the intentionally relaxed eye of customs officials. From this point onwards, the war hawks of Germany rose through the clamour, and they are not going to be silenced this time…
More importantly, it led both the French and German public to their nations’ shared borders. Ever since the start of the War, the French government had been way of her neighbour’s potential for aggression. As such, under the discretion of the Ministère des Armées, two infantry divisions were secretly stationed near the claimed lands of Alsace-Lorraine. Strictly confidential, the whereabouts and activities of these divisions were only discussed in the most private of circumstances, and it was hoped that their presence would give Germany pause if it were to join its Austro-Hungarian neighbour. It was because of such that a key point in the neutrality negotiations was partial border demilitarization; Paris and St. Petersburg could breathe easier and divert resources elsewhere if everyone agreed to stay neutral and stand down.
But then came the leaks, and the outrage of the German public. To mobilize troops was one thing, but to place them near their borders for over a year, potentially threatening the Reich as it consumed itself in hysteria and malaise? That was beyond the pale. In the heated political climate, the traumatically queer-shaken Imperial German Army decided to prove itself and – after some prodding from the Reichstag and permission from a bewildered Chancellor and Kaiser Wilhelm – ordered the placement of two German infantry divisions at Alsace-Lorraine.
But in doing so, the French public now became scared and angry. Given the mood, it was no wonder how the war hawks of the Third Republic ordered for more men to be stationed at the border. Thus, the months of April and early May saw an escalating cycle of Germany and France mobilizing more and more men as diplomatic relations broke down. While numerous other factors contributed to the fray, none was as publicly striking as notion of “troops on the border”, as noted by the famous contemporary psychologist Sigmund Freud [A]. “The more they jittered, the more men were armed, and the more everyone was angered. And afraid. A self-perpetuating cycle of destruction”.
And the fallout of these leaks would reach their height at Potsdam, when both Kaiser Wilhelm II and his fellow delegates met their Austro-Hungarian counterparts…
********************
New Palace, Potsdam, German Empire, 16 May 1906
“So, are we agreed?”
Eduard von Brasch was sure he never seen a sight so chilling.
Of course, he had seen disturbing sights over the course of his military career, but being a member of the diplomatic service meant that he was spared the path that lay for so many of his friends and subordinates. Still, he wondered whether this was a part of the Great World War itself: seeing his emperor crumble.
The meeting room of the palace was furnished to the gaudiest of tastes, yet the air seemed unnaturally cold in equal respect to the unnaturally heavy storm that poured beyond the windows. On one end of the table is the emperor of Germany itself, Wilhelm II, surrounded by a gaggle of generals, ministers, and high men. And on the other end…
Eduard has seen many emotions on his emperor’s face, but the one the monarch wore on the stiff chair was unlike anything he had yet seen: bitter distaste, tinged with resignation. Franz Joseph’s eyes stared at the florid document before him like a horrid fly, his right hand holding the signing pen like a motionless statue.
Just what additions is he having to sign? Eduard wasn’t present for the gist of the discussions – he was far too busy in the Romanian halls of diplomacy for most of it – but he had seen for himself that the German government, and the Kaiser specifically, offered to help Austria-Hungary with some high strings attached. But just two hours before, the two emperors shared a private discussion in an adjoining locked room, and Wilhelm’s reaction afterwards seemed… almost pleased, if tinged with some sort of consternation.
And that was the odd part. From what he had learned, relations between his emperor and the Kaiser were at their lowest in years, and so having the latter seem satisfied was… worrying.
I wonder if… but it can’t bethat, can it? Eduard was not blind as to what happened last year in the German Empire. The… unusual panic of last summer was a hard thing to be kept secret, and the Habsburgs themselves were far from neutral in their views on the matter, especially when the wives of the Imperial General Staff were hounding their husbands openly through the streets of Berlin for being cold to them in bed. What a disgrace; I wonder where some of them are now.
Given the rampant suicides and lynchings through the officer corps and the rank-and-file, he wondered whether some of the generals were even alive… or if the German army can be the saviour Austria-Hungary so desperately sought. No. No army could be compromised by simple hysteria for long. But with the good generals gone…
But all thoughts of this vanished from Eduard’s mind as he saw his emperor finally move. With a mechanicality that exuded hesitance, Franz Joseph slowly put the pen to paper and scrawled his name in a swish and a flick, below the paragraphs.
Eduard added his applause to the din, yet stopped early. It is done. France and Russia shall now have a new enemy. Though the paper’s paragraphs do not mention any war whatsoever between their neighbours to the east and west, Paris and St. Petersburg will not stay silent at the German Empire’s new pivot of official support, aid, and men to the Habsburgs. Closing his eyes, Eduard could almost hear the sound of stomping boots at the nearby rail station.
But with that, he couldn’t help but wonder. Given all that has happened and the… abysmal… relations between Wilhelm and his emperor, the German delegation asked for a high price for supporting Austria-Hungary. And not only that, but Eduard had a feeling that Wilhelm himself added a few strings of his own in the final hours. He wondered just how high his homeland would pay for Germany to get involved, in the end.
