Of Rajahs and Hornbills: A timeline of Brooke Sarawak

[Al-numbers]

Theresian Military Academy, Wiener Neustadt, Austro-Hungarian Empire, December 17th 1906​

Lance-corporal Müller was aghast. “You must be bluffing.”

“I am not! This is one of our best designs!” Alfred Ramberg, his Austrian counterpart, replied as he smiled on the fresh snow. His joy was a definite contrast to the metal plates he was wearing, which seemed to flare out in certain places and made him look like a cross between a knight and a mad, middle-aged ballerina.

Müller could only palm his face in embarrassment. After five hundred thousand Marks as a loan, this is what we getting out from it!? “And what would happen if an enemy spots you in the snow and aims in a second?”

“Aha, watch this! This does seem clunky, but actually…” And to Müller’s surprise, the metal plates seem to buckle and reform as the wearer turned his body flat on the earth. “Its collapsible! The hinges are at the exact places to give out full movement, and now the cover forms a barrier against any oncoming bullets. Do you see that hole there?”

Müller nodded, not wanting to give out how this suspicions regarding the small hole in the side plate and… bathroom problems.

“Now, if I can just do this…” and with a speed that indicated the steel of a soldier’s training, Alfred pushed out his rifle barrel through the opening and pulled the trigger. “And with the fringed skirt up there, my eyes are also protected as I see where I am aiming!”

“Maybe so, but what will happen once the plate joints rust?” Müller’s eyebrows are still raised in disbelief.

“Well, what is oil for?”

“And where do you think that will come from? Fiume? Galicia? Hamburg!?”

Alfred open his mouth, only to close it after a second. That’s right. Oil-producing Galicia is gone, and Fiume is still under siege. To mass-produce such ‘bullet-proof’ armour will only mean more strain on German ports, and with Germany now at war…

Müller could already feel the beginnings of a headache. If this gets out, our enemies shall flay us with our embarrassment. [1]

********************

André Barnard, “When the Politicians Fight”; the Diplomatic Dance of the Great War, (Tully Street Press: 2001)

Mention the Patras Pact, and the mind conjures images of sparkling wine and dancing girls, or romantic images of delegates standing in unison, swearing themselves to aid one another in some ancient parable of an ancient Athenian pledge.

But mention its opposite counterpart, and the most colourful scene the mind conjures is that of dour kings and ambassadors hastily scribbling their names on equally dour forms in London.

Post-war nostalgia and the celluloid industry of Italy and the United States are partly to blame for this difference in diplomatic glamour, but said glamour was built on a few kernels of solid truth; the anti-Patras empires didn’t exactly see a bright future on the horizon – especially so for Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire – and the formation of a solid alliance bloc sent these governments scrambling as fast as possible to form a strong counter-bloc. It didn’t exactly help that the weather was uncooperative, with an unusually wet summer darkening the skies of Potsdam and London when the German, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and British delegates finally assembled.

The new alliance between Vienna and Berlin also added to complications. When the Potsdam Agreement was signed on the 16th of May between Kaiser Wilhelm and Franz Joseph [2], it established Germany as the chief benefactor as her ambassadors extracted numerous concessions from their Austro-Hungarian guests. When all the aforementioned empires sent their delegates to London, the Germans expected themselves to be the linchpin and leader of the new anti-Patras alliance. This did not go down well with the British, whom wanted themselves to lead the new bloc instead. As the days rolled on, the halls of Kensington Palace in central London became the scene of heated arguments as British and German ambassadors clashed over war aims, financial loans, and military responsibilities.

In the end, it took the combined forces of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian delegates to steer the conversation back to track. On the 12th of June 1906, all four delegations finally agreed to aid each other militarily, economically, and financially against the Patras Pact. In an effort to make their alliance seem better, British Prime Minister Henry Asquith spoke out in a subsequent interview, “We four Powers, thus agreed, have matched the designers of Patras with our own great pact: the Kensington Alliance of the European Continent!”

However, a printing error in the Daily Telegraph capitalized the ‘F’ to create, “We Four Powers”, birthing a new label that is both shorter than the official namesake and glamorously poor when compared to its counterpart. Despite numerous attempts to correct it, the international press (especially in the United States) latched on to the mistake, forever making the ‘Four Powers’ an uninspiring term to denote the British, Germans, Ottomans, and Austro-Hungarians…

********************

Charlie MacDonald, Strange States, Weird Wars, and Bizzare Borders, (weirdworld.postr.com, 2014)

After the Potsdam Agreement of mid-spring, many Viennese politicians expected their new ally to immediately send them fresh troops by the hundreds of thousands to wallop Russia, or to the Carpathian ranges to shore up the Dual Monarchy’s lines. So you can just imagine their shock when Germany, in its first acts, decided to act against France first!

And thus was revealed Concession no. 1 of Potsdam: Germany places their own interests above Austria-Hungary’s.

To be sure, the Russian Empire was a serious military threat, but most of those troops were banging the faraway Carpathians all while 2 French divisions camped at the border of German Alsace-Lorraine. Oh, and Paris was determined to get the place back and steamroll into Baden and Württemberg, come hell or high water! So, it did not take atomic science to see where Berlin should set priorities first, and it wasn’t until 6 days later that the first army corps were mobilized in East Prussia and the first regiments travelled to Austria.

And thus was revealed Concession no. 2 of Potsdam: Germany selects how many troops to send.

Because let’s face it, if you have a border that stretches from the Baltic to Silesia, you’ll need as many men you can save. The first ‘shipment’ – if we can say that, of German troops to the Austrian Carpathians only numbered around 10,000 men, which was faaaaaaaaar too low to shore up the mountainous defenses. Despite the haranguing of the Habsburgs and the Viennese Reichstag, there will never be more than 200,000 Imperial German troops serving in Austria-Hungary throughout the Great War.

But in this concession hides a silver lining. Remember the queer panic that struck Germany last year? [3] Some of the disgraced officers and generals (or at least, the ones that survived) quickly found a way to potentially redeem themselves and ran pell-mell to be inducted into the Austro-Hungarian Common Army. Now, to say that they were accepted is… not the right word. In one example: when the former Imperial General of Infantry, Kuno von Moltke, tried to get inducted, he was instead laughed at and was thrown tutus by Austrian officers, “…for the sole purpose of degrading me. To force me to wear them and dance around to their pleasure, at my abasement.” Really, his journals were a horror show of how he – and his fellow disgraced army men – were treated by their new superiors.

But, queerness aside, their experience and intelligence was of more worth than anything Austria-Hungary had, and quite a few of them managed to shake off their harassment and reclaim their dignity – whether undeservingly or unintentionally lost – under the Habsburg flag.

Kuno von Moltke: “To those whom have spat and hurled at me, I have lived. And oh, how I lived.”
​

Maybe it was this, among other factors, that helped Austria to regain parts of Galicia.

Besides men, there was also the question of supplies and cash. Since I’m not too good with material goods, I’ll handle the cash first. Austro-Hungarian finances in 1906 were, to put it mildly, a hot mess. Their military budget had transfigured into a monster that swallowed imperial finances and government loans to churn out stinking piles of debt. Public finances were already being cannibalized as the Beer Consumption tax of that April showed (and the wild reactions to it. Seriously, look it up). Still, it wasn’t enough.

And thus was revealed Concession no. 3 of Potsdam: Germany holds the purse strings on their loans.

Despite pleas for a ‘Blank Check’ agreement, no one less than Kaiser Wilhelm himself put his foot down. Rumor has it that he lambasted several diplomats for even proposing such an idea, shouting at one point, “You want me to pay for their failures?!”. Thank goodness then that the German Chancellor was more conciliatory. Eventually, the final proposal did allow for some war funding for the Habsburgs, but with a sting: loans of several hundred thousand Goldmarks shall be granted to Vienna and Budapest, but set at eye-watering interest rates to be paid after the end of fighting.

In an ironic way, it would be these high-interest rates set by the Berlin Reichsbank that would prove more consequential to Austria-Hungary’s long-term survival, more so than cold machinery or hot ammunition…

********************

Issac McNamara, The Great War: An Overview, (Cambridge University Press; 1999)

…Undoubtedly, the grimmest depictions of the Great War in Western Europe came from the Franco-German border.

The buildup of troops on both sides meant that the resulting carnage was nothing short of catastrophic for the border region, with clashes breaking out before the ink in Potsdam was barely dry. With machine guns and mass-shelling a grievous impediment, trenches and foxholes were quickly dug by the combatants to protect themselves, thus creating the iconic wretchedness of trench life. Privation, disease, and the overhanging dread of death stalked the mud walls and bare rooms, where shell-shocked boys went so far as to injure themselves to escape active service. Conditions were no less alleviated by the gigantic rats that knawed-off anything edible they could find, human or otherwise.

It is no wonder then that the ‘veterans literature’ that sprouted afterwards saw the misery of the trenches as synonymous with hell.

And for all their sacrifices, the prize of Alsace-Lorraine became a divided land. By mid-July, French and German forces occupied around 50% of the border region, and the ratio would remain so for the rest of 1906. Successful offensives became rarer and more of a fantasy with contemporary capabilities, though the German high command tried several night offensives that only resulted in wayward soldiers stumbling on ruined earth in the dark into enemy hands. By early autumn, desperate pleas were made by both sides to the Low Countries to open their borders, while a race was on to find ways of circumnavigating trench defences.

In the east, the carnage was no less brutal, yet the offensives were far more mobile. After the success of pushing back Austria-Hungary to the Carpathians, major sections of the imperial Russian army quickly swung north to take Königsberg and Danzig, only to be met from behind by a wall of German infantry and artillery whom catapulted themselves from Pozen and Silesia. The Russian advance was further slowed down by volunteer battalions which mushroomed all across eastern Germany, picking off stray units and supplies. The opposing forces reached their culmination in the battles of Bromberg and the Masurian Lakes, which saw over 400,000 men on both sides engaging in offensives and counter-offensives throughout the summer of 1906.

Though the Russian army had accomplished itself greatly in the Great War till then, her generals quickly realized the mistake they had made. Powerful in manpower though their forces may be, the addition of the German Empire as an Austro-Hungarian ally added over 900 kilometres of new borders to patrol. Furthermore, a series of miscalculations by Russian generals saw catastrophic losses for them by the autumn, resulting in German forces expelling Russian ones completely from the German Empire by early November. However, each land gained came at a cost of German lives which rose so high, the newspapers of Berlin stopped reporting casualty numbers in the east by Christmas.

Such losses were further compounded by the turmoil of the Carpathian theatre. The addition of German troops and disgraced ‘queer’ officers into Austro-Hungarian alpine defences did little, at first. But as the battles of the German north soaked up available men and supplies, and as the qualitative nature of the defenders increased, the scales began to tip. In mid-September, Austro-Hungarian forces in partnership with pro-Habsburg Polish partisans began to advance piecemeal down the mountains, aided by Russian disarray over the battles of eastern Prussia. By December 7th 1906, the advance was serious enough that the Russian imperial command grew wary of an entrapment by the German north and the Austrian south, and thus ordered a slow ‘fighting withdrawal’ of troops to the Vistula River.

Nearly 100,000 Russian soldiers shall be prisoners of war by the end of 1906. The combined German and Austro-Hungarian losses were almost as high.
​

The Balkans also saw some changes after Germany’s involvement, though the effects would be delayed until late autumn. German aid and the costly victories in the north provided enough material relief for the Honvéd in their advance into Serbia, though Belgrade still eluded capture as 1907 dawned. More consequentially, the Hungarian threat forced the Serbian government to withdraw several divisions from Ottoman Bosnia and Rumelia, allowing Ottoman forces to strike some important victories against Serbian forces and local partisans. Perhaps the only places where Germany’s involvement meant little was in the Alps and the Adriatic basin, where Italian forces still held Fiume under siege while Albania, Dalmatia, and parts of Bosnia remained in their palm…

…In naval matters, the inclusion of Germany was the miracle of God the British needed. After being hounded and chased across the globe by flighty French and Italian gunboats, and after months of holding back to defend the British Isles and transatlantic shipping routes, the arrival of the Kaiserliche Marine seemed miraculous. After the Four Powers conference, German battleships quickly aided the Royal Navy in blockading the northern French coast and interdict the Baltic sea from Russian forces and shipping. In the Atlantic, their assistence was essential in safeguarding naval convoys travelling from Canada, whose ecomony grew bigger and bigger from supplying the British Empire and her allies in their time of need. The British and German colonies of West Africa also benefitted from more relievement, though it also led to a nasty spate of hit-and-run attacks by the disgruntled French navy on docked vessels.

And the German Empire’s involvement could not come too soon. The split priorities of the Royal Navy generated an opportunity for unaffiliated nations to seize British possessions, some of which was acted upon. Most infamous of this was the short occupation of the Falkland Islands in the summer of 1906. On May 29th, the Argentine Republic led an invasion force of 900 men to seize the windswept lands to “complete the formation of the nation”, as the then-President José Pérez Uriburu [4] proclaimed. Fuelled by reports from French spies and diplomats, he banked on the Royal Navy being too overextended to force a counterattack, which backfired spectacularly when a combined Anglo-German naval force pummelled the minuscule Argentine navy to the seafloor the very next month, retaking the islands.

The Argentines scrambled to draft a peace treaty before the guns even cooled.

Another, more subtle, effect of German involvement was the opening of naval ports by her fellow allies to the German navy and merchant marine. While this was considered standard procedure, it would mark the dawn of a new commercial power to rival the British, albeit not without some odd occurrences…

********************

Outskirts of Kuching, Kingdom of Sarawak, 25th September 1906​

Karl knew the rulings, but he couldn’t help his eyes wandering around.

It was just so… different. Everything is so different, especially over the last months. From the stormy tides of the Atlantic and the Argentines, to around the tip of Africa, then up into Madagascar and India of which he had only seen in pictures, he could never imagined his choice to enlist in the navy could lead this far.

And now I’m here, in the land of the White Rajahs.

As his fellow men marched in formation, following behind the captain and the two ladies – whom were undoubtedly of the storied Brooke family, Karl let his eyes glance a second or two at the crowd beside the road. The nearby locals had crammed themselves to and fro to better view the German newcomers, fresh on shore leave after an arduous journey chasing French and Italian ships across the Indian Ocean. The ports of India were colourful enough, but the sights and sounds of Kuching were simply too much for him to just keep his gaze still.

Thank God I’m not the only one, though. Despite the official formation, Karl could see his fellow sailors peering this way and that in quick glances. Though the tropical climate was as hot and mucky as the naturalists’ said, Kuching’s farms and shophouses were a world onto their own, with bamboo bridges soaring over streams paddled with cockerels and longboats. On the street, porcelain and lacquerware sellers from China and Japan haggled with local men and women wearing cloth caps and delicate head-veils. Small Indian children peered around their elders’ legs to look at Karl’s procession, and – to his inward delight – around everywhere were the bare-chested and noticeable forest-folk of Borneo, with simple styles and inked skin that wrapped from the knees up to their very fingertips.

Karl wondered if they have a special meaning.

As with many adventurous boys, Karl had grown up hearing the fantastical tales of the family that founded the Sarawakian adventurer-state. In the cheap prints and serial stories he and others read back home, the Brookes were men whom wrestled with tigers, fought with head-hunters, and danced with native girls with flowers in their hair. Nowadays, he knew they were exaggerations, but seeing them with his own eyes brought a clarity to Karl’s mind. A strange mix of fascination and curiosity.

I want to hear your stories.

“Halt!”

The group stopped. They had arrived before what seemed like a half-completed pillar, bedecked in scaffolding and the surface seemingly etched with swirls and whorls that Karl guessed were native motifs. With a simple solemnity, the two ladies – the widowed dowager and the princess royal – explained the structure’s nature to the captain, and what little English Karl learned was enough for him to discern their meaning. A memorial to their dead? But don’t these people hang their heads from their homes? Unless… this is for their unknown dead, whom they couldn’t find? [5]

Standing still before the unfinished pillar. Karl was struck by how much Sarawak had suffered for its actions.

Now moving away, he heard a few more snippets of his captain’s conversation with the Brooke ladies. As the words, “shell shock,” and “Rajah,” were said to the women’s astonished faces, a thought struck his mind.

Where is the new Rajah anyway?

Spoiler: Sarawak's Great War Memorial, today.

********************

Spoiler: The Great War alliance map, circa end-1906

********************​

Notes:

First, happy new year everyone. Second, yes I know the oath-painting technically depicts Romans in salute, not Greeks. But when you’re trying to evoke some romantic notion of a fictional alliance, that’s probably the most famous painting there is of such a thing. Third (and yes, this is an edit), the monument is IOTL the Heroes Monument of Kuching.

[1] Oh yes, these types of body armor really did exist and were used in some fashion during WWI in real-life! The exact model that is being worn in the picture, however, was more built for research purposes and it is unclear whether the above armor was actually mass-produced during the war.

[2] See the previous post for more info.

[3] See this post for more info on the queer panic Germany endured.

[4] The ITTL familial relative of José Evaristo Uriburu (the Argentine president who participated as arbiter in the peace conference of the War of the Pacific) and José Félix Uriburu (the Lieutenant General whom overthrew the Argentine government in a coup during the Great Depression). Needless to say, the family is just as (divergently) political here.

[5] Ahh ignorance, how do I not miss you. For the record, Dayak tribes across Borneo differ very greatly in funeral rites and in paying respect to the dead. The Bidayuh – depending on the tribe, time, and place – would either cremate their dead, bury them, or simply abandon them in the forest with minimal ceremony. The Iban mostly opt for burying their dead in shallow graves, though a number of Iban tribes also build a funerary structure called a sungkup on the grave to represent the longhouse in the afterworld. The Punan Bah of Bintulu and the Upper Rajang erect funerary columns from tree trunks to store their chief’s bodies within, while the Kadazan-Dusun of Sabah have a myriad of funerary practices that include all the above, although some tribes also opt to store their dead in caves.

 

[Al-numbers]

Kampot, Kingdom of Cambodia (occupied), 17 February 1906​

Private Bryant Magrath was bored.

Detestably, incessantly, stupefyingly bored.

He did not expect this. When he joined the call for enlistment in the Expeditionary Force, he thought he would be fighting at the dunes of Arabia, or the Mediterranean, or even at the thousand-islands of the southern Pacific! Instead, all he got was a passing skirmish in Saigon and a march to this lowly fishing village in some god-forsaken corner of Cambodia, only to be told he’ll be left behind to guard the place with a few others while everyone else hiked up further inland and into the mountainous north. Lucky bastards.

Worse, the fishing village he’s tasked with guarding was practically just that, a village. No lights, no clubs, not even the raucous pubs or food stalls that plied the roads of Singapore and Johor. Just muddy collections of houses plopped beside a few boat piers, save for some pretty brick buildings mainly staffed by boring clerks and crowded coffeeshops.

And above all, the local girls aren’t even gorgeous!

Standing guard beside one of the piers, Bryant’s only form of entertainment was to watch the new British vessels coming and going to this dreary place. Since this is the only Cambodian port in deep water – at least that’s what he was told – the British have signed an agreement with the country’s king to build a railway from here to the capital, and develop the place to make it a good port. A proper port.

But can they make it quicker, please?

Then, he spotted something new. A small vessel had come around the bend, and it flew a strange flag; what looked like some red-and-black cross on a field of yellow. As it drew closer, Bryant spotted some strange… abnormalities about the ship, as if someone built some extra rooms or closed spaces above decks. As the ship neared to a nearby pier, he saw what looked like children coming out and handling stuff on deck, tossing ropes to several men and women whom came out after them.

Wait, don’t tell me they live on there!?

As the boat made itself the latest moored craft of Kampot, some more men are now exiting from the interior to haul crates and supplies to and fro. With the high sun, Bryant clearly spotted some of the newcomers bearing strange tattoos on their arms and torsos. But the tattoos are of an odd sort; spiky whorls and spiral patterns, not like the usual characters and figures he had seen back in Singapore.

He quietly made a mental note of eying them for the rest of their stay. The boring day quite suddenly turned a lot more… interesting.

____________________

Notes:

Work and life have sapped much of my energy as of late, but I am writing the new update. To whet all your appetites for the moment, here’s a mini-interlude; anyone who delves a bit into the timelime will recall how some Sama-Bajau families are forming trade partnerships with Sarawakian Dayaks. In other words, what Bryant Magrath is noticing is an economic evolution of a regional kingdom in progress.

 

[Al-numbers]

Ulani Keopraseuth, The Years of Foreign Lead: Indochina (Anh Duc; 2018)

…As 1906 dawned, the British slowly realized they may have underestimated Indochina.

Though Cochinchina was pacified in relatively short order, the colonies of Annam and Tonkin still boiled with revolt. The arrival of the British was never really welcomed by the sceptical locals – whom were already burned by the previous French – and the mountainous interior lent well for guerrilla forces and bandits. The arrival of the eccentric emperor Thành Thái himself into a peasant army boosted the reputation of the agitators and before long, thousands pledged themselves into the royalist ‘Restoration Army’ (though some groups used that as a cover for banditry), with the intent of forcing out the new arrivals, as the emperor put it in a decree, “till they run back towards the sea!”

The result was a continuous guerrilla conflict that paralyzed Annam for much of 1906. The British-assembled Annamese Expeditionary Force consisted of only around 600 men, of which most were actually Indian in origin. With such low numbers across such a vast hinterland, effective control was reduced to the French-built coastal railways that stretched across some lengths of the colony, with sporadic calls to the Royal Navy for aid when severely threatened. Wildcat attacks struck any patrol that dared to climb inland, while local villagers gave ample food, supplies, and information to the entrenched rebels.

At Tonkin, the situation was worse. In the mountains, rebel groups quickly established connections with smugglers in Qing China and thus insulated themselves from any dearth in supplies. In the northeast, the Yên Thế district became the polestar for a revived rebellion led by local peasants and feudal lords, whom had already resisted French forces for over a decade before the Great War. While Hanoi and the Red River basin eventually folded into British control, the western and northern highlands remained dangerous up till the midsummer.

But as time went on, cracks began to appear on the rebels’ façade. In Annam, the runaway emperor began to act strangely in private and in public, first requesting for an all-women troop of guards for himself and then asking for out-of-season fruits and dishes. Soon, it was clear that some mental disorder was manifesting within the monarch, whom never truly adapted well to rebel life in the mountains. [A] The source of this “internal affliction”, as the British would call it, is still a controversial topic among historians and nationalists, but it can be said that Thành Thái’s erraticness led him to be slowly sidelined by rebel leaders, whom always saw him as a simple prop to legitimize themselves.

It also did not help that much of the rebel forces began to clash with the other inhabitants of Annam’s mountains: the Degar. Made up of a diverse mix of indigenous peoples whom have inhabited the land for centuries, the “people of the mountains” – as named so by the French – were traditionally seen by the Annamese as a foreign ‘Other’ that could not be trusted or accepted. And thus, acceptable to pillage and plunder. It wasn’t long before a significant portion of the Restoration Army was diverted to tamp down the increasingly violent conflicts that began to affect the central and southern highlands...

British photograph of two Degar men and the remains of a skinned water buffalo, circa 1906. It is these perceptions of relative plenty that led the Annamese rebels to plunder Degar villages.​

Meanwhile, the Annamese Expeditionary Force began to receive reinforcements from Malaya and India, as well as recruit locals to further expand control into the mountains. In the capital of Huế, the new British administration enthroned yet another Nguyen prince to mark “a fresh start”, as well as lowering some taxes and repealing some of the worst colonial laws; in effect, using a combination of carrot-and-stick methods to sway peasants and Degars to support the government. By August, the Restoration Army was on the retreat.

Still, it wouldn’t be until early 1907 that the end came for the emperor and his peasant army. The easing of the winter monsoon coupled with food shortages and increased British presence finally tipped the scales, and the Restoration Army’s makeshift capital of Khe Sanh fell in a titanic battle that left thousands of peasants and troops dead. Emperor Thành Thái himself was captured attempting to escape the city (covered in paper charms, no less) and would later be permanently exiled to the Seychelles, but his spirit of defiance would eclipse his eccentricities and bandit groups would continue to invoke his name well into the 20th century…

…For Tonkin, the end would be much more muted and grinding. British reinforcements from India were also received, yet the conflict would became one of piecemeal progress against well-supplied enemies. The fact that Tonkinese rebels can smuggle supplies from Qing China made them much harder to dislodge; often, British forces would set out to a village or district, deal with whatever they had found there, set up a garrison presence for some time, and then move on, hoping that their actions were enough. As such, the pacification of the colony would continue long after the end of the Great War…

But it was also this problem that led to a peculiar – and controversial – experiment conducted by the British: population relocation. Taking a leaf from the conflicts of Europe and Africa, the new administration in Hanoi began enacting measures that entailed forcibly moving villagers away from mountainous strongholds. The public outcry that arose from this quickly put an end to the practice, yet it would be one that would be sporadically considered, and sometimes done, over the course of British Indochina…

********************

Ethan Huynh, The History of Laos: 1900-2000, (Aesngsavang: 2005)

No one expected the War of the Insane to catapult Laos into the 20th century.

In truth, the British had not prepared anything concrete for the mountainous colony. Cobbled together from three separate kingdoms, the Protectorate of Laos was the most underdeveloped state in French Indochina. To Singapore and India, it was a place barely of worth and its deposition was mainly done to prevent an inland French base of resistance from coalescing. With the surrender of the French Governor-General at Vientiane, it seemed their mission was accomplished.

But the British never realized how much their foes’ fall released the pent-up tensions of the peasantfolk and the mountain tribes. At Champasak to the south, a man named Ong Noi – modern consensus consider this a false name – proclaimed himself as a Phu Mi Boun (Person of Buddhist Merit) and launched a religious rebellion to create a theocratic state. In Luang Prabang, local elites quickly began haranguing the British for the reinstatement of the opium trade. Peasant farmers everywhere started to ignore their tax dues, even to official Lao collectors. And in the northwest, the Hmong people of the mountains rose up to carve their own homeland, led by a charismatic man called Pa Chay Vue.

Thus was born the War of the Insane; a web of separate conflicts that set the mountains of Laos ablaze. From the banks of the Mekong to the borders of Tonkin, the 500-strong British expeditionary force quickly found themselves overwhelmed in grasping a sense of order. Worse, the lack of future aims for the colony forced the British commander to side with the elite court at Luang Prabang by default, which caused enormous outrage among the peasantry whom initially hoped for the best, yet now see the British as little more than their former French occupiers.

But what made the war truly legendary was the proliferation of gunpowder firearms among the rebels. The Hmong people of north-northeast Laos were no stranger to tribal wars, yet their proximity to China and the mountainous Indochinese trade routes had gifted them with the extraordinary knowledge of gunpowder making, simple manufacturing, and barrelled weaponry. When the French and British began asserting themselves in the mountains, it didn’t take long for these ideas to merge together. Using local deposits of sulphur, charcoal, saltpetre, and metal, Hmong smiths quickly began crafting carbon-copies of rifles and matchlocks before finally striking with the iconic Tsiv (Fierce) musket, capable of inflicting accurate damage at a great distance.

Still shot of a Hmong musket from the Russian documentary, ‘The War of The Insane’, circa 2000.
​

And they were produced by the thousands. Craftworks hidden in mountain camps continuously pumped out firearms and gunpowder while runners dashed to and fro to trade them with other rebel groups, whom sought them for their effectiveness. In fact, the proliferation of gunpowder firearms was so rapid, nearly all major rebellions in Laos were using them by mid-1906, much to the shock and horror of the British. They were baffled at how these peasants and mountain tribes were able to access such weaponry, and an investigation was even launched from Hong Kong on whether Qing China was honest in having no intentions in Laos. In short, to the people whom saw their weaponry as superior, the thought that locals and indigenous inferiors could best them in firearms was – well, insane.

In the meanwhile, calls for reinforcements were bleated out to all nearby forces, yet it was Siam whom surprised everyone by answering it. King Chulalongkorn and his ministers had quietly observed the escalation of the Great War from his very doorstep, and though they were thankful to the British of ousting the troublesome French at the east, they weren’t in the mood for Siam to be surrounded by British colonies.

A communique was swiftly sent to the Bangkok’s British embassy that Siam could intervene militarily and relieve the expeditionary force, yet demanded the territory be declared a neutral and independent state under joint Anglo-Siamese influence as recompense…

___________________

Notes:

Well, it took a while, but the Indochina update is finally here! Overall, I’m not particularly happy with how this turned out, especially the Laotian part which feels a bit bare, uncomplicated, and not fleshed out than Annam and Tonkin, when in all rights it should be the opposite. But in the end, I think it’s better for something be finished rather than for it to be perfect. And yes, the shot of the Hmong musket is from the Rare Earth video, I admit.

In one notable instance, all the information on this update can be referenced back to post# 1434.

[A] Emperor Thành Thái was known to have an erratic personality in real life and may even have a mental disorder, though to what degree was he 'sound of mind' is still heavily disputed today. French and Vietnamese sources are veeeerry biased in discussing his mental illness, with the former seeing him as a sometimes violent puppet-ruler, while the latter portrays the emperor as feigning insanity in order to divert French attention from his pro-nationalist leanings.

 

[Al-numbers]

Sibu, Kingdom of Sarawak, 15 June 1906​

The docks looked livelier than it had ever been, and that uneased Jilang.

He made a few more adjustments and allowed his men to cast the ropes. Walking out onto the open deck, the Melanau captain quickly noted how many other ships and boats were docked alongside the warehouses; there were the traditional sampans, cockerels, and Dayak prahus all filled with the usual hauls and goods and chatter amongst their occupants. But there were also the big boats, the large boats, with sails and metals and gigantic odd engines that belch out foul-smelling smoke, all above large underbellies that can hold incredible loads. And from his place, it seemed far more dockworkers were attentive to those hulks.

But why so many? The war up north is already over. There’s no more need for emergency transports or food hauls.

Putting the uneasiness aside, Jilang went back to work. His small boat will soon filled with sacks of sago flour and the starch will be very profitable if sold to the right buyers. Climbing up onto the pier, he began to walk towards his usual warehouse when a group of dockworkers strolled past, all in line. Normally, such as sight would be uninteresting for him, but for two things: they were all carrying shoulder-poles, and the baskets hanging from them were filled to the brim with white bricks.

“Tumpan Taniya!” He cried out in Malay pidgin to one of them at the end of the line. “What are those bricks you are carrying about?”

The dockworder – Chinese, if severely browned by the work and sun – looked a tad addled, but then exclaimed, “Getah perca, this is! Very valuable stuff! All the Omputeh are buying them for lots of money!” before re-joining the line.

Gutta-percha? Jilang thought, looking on. Why would the Europeans want such a thing? And why now? Unless…

His eyes widened. Could it be? Everyone knows certain tree saps can be transformed into an incredible variety of goods, but gutta-percha is most valuable if they are congealed into insulation, or handles for weapons. Indeed, how many blowpipe grips and cutting handles from Sarawak and beyond – from the smallest daggers to the greatest of swords – are made or furnished from congealed rubber?

And if the Europeans are buying them in such masses, that would mean…

As he looked out at the workers, hunched over by the bricks of rubber carried on their backs, making their way to the large ships, Jilang shuddered. He didn’t want to imagine what kind of great war the white peoples are waging against.

********************

Anton Kumat Rodriguez, Bezoars, Smoke, and Merchant-Raiders: The Historical Economy of Sarawak and Sabah (Journal of Asiatic Studies, 1995)

…When the call to arms was raised for Sabah’s conquest, thousands of Malays and Dayaks answered it, leaving behind their lands and farms which were entrusted to family members, neighbours, and friends for safekeeping.

For the local economy, the loss of many agricultural hands was uncommon but not unprecedented. The tribal wars of old often involved most, if not all men in a community to leave their fields behind, and the decades-long expansion of Sarawak were often spearheaded by the Brookes waging punitive expeditions with thousands of local men, young and old, by their side. As such, local customs have long since adapted to a prolonged loss of an agricultural and artisanal workforce with the remaining men, women, and children taking care of things. But the Great War was different. The conquest of Italian Sabah and the fallout of the Ancur lasted far longer and was fought bloodier than any Sarawakian war campaign yet seen, straining traditional harvesting customs to the limit.

As a result, the kingdom reported subpar rice harvests for the remainder of 1905 until at least 1908 from all the casualties and missing people, which created a noticeable drop in rice tax collections for the government. The loss of so much agricultural manpower was exacerbated by the economic disruption brought by the Italian and French navies across the region’s seas and oceans, especially with their targeting of cargo vessels. The price of rice in Sarawakian markets jumped to over twice that of normal levels, leading the government to enact emergency price controls and lowering rice tax rates.

And it wasn’t just the rice. Market values of lumber, gold, silver, coal, and crude petroleum all jumped throughout Sarawak as the Great War increased demands amongst belligerents while straining supplies amongst producers. The local timber industry came under intense scrutiny as Dayaks and Resident-Councillors made sure local companies didn't fell too many trees close to indigenous villages. Conversely, the value of cash crops like pepper and gambier dropped like a stone due to global belt-tightening, which resulted in dozens of bankruptcies amongst Sarawakian Kangchu spice-planters. On the opposite end, mining investors saw themselves becoming richer by the month as the monopolistic Borneo Company Ltd. recorded their greatest net profits yet from their control of local gold and coal seams.

But perhaps the biggest winner of the disruption was gutta-percha. Sarawak has a long and storied history with traditional rubber-tapping, yet the gutta-percha boom of the 1850s to the 1880’s saw the palaquium and dichopsis tree species facing local extinction due to overharvesting. The problem was so dire that the late Rajah Charles ordered the planting of several palaquium seedlings in the Astana gardens and gave them to Chinese Methodist settlers in order to save a potential revenue stream.

Now, the trees are fully mature and the settlers of the Rajang Delta took the opportunity to the full as rubber prices quadrupled over the course of the Great War. A new method of tapping was recently discovered by botanists in neighbouring Singapore that allowed the trees to still live afterwards [1.], and this was utilized to the full as the settlers tapped the trees and sold them to German, Dutch, and British middlemen. The sap was then coagulated and purified through petroleum-based liquids [2.] (mostly supplied from Miri) before being exported to Australia, India, and beyond.

Rare photograph of Christine Shew Wen, a second-generation child of Qing Methodist immigrants to Sarawak, tapping gutta-percha rubber in Sibu, circa 1908.​

Besides being used as supplementary agents, crude petroleum formed the second most valuable export for wartime Sarawak. After the takeover of Brunei and the Seria oilfeilds, the British and Austrian consuls quickly made hasty agreements with Kuching to export as much of the raw crude as possible to their warring empires, for Sarawakian gain. Despite the turmoil of the South China Sea, the following months and years saw rapid growth of the local infrastructure as new oil derricks and pumpjacks were installed, with an accompanying swell of foreign workers to service the area. As passages to India were deemed too dangerous and Sarawakian law forbids local labour exploitation, the bulk of these skilled workers originally came from Dutch-ruled Eastern Borneo, which already embarked on its own nascent petroleum industry around the same time as Sarawak’s [3.]. Later, men from the Philippines and Indochina would be recruited into the endeavour, forever changing the local demographic and political scene...

…Another side-effect of the war economy was the sheer explosion of Sarawakian trade to the rest of the world. For the past few decades, the kingdom’s indigenous peoples have slowly opened themselves to the fast-paced nature of global trade, with the Iban subgroup in particular gaining notoriety for their search of foreign luxuries. By 1905, a native-based trading network has emerged that strung across the local seas, with Singapore and Malaya on one end to western Dutch Borneo and Philippine Paragua on the other, mostly carried on the backs of the Sama-Bajau. With their knack for the seas, it became more and more common for land-based Dayaks to form partnerships with Sama-Bajau families to export local salt, sago, rattan, forestry wares, and semi-artisanal goods in exchange for foreign rice, silk, rare goods, porcelain, and lacquerware.

The Great War altered this paradigm. In the initial months, locally-headed Sarawakian trade buckled as foreign navies went on the prowl across the surrounding waters, though the need for supplies in the Sabahan theatre kept many traders otherwise occupied. But after the fall of Italian Sabah and the pacification of the local seas, the conditions were ripe for an export boom as regional demand for basic goods soared across mainland and maritime Southeast Asia. Iban, Melanau, Kadazandusun, and Sama-Bajau captains pioneered new routes that took them to Singgora, Mindanao, the Mekong delta and beyond. Under the watchful eye of the Royal Navy, the potential for greater trade – particularly for salt, sago, and traditionally-tapped wild rubber – enticed many to sail beyond their horizons. By 1906, a small trading community had coalesced in Zamboanga while Sarawakian ships had begun to dock at Cambodian shores.

Of course, not all of these new changes were seen positively by everyone, particularly the Chinese and Peranakan trade companies of Singapore. Before 1905, the two groups dominated local and regional trade (or the sectors that weren’t already controlled by western companies and colonial enterprises), forming wealthy companies that linked each other all across Southeast Asia. But their very lucrative businesses and pro-establishment leanings also made them targets for British, French and Italian gunboats; many trade firms in Singapore, Saigon, and beyond went bankrupt in 1905 to 1906 as their vessels were sunk, interned, or commandeered by belligerent forces.

Stepping into the void, it was perhaps no wonder that the new Dayak merchants weren’t exactly welcomed by the established Chinese and Peranakan business elite. To be forced to compete with western firms is one thing, but going up against local natives is another entirely. An additional irk was that most Dayak tradesmen came from a lower economic base, investing relatively minimally in their endeavours while their Chinese counterparts sank more money into their collapsed ventures. But in every cloud lies a silver lining, and some less discerning firms tried to form partnerships with the Dayaks themselves. Differences in demand – most native Sarawakians cared little for bulk goods and raw materials were far more in demand amongst westerners – meant few of these lasted long, but those that did paved the way for the successive eras of the Sarawakian economy…

********************

Bethel Masaro, A Land Transformed: Sarawak and the Great War, (Sandakan University Press: 1990)

…In fact, the Great War created many complications to which the people were unprepared for.

While the deaths of so many combatants were tragic for families back home, the death toll was grimly distributed somewhat evenly on the land – while several places lost dozens of casualties, many villages lost only a few men, and a fair number lost just one. Far more adverse were the rate of injured and disabled combatants whom were maimed during the conflict whom could no longer farm, work, nor hunt. Permanent injury is nothing new for the Dayaks of Sarawak and most subgroups have developed customary systems to care for the disabled after tribal wars, with their sons, wives or relatives taking up the reins of village life.

However, the Great War and the Sabahan theatre was more destructive than any prior conflict, resulting in tens of thousands of injured tribesmen which overwhelmed traditional care-giving systems. While some injuries were minor, a number of men were stuck with grievous wounds (especially from Askari bullets) that crippled or debilitated them, despite the attention of foreign doctors accompanying the Sabahan front. With the absence of a national healthcare system or any sort of modern medical facilities in contemporary Sarawak, many of these injured tribesmen were sent back home after the fall of Sabah, leaving their care to their fellow villagers and to traditional medicine.

Besides that, the Sabahan conflict also created a number of leadership voids in a fair number of communities. Up until then, the Brooke system of war called for chieftains to accompany the Rajah or Resident-Councillor, leading their men into battle. While this system of war preserved old notions of conflict and presented a united front, it also meant placing tribal leaders into the line of fire. Despite the Sarawakians’ knack for jungle warfare and asymmetric tactics, a number of chieftains died alongside their men as they advanced into Italian Sabah, often by Askaris shooting as they tried to attack. This created a host of complications for their respective villages back home, as tribal successions differ according to subgroup and circumstance.

For example, some groups like the Malays, Penans and Bidayuhs select their headman or chief by informally choosing who amongst them leads better, confirming their selection in a somewhat meritocratic manner. But for some others, like a few Malay and Iban sub-branches, leadership selection can be influenced through heredity and it is not uncommon for a longhouse to select a dying chief’s sons as successors. After the Sabahan conflict and into the Ancur, there were succession conflicts plaguing parts of Sarawak as villages clashed as to whether to choose family or prowess in terms of leading their tribe.

Complicating the issue further, some Dayak villages surrounding Kuching and the major towns have been Christianized or Islamized before 1905, with some of their youngsters attending missionary or hut schools. For these villages, the question took more of a cultural and religious angle: should they choose a person who represents something new, or harken back to tradition? In particular, the Bintulu and Niah basins – already in simmering discontent due to tribal migrations intruding on local grounds [4a.] – saw an upswing in sporadic violence as tribal successors fought along cultural and religious polestars. These events, among others, would have profound effects during first great tribal assembly under Rajah Clayton’s rule…

Photograph of an unknown river in Sarawak, circa 1907. Courtesy of the British National Archives.
​

In the former Italian Sabah, problems of a different sort were flickering. The influx of Sarawakian aid was a lifesaver to many displaced communities and the region saw much in the way of rebuilding, rehousing, and the reconciliation of thousands of broken families, with the new Rajah Clayton himself overseeing such rituals and cases. Understandably, this endeared many indigenous Sabahans to the new order, yet not everyone was so enthused. Over twenty years of Catholic proselytization has left a small number of lowland and coastal communities converted to the new faith, and they were one of the few pillars that propped up Italian rule in Sabah as it lasted. Besides that, Italian companies also hired many workers from the Philippines to work for the colony, which formed a small minority of Filipinos whom also depended on the colonial state for help.