I hope Wilhelm’s price wouldn’t be too steep.
____________________
Notes:
Blarg. Given this update’s shortness, I should have finished and posted this piece last weekend. My apologies.
The above post is intentionally meant to be short, as to from a bridge between the first phase of the Great War (with the Patras Pact and all) and the second phase where things start to get even messier for everyone.
1. For further context into the German Empire’s queer panic, see post #1243.
[A.] Yes, Sigmund Freud exists and lives! He was born in 1856, well before Sarawak’s effects alter world history. The field of psychoanalysis that he will be involved in (and most certainly be molded by him) will be almost as OTL, though pop culture may not pivot to him as the definitive spokesman for psychology ITTL - for better or worse.
So, after weeks of painstaking work and crashing browsers full of references, may I present to you all the world of Rajahs and Hornbills in 1905!
(An unnumbered version of the map can be accessed here)
1. Canada: Just two months into the Great War, Alberta and Saskatchewan will be made into full-fledged provinces.
2. TheUnited States: Is sorta-isolationist, but for how long?
3. Chan Santa Cruz: Weak, but still fighting.
4. U.S planners: “Hmm, should the transoceanic canal be built here, or in Colombia?”
5. Venezuela: With global tensions as it is, the government is slowly thinking of settling the Essequibo Question.
6. Brazil’s Empress Isabel cares less for international geopolitics and more about the continuing civil unrest caused by the abolition of slavery.
7. Peru and Bolivia: Still getting miffed over Chile’s takeover of the Litoral, Tacna, and Arica regions. In the meanwhile, the nitrate boom is making tons of local Bolivians and Chileans to migrate there.
8. Argentina: “Should I take the Malvinas? Should I not take the Malvinas? Should I take the Malvinas...”
9. Great Britain and Ireland: Being the center of the world’s biggest empire has some perks and downsides. Unfortunately, that also means getting dragged into geopolitical squabbles abroad and in their backyard.
10. Kingdom of Spain: Rising rapidly in industry and trying to reclaim their Great Power status, though the rest of the world isn’t buying it. For what it’s worth, at least they still have a colonial empire.
11. (a) Austro-Hungarian Empire: A European mindbender, the land of the Habsburgs is simmering with autonomist and nationalist aspirations from her multi-ethnic peoples.
11. (b) The German Empire: Desires to be the hegemon of the European continent, especially under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t go down with her neighbors, most notably the-
12. -Third French Republic: Whom are still annoyed that the Germans nabbed Alsace-Lorraine. Otherwise, it has vastly expanded across Africa and has made new alliances to counter their eastern neighbor.
13. The Low Countries: Getting jittery at being squished between large nations and their politics. The Netherlands in particular is way of getting entangled, for both the mainland and their East Indies holdings. So do the Belgians.
14. Kingdom of Italy: Currently casting political webs of her own, especially in the light of what happened over in Tunisia and her neighbors. One nation that has taken their interest is the-
15. -Kingdom of Greece: Still dreaming of the Megali Idea. Still dreaming of anti-Ottomanism. The latter of which has made them some new friends in both Italy and another country-
16. -The Kingdom of Serbia: Which seeks to expand in Rumelia, but not without some allies as backup.
17. Crete: Another mindbender, this time to Athens and Kostantiniyye. A part of the Ottoman Empire, yet separately administered, the island is a keystone for the clash of Powers.
18. Go here to find cranky and disgruntled Poles!
19. Imperial Russia: Big, brash, absolutist, and strong! (or… is it?)
20. Grand Duchy of Finland: getting pissed at its autonomy being recently taken away.
21. Kingdom of Morocco: Currently feeling the pinch from French pressure. The sultan trying to get British and German protection has not helped matters.
22. Algeria (French Third Republic): Where colons are moving in and the Rights of Man are held in full (unless you’re not a Muslim évolué.)
23. Vilayet of Tunisia (Ottoman Empire): Some jokes have abounded of a region-renaming to ‘the place with too many exclaves'.
24. The Khedivate of Egypt (Ottoman Empire): Comparatively prosperous, Cairo is fast becoming a hub for new Islamic ideologies, though not everyone is happy at still being part of the Turco-Albanian regime.
25. Ethiopian Empire: Defensive and a tad militaristic, emperor Menelik II is concerned at the rising global tensions. Otherwise, he’s glad the empire still has a coast.
26. The Dervish Caliphate: Here, extreme rigorism shall be upheld! or else... every pissed-off neighbor shall invade and smite them all out of existence.
27. The Sahelian sultanates: Darfur (right), Ouaddai (middle), and Kanem-Bornu (left), are all under pressure from either righteous-feeling Europeans or righteous-feeling Dervishes. No wonder they all became military recipients of the Turks.
28. German East Africa: But thanks to those Dervishes, just about everyone in Equatorial Sudan and thereabouts are now allied with each another, even the Germans! The high army pay helps too in enticing new schutztruppe recruits.
29. Ankole: or, The Little Buffer State that Could.
30. Portuguese Africa: They had almost gotten away with their Pink Map, if it weren’t for those meddling Brits in northern Mutapa!