Now under new administration, these converted villagers and immigrant workers were now shunned by the wider tribal society for siding with the former colonizers and sharing their religion, even though a fair number of them were forcibly enticed (or coerced) into fighting and serving the commanders of Sandakan. With the closure of many logging and mining fields – save the coal mines of Silimpopon which were too valuable to be shut down, many of these unfortunates also had little to work and were forced to take on menial labour, which made them even more suspicious in the eyes of local animists and Muslims…

But not all of the kingdom stumbled during the aftermath, and a few places underwent more heartening outcomes. Plopped right in the middle of the South China Sea, the Natuna and Anambas islands formed a microcosm of Sarawakian dynamism during the Great War. Home to Malay, Chinese, and Sama-Bajau fisherfolk [4b.], the brief rule of the Italians and the subsequent war for the sea saw many families aiding one another to protect their boats and catches. Afterwards when Sarawakian rule was re-established, the island’s strategic location and the rise of the Dayak merchants meant a fair number of these communities became more financially and personally involved in international trade as boatbuilders, captains, crewmen, and other occupations. Naturally, relationships and intermarriage followed, with the already syncretic oceanic Islam of the Sama-Bajau becoming syncretized with traditional Chinese deities and other Dayak sea figures as time went on. While such cross-cultural mixing did exist before the Great War, it paled in comparison to the dynamism and activity that now affected these outer islands.

Paradoxically, local literature also blossomed in this period, though not all were happy in nature. The increased literacy of urban communities and the need to record down information created a notable uptick of written records amongst local Sarawakians; from converted indigenous priests to former nobles to partially-educated youths whom left their hut schools to join the land and sea conflicts. Though the central government had no general education policy, the slow but sustained rise of hut schools, missionary centres, and madrassahs across Sarawak allowed a new generation to give voice to the trials and tribulations that scarred the land, through their eyes…

A Chinese youth at Ranai, Natuna Besar Island, smiles at the camera while his fishing companion, an old Malay grandmother, looks curiously at his behavior. Taken circa 1907.​

____________________

Notes:

1. This method of rubber-tapping (which involves cutting a groove into the bark of a rubber tree and letting the sap flow into a cup) was discovered after thorough experimentation in the Singapore Botanical Gardens IOTL, and this method is still used today in rubber plantations across Southeast Asia.

2. In the 1880’s to the early 1900’s, gutta-percha was purified and coagulated using repeated washes of water and light petroleum liquids, particularly benzene.

3. IOTL, the Dutch embarked on their own adventure with liquid black gold during the early 1890’s, though geological exploration and local tales have confirmed the presence of oil seeps in east Borneo as early as 1863.

4a. and 4b. See post #1261. Bintulu in particular has seen a small but noticeable rate of local Dayaks converting to Islam around this period, both IOTL and ITTL.

 

[Al-numbers]

Pengiran Nor Zubaidiah binti Salam
(Pontianak: The Love of a Mother, Monsopiad reprint: 2007)​

​

In 1905, Italian forces invaded Tempasok, and Pengiran Nor Zubaidiah’s life changed forever.​

​

The youngest daughter of a Bruneian aristocratic family, her father made the decision to back the neighbouring Brookes of Sarawak as they expanded during the late 1870’s, a decision that ultimately led them to resettle in the town of Tempasok in the Wariu river basin, north of Bandar Charles.​

​

There, her father married a scion of the famous Muda Hashim family to confer protection and status for his own. The Muda Hashims were descendants of the original Pengiran Muda Hashim, the very notable prince whom partnered with James Brooke during the very birth of Sarawak [A]. As a result, Nor Zubaidiah was ennobled with the title ‘Pengiran’ when she was born in 1885, conferring herself and her kin as blood descendants of old Malay royalty (though the Brunei court has since disinherited her family bloodline to this day).​

​

As a result of her high birth, Zubaidiah was uncommonly educated when compared to most contemporary women. Attending Quranic studies, hikayat readings and the local hut school, she became fluent not just in Malay and Arabic, but was also conversational in English and understood the local Rungus dialect. In 1903, she was married in an arranged ceremony to Awan Mustapha of Kudat, a son of a trading Sama-Bajau family.​

​

Due to the increase of lucrative exports brought by international demand, the couple saw no reason to move from Tempasok, which meant they were direct eyewitnesses for the Italian invasion of Sarawakian Sabah, just two years later.​

​

If the speed of the invasion didn’t shock Zubaidiah enough – indeed, her extended family was just contemplating to move out when the Italian forces arrived – the invading commander’s decision to court her kin certainly did. Her family’s notable status (and her husband’s business sense) have made them pillars of the local community, a factor the Italians sought to influence. However, Zubaidiah has heard much of Italian rule in Sabah and she successfully persuaded her husband to refuse their offer. The ensuing house arrest thankfully did not last long; Sarawak retook Tempasok back within a month.​

​

But as the Great War ground on, news began to arrive of horrific bloodshed to the north and east. After some debate, Zubaidiah followed her husband north to see what was left of his family in Kudat, and eventually to the river basins out east.​

​

What she saw there, and the work she helped to rebuild, laid the basis for what is to be her iconic first novel; Pontianak, Kesayangan Ibu – which was to be translated in the first English publication as Pontianak: The Love of a Mother.​

​

Written as a series of short stories before being compiled for publication, the story is based in Malay folktales and Rungus worldviews. Pontianak explores the tragedy of war both on a societal and personal level through the eyes of Melati, a young mother, and Adeh, her 10-year old son. For over a decade, the riverside village of Simpang Sungai was at peace with itself and with the local Rungus community, and Melati’s family seemed to fit the typical Malay household.​

​

But this peace rests on a great secret, kept shut by everyone whence a foreigner visits or a trader sojourned. For Melati was known to locals as not just a mother, but also something else: a Pontianak. A Malay vampiress.​

​

In truth, she has been dead for over 10 years. A decade ago, she suffered greatly during her pregnancy and eventually passed away of blood loss while giving birth to Adeh. These conditions meant that Melati’s death lasted only moments before she reawakened as a malevolent Pontianak, out to drink the blood of those whom had achieved motherhood. It took a combined effort by both the villagers and the Rungus people to subdue her and drive an iron nail into her spine, thereby pacifying her and rendering Melati back as human and alive, albeit with no heartbeat.​

​

Since then, Melati has been Simpang Sungai’s greatest secret. Since her undeath and return to life, she has been watched over by family members, neighbours, local elders and the Rungus bobolizan – the high priestess, to ensure her humanity wouldn’t be lost. Her exquisite (and unearthly) beauty has remained undimmed over the years and she herself become wary of the many advances by local men, despite still being married to her husband Adam. But despite this, the family lived as happily as they could.​

​

But a call to war by the king of the land forced many adults to fight and to leave their families behind – including Melati’s spouse. For a while, most villagers adapted to their men’s absence and began to share each other’s workloads, but reports from faraway traders began to add an undertow of unease as they tell of the war’s rising bloodshed, as well as reports of random attacks on women and children in nearby villages by “a flying demon.” Suddenly, local attention began to lie on their resident Pontianak.​

​

But such suspicions were soon for naught as the creature itself struck the village as Melati, Adeh, and a few close friends were returning from a check-up with the bobolizan. Despite the dangers of losing her humanity, Melati ripped her iron nail from her body and fought the demon in her powerful vampiress form till it flew away, and – with the help of said friends – only just managed to reinsert her nail before she lost control of herself.​

​

From then on, the demon began to shadow and attack on Simpang Sungai and the surrounding villages, leaving behind dead youths and headless girls, all drained of blood. Along the novel, the demon attempts to attack and eat Melati, Adeh, and their friends and neighbours multiple times before being driven away. In the increasingly paranoid air, the surrounding villages pin the monster as Melati herself, angering those whom she rescued. Meanwhile, the local Rungus longhouse led by Chief Mabok made their own investigation into the matter as their own youths were being attacked.​

​

Eventually, the truth was revealed that the demon was a Manananggal, a Philippine winged creature that acts similar to the local Pontianak in hunting women, children, and the unborn. In particular, the Manananggal was that of a female immigrant that moved with her family to find work in Borneo, only to be all killed in the confusion of the ongoing war. Driven mad by grief and rage, she returned back as a vampiress in her own right, swearing to mutilate every mother and child whose husbands, fathers, and sons are involved with the conflict.​

​

The following climax outside a burning longhouse forces Melati to confront a choice: rip-off her iron nail and turn into a Pontianak forever to defeat the creature, or remain human and have her son and fellow neighbours be burned to death at the Manananggal’s hands?​

​

Adapted into multiple dramas, plays, and the famous 1979 and 2001 celluloid pictures, Pontianak: The Love of a Mother has been hailed as one of the great icons of Sabahan literature. The novel is not without controversy, as many international Islamists have panned it over the decades for its supernatural nature while some Kadazan-Dusun critics looked down on the use of an indigenous high priestess as a ‘magical doctor’. Nevertheless, Pontianak remains a powerful novel for conveying the bloodshed and disaster of the Great War in a unique way, as well as incorporating how war impacts the innocent as much as it does the guilty.​

​

But despite that, the novel also shines in its depiction of hope and the human spirit in times of hardship, and nothing exemplifies this more than the communal bond that was formed across the tale, and especially during its climax…​

********************

​

“The Bisayas?”

The whole congregation was confused, as was I. “Do you mean to say, the demon that has terrorized us so, is a foreigner?”

“Correct.” Chieftain Mabok answered solemnly, his eyes shining by the lamplight. “From what Maraun and the others have told me, the demon is another kind of …vampiress that comes mainly from the Bisaya Islands to the northwest. Our particular monster was once a mother who came from there. They said the peoples call beings like her... Manananggal; the Separating Ghost.”

“What was her name?” I wanted to know.

“I think it was… Isidora.” Maraun himself spoke up, half in thought. “Yes, Isidora. Most people I spoke to called her ‘Is. From what I could gather up north, she came here with her entire family in the last few years, trying to find work. (he held up his hand and began to count) There was ‘Is, her husband, and their two young children. The last I heard of her, she was also pregnant with a third.”

At his words, the implication became darkly clear. The whispers around me rose higher and many more kept glancing each other at his words. The floors of the longhouse creaked as more hands were held, more fingers gripped more strongly on their weapons and their handles. My Adeh’s hand tightened in mine, and I squeezed his. I am here. I am here.

I wanted to speak, but Che Fatimah snatched the words. “So, then, she died at childbirth?”

“No.” Maraun shook his head. “Worse. The ones I spoke said ‘the whole family died’. But they also said the family moved east just before this war, so no one was sure how they died.” The man looked to his side. “You went east, did you not, Marajun? Did you find out?”

Only now did I realize how Marajun looked hesitant to speak. It was as if all the knowledge we had discovered were weighing down on the young man, sagging his shoulders. “…I did. I was… are you all sure this is safe? Sharing all of this openly?”

“Speak, my son.” Chief Mabok’s voice attained the weight of a Rungus leader. “We have seen much, and we have done much. All of us are armed, and you have no fear here.”

Marajun blinked several times before he finally began, his voice shaking like a frightened leaf before a gale. “I went as east, as you all told me to. Unlike the north, the villages there are… well, our king’s war wasn’t as kind over there. Burned houses everywhere. I had to track… for a while… to find those who knew the Bisaya family, and even then I had to work for them for a week to earn their trust.”

“What did they say?” I asked. His eyes seemed to speak at something he wish he could forget.

“She, she – Isidora – was in labour when the enemy troops came. No… not the enemy. Local louts whom joined the enemy for pay and plunder. They took everything they had, and they said ‘Is’ husband tried to fight them off. They…”

He looked right at me at the next sentence.

“…They burned her house down with her inside. In labor. With her children.”

I hear the gasps, but it seemed like the world had stopped. To die in childbirth, that was pain beyond pain. But to die like that… horrifying was the only thought I could imagine at that moment. Beside me, I saw Che Fatimah’s hand trembling pale white over her husband’s dagger. “…So …that’s how she became a vampiress? A Manananggal?” she spoke hesitantly. “And why this Isidora is attacking everyone?”

“Almost.” Marajun continued. “I noticed something strange when I headed back. Can anyone remember whom Isidora attacked? The ones from around here, at least?”

A few ways down, Pak Atan croaked. “Of course! First was Melati, Adeh, and Zulaika. Then there was me out in the fields, then Sigunting on his boat, then Kumat and his wife. This longhouse was next, and lastly Miss Fatimah. Why…” And then he stopped, understanding.

It wasn’t just him. I was stunned. Every single person this demon had attacked had a husband, son, or brother in the war. Every bloodless, headless corpse we could identify had a living family member still fighting out there. “This is revenge. Isn’t it? Revenge for all whom have spilled human blood.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Pak Atan was irate. “We didn’t kill her or harm her! Our husbands and sons didn’t hurt her! Why would she mutilate those who aren’t even fighting?”

“Perhaps it doesn’t matter.” Mabok’s wife Salima opined. “Perhaps, to this Manananggal, in her grief and rage, in her death and undeath, she sees all soldiers and their families as the same: as people whom can fight and achieve happiness, while she burned alive with her children and newly-born baby.”

​

“Still! What about those– ”

But I heard no more, for my Adeh whispered to me. “Mother, it’s too quiet. And I smell something.”

“Dear? Of course it is not qui…” I stopped. While the longhouse gathering was plainly noisy, the outside was silent.

Too silent.

There were crickets chirping when my son and I arrived. There were none now.

And then I smelled it. Oil. Lamp oil. And rotting flesh.

I turned around, and she was there.

Black-yellow eyes stared at me like a snake’s through the spaces between the walls. Her dead skin looked like that of a bloated carcass put to fire and partially burned. Her hair wild and unruly, matted at places with dried blood. Her bat-wings moved silently like the flying beasts that roam the pitch-night skies. Below the navel, her insides and flesh dangled like a piece of raw meat, ridden with maggots.

She pounced.

I remember her claws grabbing my shoulders. I remember releasing Adeh from the shock. I remember being pulled and dragged with inhuman force. I remembered the screams of Fatimah, my son, and the others as I was pulled through the wall. I remember the wooden supports tearing my dress and skin. Undead I was, but I remembered the pain of the splinters and the creature’s claws.

I was thrown onto the ground as the demon released me. The smell of oil mixed with that of the earth as I shut my eyes from the force and pain. I heard the crash of broken glass, more screams and a flash of bright light. I opened them, and saw terror; the wooden pillars and underside of the longhouse were aflame!

Then a clawed hand swiped at my face.

I was already hurting, but the gashes that tore through my right cheek was unlike anything I felt, not even in our past duels. Then those claws turned to fists and my head and neck were bombarded with blows, the nails clawing off pieces of my flesh with every swipe and strike. I cowered and huddled, and pushed my left foot out with all the strength I could to kick my attacker. The blows stopped, but not the pain.

As I writhed around, I realized there were no watch-guards to help me, or rescue the trapped souls from the burning longhouse. The creature must have killed the guards, found their oil lamps, gotten into the tribe’s oil stores, and soaked the pillars before throwing the lamps to set them ablaze.

Her face was loathsome as she hovered before me.

“You!” The Manananggal – no, Isidora. ‘Is. – screeched. “You! You are just like me! And you gained happiness?! How dare you!”

I slowly rose. The iron nail at my neck throbbed from the fall. My face and body were gushing too much precious blood. My eyes found hers, and I understood. Salima was almost right. This woman had suffered the worst of fate, and she is angry. So, so angry. Angry at her death and those of her children and husband’s. Angry at the louts whom did this to her for nothing more than malice. Angry at the soldiers and the king for making this horror possible, and angry at their families whom have achieved the motherhood that was taken from her. But she was furious at me.

I could almost hear it, but her eyes spoke enough. How dare I found happiness, even after death! How dare I have a still-faithful husband and an understanding son! How dare I have neighbours, friends, and people who cared for me and made me human again, to replace my iron nail as it rusts, to help me walk and restrain myself in anger, to be there for me even as other villages tried to kill me! How dare I, as a Pontianak, be loved and accepted into motherhood!

I knew then that ‘Is would not let me go. She would not let all of us go. If she was denied the happiness of life whilst I could, then she will do anything to kill me and everyone around me. She would try and try until we all would be drunk dry from her mouth and rot beneath the earth, or be burned alive as it were.

The screams from the longhouse were becoming frantic through the smoke. Isidora was blocking my way.

How dare she. How dare she! How dare she hurt those whom are innocent of crime! How dare she assume the worst of humanity and act out in revenge and inconsiderate terror! How dare she took her grief and used it to hurt my neighbours, my friends, and my son! I almost felt pity when I first saw her, during the first attack. A horrific consequence of a horrible war. That was gone now.

I stood to my greatest height, and said those final words. “You will never harm us again.”

And in one move, I swung my right hand to my spine and ripped out the iron nail there.

____________________

Spoiler: Notes

I may have gone on a bit too long at this piece. At least now I can say I experimented with my timeline by writing an in-TL thriller/horror novel!

The image of the Manananggal is courtesy of jogihoogi.

(A) Pengiran Muda Hashim is a person that goes way waaaaay back to the very beginning of this TL.

 

[Al-numbers]

Ina Manto, Sultans and Chieftains and Controleurs: Borneo Under Late-Dutch Rule (Journal of Postcolonial Studies; 1997)

From the 1890’s till the end of the Great War – and arguably beyond, Dutch Borneo underwent economic, social, and religious changes that were nothing short of seismic.

Some of these changes were brought by local considerations and colonial interests, but others stem from a source of misguided intentions and, ironically, administrative throttling. Starting from January 1901, Batavia and Amsterdam began instituting the Dutch Ethical Policy, which aimed to “uplift the natives of the Indies,” as spoken by the contemporary Governor-General. This would be done through colonial patronization and infrastructural improvements – thus tying the archipelago together whilst (secretly) veering it away from the throes of Islamic reformism [1]. In practice, this would sow the seeds of the region’s tumultuous future, but their short-term effects were no less disruptive.

In a broad sense, the Dayaks of Dutch Borneo now answered to three regional authorities. Massive swathes of land were consolidated under the new Residency Acts to facilitate local administration, with the polestars of government now concentrated on the Residencies of West Borneo (capital: Pontianak), South Borneo (capital: Banjarmasin), and East Borneo (capital: Balikpapan) [2]. Another change – though this would later be finalized in 1910 – was the creation of a separate administrative division for native sultanates and kingdoms, which would be later known as Zelfbesturen. In these parts, some superficial sense of law could be held by local rulers, though they were still constrained by their Dutch overlords and possess no actual power over Chinese and European dwellers.

Other, more intrusive measures were also introduced to better improve indigenous life in the guise of ‘productivity’. The introduction of cash crops was pushed onto local farmholders while Malay and Dayak-held lands were officially legislated, “to never be sold to non-natives”, as a 1903 Pontianak version of the law dictated. Churches and missionary schools mushroomed in downstream towns as foreign priests traversed local waterways to convert curious Dayaks, all while military officials and regional Residents continued persuading the semi-nomadic peoples of the interior to permanently settle down (preferably near the regional capitals where they could be monitored for revolt).

But these questionably ‘enlightened’ policies were far from accepted. In fact, there was a strong counter-notion amongst local bureaucrats of obstructing the Ethical Policy to preserve their own interests, though this was outwardly dressed in the name of preserving local cultures and traditions. Old notions of patronization were strong in the less-developed parts of the Indies, and a fair number of Dutch Bornean civil servants – now further recognized through the same Ethical Policy – actually came from Peranakans and princely families (and thus have an incentive to keep the fruits and power of the Policy to their own class) were also a opposing factor. [3]

Improvement would eventually come to Dutch Borneo, but it would be less so than neighboring Sarawak or Java and much more fought-over.

Royal photo of the Sultan of Kutai Kartanegara ing Martapura, a Malay state in Dutch East Borneo, surrounded by attendants, circa 1909.

​

For instance, the basins of West Borneo were peppered with smallholder paddy farms and gold mines, primarily worked by Chinese immigrants. After being brought to heel by the Dutch, the latter were dismayed to discover how unprofitable mass-mining were to the region and so enacted spice cultivation and rubber plantations, thereby creating an incentive to stake unclaimed forests and riverlands for their own. Even the Chinese and Peranakan minority joined in on the action, manipulating the “native lands” clause to restrict Malays and Dayaks from cultivating new lands and forcing them to only sell their farms to other Malays and Dayaks. Thus, the indigenous peoples saw their share of owned domains frozen in place while their fellow immigrant neighbors expanded in scope.

Over on the east, colonial intrusion came in another way: petroleum. While knowledge of oil seeps were known in eastern Borneo as early as 1863, it wasn’t until the 1890’s that mass-extraction came to the minds of authorities and Dutch corporations, though some have posited the discovery of oil near the Sarawakian town of Miri in 1898 that finally drove Dutch attention, especially as both Great Britain and Austria-Hungary began to stake their claims on extraction [4]. The first oil well was drilled in 1899 near the town of Balikpapan, which was soon so inundated with wealth that it quickly became the regional capital and the headquarters of several major oil firms.

More was still to come. Further north, the Dutch-controlled Sultanate of Tidung also recorded profitable wells on the island of Tarakan in 1903, sparking another corporate rush. By the end of the Dutch period, Tarakan would yield over five million barrels of raw crude per year, totaling up to one-third of all extracted petroleum in the Dutch East Indies.

Contemporary photograph of a barge carrying materials for the petroleum storage tanks on Tarakan Island, circa 1912.

​

Malay and Dayak life were also impacted in other ways. With greater administration came regular taxation, which vexed many downstream families whom now couldn’t escape the colonial government’s district officers. There was also the influx of Chinese immigrants, Dutch planters, and European opportunists in the major princely towns, bringing with them the strange manners of their homelands. Informal segregation became the norm in these expanding centers, with the Dutch and Europeans owning the best places while the Chinese began clearing the forests for their own rice fields and plantations. The Malays and Dayaks, by contrast, saw their share of owned lands only increasing slowly (if at that) due to the new ‘native land laws’.

For a short while, even the language of government communication changed, though local backlash from high and low quickly sunk the measure. The 1903 decision by Batavia to change the regional lingua franca from Malay to Standard Javanese was partly intended to veer the Indies from Islamic reformism, which swirled headily in neighboring, Malay-tonged Aceh and Johor. Instead, Bornean bureaucrats complained of being confused while Malay sultanate families berated their superiors in a rare instance of mass-elite criticism. Though the Javanese Language Policy died a quick death, its effects would kick-start the formation of Dutch Borneo’s modern nationalist circles…

********************

​

Jalumin Bayogoh, Legendary Icons of Bornean History, (Kenyalang Publishing: 2010)

…One famous figure of the Dutch-controlled, yet relatively remote Sentarum Floodplains (though to Sarawak, close-by) was one Penghulu Bantin, a wily Iban chieftain from the Ulu Ai valley of Sarawak. Making a name for himself by conducting tribal wars beyond anyone’s control, he was among a coalition of tribal chiefs whom resisted Brooke rule and it’s imposition of external law during the late 19th century. This animosity was further heightened when his son, Inggol, was killed in 1895 by an allied-Rajah raid on the Ulu Ai valley.

But feeling the pressure of the Brooke government, Bantin decided to relocate deeper inland. Moving further up the valley, the chieftain crossed the border into Dutch Borneo with over 80 following families, settling with Dutch acquiescence in the Sentarum Floodplains.

Despite his knack for raids and wars, Bantin was careful to not ransack any villages inside Dutch Borneo. Not wanting to make another powerful enemy, he maintained good relations with other local tribes, Dutch officials and Chinese merchants, whom quickly saw him as a wary benefactor and bargaining chip. Despite Charles Brooke declaring the Penghulu a true outlaw in 1904 and offering a large bounty for his capture, the Dutch offered him full amnesty should he permanently settle in a controllable area of the Sentarum Floodplains.

However, his fiery disposition would cause far more problems for his new masters than expected, which would impact the region well after Bantin finally called the floodplains his new home… [5]

********************

​

Kristian anak Minggat, A Summary of 20th century Dutch-Dayak Relations, (Journal of Southeast Asian Studies: 2009)

…It would be something to say, “The Great War landed the Dutch in Borneo in an awkward position.” But the truth eludes simplicity, and describing the horror of the Ancur – the turmoil of Borneo’s indigenous peoples during this period of global conflict – as just an offshoot of Italo-Sarawakian fighting, is too simplistic and reductive a reasoning.

There were already a few noticeable incidents of revolt before the Great War, but the brutal slugfest between the Kingdom of Sarawak and Italian Sabah marked a new and terrifying sign of things to come. As waves of warrior-warlords broke off from Italian control and ravaged the river basins, thousands of Sabahan Dayaks fled south over the mountains into Dutch Borneo and particularly the Pensiangan region, which formed the inland part of the Dutch-controlled Sultanate of Tidung. Many of the refugees belong to the Kadazan-Dusun subgroup whereas most of Pensiangan’s inhabitants were of the Murut ethnic family. Inevitably, conflict ensued.

For the neutral Dutch authorities in faraway Balikpapan, the disturbances were initially seen as a distant nuisance; small spats between tribes that shall blow out once Sarawak captured Italian Sabah. However, the final fall of Sandakan and sudden death of Rajah Charles did nothing to reverse the flow; the fleeing tribes had no wish to return to the horrors of home. One report from a Dutch fort by the Sembakung River described, “…entire villages of newcomers setting up homes by the waterside, sparring with local tribes with the victors taking the local forest as their own.” These uprooted villagers would then move further south, clashing with other tribes and spreading the carnage. The Ancur had begun.

Throughout 1906 and 1907, a slow wave of violence would creep throughout north-central Borneo as displaced peoples fought for control of the mountains and rivers. Longhouses were burnt and streams poisoned in a chaotic melee that would see villages torn apart and the survivors adopting ever more brutal methods of defense. The practice of headhunting – still practiced in some from in these remote regions – exploded into prominence as victorious warriors adorned their homes and galleries with the skulls of the defeated. The decapitated bodies of the fallen were often left behind to rot.

Eventually, it would be these reports that would spur Dutch authorities into action, though rumors have persisted of them doing so only to protect the oil-rich island of Tarakan. New expeditions were sent up the northeastern rivers to pacify the forests, though the relative remoteness of Pensiangan stunted many peacemaking attempts, as were the local accusations of broken trust. In most cases, arbitration became the end goal as tribal chieftains harangued each other over local hunting, farming, and fishing rights, while a sizable minority moved downstream to better be protected by their new colonial overseers. It wouldn’t be until 1908 that Dutch control was confirmed to north-central Borneo, and even longer for general peace to take hold.

However, the expeditions did result in one major (albeit off-shoot) incident: the highland adventure of Long Bawan. In 1907, the new Rajah of Sarawak, Clayton Brooke, organized an expedition deep into the kingdom’s mountains to halt the Ancur from spilling into his corner of Borneo. But in doing so, the Rajah and his men became the first lowlanders to walk the highland valleys of Borneo’s interior, which created a sensation across a war-weary Southeast Asia, searching for escapism [6]. Upon the expedition’s return, the subsequent coordinates of these valleys were noted with the largest of them, Long Bawan, being actually located inside the Dutch border.

Instantly, explorers and naturalists scrambled to witness the storied vales where, “golden fields rustled amidst cloud-topped peaks”, as Rajah Clayton described it. Local missionaries were just as absorbed; the Ethical Policy saw an upswing in Christianizing activities across the Dutch Indies with Calvinist and Evangelical societies pouncing on the discovery to save native souls. The first missionaries arrived in Long Bawan in 1909, altering the religious makeup of the interior forever…

Photograph of the local Dutch Reformed Evangelical Church of Long Bawan, circa 1931.

​

____________________

Spoiler: Notes.

1. See post #945 on the Dutch East Indies.

2. IOTL, Dutch Borneo was divided into the Residency of West Borneo (capital: Pontianak) and the Residency of South and East Borneo (capital: Balikpapan). In the 1930’s, plans were made to centralize the above systems under a ‘Government of Borneo’, based in the south, that would have jurisdiction over the entirely of Dutch areas. However, the arrival of WWII dropped those plans flat.

3. Aristocrats from princely states really did became part of the Dutch civil service in the East Indies IOTL. Taking a leaf from the British, the measure was done to save the cost of administration and to disrupt as little of the elites as possible. This however meant a sizable number of sultanate families and aristocrats were seen as Dutch collaborators, which led to some massacres among their number during the independence period of Indonesia.

4. See Post #1,004 on how Britain and Austria-Hungary (well, Franz Ferdinand in particular) stumbled into perhaps the most unexpected event in Sarawakian economic history: the discovery of viable petroleum seeps.

5. All this, despite a few ITTL changes here and there, is an abridged and oversimplified version of the real-life Penghulu Bantin and his move from Sarawak to Dutch Borneo. The Iban chief was known to create trouble by waging his own wars and raids which incensed Kuching, whom Bantin saw as an illegitimate force upon the Dayaks. During the late 19th century, he was part of an alliance of chieftains that resisted Brooke rule, with his own son Inggol being killed by a punitive expedition of Rajah-allied Dayaks in 1898. His carefulness to avoid antagonizing the Dutch was also true, as he didn’t want another great enemy nipping at his heels; he eventually moved into Dutch Borneo in 1909. ITTL, the greater growth of Sarawak sped-up events early. A more complete telling of his war years can be read here, though you need to understand the Iban language first.

6. See Post #1,641 for Clayton Brooke’s expedition into north-central Borneo.

 

[Al-numbers]

Charlie MacDonald, Strange States, Weird Wars, and Bizzare Borders, (weirdworld.postr.com, 2016)

So, with all things considered, it’s safe to say that the Dutch East Indies is incredibly, mind-numbingly, and brain-meltingly diverse. There are islands that are larger than European nations and more than tenfold as diverse, not to mention the sheer variety of faiths and syncretic mixtures.

Now, have you considered of a way to piss-off nearly all of them?

Before we start, let me talk about Java. Despite the name, Java Island does not fully belong to the ethnic Javanese. In fact, the isle’s western half is inhabited by another great ethnic group, one that possesses their own history, culture, language, and writing system: the Sundanese.

And they have a traditional grudge with their eastern neighbour.

For centuries, the two groups have swung between reconciliation and hostility. In the most infamous event, dating back to the 1300’s, a match was planned between a princess of the Sunda and the monarch of the glorious Majapahit Empire. However, as the Sundanese royal family, nobles, and bride-to-be arrived at the Javanese court, it was revealed that the princess would only be wed as a concubine, not a consort, as a symbol of Majapahit dominance over their close neighbours. The outrage from this culminated in the horrific Massacre of Bubat; a slaughter of the entire Sundanese royalty and nobility by Javanese soldiers with the princess herself, Dyah Pitaloka Citraresmi, choosing to commit suicide and join her fallen family. Echoes of this event became embedded in local culture and to this day, there is still a popular saying of this outrage: “Javanese men should not marry Sundanese women.”

Now, fast-forward to 1903.

You are a high-ranking Dutch government official in Batavia or Buitenzorg, and you are unsettlingly worried (and yes, I believe that is proper grammar). Why? Because a new report mentioned of over 15,000 Javanese citizens permanently settling in faraway Makkah [1]. Number figures show that hundreds of Indies’ youths are taking their studies in Aceh, Johor, and the Ottoman Empire, and they are bringing the winds of agitation when they return home. Already, reports are afoot of local religious schools called pesantren where reformist ideas are being passed – not just to students, but their parents as well! And all this is done with the ever-increasing use of the Malay Jawi script, the lingua franca of Muslim Southeast Asia. The tide is shifting.

Understandably, you are worried. The last thing you and your mates want is another Aceh. But how can you change this? A travel ban to the Ottoman Empire? The anger from millions would be incalculable and would only redirect people to Acehnese and Johorean ports. Close borders with the two sultanates then? But they are the richest independent states around (discounting Siam) and there are many Dutchmen with lucrative businesses there, not to mention the explosive diplomatic fallout of angering two major states that can choke the Malacca Strait. Increasing local conversions is one option, but that takes time, more than you have.

Wait. What’s this? Some team of translators have successfully crafted a Standard form of the Javanese language? Could that be the answer? A new, controlled lingua franca that could stem the regional exchange of ideas? At the very least, it’s worth looking into. [2]

And this is where the bullcrap blew out.

Observe: Javanese (left) vs. Sundanese (right)
Also, nice try. But making the script look European does not make any of it understandable.

​

Chiefly, Standard Javanese wasn’t even meant to be a lingua franca! The language was a Dutch creation that was in-progress since the 1890’s; a hodgepodge of stunted words, butchered grammar, and simplified structure, which was so because actual Javan-Javanese has 3 different forms of speech, all of whom can be interchangeably used depending on your class and family and status and just who you are! A noblewoman would address her servant with one form of Javanese, and be answered with another! [3] No wonder the Dutch just stuck with Malay for a long while as the common tongue.

So the decision by Batavia’s Governor-General to approve, “…the experiment of local language change to Javanese.” was eyebrow-raising enough.

To do so when the very homelands of the Sunda people are literally around the capital, without asking for their consultation, was full-on absurd.

To say the Sundanese elites were offended were an understatement. The first local mass-protests of the 20th century had shouts of “Remember Bubat!” while rumours abounded that the Dutch, “…shall make the Javanese dominant across the whole Nusantara.”(Another term for Sundaland. Oh look, what a name!). In an instant, local pride for the Sunda language became a boiling sore as clerks used the language instead of the traditional Malay or Dutch tongues, as well as writing orders in the traditional Sundanese script. The American explorer and noted traveller of the Indies, Theodore Roosevelt, pretty much encapsulated how many thought of the affair by laughing his ass off as he cried out, “Only in the Dutch Indies do they have native language disobedience!”

The Dutch tried to reverse the decision, but across the archipelago, people began asking, “wait, we aren’t Javanese. Why should we learn how they speak?” From the highlands of Toba to the terraces of Sulawesi to the bay of Fakfak, the catastrophe of the Javanese Language Experiment led to a lot more attention for local culture from local people, for good or ill.

In short, Pandora’s Box was forever opened…

********************

​

Oka Mahendra, The Dutch East Indies: from Colony to Independence (Bulan-Bintang: 1998)

…By the midpoint of the Great War, the local situation was irrevocably changed.

Given the swirling currents of change, it was perhaps inevitable for new groups and associations to form and ferment; there was still enough lingering bitterness regarding the Javanese language debacle for locals to form their own groups of self-interest, despite continued Dutch efforts at stamping out agitation. Now, the continuous coverage of the global conflict, the particular involvement of nearby Sarawak and Aceh, the influx of new European families fleeing the Repossession Laws of British Malaya, the experimental rise of modern industry at Johor and Aceh, and the wild swings in local prices of goods… all added to the transformation.

And with the seeds of a new education policy bearing its fruit in the first crop of modern intellectuals (ironically minted from the very patronizing Ethical Policy that created the Javanese experiment), a perfect storm was brewed that would accelerate local self-awareness.

Notable groups that grew in popularity during this period were:

Sarekat Batik: a union of ethnic Javanese batik cloth weavers and traders that formed in 1905. Considered the first secular economic group of the East Indies, the Sarekat Batik (literally: Batik Union) were concerned at the growth of European, Chinese, and Peranakan businesses that were outcompeting the Javanese cloth industry, which was heavily cottage-based. This concern rapidly grew to alarm during the Great War as fleeing Italian, Russian, and French families immigrated from British Malaya [4] and prices for raw materials spiked beyond the reach of most weavers. Besides advocating for local industry, the Sarekat Batik also called for boycotts of foreign businesses and self-sufficiency in the local economy.​

​

Kampelan Sunda: Created from the backlash of the Javanese language experiment, the Kampelan Sunda (literally: Sunda Group) was made up of intellectuals, elites, and civil servants of Sundanese descent whom all advocated for the preservation of their language and culture. They were among the first groups to print their own pamphlets and were moderately successful at laying the foundations of a cultural revival in their homeland of West Java. However, the Kampelan Sunda were also the first to provoke racial tensions to further their own agenda; a 1907 riot involving a looted Chinese sundry and Javanese batik store was linked to the group whom accused the owners of price-gouging (in actuality, a Great War side-effect) and, two weeks prior, printed a pamphlet that espoused “the liberation of the Sunda people from foreign dependence”.​

​

Jamiat Kheir: Revolving around religious and educational concerns, the al-Jamiyyatul Khairiyyah (Association of Goodness) was formed by a group of Arab, Hadrami, and Turkish families in Batavia in order to teach their foreign children a comprehensive Islamic education, as well as to assist the community in times of need. However, the association exploded in popularity during the Great War as locals clamoured for new Jamiat Kheir schools to be built in their villages, perceiving them to be better-run and more educational than the traditional pesantren hut schools. The Dutch authorities quickly banned the association in 1908 from operating outside Batavia, but the Jamiat Kheir continued to let local pesantrens to align their studies with the main organization – and to use imported books.​

These and many other associations were not originally formed to combat Dutch colonialism, but their very character of fighting for local interests would make them the nuclei of political culture. However, the Great War-era Dutch Indies also saw the birth of two other, openly semi-political groups, each with completely different goals. They would play pivotal parts in the fate of the archipelago:

Sarekat Ambon: Perhaps the smallest of the new organizations, the first meeting of the Sarekat Ambon recorded only 29 people in attendance, most of whom were Christian civil servants, clerks, veterans, and traders from the Ambonese community in Batavia. Their home islands of Ambon were among the longest-held Dutch territories in the Indies (dating back to the Age of Exploration) and this longevity, coupled with the Dutch Ethical Policy of prioritizing Christians over Muslims, led to them being favoured both in the colonial army and government service. As such, the Sarekat Ambon was meant to protect the privileges of the Ambonese, whom were jittered over the Great War and recent language policy.​

​

Dutch Socialist Association (I.S.V): Perhaps the most explicitly political group, the Indische Socialistische Vereeniging was actually the brainchild of a naturalized Indo-Spanish workman, Ignazio Dagala Soler, who based the association on its much more successful Philippine counterpart that flowered after the fall of the Devil’s Island prison complex in Italian Sabah and the subsequent escape of many Italian leftists [5]. Formed in 1907 with an initial attendance of 30 people, Ignazio espoused the formation of unions for Javanese rail workers and port hands, believing in the power of collective action.​

On the village-level, these changes were exemplified in several ways, most of which were religious in character – though much of this was limited to the major islands of Java, Sumatra, and coastal Borneo. The first was the explosion in learning through the rise of secular and pesantren religious schools, some of which are affiliated with outside groups like the Jamiat Kheir. Another was the ‘critical mass’ of village-scholars, imams, and the orthodox-minded santri class now teaching in these schools, borne forth from the decades of migration between Southeast Asia and the Turco-Arab world. Thirdly, there was a resounding call for villagers to unite together to press for changes in local issues.

Lastly, there was the appeal of looking at the Dutch East Indies’ independent neighbours…

********************

​

Eko Rohmanudin, Centrifugalism? Change in the Dutch East Indies’ Borderlands (Journal of Southeast Asian Studies: 1989)

…For the most part, the roiling war between Italian Papua and the Royal Australian Navy did not impact the locals of Dutch Papua much.

Of course, this didn’t mean they were completely immune to the Great War or the goings-on up north. Whispers of armed conflict swirled around the coastal villages of the Onin and Bomberai Peninsulas while strange metal ships criss-crossed the straits, passing awed fishermen in their sampans and canoes. Strange demands were also being heard from the peoples living up in the Italian territory, calling for sulphur, charcoal, and malleable metals. Native traders were particularly perplexed by the sudden rise in the price of foodstuffs like rice, sago, and salt.

But other than that, ethnic difference and geographic distance made the Papuan front and the Great War a faraway issue for the people of Dutch Papua. What was more worrisome was the intrusion of Dutch control into everyday life.

This was already a creeping issue since the 1890’s, but the explosion of the War and the particular battles near Aceh and Sarawak amplified the pressure for Batavia to hold on to their slice of New Guinea. Makeshift barracks were swiftly constructed and filled with troops from Java and the Moluccas to patrol the coastal towns, which were themselves transformed into ever-jostling construction sites in the rush to build large docks and piers, capable of handling the oceanic might of the Dutch. Further afield, new trading posts were quickly erected to gain as much trade (and contacts) with the natives as possible.

And then there were the Christian missionaries, which were the most grating of them all. It was one thing to have faith, but another to have a person who would bark about it for hours and follow someone into a dwelling over it. For a few village-states, this went beyond annoyance; the coastal state of Patipi had converted to syncretic Islam and its sultan had sent forth imams to proselytize across the Onin and Bomberai lands [6]. Now, he was running up against swarms of missionaries that could out-walk, out-transport, and out-preach across the region. Much of the Onin Peninula would eventually be Islamized, but the conversion of Dutch Papua would belong to the colonizers.

So perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that Patipi’s sultan, Fahim Kanumbas, looked to the far west for inspiration.

A similar outlook was also spreading among many of the Malay sultans of eastern Sumatra, whom were shocked by the Javanese language experiment and its implications. For these rulers and the larger Malay people, their language was the lingua franca that linked themselves to the wider world; to cut it off would mean to sever themselves from their neighbours and to lose contact with the high scholarship and intellectualism of the greater Malay world. The recent moves by the Dutch to open missionary activity across Sumatra and to import new migrants from Java and beyond were also troubling for the local demography.

So it similarly shouldn’t be surprising that these sultans of Sumatra also looked abroad for inspiration and guidance. Only in their case, it was to the north and east…

____________________

Notes:

Whew! This took a while. As you can all guess, the current crisis and the Great Lockdown has somewhat sapped my will to write, though reports of my disappearance are greatly exaggerated.