31. The Boer republics: After a brief war in the 1880’s, Transvaal (brown) and the Orange Free State (orange) have successfully kept themselves afloat, though they are feeling some pressure from the Cape.
32. Spanish Congo: Now with 100% more Philippine exiles and rubber barons! International outrage has made them consider using other forms of labor instead of the locals.
33. Kingdom of Benin: juuuuust managed to get itself a sweet deal with the incoming British, nabbing themselves the same rights and freedoms as the better Indian and Malay princely states. Now they have to watch out for the missionaries… and imams.
34. The Sokoto Caliphate: does not like getting boxed in from all sides.
35. The Ottoman Empire: Looks large on paper, and their surprising resilience has earned it fanboys from as far as Aceh. But with internal divisions simmering here and there, who knows if they can withstand the storm.
36. Southern Hejaz: Shh…. Stay quiet here, for the Zaidis are scheming with their Yemeni counterparts on French and Italian cash.
37. Oman: “If I stand very still… there’s a chance no one will see me.”
38. Qajar Iran: The Qajar dynasty as a whole are bewildered, unhappy, and slightly intrigued by how much the world has moved on from them. Too bad they only control Tehran and thereabouts.
39. The Caucasus: A hotbed of new industries and old conflicts, all sandwiched between three irrepressible empires.
40. The Emirate of Bukhara (a.) and Khanate of Khiva (b.): For now, they are Russian protectorates, though ‘protection’, aren’t exactly what the locals call their new overlords.
41. The Emirate of Afghanistan: Agreed to let the British handle ‘foreign affairs’, but already there are rumblings of discontent over this in Kabul.
42. British India: The pride of the Empire, and an old source of its headaches. Now with nationalism on the pile!
43. British Burma: Being annexed into British India has led to millions of Indians immigrating to the Irrawaddy basin, much to the consternation of the Burmese.
44. Kingdom of Siam: King Chulalongkorn’s gambit with Russian relations has turned fruitful, for Siam remains independent and free despite repeated French and British pressures.
45. Russian Phuket: As thanks to their diplomatic relations, the island has become the most tropical holding in the Russian Empire. Too bad it already has made some neighbors anxious, most especially-
46. -the Sultanate of Aceh: Being independent on Ottoman protection has made many locals suspicious of the Russian presence, so close to their shores. In the meanwhile, the nation’s economic recovery has attracted a slew of foreign immigrants, which has already raised a few eyebrows.
47. British Malaya: A patchwork of princely states and crown colonies make up this part of the British Empire, and they are finding the place a lot more lucrative than expected, thanks to tin and rubber.
48. Sultanate of Johor: As the last independent Malay state, Johor is trying hard to experiment with crash industrialization, though they may need to check on their minority-majority issues first.
49. Dutch East Indies: Currently, they seem peaceful, but the recent Ethical Policy has opened deep fissures within the 17,000 islands. On another note, has anyone noticed how… Polish the city of Medan is becoming?
50. Italian Borneo: Thanks to coal and oil, the region has become the unlikely crown jewels of the Italian colonial empire. Too bad they are now eyed by-
51. -the Kingdom of Sarawak: Where the Brooke family dreams of swallowing Bandar Brunei, once and for all.
52. Sulu and Zamboanga: Reduced to little more than tribal guerillas fighting in the hinterlands, the remnants of these two sultanates are pursued endlessly by Spanish troops and indigenous forces.
53. The Spanish Philippines: Has grown to be the richest and most vibrant territory in all of Southeast Asia. Just don’t mind the extreme inequality.
54. Qing China: The Empire of A Million Issues, the imperial court reformists are desperately perusing modernization to deal with current realities and maintain some sort of cohesion. The rise in weird religious groups persecuting Chinese Christians are not making things easier.
55. Empire of Japan: Rising faster than ever, Japan yearns to flex her power over her neighbors and on the world stage, starting with a certain peninsula called…
56. …the Korean Empire, whose government has erred to Russian influence in an attempt to just be free, dammit!
57. Qing Manchuria: The world’s biggest (and oddest) Free Trade Zone, the rise of Russian enterprises here has induced a swell of Chinese Christians to move in, much to Qing concerns.
58. Mongolian herdsman: “Has anyone noticed how… odd some of the settlers are becoming?”
59. Italian Papua: "We actually have a colony over there?”
60. German New Guinea: Otherwise known as Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, the colony is barely explored and inhabited, save for the outer islands whom are headed by Emma Coe, the Queen of the South Seas.
61. Federation of Australia: Newly federated, Australia has been getting reeeeeally anxious at being surrounded by different neighbors. Just don’t check the bookstores if you are Chinese or Japanese.
62. New Caledonia: The jail cell of the French Empire. If you’re lucky, you can find Algerian rabble-rousers working alongside French anarchists.
63. Yap Island: remarkably, this little land is also inhabited by a White Rajah-ish figure, David O’Keefe, whom has plans in continuing his lineage here.
64. The Kingdom of Hawaii’s fear of being annexed is slowly giving its royal family some dreadful nightmares.
I couldn't find any other image that 'fit' someone of his character.