In a nutshell, the Dutch East Indies is starting to get really affected by all that’s been going on, and the conflicts/mishaps the Dutch have planted are slowly growing up to bite them – in small ways, for now. For the most past, this growth in modern self-awareness is taking place in the local level, which is why we are not delving into the actions of the Dutch officials much (and also, because I am more interested in local happenings). But there’s a hint of ethnic separatism amongst some of the elite and intellectuals brewing about, and a whiff of completely foreign ideologies that… may not gel well with local thinking.

Sidenote: If you wonder why I had to fall back on pre-colonial history despite this being an update set during the Great War (1905-190X), it’s because… I forgot to write about local history and culture as a backgrounder in previous updates, and now I have to fill them in lest future installments become devoid of context and be misunderstood.

Also, and despite the floridness of it all, the Europeanized Javanese script is really beautiful.

Spoiler: all the notes

1. This is actually close to OTL! Religious pilgrimages from Southeast Asia soared towards the end of the 19th century; by 1910, the port of Penang recorded close to 10,000 Malays from across the archipelago partaking in Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages, and similar numbers of Indonesians were recorded living in the holy cities by the late 19th century. On a personal scale of reference: when I was in Makkah for my Hajj, my Malay-but-Saudi-born guide explained how the local hills used to be inhabited by permanent Malay and Indonesian communities until the Saudis started bulldozing them for their own megaprojects.

2. See Post #945 on the Javanese language change. It is worth mentioning that Dutch authorities were becoming increasingly worried at the congregation of East Indies’ locals at home and in Makkah and Madinah IOTL, and how pilgrims and intellectuals could talk openly on the colonialism of their homelands while on Ottoman ground, in Malay.

3. The closest I can compare Javanese styles of speaking is with Japanese honorifics and how different forms of vocabulary and grammar are used depending on a person’s relation to a family member or superior, but even that comparison is a bit imperfect. At times, the different Javanese styles can almost sound like different languages entirely!

4. See Post #1445 for how the Great War tore the European community of Malaya apart.

5. See the final paragraph in Post #929 for the Isolo del Diavolo / Devil’s Island prison complex on Italian Sabah. Also, f o r e s h a d o w i n g . . .

6. See Post #1034 for a background look into the Islamization of Patipi and Dutch activities in Papua in general.

 

[Al-numbers]

Darud Dunya Palace, Kutaraja, Sultanate of Aceh Darussalam, 7 October 1907​

“If you please, putri-putri?”

Entering the space, Raja Pocut Syakirah couldn’t help but be impressed. The small room was furnished to the full with multiple pieces of furniture and props for the photography session, with one particular stand being piled with an assortment of curtains, cushions, tomes, and plant arrangements that pleased her eye. Perfect for commemorating our introduction of us both as future sister-in-laws. “I think I’ll try this place first.”

“Where do I stand?” Uttered said sister-in-law, and Pocut turned around at the lilt of accented Acehnese. It was a strange thing to see a foreigner dress in traditional clothing, but Ayshe Konca looked stunning in the dress and fineries personally handpicked by Pocut’s grandmother. It is traditional for outsiders to don Acehnese clothing when in the presence of royalty [A], but to have beauteous Circassians be wedded into the family, it does well to bring out the stops.

“How about behind me for one session, and then you can sit in front for the next?” Pocut queried, taking her place on the chair. “And you need to tell me of the legends of Turki and Tanah Sirkassia after this! Especially the women’s tales! I simply must know of the girls who fought against the Russians when they arrived! And also-”

“Your Highness, please.” The photographer interrupted, ferrying his contraption forward. “Enough talk and hold your positions.”

“Oh.” Pocut stopped, the words still buzzing in her mind. The following minutes were full of silence and as she angled her body according to the man’s directives. Lady Ayshe – no, Putri Ayshe soon enough – assembled herself behind as the photographer made his final preparations.

Still, the images of Turkey and the mountains of her new sister-in-law danced in Pocut’s eyes. Like all royal ladies, she had heard tales of Circassia and how it fell to the horrid empire of Rusia, and how the mighty Uthmaniyah offered them as much refuge and protection as it could to the expulsed people. And having them to actually be here, in Aceh! For a moment, she wondered if her parents were reminded of their own struggle against the Dutch when they first saw Ayshe. I wish Mother and Father talked of their time in the mountains.

“You will have to forgive me then, sister.” The voice of said person whispered, her accented words lilting her ears. “I’m not much of a storyteller compared to my brothers.”

But I want to hear what it’s are like over there from you, Pocut wanted to say, but the spider-like machine was ready and she didn’t want to blur herself on its frames.


____________________

Notes:

This piece was originally supposed to form the introduction to the next update (Aceh and Johor), which is underway. However, the length of the next instalment is now reaching so long, I need to consider making major edits or splitting up some parts in order to make it all palatable to read. In the end, it was either putting this up first, or have it cut entirely on editing.

Why yes, we shall be delving a bit into how Aceh and Johor sees the Ottoman Empire and her residents. And yes, we shall view just how that entails to Circassians being married off to royal houses in Southeast Asia, amongst other strange marriages.

Spoiler: Reference and translations

putri-putri = princesses (plural meanings are formed when a word is duplicated)
Turki = Turkey
Tanah Sirkassia = Circassian land / homeland
Rusia = Russia
Uthmaniyah = Ottomans

[A] This may seem like an odd rule, but this is actually a documented subject amongst western traders in Aceh’s heyday. In the court and in the homes of major officials, it was customary for guests and envoys to don traditional Acehnese clothing presented by their hosts. No wearing the clothes, no business whatsoever.

 

[Al-numbers]

​

Eunice Thio, The Fraternal Twins: Johore and Aceh in the Imperial Period, (Ender Publishing; 2005)

...In a sense, the rebuilding of Aceh did not go as the Acehnese originally planned.

Despite all their efforts, it was incontrovertible that the Aceh War wiped the land clean of many treasured craftsmen and spice planters, most of whom fled to British Malaya, Temenggong Johor, Brooke Sarawak, or the D.E.I to escape the carnage. Later on, this void would be filled by more than 60,000 Chinese immigrants and settlers, grasping the opportunities created by the postwar-Acehnese court’s copying of Johor and Sarawak’s Kangchu policies. [1] Despite this, the Aceh War had given her neighbours a golden opportunity to develop their production of pepper, gambier, cloves, and other cash crops, forcing the sultanate out from its corner of the global market; Aceh would never enjoy her former prosperity as a spice producer.

Nonetheless, the pace of the sultanate’s rebuilding was impressive. When the Dutch finally left the region in 1888, they left behind an Aceh of scorched earth. Burnt fields, massacred villages, and destroyed plantations blighted the land with the Acehnese court having to depend on international charity to feed her population for the first few years. But the nature of the war had also protected a surprising source of potential revenue from overexploitation by the Acehnese: gutta-percha. By the late 19th century, the world went wild for rubber and Southeast Asia formed one of the largest raw producers of malleable latex. However, regional overexploitation had left many of Aceh neighbours bare of gutta-percha, with populations of the latex-bearing palaquium gutta trees crashing across the archipelago by 1884. [2]

This drop in production, also known as the Gutta-Percha Crisis, was the opportunity that Aceh sought. With their Ottoman saviour in need of raw materials for industrialization, Aceh stepped in as a grateful benefactor by harvesting and exporting wild latex to the Sublime Porte, collecting enormous profits along the way. In fact, gutta-percha exports and taxation would be so lucrative, it would form 1/5th of all total government revenues In Aceh by 1910. With the birth of the Great War, Aceh’s customer base would even grow as British (and later German) governments signed emergency agreements to claim even more of local wild rubber. While this trade would later collapse by the end of the decade due to overharvesting, the sheer scale of the revenues produced would set the Acehnese with more than enough financial capital to rebuild.

And rebuild, they did. By 1898, the capital of Kutaraja had been completely rebuilt with many new buildings set in the neo-Mughal and neo-Ottoman style as a result of local infatuation with the Islamic West. Once-despoiled residential quarters were back to overflowing as new immigrants flooded in from the countryside and beyond, carving off their own neighbourhoods. The sultanate’s conflict with the Dutch had also brought it enormous clout within the Islamic world, leading to an immigrant Turco-Arab-Hadrami population of over 8000 by the Great War. These new peoples, most of whom were traders, entrepreneurs or prospectors, even began to pioneer Aceh’s mining industry as ore seams began to be investigated across the interior mountains.

Aceh National Archives: ‘Locals at the market in Kutaraja’, circa 1905.
​

But if there was one place where Aceh lagged, it was industrialization.

Despite all the progress, the sultanate government was still much too sceptical of Western nations to accept their promise of foreign investment. The fact that business dealings were also wrapped up in Acehnese customs – such as wearing traditional clothes provided by the palace court and high officials – further dissuaded many westerners (though not all) from dipping their toes locally. [A] There was also a tussle within the royal government to turn the clock back and relaunch Aceh as a spice producer with the associated agrarian-based economy to support it, as it was during the land’s heyday, which conflicted with more modernist voices who clamoured for greater exploitation of the region’s coal reserves.

Instead, the honour of industry went to Johor, which had carefully grown her spice economy to become not only the richest independent sultanate in the Malay Peninsula, but perhaps all of archipelagic Southeast Asia. After decades of careful investment – supplemented with the Kangchu system and the arrival of the Acehnese spice planters – the Johorean government had acquired enough capital to embark on projects that would make any subordinated sultanate cry; Johor Bahru was the first city after British Singapore to install electric lights and a sewage system, along with a myriad of semi-artisanal industries that blossomed as a result of royal patronage and international demand – a happy consequence of the state’s showing-off at the periodic World Fairs.

Another sign of forwardness came from one of Sultan Abu Bakar’s pet projects: a state railway. Taking a leaf from equally-rising Japan, foreign experts were hired to help the royal government in connecting the far-flung towns, villages, and plantations of the sultanate together, which had the added benefit of helping the tabulation of the state’s population, a process that has long thwarted government efforts. While such a project – which would entail cutting down virgin forests, blowing up hills and erecting new bridges – would have swallowed any local state with debt, Johor’s wealth enabled it to continuously fund the project [3] and even embark on some showpiece projects, such as the grandiose Johor Bahru railway station.

A cigarette card showing a locomotive of Johor’s state railway (above) and a photograph of the imposing Johor Bahru train station and hotel, completed in 1906.

​

But industrial development was always on the minds of the sultan and his ministers, and such an opportunity arose when the Great War broke out. Despite Abu Bakar’ Anglophilia and the royal court’s erring for the Sublime Porte, Johor remained a neutral nation and even accepted the flight of hundreds of Italian, French, and Russian families fleeing from British Singapore and Malaya. For the government, the moneyed and skilled arrivals were an untapped source of knowledge as they began to embark on building their first factories; the War made a mess of global shipping routes and jumped-up the price of imported goods flooding in from Singapore. Such a chance was rarely seen.

The first assembly lines were built to churn out military kits that would supply British, Indian, and Ottoman forces across the Arabian, African, and Indochinese battlefronts. However, it wasn’t long before more commercial concerns mushroomed. The most famous of these were the canning wares of Jean Clouet, a Frenchman who emigrated to Singapore in the 1890’s to start a trade in selling perfumes and wines for the rich. However, his entrepreneurial spirt soon led him to import canned food to the Singaporean public, which led to both popularity from the locals and disgruntlement from the British, whom confiscated Jean’s business during the Great War. Fleeing to Johor, it wasn’t long before his idea for a canning factory found reception by the government and by 1907, the now-famous ‘Ayam Brand’ of tinned foods was officially launched. [4]

But for all this, Johor’s growth had one Achilles’ heel: the absence of coal and oil. Back then, the only nearby source of coal in Malaya was in Batu Arang, deep in Selangor. In an ironic twist, the sultanate that aimed to achieve industrial growth had to rely on oversea coal imports from Aceh, which saw the latter’s mining industry boom as a result…

********************

​

Nor Kamsiah binti Halila, Islam and Ideology across the Colonial East, (Tengath-Timur: 1985)

…Given Johor and especially Aceh’s connections to the Ottoman Empire, it was only a matter of time before Islamic reformism struck the two polities with full force.

For Aceh, their decades-long war with the Dutch had obliterated old styles of religious tradition and the royal government sought a fresh start by looking beyond their borders. Coming from the bottom, it was obvious to see why the Ottoman Empire was so enrapturing for many Acehnese; here was a beautiful, established, and powerful Islamic empire that fought against the Western Powers on several occasions, and sometimes won. The high culture of the Turks and Arabs – in all their arts, poetry, lifestyles, and philosophies – was worlds away to many Acehnese peasants and even nobles who had to content themselves with wooden homes and brick palaces. Students and travellers to Cairo, Alexandria, Edirne, and Kostantiniyye spoke of the cities festooned with enchanting mosques and bedecked in such wealth, people, and prosperity that made populated Kutaraja seem like nothing more than dust.

And of the Ottoman philosophies that Aceh beheld, two were held in the highest regard: Islamic Modernism and Pan-Islamism.

Given the battering it had against the Netherlands East Indies, a great many Acehnese students and courtiers saw Islamic Modernism as a way out for their homeland. Centred in the great halls of Cairo and Kostantiniyye and spearheaded by figures such as Sheikh Muhammad Abduh, the movement called for a rethinking of Islamic doctrine, the use of intelligence and reasoning, friendliness and cooperation between non-Muslims, and a reconciliation between science and spirituality. For the Acehnese whom listened, these were heady and incredible notions that went far beyond traditional homeland creeds. For those who subscribed to the philosophy, reinterpretations of sharia to reconcile scientific, technological, and social progress was seen as essential if Aceh were to rise again as a modern nation.

But equally as popular (and more forceful among the religiously inclined) was Pan-Islamism. This movement, partly borne by the rise of new creeds such as Deobandism and Wahhabism, calls for different paths: emphasizing Islamic unity over ethnic and national boundaries, religious revivalism, doctrinal purification from old practices, the upholding of traditional sharia (except in cases where it obstructs the Pan-Islamist ideal), and anti-imperialism. This ideology was especially attractive to religious students and pilgrims studying in Cairo, Makkah, and Madinah as they became aware of just how much western colonialism was so dominant worldwide. For them, Pan-Islamism became a clarion call for mass-resistance, organization, and international unity.

‘The Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo’, by Adrien Dauzats (circa: 1831)​

By 1906, both these philosophies had taken root in mainland Aceh with the first political clubs coalescing around each ideal, formed mainly by returnees. However, many locals saw no wrong in subscribing to both movements in some shape or form; Acehnese society was still rural and thus heavily conservative, and religious orthodoxy in the form of Turco-Arab-centric practices was considered a respectable way of Ottoman emulation. However, there was an equal awareness that some modernization in the Japanese, Siamese, or Johorean style was important for Aceh to survive in a colonial-happy neighbourhood. In another vein, almost all Acehnese equated both Modernism and Islamism as supporting the Ottoman sultan as paramount caliph, a notion that was distasteful to several Arab and Turkish ideologues.

In Johor’s case, the ideologies of Islamic Modernism and Pan-Islamism took root in a different way. Similar to Aceh, the sultanate’s Malay youths and ulamas (clerical establishment) saw the Ottoman Empire as place of pilgrimage and education. However, the decades of partial cooperation with the British Empire saw a number of Malay notables seeing the British as a worthy emulator of progress, with the most notable effects being the persistent push for industrialization and the creation of western institutions such as a central bank. A number of Malay nobles also sent their children to be educated in Great Britain, though a majority still sent theirs to the universities of Cairo and Kostantiniyye.

As such, the currents of Islamic, Western, and Ottoman philosophies hybridized in a different way in mainland Johor, aided along by the sultanate’s equally mixed institutions of rule which stayed strong while Aceh’s was obliterated during their long war against the Dutch. This hybridity was soon given a name: Islah – ‘Reform’ in Arabic. For the newly-educated Malays, the Islah movement was more than just a philosophy, but a political and ideological creed to push Malay culture, scholarship, business, and thought away from the traditional creeds of the Malay ulamas - who saw religion in only spiritual terms and cared little for progress or British influence on everyday life.

One of the Islah movement’s early proponents, the Johorean Sheikh Faisal Tahir al-Jalaludin, summed up the movement’s goals in a 1906 pamphlet [5]:

• The reformation of Islam in Malaya and the disbandment of practices not of Islam;
• Practical considerations on workers welfare;
• Wealth pools for Malay businesses;
• Governmental support for Malay businesses;
• Emphasis on good education, attention and knowledge to the English language;
• Application of British progress to Malaya;
• The upholding of the Malay sultan;
• And the education, emancipation, and participation of women in Islamic, scientific, and political scholarship.

In time, all three movements would spread change and upheaval across the Malacca Straits…

********************

​

Mazyar Ebrahimi & Jana Daghestani, Ottomanophilia: The Tale of Ottoman Influence in Southeast Asia (Journal of Southeast Asian Studies: 1979)

…To be fair, Aceh’s erring for the Islamic West wasn’t exactly a new thing. For centuries, the sultanate had looked towards the empires of India and Arabia as inspiration for local rule. In the 17th century, for instance, the Kutaraja court created the position of Shaykh ul-Islam as the supreme authority of religion throughout the land, in emulation of the Ottomans and their own ennoblement of senior jurists to dictate religious affairs.

But the Ottomanophilia of the re-emerging Aceh was much larger and deeper in scope, not simply confined to philosophy-waxing students and nobles. In northern Sumatra, the love for Turco-Arabian culture permeated through all fabric of life; Fezzes and robes became everyday wear for locals, while the homes of the wealthy became decked in Turkish carpets weaved as far away as Uşak or Bursa. Hookah and coffee culture rose to prominence in major towns – though this was partially aided by the growth of Chinese-run coffeehouses, which fiercely competed with their Arab and Turkish counterparts for new customers. Some Arab and Hadrami notables became employed as Aceh’s ambassadors to the wider world, such as the famed ambassador Habib Abd Rahman al-Zahir [6]. A number of Arabic and Turkish schools were even set up for young children and adults to master the languages, with exemplary students being offered a chance to study in the faraway Empire itself.

The most significant effect was in martial relations. Families with Ottoman links became highly sought after for Acehnese notables and even local townsfolk were impressed if a person managed to marry an Ottoman citizen. The influx of Turks, Arabs, and Hadramis moving in certainly kept the prospects afloat, lured in as they were by Aceh’s attempts to reopen and expand its economy from spice-farming. By the Great War, around 8000 Ottoman immigrants made Aceh their new home, with many intermarrying with local Acehnese for business or practical reasons.

But of all, the most prized match was to wed a fair Circassian. The sultanate had, along with the greater Muslim world, heard tales of the Russian annexation of the Caucasus Mountains and the expulsion of its Circassian inhabitants, and it too had been brought along into the romanticized portrayal of the ‘Circassian Beauties’, whom were seen as extremely beautiful and voluptuous. The Acehnese royal court became particularly enamoured, especially as princes and diplomats began to travel to Kostantiniyye for various affairs – such women were often presented as concubines by the court of Abdulhamid II as gestures of goodwill. As to whether these women consented to be married off and taken so far from home, their words are scant to be found; many Circassian-descended families are notoriously cagey of their histories and the Acehnese royal archives are just as secretive.

Personal photograph of Putri Ayshe Konca, a Circassian woman who was married to the crown prince of Aceh, circa 1907.

​

On a darker scale, Ottomanophilia also meant that Aceh picked up some of the less salubrious aspects of the Empire. Incoming Greeks and Armenians were particularly distrusted due to their opinions and (in the case of the Greeks) outright revolt against Ottoman rule, which partially explains into the contemporary rivalry between Kutaraja and British Penang, which housed a sizable Greek and Armenian community [7]. The emulation also expressed itself into local support for controversial Ottoman policies such as the internment of many Armenians into camps during the Great War in Anatolia [8], which has complicated Acehnese diplomacy to this day.

But most dark of all was the growing suspicion by some Acehnese of the land’s Chinese minority. Brought in by the Kangchu system to restart the spice economy, more than 60,000 Qing Chinese immigrants had settled in Aceh to plant pepper, gambier, and other spice crops. But the new arrivals quickly began to make themselves known in other ways by building their own villages, town quarters, and temples that honoured foreign gods. Some had even began to smuggle opium, which was still a legal good in British Malaya and the D.E.I. . Their foreign connections were also exploited in the form of new sundry stores and coffeehouses which began to grow faster than their local or Arab counterparts. Even the Acehnese court hired a Chinese Peranakan as their finance minister, further adding to the suspicion that, in one contemporary maxim, “We fought off one conqueror, only to be conquered by another”.

As a result, many locals began pushing for the institution of Ottoman-esque laws such as the Millet system, in effect to create a separate administration of law for the Chinese. But a few also began to push for the primacy of Islam and the Acehnese people vis-à-vis the increasingly large Chinese minority, calling for the restriction of several rights and freedoms in a manner reminiscent of Turco-Arabian dhmmitude – ironic given how such concepts were themselves being challenged back in the contemporary Ottoman Empire. As the Great War rolled on and the Balkan and Anatolian theatres were fought and slowly retaken, the calls for what to do with the local populace became mirrored in Aceh with what to do with the Chinese…

Photograph of a Chinese temple near the town of Meulaboh, circa 1910.

​

In Johor, Ottomanophilia was similarly buoyant and followed by both nobles and peasants with a few Circassians, Arabs, and Turks being equally married into local society. And like Aceh, it too suffered a problem of being engulfed by minorities. But the decades of unbroken co-habitation with the Chinese populace (rough estimate of 250,000 by 1905) – now far exceeding the original Johorean Malays (about 95,000) and immigrant Acehnese and Javanese (around 40,000 each) – began to produce a strange effect that was seen as unfavourable to the biased locals of Aceh: local intermarriage.

Such unions were uncommon but not unprecedented in Malayan history. As far back as the 15th century, there have been oral and written tales of Chinese women and men having Malay spouses. The growth of the mercantile Peranakan class was in itself a sign of how malleable locals were at the prospect. Given the dearth of Chinese women for many Kangchu settlers in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, it was inevitable for interracial marriage rates to start ticking upwards in the Johorean backwoods and market towns. While the most of these marriages involve Chinese men taking Malay women as concubines, a few did took the extra step of conversion to Islam or syncretise it with traditional beliefs of ancestor worship and native/foreign gods, giving rise to a new strain of a Malayan faith... [9]

But the biggest splash in this paradigm was taken up by none other than Sultan Abu Bakar himself. Over the decades, the man had become personable with a rich Cantonese entrepreneur called Wong Fook Kee, who helped invest in the modernization of Johor. Along the way, he began to ensconce himself into the sultan’s inner circle and decided to go further by presenting his own daughter Wong Siew Kuan as a prospective match. Abu Bakar was already married twice, but that did not stop the two from being wed in a public ceremony in 1886. Wong Siew Kuan subsequently converted and renamed herself as Sultanah Fatimah, and accounts report that she was surprisingly the most respected of all Abu Bakar’s wives, taking a keen interest in the development of Johor.

All this, despite Johor adopting a “Separate but Equal” policy for their Malay and Chinese residents, points to a clear shift in preference regarding spouses vis-à-vis Aceh. And with this, it is perhaps no wonder that as both sultanates began to influence their surrounding regions – Johor for Malaya and Aceh for Sumatra – both polities began to drift apart…

Wong Siew Kuan / Sultanah Fatimah (left) and her daughter Tunku Besar Fatihah (right)


​

____________________

Notes:

First off all, thanks to @frustrated progressive for helping me with proofreading!

Whew! This update was a mammoth of an undertaking. I have promised almost a year ago that we shall delve into how the Ottoman Empire impacted Aceh and Johor, and here it is. The previous interlude was meant to form an introduction to this piece, but the following paragraphs and passages became so long, I decided to post the interlude first instead of cutting it out for the sake of brevity and bloat-cutting.

Regarding the incidence of Malay-Chinese intermarriages, legends of such date back all the way to the Malacca Sultanate of the 1400’s in which a Ming princess named Hang Li Po was married to the Malaccan sultan Mansur Syah. However, Ming records show no such event taking place, although they do note the presence of Chinese communities, diplomats, and even graveyards around contemporary Malacca. More personally, the fact of such intermarriages are hard to ignore once you start looking up your family tree.

Also, the part where Abu Bakar married a Cantonese woman isn’t just a TTL event. The Johorean royal family really did marry non-Malays during the late 19th century with Chinese and Circassian brides becoming a part of several prominent families. To this day, a fair number of Malay-Muslim politicians claim some mixed Chinese or Eurasian ancestry, like Malaysia’s third Prime Minister who had partial Circassian ancestry. No less than the current Queen of Malaysia herself, Tunku Azizah Aminah, has openly stated of her Cantonese heritage (from her ancestor Abu Bakar’s marriage, no less!) and has said that, with some digging, she could retrace back her maternal lineage back to southern Guangdong.

[A] This practice of foreigners wearing traditional clothes before facing royalty and high officials was attested as far back as 1599! (page 60)
(B.) Opium sales and opium taxes made up a substantial portion of colonial revenues for the British and Dutch all the way to the mid-20th century IOTL.

Spoiler: so many notes...

1. See post #464 on the Kangchu system of Johor and Sarawak.

2. See post #896 on the growth and collapse of the Gutta-Percha trade in Southeast Asia.

3. The profitability of a spice-cargo rail line was seen even back then by the Muar State Railway, which was built between the towns of Bandar Maharani (present-day Muar) and Parit Pulai in 1890. Carrying spices and fruits from the two termini, the transport of goods and people was so profitable that there were proposals to extend the railway to further reaches of Johor. Sadly, they were never carried out and the line was eventually closed in 1929 due to soft ground and rising maintenance costs.

4. The Ayam Brand is a real brand of canned foods in Malaysia that was started by Alfred Clouet, a Frenchman who travelled to Singapore to sell luxury goods. ITTL, it was his TTL cousin who sailed to Southeast Asia and started the manufactory. When the Great War arrived, he moved the business (and factory) to Johor.

5. Every part of that list were the actual aims of the Islah movement in British Malaya, though it should be noted that the original espousers took some inspiration from both the Ottoman Empire and Kemalist Turkey, especially regarding women’s rights. ITTL, Johor’s long history with the British provided another point of hybridity into the reformist movement.

6. Habib Abd Rahman al-Zahir was an actual Hadrami wildcat of a person who led a colourful life serving in the royal governments of Hyderabad and Johor whilst also shuttling back-and-forth all over the Indian Ocean in trading various goods. But he was also inducted into the Acehnese court and became Aceh’s diplomat during the early years of the Aceh War, trying in vain to entice Ottoman intervention. ITTL, he was successful and continued to serve as an ambassador right up to his death in 1896.

7. Penang still has Armenian Street ITTL, and the continued influence of the Ottoman Empire in trade ITTL allowed some Armenians to still reside there during the Great War.

8. F o r e s h a d o w i n g . . .

9. M o r e f o r e s h a d o w i n g . . .

 

[Al-numbers]

San Nicolas neighborhood, Manila, Spanish Philippines, 29 November 1906​

It wasn’t the crowd Errico Malatesta thought he would preach, but it was a crowd nonetheless.

The dockhands and factory workers weren’t too put-off by his halting Spanish, at least. “As I said before, by what right do your employers have to claim that your sweat and tears are for your own gain? Isn’t that like a farmer who whips a donkey incessantly just so it could walk faster? And then shout to it that the scars shall make him strong?”

Looking up and around – the warehouse had a tendency to amplify his voice, which made him alert for any unwanted ears, he finished. “If they truly cared about your lives, they should have given you all a living wage to begin with!”

The responses were the usual, but one man – a young mestizo with Chinese features – caught his attention. “But even if we band together and protest, the police shall be on us all! I want more than anything to be something more for my children, but I don’t want them to lose a father!” He squinted. “Even if we can unite ourselves, even if we can organize every single worker in Manila and elsewhere, do you think the authorities back in Spain will just let us be!? Or the Dutch? Or the White Rajah?”

That, Malatesta knew, was the most difficult question. “What is your name?”

“Rafael.”

“So Rafael, let’s say you are fired from your work for some reason or another. Would you stop looking for employment there and then?”

“No!” The reply was biting. “I’ll try again!”

“And would you try and help your friends with employment or their lives along the way?” Malatesta continued, “With all that you can?”

“It depends, but I won’t simply leave them alone, if that is what you are saying!”

“Exactly. Helping one another supports us all. And that is why organizing yourself at work is the absolute right thing to do! The police are able to pick-off people one by one, but not a united crowd, and never against a city. I definitely don’t recall them having complete control over Manila. Same too for the abusive archbishops and the Spanish church; where are the letters from God that said they have the right do what they wish on this land and its people? I would like to see it! And as for Spain and the neighbors, their leaders are just as supported by the same injustices as here! If we can all stand united, how many walls can we breach?”

“But our children and families! What if the police gets to them to get us to stop!?” Rafael was still irate. "And you don’t know how the factories work here! The kapatas can throw us all out in a day and get a floor of new workers the next! There shall always be new people from the villages that want a wage! What then?”

“Solidarity, Rafael.” Malatesta said. “That and humanity. When I suffered through the hell of Devil’s Island – (No more. No more…) – I had to rely on other prisoners to ease my pain. We helped each other with labor, shared what little food we had, and soothed each other when the guards weren’t looking. We were thieves, bastards, rabble-rousers and stabbers, but solidarity made us stand through all that place’s horrors, and it was solidarity that helped us escape when Italian Sabah was falling apart. It was solidarity that let me here, now!

You can help by making protective associations for your wife and children with other women, so that they can be safely fed, provided, and protected from harm. And if we can change things here on the behalf of the downtrodden, then those villagers can work in far better surroundings than they could be, in this city and others. If we push the barangays and haciendas to be better, they wouldn’t need to move at all! It’s like the old Malay saying: ‘Bersatu tagoh, bercarai raboh’ (I hope that Malay wasn’t atrocious) – united we stand, divided we fall. And if a factory can fire every single one of you and hire replacements the following day, that is a factory that shouldn’t exist at all.”

But whatever the argument, a loud burst of sound interrupted the exchange. “STOP! Everyone! We need to leave!” A street boy entered the doorway, panting. “The police are on the way! Twenty of them armed with guns! We have to all go, NOW!”

At that, pandemonium erupted. Malatesta jumped off the boxes he used as a stage and rushed out to the nearest side door. One look with Rafael beside him spoke enough. We shall talk later.

********************

Jerome Farrales III, A Leftist History of the Philippines, (Cradling Star: 2019)

It is interesting to note how such a fountain of change could come from such a miserable island.

Located off the coast of Sabah, the Devil’s Island (Italian: Isolo del Diavolo) prison complex acted the same as its French counterpart in the American Guianas: to house rabble-rousers and the worst of men. From its very opening in 1885, scores of murderers and political dissidents were shipped off on the premise that they would be, ‘reformed and reverted to true members of good society’, as one newspaper article put it. But the scores of anarchists, socialists, and general leftists that show up on the records point to a different story of political silencing. Just as the Spanish Philippines exiled their intellectuals to the Congo, and the Algerians under France to New Caledonia, so shall Italy cart the undesirable speakers of truth to the farthest end of the earth.

Once arriving on the formerly named isle of Timbun Mata, the life of a new prison inmate was harsh and exhaustive. Given the far distance and logistics, the prison was intended to be partially self-sufficient, and that entailed the planting and growing of food on a hilly island, cloaked in jungle. Prisoners were instructed to fell trees, clear rocks, build terraces, and plant crops of rice, beans, and other produce in an effort to, “re-build exercise and character”, as the island’s chief sovrintendente, Ricario Petricca, responded in 1899 to journalistic enquiries. “The improvement of a criminal nature can only be so once it is exposed to, and thus receive, the fruits of honest labor.”

So it is rather bewildering how there were several attempted escapes from Devil’s Island already before 1905. The most daring of which involved two prisoners attempting to float by using sacks full of buoyant coconuts [1], only to be caught by a patrol boat as they floundered in the water. The harshness of work was reason enough to flee, but so was the punishments; prisoners whom flouted rules had to face longer working hours, forced stands in the heat, and even confiscation of their own hard-sown food from nightly meals. This method induced inmates to not destroy their crops, but also contributed to an abnormally high death rate of over 35% over the prison’s operation, mostly through malnutrition and elemental exposure. To this day, the prison cemetery remains a site of pilgrimage for many Italian and Southeast Asian leftists, journeying every year to honor the fallen on the Isle of Misery.

But though their bodies were beaten, the spirits of the inmates were far less so, and this showed greatly amongst the sharing, caring, companionship, and collaboration that was noted by both victims and jailors. It was the spread of agricultural knowledge amongst prisoners that prevented the death rate from climbing higher, and it was through successive mass-wrangling that better housing conditions were provided in 1903. But perhaps the best example was during the fall of Italian Sabah in 1905 during the first year of the Great Global War, when socialist and anarchist inmates staged a riot that overrun the facility as the sovrintendente and his cohorts attempted to flee. Taking control of the complex proved to be last unified decision for the inmates, though, as a fair number (the robbers and murderers) decided to flee inland while the rest (communists and radicals) sought escape to Sulu and the Philippines.

Almost all whom headed inland were killed during the Ancur; the tribal bloodbath that engulfed Sabah and Borneo.

…When the first boats arrived in Zamboanga and Mindanao, many leftists were grappled with a new question: what should they do now? Many had never conceived of travelling to Asia, much less to a Spanish dominion inhabited by natives and criollos of many colors. Indeed, several communists were in fact disgusted at the local cultures and social mores, exemplifying how even chain-breaking Leftism can be undone by racist and culturalist prejudices. But travelling home to Italy, across now-unsafe oceans and watchful colonies, was simply out of the question. And so many began a strange, new, hidden, and bewildering existence in the colonial realms of the Asian east.

-------------------------------------------

​

For exile, it would be hard to find better places in Southeast Asia for it than the Spanish Philippines. A neutral dominion of a neutral nation, the archipelago blossomed during the late 19th century as decades of rolling investments transformed the isles into a center of industry. Now, the Great War fed to even more prosperity as imperial belligerents clamored for ever-needed raw materials to consume each other. With new bridges and railroads being forged as fast as they were laid, the lowered costs and soaring profits from various mines, quarries, farms and workshops fed to the embellishment of the burgeoning cities. Filigrees and ornaments adorned even the meanest of tobacco factories, signaling the ostentatious wealth of their ever-prouder owners. And all along, the great society of peninsulares, criollos, mestizos, natives, and everything in between hustled and bustled in a colorful array.

But this veneer of prosperity hid a rotten core. Wracked by the turbulence of the 1890’s [2], a new dominion government now headed the Philippines, centralized in Manila. However, this arrangement was unfairly gerrymandered to produce conservative, pro-Spanish majorities in the Manila Cortes, and discretionary powers were broadly wielded by the Governor-General to ensure the continuum of colonial imperium. Residual laws on race were still upheld, as were the unjust wealth and educational qualifications for votership. And of the land’s crop of educated nationalists – the ilustrados – many had to toe the governmental line, lest they be continuously locked up for demanding a freer homeland. The loudest espousers often had to flee abroad to places like Japan, or found themselves exiled to central Africa on charges of ‘sedition’.

The lower classes and peasantry suffered worse. Uncounted tens of thousands were swallowed up by the new mines, plantations, and factories of the archipelago. Villages that stood in the way were often confiscated of their land, or were added to corrupt estates called haciendas which often expelled recalcitrant farmers, adding to the landless poor. For the indigenous peoples, such encroachment also came with a religious additive in the form of the Spanish Philippine Catholic Church, then-packed with foreign priests from the Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian Orders. Far from defending the helpless, the Spanish-born clergy had no qualms ratting out nationalists and radicals from the confession booth, even if they were of their own parish priests [3]. Religion had become the government’s eyes and ears.

Small wonder then this era is remembered by the now-infamous term: La Frailocracía.

A session of the corrupt Philippine Cortes, circa 1904​

For the escaped Italian leftists, it was a world that was strikingly similar. Yet not all were so eager to espouse what they believed in; colloquial Spanish was not a language most knew, the fear of arrest remained an issue, and a fair few regrettably preferred their racist and cultural prejudices to rule their judgement. One socialist hidden in Cebu noted how “…the superstition, attitude, and general character of the Philippine people are too low to understand the words of Marx.” As for the indigenous, many never thought of them as an issue of worth, or darkly assumed that modernization – however crude – would uplift them into ‘proper people’. As another socialist noted, “Why do these natives reject the world of order? Because they are in love with baseness, sloth, and disorder.”

But an equally fair number saw differently and were entranced with their new residence, and none went as far as promote the cause of equality as Errico Malatesta. A devoted anarchist since his youth, he was arrested in 1899 and transported to Devil’s Island the following year, though the dispiriting conditions failed to stop him becoming a leader in the 1905 prison breakout. Now an escapee halfway from home, he was struck by the social conditions of the Spanish Philippines and did what he did best: wander and organize. Helped along by a few others, he began to print pamphlets on leftist ideals and organized meetings with workers and intellectuals across the archipelago, though their religiosity sometimes dissatisfied Malatesta, who was an avowed atheist.

But it was his self-induction into the dominion’s cultures that truly affected him. After repeated interviews, wanderings, and studies, Malatesta was struck by the similarities and differences between European anarchism with traditional village life, divisions of labor, land conception, and the value of resources. From the nomadic Lumad peoples whom practiced swidden agriculture in the unclaimed rainforests, to the Panay and Negrito tribes whom were as materially free as the Spaniards aren’t, the myriad of cultures were nothing short of eye-opening. It is no coincidence that his famous meetings in Manila sometimes used analogies to local culture and his own incarceration, calling for solidarity with the downtrodden, equitable use of resources, mutual aid, education, and tools and land held in common – or at least in trust to the original inhabitants.

In mid-1906, Malatesta announced the birth of the Philippines’ first labour organization: the Unión Obrera Filipina – the Philippine Workers Union. [4]

Of course, this development was far from welcomed by the powers that be, and attempts were made to arrest Malatesta and his cohorts. But it was too late. Other socialist and communist groups were similarly sprouting, planted by fellow Italian escapees whom were now spreading Leftism beyond the Philippines. The socialist Giuseppe Ciancabilla was similarly successful at founding the Philippine Socialist Association (Asociación Socialista Filipina – A.S.F) which was successful enough to birth a sister organization in the Dutch Indies [5]. Though later arrests were made on a few Italian exiles, the agitators used local help in slipping away and fostering the creeds of leftism in secret, outpacing the authorities by the depth of their new movements.

And these movements, along with the local clergy, public discontent, Japanese observance, and economic shocks, shall light the path to the Philippines’ Second War of Independence…

********************

Somewhere in Mindanao, Sultanate of Maguindanao The Spanish Philippines, 07 December 1907​

Sultan Badaruddin II held his breath, and the ‘Amin’ almost didn’t came out at all.

But it did, and the union was sealed. Amin.

It is done.

The makeshift pavilion now exploded with joy as all manner of guests and family members began to surround the married couple. Following close behind, Badaruddin [6] kept himself busy conversing with the new in-laws and with the imam that solemnized the marriage. Still, even as the party traversed down the path, even the smell of food wafted through the air, even as the dining pavilion came into view, he couldn’t help but be deeply irked.

It has come to this. To be married off like a fallen house.

It rankled. Oh, how it rankled. Once, the sultans of Sulu had free reign to pick whatever spouses they wished. Once, the palaces of Jolo were flushed with wives and concubines that hailed as far away as China! Now, he had to see his darling daughter be married to a prince of Maguindanao, the ceremony solemnized in a pavilion of rickety wood deep in the mountains of the latter sultanate. Bitterly, Badaruddin wondered if this is what it was like for an upstart noble; milking his children in a clamoring for royal favors.

Hmph. At least the other Maguindanao princess is now ours.

Now under the dining pavilion’s shade, Badaruddin sat down and picked up some durian flesh from a porcelain plate. At least they aren’t completely destitute. Weddings and solemnization ceremonies are usually when royals and nobles show-off their wealth and splendor, but the recent wars with the Spanish have drained both Sulu and Maguindanao of all their priceless treasures. Still, a wedding without adornments, without fineries of gold, silver, silk, brass, and porcelain, is a wedding fit for paupers. Whosoever marries in such a condition – even though they were of purest royalty – is a family truly unworthy of dignity. [7]

Hmm, delicious. At least the food is satisfactory.

But as he craned his neck to see his daughter settling alongside the prince, with the sultan of Maguindanao coming close to congratulate the pair, Badaruddin also felt a small pang of guilt. It’s not like they have a choice. The decision to unify the houses of Sulu and Maguindanao was an outrageous one, but given how much the Spaniards are in control of the islands and lowlands, it could be the only choice that could save them all. The secret expedition to Aceh – the nobles should have reached Kutaraja by now – could be the deliverance they all need, but what good is foreign support if Manila could pick off royal houses and noble warlords piece by piece?

Divided, we all fall, but united… together… may our children achieve what we can’t.

After all, nothing lasts forever. Not even wars.

…Now, don’t tell me these people don’t have dancers or entertainment!


____________________

Notes:

Firstly: Happy Eid / Aidilfitri / Lebaran to all readers!

And thus, the partial foreshadowing in previous updates are now connected. The Spanish Philippines is becoming into quite a state as it grows under a resource-rich, neutral empire during the Great War, yet that very prosperity may have sown the seeds of the region’s downfall: gerrymandered politics, rising inequality, abusive behaviors, and the locking-up of intellectuals. In a way, the arrival of new leftist ideas is just the icing on the cake.

And if you’re wondering why the written section is extremely biased, that was intentional. The book’s premise and ideological bent did not make for an objective review of sorts.

The photo of the prison is actually that of the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands (used to house Indian nationalists), and the photo of the Cortes is actually that of the First Philippine Senate.

Spoiler: Translations

Kapatas = Foremen

Barangay(s) = Administrative division within the Spanish Philippines, equivalent to a village, rural district, or small town.

Hacienda(s) = landed estate of a family or group, whom use the lands for agricultural or other productive purposes. In the Spanish Philippines, the system was so strong and lucrative that even church Orders had their own haciendas.

Bersatu (kita) teguh, bercerai (kita) roboh = An old Malay saying: “We stand united, we fall divided” – that is often used to highlight cooperation and togetherness.

Sovrintendente = Superintendant.

Criollos = Creoles, Spaniards whom are born and raised in the Philippines.

Peninsulares = Spanish-born residents born in Spain. Often seen as above Criollos in judicial and societal matters.

Mestizos = Mixed-race people of Spanish and local descent.

Ilustrados = Spanish for "erudite," "learned," or "enlightened ones".

Spoiler: Actual notes

(1) You may laugh, but this actually how two prisoners escaped from one of the prisons in French Guiana!

(2) See post #1067 for more on the troubles afflicting the Spanish Empire in the 1890’s.

(3) Local Philippine clergymen, being local, were often more sympathetic to the nationalist movement than the Spanish-rooted foreign orders. For example: the ringleaders of the 1872 Cavite Munity were local priests, and their relation to noted intellectuals accelerated separatist sentiments.

(4) In comparison, the first workers union of the Philippines, the Unión Obrera Democrática Filipina (Democratic Workers Union of the Philippines) was established in 1902 IOTL based on socialist ideas the intellectuals picked up from Europe. Amazingly, one of the founding documents that the group used to exemplify its principles was Errico Malatesta’s own 1884 anarchist tract: Between Peasants.

(5) See post #1,843 for more information on the Dutch Socialist Association and other groups in the D.E.I.

(6) Sultan Badaruddin II of Sulu died in 1884 at the age of 19. Here, life was a lot kinder in not making him sick.

(7) This is attested by both oral, written, and my own family accounts of traditional weddings. Up until the 70’s and 80’s and even sometimes today, families in Malaya, Indonesia, and the southern Philippines would sometimes bankrupt themselves in hosting a grand wedding festivity in their homes, which often served as a ceremony of union and a community get-together. In fact, a couple that marries elsewhere (or, God forbid, in a mosque) is often seen by others as a) too poor to throw a bash, or b) eloping.

 

[Al-numbers]

In and around Miri, Kingdom of Sarawak, Sometime near the end of the Great War

​

The sun’s light had barely warmed the air and there was already a crowd gathering near the large, open hut.

Well... what looked like a hut?

The structure wasn’t like any sort of temporary shelter Paran had seen. With the painted white pillars and stone-raised wooden floor and the sheer largeness of the whole form, it looked nothing like the small stick-and-leaf constructions he and his friends had built when they were children. Back then, they made their lepo shelters for fun; to watch over their tribe’s paddy fields from hungry mouths.

At least it’s large enough for our wares today.

Settling down on the hut’s floor, Paran and his partners unloaded the woven baskets strapped onto their backs, taking out tubes upon tubes of the most precious good they have carried for weeks: Mountain salt. Individually wrapped in a layer of palm leaves and corded with strong rattan – the most excellent batches are placed in hollow bamboo – each tube was carefully noted, counted, and lain out in an ordered pile, offering the salt the respect it deserved for the weeks of labour poured into their creation.

As they should be. Now then. Let’s see if you are as famed as they said.

The opening of their trade began with a shout. With some prodding from a few lowlanders who accompanied the group as protectors, the gathering of people transformed into a line that snaked from the front steps to across the open field. Looking at them, Paran wondered what his chief would say if he witnessed the sight. Probably how irresponsible they are. To think the Boat Brothers and their salt-gifts created this demand [1], and yet these lowlanders have the great saltwaters nearby to make their own! The coming of the Rajah was a needed respite, but thank the gods we only do this once every few months!

Then again, if the great saltwaters are as medicinal as their mountain cousins, the lowlanders wouldn’t crave the latter as much.

Pushing the thought out, Paran prepared the scales and began the exchange. A person would walk up the steps and sit down, explaining to an interpreter how many salt-tubes are desired. But the price is always firm: no coins nor scraps of paper, no; the Kelabit and Lun Bawang mountainfolk have no use for that. What his peoples instead sought was rice – in small cloth sacks or leaf-woven pouches, so long that it can be opened and the grains inspected and weighed. If the amount is agreeable and the rice unadulterated, Paran allowed his partners to hand over the tubes.

But then there are the ones who don’t have rice on their hands. The ones that have bolts of cloth or pieces of gold, silver, or iron on hand, some of them decorative. While Paran might be willing to exchange mountain salt for a few such items – the women would adore the patterns and the mountain smiths the metals – a person can’t eat cloth or metal. One particular man, a foreigner from his looks, was insistent on paying them with a pouchful of metal coins and became desperate when Paran and his cohorts disapproved. Eventually, the purchaser ran off and returned later with some strange iron tools he was willing to part with. If nothing else, at least they can be smelted.

He got one salt-tube. One.

And speaking of the man, the people whom desired the tubes were a surprising bunch. Paran thought it was mostly the lowlander Malays and Dayaks whom seek the mountain salt, but there were a number of foreigners too in the line, hailing from lands he never even knew. There were some with slanted eyes, some with turbans and dark skin, and the person who bought the last salt-tube had… green eyes and what looked like red hair! Why did he colour that?

But with him, the day’s wares are over. As the interpreter announced the closing of the exchange to the disgruntled stragglers waiting outside, Paran straightened his spine after what seemed like hours of sitting forward. I need to hunch around less. With the baskets now full with burgeoning rice, he wondered if his back could handle carrying the load back to the riverboat.

I wonder if I can ask for some help.

********************

​

“Incredible. Is that… what I think it is?”

Syahrul the houseboy knew his employers would be interested.

Of course, given the rarity of the strange object (now lying on the cool wood of the dinner table) and how it played a part in the Rajah’s war in the deep heart of Borneo, Syahrul had a hunch that the Lindermann family would be, at least, a bit curious. Then again, anyone would be as to the origins of the legendary mountain salt of the Kelabits, harvested from the storied golden valleys of the deep interior. Now, not only is every family member gathered in the dining room, but almost every servant in the household had come to watch as well!

They were always curious about things like this. Silently, Syahrul gave a prayer of thanks for finding employment with such an agreeable family. For all their great wealth and Encik Lindermann’s high position at the nearby oil wells, their household was a surprisingly pleasant one through their willingness to learn the local Malay. Besides asking Syahrul of any stories he knew, the family also walks through town every few weeks or so, collecting anything that looked interesting in their eyes. In that, they were much better than the last family Syahrul worked; those people barely tried to understand Malay at all.

And speaking of the house’s head… “Let me get my notebook, first. Wait.”

And quickly as he spoke, Encik Lindermann left and returned with a book, a pen, and a sharp pair of scissors in his arms. And yet, he scarcely noticed his wife and children’s fond exasperation at all. “Alright. An… diesem… tag… unser… diener…”

They weren’t all perfect, though. Syahrul wouldn’t say it here, but the Bahasa Jerman of the family was the most disagreeable form of speech he had ever heard.

Down the table, their beautiful darling daughter Sofie was even more curious than her parents. Coddled in the arms of her nanny, she craned her neck and spoke in that weird Jerman of theirs. "Was ist da drin, Pa?"

“Warte zuerst, Liebling. Syahrul, how much rice did you trade to get this much?”

He thought of the pouch he took that morning. “About a kati, or so.”

“And how did the salt-sellers calculate the rice to the number of tubes?”

“One of them brought an iron scale and some weights. They gave out the tubes depending on how our rice weighed.”

Mem Lindermann looked surprised at that. “So they already know a thing or two about equivalent exchange? How did they learn that fast?”

“I think they already knew how to exchange goods and such…” The washerman Jamal piped from one end of the room. “…From trading their salt in the mountains. Some of the Dayaks in town are as clever as the Chinese in these things. That also may be where they got their scales from.”

“Alright. Now, for what’s inside…” Encik Lindermann took up the scissors and slowly cut through the rattan twine in one end. Peeling back the layers of wrapped leaves, Syahrul could almost hear the anticipation of the room. What did the storied salt look like?

“…Oh.”

The inside was… less exciting than expected.

The salt within looked tough but brittle, but what surprised Syahrul was how dirty it looked. The salt grains weren’t as pure white as those that are usually sold in town, but coloured with splotches of brown and even black! In all, it didn’t like the sort of salt anyone would use.

“Interesting. And the taste – (Encik Lindermann used his smallest finger to scrape off the end, and placed it on his lips) – is… less salty than sea salt? Syahrul, did you know of this?”

He shook his head. “No Encik.” He then explained of what he did know; that the mountainfolk he met claimed that their salt had medicinal value, that it can heal bones and bruises and make the body strong. “They said of adding this to their food to help with fever, sore throat, and even in women’s issues. Some have even said of presenting salt-tubes as gifts!”

In the arms of her nanny, young Sofie looked perplexed.

“But, who wants salt as a gift?”

********************

​

“Please, is it satisfactory?”

Connor Branagh grew concerned at the silence.

Perhaps it was too much to think that the father and the chieftain would quickly agree, but he hoped his sincerity would make itself clear with the gift. As it is, the two were still stunned by what he presented, the father’s fingers still tracing the lines of twined rattan on the object.

Turning the salt-tube over, the Iban man finally said something in the creole Malay they both know, “You really are devoted to this, aren’t you?”

Connor nodded. “I do.”

Beside the father, the chieftain looked… not stern, but definitely more serious. “I never thought I would see this. Please understand, it is not that I think it is fundamentally wrong, but this is… new for us. To be wed is usually a matter for other people like us, yes, and we do share the same Kristian faith. But no outsider of your race has ever married into our tribe and family. Or even considered it.”

“I know. So please accept my… sincerity in this. My… ikhlas?” That was a word Connor never thought he would use. Then again, he just learned what it meant days ago from his Malay and Dayak mates.

The situation still felt a tad surreal. Connor didn’t expect his life to journey here, of all places. When his family decided to move abroad from Connacht, everyone wanted to follow his cousin and move to sunny Australia. [2] But with the chance to see the world that he dreamt as a child, Connor argued that they should explore their options; Penang and Medan had thriving foreign communities, and the African Cape was always on the lookout for more immigrants. There were even Irish and Welsh groups in places like Brazil, Argentina, and Chile!

To say that he was rebuked was an understatement. The resulting firestorm within the household was enough to convince him to set out alone.

Mother would scream if she knew my heart to fall in Borneo.

“Ikhlas you are, but I need to ask: do you know what you are marrying into?” The father’s gaze was dark.

Connor gulped. “I know that I must abide by the rules of the longhouse, and the customs and practices of the tribe. Even if we live outside the longhouse, I must abide by your rules and come here if trouble arises. And I know that I must respect my ‘Bini’ – my wife.”

“The proper word is ‘Nguai’ – my spouse. And it is more than that.” The chieftain now explained. “If you enjoin with us, you must be aware of what we do and what this longhouse stands for. If there is a gathering held for a surprising incident, you will need to attend and give your voice. Your problems shall be our problems, but so shall be the opposite: our issues shall be yours. And given your form, eyes, and hair, you might be called to speak for us to the Omputeh – the White People that now live in the town. Can you do that?”

The last part momentarily startled Connor. He knew his Irish appearance already made him a small fascination among the locals – the Dayak mountain salt-seller couldn’t help but stare at his green eyes and reddish hair during the entire exchange – but he never thought the tribe would use it as a means to be heard.

But with that, the answer came easily. “I can. I promise.”

“…Good.” The chieftain now held the salt-tube as a prized treasure. “Thank you for the gift. To bring a rarity as this is a high mark of true devotion, and you seem truly honest in wanting know us all. But I need to speak with the other elders first before moving forward. Can you stay outside for a moment?”

“Of course, thank you.” And with that, Connor stood up and made the parting pleasantries before walking back through the longhouse’s verandah. All around him, the adjourned gathering of families began to move apart, and through it all, he could see the radiant form of Layang, looking at him with the promise of a future.

For a moment Connor mused on how his mother and father could react once he wrote back to Sydney. Shock, perhaps. I was always the odd one out.

But as he glanced at Layang, her beauty undimmed by the surrounding world, Connor thought it was worth it.

********************

​

Cheong hoped he wasn’t too late.

Rushing with the last of his strength, he burst through the door of the housing shack and passed the leaf-wrapped tube to the closest person he saw. With what little energy left, Cheong let the momentum of his body push himself through the crowd, the massed bodies parting their way until he finally reached the centre of his sorrow.

Spread out on the bed, at the very back wall, lay the dying Kai Heng Soo.

Cheong could only crumple in despair.

It had been nearly a week since his sickness began, and the former Head of the workers looked like he hardly recovered. Kai’s pallid face barely moved, but Cheong could see his eyes sliding just so to see his new visitor. For a moment, it seemed the man’s head might move up to greet him, as if he was ashamed to be welcomed in such a sorry state in bed, but Kai’s efforts ended with a “eeeehh…” before he sank down upon the dirty pillow, exhausted. Only his arm moved then, and Cheong could only grasp it tenderly.

Goh-Goh, I’m here. [3]

There was movement, and the crowd parted again to allow another close. It was friend, Tan the coolie, holding a steaming bowl of broth no doubt spiced with the hard-to-earn salt. Going to the other side of the bed, Tan crouched down and blew on a spoonful of broth before bringing it to Kai’s lips. For a second, the man’s mouth seemed immovable, but Kai slowly parted his teeth and allowed the liquid to enter.

Cheong didn’t know how long he stayed there, gathering back his energy whilst staring at his friend spoon-feeding his work-brother. With the repetitiveness of the motion, his mind began to wonder… It was a saving grace that he recalled how the mountainfolk abhorred coins and so ‘borrowed’ some iron tools from across the oilfields, not to mention hiding them in town before the forest men came with their loads of special salt. All the same, Cheong knew he acted madly when he came before the salt-sellers, desperately pleading in broken Malay for the wild men to accept the pouch of Sarawak Dollar coins everyone had scrounged up from their meagre salaries.

But they rejected. With the salt-sellers’ refusal and their visible supplies falling dangerously low, Cheong had to take the biggest gamble to retrieve those iron tools and pray that they can be traded.

How in the world did I even sprint that fast?

The clatter of the spoon on an empty bowl shook him from his contemplation. Despite the medicinal meal, the bedridden Kai still looked malnourished and weak, but his eyes are now closing and the rhythm of his chest indicated he was going to sleep. Energy recovered, Cheong took one last look at his work-brother before standing up. If Kai wanted to rest, he didn’t want to disturb him.

Opening the shack door, a wave of fresh air struck Cheong’s face, but he also smelled the underlying cloyness of what the locals call ‘minyak tanah’ – ground oil. Wafting everywhere along the breeze, it wasn’t a welcoming smell. Closing the door behind (he hoped the crowd within would give their Head some peace and quiet), Cheong viewed the bleak surroundings. The shacks of his and Kai’s were laid out all behind him in a deplorable row of workers’ housing. To his left, fields and hills were pockmarked with oil towers that soared into the air, pumping out the black gold that induced many companies to employ people like Cheong, all the way from China. To his right, in the distance, stood a towering mass of steel, iron, and metal pipes, refining the black gold before shipping it off to ports around the world… maybe even back to his homeland. [4]

But without homelanders like Cheong and the others reaping all the benefits.

We shouldn’t be living like this. No one should live like this.

A light crinkling in his trousers distracted him. Oh, right. Putting his hand into the left pocket, Cheong pulled out a crumpled leaflet that he found in a trash bin whilst wandering the town last night, looking for a place to stash the iron tools. Now in the sunlight, Cheong could now see why the scrap of paper so interested him enough to fish it out from the other mass of garbage. The title was in some strange language that he couldn’t recognize – is that Spanish? – but the main text of the paper was in Guoyu, and the first line alone was enough to grab Cheong’s mind.

‘Workers of the World, You have nothing to Break but your Chains!’

​

____________________

Notes:

Spoiler: Language terms

1) Lepo= temporary shelter often built for hunting and watching from a distance. Used mostly by the Kelabit.

2) Encik = Malay term for ‘Mister’..

3) Bahasa Jerman = Malay for ‘German Language’.

4) Kati = an old unit of measurement in China and Southeast Asia, equivalent to 600 grams.

5) Mem = a borrowing from the English ‘Maam’.

6) Ikhlas = borrowed from Arabic, the Malay version means something akin to ‘Sincerity’.

7) Guoyu = ‘National Language’. Usually applied to non-Han languages IOTL and ITTL.

Spoiler: Actual notes

1) Boat Brothers – the Peja’ Alud from Post #1,641

2) Irish immigration to Australia was surprisingly high throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, though the numbers paled when compared to that of the United States. By the end of the 1800’s, 27% of all Australian settlers had some Irish ancestry and even into the early 1900’s, there were an estimated 180,000 Irish citizens in the process of migrating into the dominion per year.

3) In the kinship system of the Cantonese, one way to address a brother in general (and especially an older brother) is Goh-Go. However, the first term can also be duplicated to show intimacy, such as Goh-Goh.

4) Late Qing China imported voluminous amounts of refined oil IOTL, most of which came from the United States. In TTL, they have some more options from nearby Southeast Asia, but the imports are still pushing Peking’s finances into the red.

 

[Al-numbers]

As an addition to the update above, here is something that I have just found today: a complete map of the linguistic divisions of Borneo. The island's ethnic and linguistic diversity has been noted a few times before, and several maps have been posted here to show this. But this is perhaps the most detailed map I have found that truly captures the sheer mind-bogglingness that is Borneo's ethnic groups. While I do have some doubts regarding a few linguistic placements (the Melanau region being that small? And that uninhabited stretch of southern Sabah... really?), this map is a really good visualization of the island nonetheless.

(Also, if there is one thing that gripes me, it's that a lot of relevant information can be searched throughout the internet, only to be unsearchable due to my sheer denseness and ignorance. If I had this map early on...)

An interesting observation is how some linguistic regions are heavily elongated - the Kelabit, Lundayeh, and Bakumpai in the south are really notable in this, often corresponding to regional rivers and waterways. Riverine travel was a common feature in Bornean life, but it was really indispensable to some tribes and may even function as a driver of acculturation, converting tribes into regional blocs through trade, social happenings, and wars. More relevantly, most salt springs are found in the central Bornean mountains that straddle the border between Indonesia and Malaysia, and the river trade that grew around this (alongside the proximity to medieval Brunei) may be what grew the Kayan, Kelabit, and Lundayeh subgroups to dominate north-central Sarawak.

 

[Al-numbers]

North Bridge Road, British Singapore, 9 April 1907​

The ringing entrance bell lifted Andrew Tong’s spirits more than it should. Still, it was almost closing time.

“Who could be coming in now?” Asked Kean behind him, his sewing machine shuddering down as with the disappearing daylight streaming in through the windows.

Andrew turned around, “Never you mind! Are you finished with that?” As the shop’s proprietor, he didn’t want to say just how precarious they all were, with half their customer base vanishing because of the War. It was a miracle of god the remaining revenues were just enough to pay for the shop’s monthly expenses.

After taking one quick sweep of all the workers and their tasks, he made his way to the front end, passing through racks of unsold undershirts and waistcoats that were once desirable amongst Singapore’s European elite and up-and-coming locals. Please let this be an unaffected customer, please let this be an unaffected customer…

Donning on his overcoat to further embellish himself, despite the layers of fabric adding to the stifling heat around his body, he pushed any doubts out of his head and voiced out in accented English. “Welcome!”

Immediately, the portly man standing by the entrance looked high-minded and pompous to the proprietor’s eyes, with a look on his mixed visage that expressed a taste for the best and nothing less. An Anglo-Indian? Oh well. Customers were customers.

“Good evening!” The man said in a cultured British accent. “I was wondering if I can get a good suit done in three days?”

What? “I’m… sorry? What did you say?”

“I said, can you tailor a suit within three days?” Annoyance was seeping into the man’s voice.

Andrew was flummoxed. Suit patrons weren’t usually this bold. “…Well, we have a selection of suits and coats that you can try! You might obtain your selection of choice sooner than you wish!”

And with that, he whisked the Anglo-Indian into a tailoring whirlwind. For the next half-an-hour, Andrew and his backroom assistants made the measurements, fittings, and cuts to an assortment of stored suitwear, all the while making sure the customer’s pomposity was sated with flattery. Every once in a while, the Anglo-Indian would bark out something like, “My father is one of the wealthiest businessman in Rangoon, you know?” Or, “Have you heard what is happening in Indochina? Dreadful. Very bad for business.” By the time Andrew was back on the front end with the finished suits, he wished hard for some cold baijiu.

But as the final payment was made, he realized he hadn’t asked yet on why the man wanted the clothes. “Is there a function or celebration you need to go?”

The Anglo-Indian only laughed. “Oh, no! Nothing like that! It’s… well, you will see.”

“See?”

“Yes! Don’t worry! You will remember my name soon enough! Everyone will! All the newspapers will say my name! Then everyone would want some suits from your little tailors’!”

Somehow, something of that ‘little tailors’ pricked Andrew deep.

As the front door opened once more, he made a note to ask around for anything about the Anglo-Indian and for anything odd that is being held in Singapore. After locking the door, Andrew finally made his way back to where all the workers were finishing up.

“Why did the man want the suits for?” asked Kean.

“I don’t know.” Andrew answered, shrugging. “Wonder what he said about remembering his name, too…”

********************

(Uploaded from the Penang state archives: The Malay Tribune, 10 April 1907)​

____________________

After years of planning, it’s FINALLY HAPPENING, FOLKS.

Baijiu: traditional distilled liquor from China, often made using sorghum or barley (in the northern regions especially) or with rice and other grains (with rice being prominent in China’s south).

 

[Al-numbers]

Cempaka Murang, The Hidden Trials of the Brookes (Kenyalang Publishing: 1999)

...The issue of marriage was always a matter of uneasiness. Then Charles Brooke and his presumptive heir died.

And with that, a large hole was blasted through the carefully planned succession of the Brooke family. When the children of Rajah Charles and Ranee Margaret grew up, it was decided that each son would be educated in the art of ruling and traditional warmaking so that Sarawak would enter into capable hands once the parents passed. But for that to happen, the children would trade their teenage and young adult years that would usually have included a search for a wife (or in Dayang Lily's case, a husband), a paradigm that characterised their princely peers in Europe.

Back then, the subject of marriage was one that few dared touch. Rajah's Charles' own marriage to Ranee Margaret was a quick and rather dry affair (and one that hid a secret that would explode in his son Clayton's face) (A). Afterwards, the pair kept a somewhat strained yet respectful relationship; Ranee Margaret grew to love her new home, but she also carried a strong and inquisitive personality of her own that sometimes clashed with her husband's. The fights they had over their children's education were perhaps the most famous, though many books tried to downplay Charles and Margaret’s preferences for tutors as ‘scuffles’ [1]. Regardless, there was enough respect for each other that both husband and wife agreed to postpone their sons' marriages, "...until they are old enough to know how to govern Sarawak." as Margaret wrote in her memoirs. (B)

But the arrangement did not extend to their daughter Lily, and plans to find her a husband were set afoot as soon as she reached adulthood. But as the eldest and only daughter of the family grew into an eligible princess royal, Lily began to throw off her parents’ expectations; to Charles and Margaret’s dismay, Lily carried both her mother and father's self-willed personalities. After returning home from boarding school in England – a rite of passage for all the children once they reached adolescence – she moved out of the Astana into her own bungalow on Kuching’s outskirts, using her new freedom to entertain her own circle of friends and foreign figures. She also embarked on personal tours of Sarawak and Southeast Asia throughout the 1890’s, raising eyebrows for a Sarawakian society that was still conservative on women’s issues.

However, not even headstrong Lily could withstand the prospect of parental arrangements. But both the Rajah and Ranee had different ideas of what marriage meant. Charles preferred a match with a local or regional notable that would anchor his daughter and family to Sarawak – in fact, this idea for European-local mixing was espoused several times throughout his reign – while Margaret sought a man picked from European nobility or aristocracy to further the kingdom’s connections to high places. At times, the two would get into arguments over the issue, with many Malay nobles and Dayak chieftains commenting on how their voices could be heard from the Astana’s private rooms. A few even tried to nudge the couple towards their own candidates, but they were all rebuffed. The search for a groom would be a family matter.

Witnessing the commotion, Lily decided to act.

It was on one of her regional tours in the mid-1890s that a chance encounter was had with a certain Conrad Alexander Leadley, a son of British Penang. Born from transplanted British parents and employed as the manager of a shipping firm, he was actually connected to British high society as a distant relative of the Earls of Mansfield – albeit through an illegitimate line. First encountering each other in Singapore, the pair began a secret correspondence and met periodically across the Malay archipelago, growing close with every encounter. There was much for Lily to find him favourable: Conrad knew Malay, had a good knack for local culture, could handle the tropical environment well, and (most of all) had a cool head when faced with dangerous situations. When the subject of marriage reared up, the choice was easy for the Ranee Muda. On May 1899, Conrad visited Kuching.

To say that Charles and Margaret were shocked was putting it mildly; they intended their daughter to be married to their preferred choice(s), not to pick a spouse on her own. Charles was particularly suspicious of the man’s knack for business and economics, fearing that he could influence Sarawak to be opened to mass-exploitation along the lines of Malaya or the Spanish Philippines. Nevertheless, Conrad’s noble links were highly-sought for a kingdom that depended on powerful connections, and Sarawak’s riverine nature meant that a figure that could aid in local shipping was sorely welcomed. After much deliberation and a further round of arguments, both parents gave their assent, Charles begrudgingly.

And his fears were half-right. Following a private ceremony in Singapore in 1900, the new addition did not exactly settle down as the Rajah and Ranee hoped. Conrad relinquished his managerial position in Penang but continued to be involved in the shipping business, raising official eyebrows at such a conflict of interest. He was also a persistent critic of Rajah Charles’ economic policies, claiming that Sarawak’s reluctance to enact large-scale economic policies, particularly in forestry, and the kingdom’s hesitance in allowing international corporations for exploitation hindered local Malays and Dayaks from development. “While I do recognize the traditional customs and cherished nature of the inhabitants of Sarawak, it is only through the introduction of favourable laws towards the lands and forests can they be brought to a developed world”, he wrote in a journal entry in 1903.

Photograph of Conrad Alexander Leadley, while in London, circa 1898.​

Still, there was no question that he cared for Lily, and this was quickly shown by the birth of a son, Walter Leadley Brooke in 1901, followed by Elizabeth Margaret Brooke in 1902 – their surnames alone a large break from traditional British convention. The couple’s bungalow in Kuching became a favourite haunt for Ranee Margaret and the Astana’s entourage of noblewomen, and the toys gifted and poems written in the childrens’ honour spoke clearly how much they were adored. Conrad also put his weight into Sarawak’s modernization by helping out in the mushrooming of dockyards, piers, and warehouses along the kingdom’s coasts and river basins, partially mollifying the rift between him and his father-in-law.

So when Conrad died in a shipping accident in 1904, it wasn’t surprising that Charles himself wrote a personal eulogy in the Sarawak Gazette.

If the death of Lily’s husband was a shock to the family, the deaths of Rajah Charles and Rajah Muda Clarke Brooke the following year were a catastrophe. In a single stroke, the kingdom’s succession now rested on a 32-year old twin son and his 4-year old nephew. From the moment the family’s glorious dead were interred in Kuching’s St. Thomas’ Cemetery, a new consensus was forged among the Supreme Council, the local notables, and the now-Dowager Ranee Margaret: the Rajah needs to marry.

But with the Great War tearing apart oceanic sea routes for the foreseeable future, it would be difficult to find a prospective wife from Britain or the European mainland, much less one that would be comfortable with Sarawakian life. And as the months went on, it was clear that the new Rajah Clayton and widowed Lily Brooke had little interest in marrying spouses (or in one case, a new spouse) to continue the family, despite the urging of fellow nobles and their mother in particular. When those months turned into years, Dowager Margaret decided it was enough, and began to assemble a group of her own gossipers and informants, sifting through local, regional, and international notables to find a good match. In effect, her indifferent children forced the Dowager Ranee to play matchmaker.

And the options were notable options. With Rajah Charles’ wish for a localised Brooke dynasty now as dead as himself, Dowager Margaret’s own wish for a spouse coming from blue-blooded aristocracy and nobility took centre stage. Though there were hurdles, Margaret de Windt and Conrad Leadley had themselves shown that British aristocrats and illegitimate nobles can adapt to a Sarawak environment. Still, there was also an understanding that any future spouse into the Brooke family must carry certain crucial traits. One list, hastily scribbled by Fatin Aminah, a daughter of a Kuching notable, listed the conditions as follows:

• An understanding of Malay- or easily teachable.
• No political problems.
• Willingness to eat the local food and live “rough.”
• Know how to understand and talk to the Orang Sarawak (the Sarawak people).

And so, the search began. Letters and telegrams were sent out to Margaret’s relatives in Great Britain and Europe in a bizarre kind of spousal networking, calling out here and there for: “any hot leads?”

Meanwhile, transplanted British, Dutch, and other European immigrants to Southeast Asia were assessed and debated by the Astana on their suitability as spouses. One early candidate family were the Michałowskis of Dutch Medan; transplanted Polish barons that had fled Europe after the failed January Uprising of 1863 [2]. They had since become the first family of Medan, but the Astana quickly noted how their steadfast Catholic faith could make the Michałowskis very unpalatable to northern Sabahans, who were still stung after 25 years of Italian Catholic proselytization. Another potential lead was the daughter of Emma Eliza Coe, a Samoan-American born from mixed-race parents to a branch of the Samoan Malietoa dynasty [3]. Settling in the Papuan colony of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, she had used commerce and coercion to become the largest landowner in the colony with 100,000 hectares to her name. However, her eye for native exploitation and the unsafe conditions of New Guinea’s seas dimmed her prospects significantly.

But as 1906 went forward into 1907, word of the Astana’s search began to leak out from the palace’s walls. Newspapers in Johor and beyond began noting Rajah Clayton’s celibacy and Ranee Muda Lily’s widowhood, leading to an ever-growing flood of letters and missives from transplanted European, American, and even Australian families clamouring on their sons and daughters’ pedigrees and eligibility for the Brookes. A few suitors even attempted to woo the Brooke siblings personally by travelling to Kuching in the hopes of encountering them…

********************

The Astana, Kuching, Kingdom of Sarawak, 13 April 1907​

“…And don’t you come back!!”

Margaret had never been so scared, or enraged.

Watching the portly Anglo-Indian stalker being carried away by the garden-guards, his tailored suit now crimped from heavy handling, she let out a frustrated breath. Good riddance. It was already a headache trying to sift through the endless stream of letters and proposals, but the recent presence of suitors and bachelors now streaming into Kuching was something else. To think he’d be this scarily persistent…

“Rajah Ranee, are you alright?”

Margaret turned around. Despite her age, it was nice that she could still move almost as good as in her youth. The servant girl’s features relaxed at her slight smile. “I’m fine. Are the others?”

“They’re alright.” And with that, Margaret allowed the servant to lead her back to the drawing room… and to the chaos that lied within it. The pile of letters on the floor seemed to barely diminish since she and the fellow noblewomen of Kuching set themselves to clear it earlier in the day. As it is, the other women looked just as affronted at what happened.

“What a vulgar person!” Dayang Lehut snapped out loud. “I hope the guards gave him a piece of our minds!”

“Have you called the police, Rajah Ranee? I don’t think that Indian man should be anywhere around other women or in public, especially since he may try to break in again to court you.” Lady Kamariah was similarly displeased.

“Don’t worry, everyone. I have already called the police to let them handle the intruder, and to place more guards around here to catch anymore trespassers.” Margaret suppressed a shiver. Having young men and women ask the Astana for an audience with Lily and Clayton was bad enough, but to have people be obsessed with her… “Anyways, have you found anything good?”

“Well, there is this one letter from… I think a prince of Siam?” Dayang Lehut took out an envelope from the pile and unfurled it at Margaret. “It’s written in fancy English, and I can barely understand half the words.”

Oh no, not this one again. Margaret already knew as took out the paper which particular prince Lehut meant. Some of the Siamese royal household have intermarried with foreigners and westerners, hoping to emulate the colourful courts of Johor and Aceh. However, this has also meant coming under the wrath of the monarchical establishment, which has since began to strip them of all their fineries, royal allowances, titles, and even the succession. Prince Vajiravudh [4], how we meet again. And how I will not arrange a match between your newborn babies with our future ones.

“Excuse me, Rajah Ranee and Dayang-Dayang.” The chief household executioner Aminul Fakhri announced himself by the doorway. “The postman has just arrived with another set of letters.”

“Already!?” Lady Kamariah was shocked. “But we aren’t done finishing this pile!”

“Let me take care of it.” As Margaret began to stand up, something on a nearby chair caught her eye. It was a Singaporean newspaper, one of the periodicals that she placed here and there in the room, unread, as she was too busy to read earlier that morning. But one article on the front page looked somewhat peculiar…

Margaret reached out and unfurled the paper. As she skimmed, she barely noticed how everyone in the room went quiet, or how her eyes seemed to widen with every passing paragraph.

********************

Cocos-Keeling Islands, One Week Earlier​

Roger Alton secured the machine gun. It was time for lunch.

A light wind blew as he checked his materials before handing the position over to his replacement. Overhead, the leaves of the coconut palms swayed and rustled, annoying the local birds and casting dappled shadows upon the sandy ground. Elsewhere up the beach, Roger could see several others similarly exchanging their spots and heading up for a bite.

What a place.

Despite the goings-on, Roger found himself wondering time and time again on the place he was now deployed in. It was one thing to fight in a war, but another to fight in a place like this; a string of green pearls floating in the middle of the Indian Ocean. With no hills whatsoever and colourful reefs surrounding the entire chain, it seemed as if the Cocos Islands belonged to another state of existence altogether; somewhere where time stood still and the pace of life slowed to a leisurely amble. The local Cocos Malays were just as unhurried, taking their time in the coconut fields and carousing with each other as easily as if they were all one family. It was as if the Great War never reached here at all.

Well, not quite.

Even from here, Roger could see the broken hulk of the Marmont in the distance, stuck aground on the outlying reef and pounded continuously by the sea and surf. Hardly anyone expected French Madagascar to hold out into this year, and barely anyone even conceived of the remaining French and Italian warships churning their way to the Cocos and shut down the islands’ telegraph station, not to mention cutting off the undersea cables. [5] To think West Australia’s connection with India and South Africa rests on this place.

Still, he sometimes wondered. Growing up in the outback, Roger was more familiar with the wild than anything else. When this whole war is over and I return back to Perth… I wonder if I could come back here and stay a while longer…

As he thought, his feet took him on the dirt path that winded through the trees, leading back to the Navy grounds. But there was already two older men walking along the path up ahead, and now they turned around to see who is coming up behind.

Immediately, Roger could see that one of them was his commanding officer, and he saluted accordingly. But the other…

“Sir Clunies-Ross, I presume?”


____________________

Notes:

Firstly, thanks to @fustrated progressive for helping me in editing this piece.

By Jove, it's a wall of text! Top tip: be careful if you want to skim over important characters to write something else, or you'll have to fill in their existence later and be trapped by what you have already written.

(A.) Anyone who knows Brooke history (or saw the comments two pages back) knows well what this is.
(B.) Marrying late was a hallmark of the Brooke family in OTL. Bertram Brooke married when he was 28 years old while his brother, Charles Vyner Brooke, married at the age of 37!

Spoiler: Numbered notes, ahoy!

1. An example of these ‘scuffles’ can be found in post #783.

2. For more background information on the Michałowski family, see post #1445.

3. For a backgrounder on Emma Coe, see post #1034.

4. Prince Vajiravudh of TTL is partially based on Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath, the 40th child of king Chulalongkorn who married the Russian Ekaterina Desnitskaya IOTL. Here, it is Vajiravudh who marries a European spouse, but is still facing the wrath of the court for doing so.

5. Those that know of the German navy in WWI can probably see parallels with the S.M.S Emden.

 

[Al-numbers]

Charlie MacDonald, Strange States, Weird Wars, and Bizzare Borders (weirdworld.postr.com, 2014)

“Before we can go any further, we need to know of the Clunies-Ross. . So, who are the Clunies-Ross?”

“Well, they are the first family of the Cocos Islands.” …And how did they become the first family?”

“what are the Cocos Islands?

Let’s just start from the beginning.

In the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, off the southwestern mouth of the Sunda Strait, lies two volcanic atolls fringed by dangerous reefs. Bedecked by tropical flora and endemic wildlife, the islands lay undisturbed until 1609, when a captain-employee of the Honourable East India Company stumbled on the place and mapped it.

Or, maybe he did. A lot of early Cocos-Keeling history is incredibly spotty, and the captain-employee (William Keeling – guess what happened to his last name?) did not even mention the islands in his later journals! It didn’t help that the early sources are biased in some shape or form, so bear in mind that this backstory may or may not be entirely accurate, alright? [1]

So after their discovery, the Cocos Islands remained undisturbed except for the occasional captain or surveyor dropping in. The real juicy story began in 1825, when a Scottish merchant captain by the name of John Clunies-Ross – along with his serendipitously named ship, the Borneo – stepped onto the atoll sands, planted a honking Union Jack on it, and planned to move in along with his family.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one with such ideas.

Here’s where things got complicated: During the Napoleonic Wars, the British took the Dutch East Indies and administered it for a while. This involved putting in new administrators, and one man in particular for the south Bornean city of Banjarmasin: Alexander Hare. This man is incredible, but for the purposes of not bloating this post, I’ll summarize by just saying thus: he collected an assortment of young women, made a deal with the Banjarmasin sultan that bequeathed him 1400 square miles of Bornean land, made it his own independent state of Maluka, and began populating it with men and women convicts from Java! When word got out, he fled with his supporters and his bevy of brides, first to Batavia, and then to the Cape Colony. In 1826, he set his sights on the Cocos Islands.

So, Hare paid a captain – coincidentally, John Clunies-Ross’ brother – to send himself and a volunteer force of either 14 or 40 Malay women (either Cape-bought or East Indies-taken) to populate the islands. And yes, in more ways than one. Ew.

So when dear John came back two years later to the atoll, imagine his surprise to find a new owner making love all over it, after bringing in-tow his wife, children, 8 sailor-artisans and mother-in-law. Long story summarized: things quickly deteriorated, Hare was eventually driven-off to a single island, and his women eventually deserted him for Clunies-Ross and his sailors! Hare, left with only 4 or 5 of his wives, fled to the East Indies and eventually died in Bencoolen (now modern-day Bengkuku). [2]

With that done, the Clunies-Ross quickly made themselves the de facto rulers of the islands. Soon, the Cocos-Keeling atolls had an industry (fishing & coconut plantations), staffed by locals (mixed-race descendants of the sailors and women) and with some convict labor from Java, and paid by a currency (minted by John Clunies-Ross himself). For extra cash, the local catches and crops were traded abroad on the occasional passing merchant ship. For law, an occasional vessel would travel from India, Ceylon, or Singapore bringing a magistrate to decide matters.

Still, life on the Cocos-Keelings slowed to a leisurely pace, and the atolls became much more known for the relaxed local lifestyle and the open character of the ruling family. I should note though that until the Great War, the Cocos Malays were explicitly forbidden from ever leaving the atolls. If you do leave, you can’t return, which makes the paradise more illusory than anything. Naturalists and adventurers like Charles Darwin and Joshua Slocum made stops on the place and their local accounts were wildly divergent; Slocum remarked how idyllic the Cocos locals were, while Darwin saw the women and convicts as little more than slaves (ouch!). [3]

The atolls were later annexed into the British Empire and tossed between Ceylonese and Malayan control. Its strategic location also made them a meeting point for telegraph cables that snake out to West Australia, India, Ceylon, and southern Africa’s Cape Colony. Even so, life on the Cocos-Keelings continued as it was: slow and ‘seemingly’ peaceful.

And given as such, is it any wonder that the Clunies-Ross themselves intermarried with locals?

And thus, another new, beautifully odd facet to the world is born.
(Also, before you complain about the picture not being old, this is the only vintage British-era photo of them in, like, colorful splendor! I spent a week searching!)​

Alright, backstory over.

Fast-forward to the Great War, and things go way popping! Thousands of kilometres to the southwest, the French colony of Madagascar spent nearly the last two years fending off British forces from southern Africa. But their luck couldn’t last forever and on March 1907, a combined Indian-African thrust finally took the island and sent the remaining Franco-Italian ships there scrambling for the deep sea. With enemy battleships on pursuit, one of the French gunboats, the Marmont, decided to take a lovely detour to the Cocos-Keelings and smash the telegraph cables there to cut off British communications to her Indian Ocean domains. Hey, if you’re going down, might as well do it while pissing off your enemies as well.

For the Marmont, at least they tried.

One cat-and-mouse chase and attempted scuttling later, the French vessel found itself embarrassingly stuck on the Cocos reefs, unable to move as storm waves bashed its hull against the corals. The ‘Battle of the Cocos Islands’ became instant fodder for all the media over the Indian Ocean, shouted at loud over papers and codes.

And it was on one of the newspapers that matchmaking Margaret found out that the Brookes aren’t the only “let’s-takeover-a-foreign-island-and-rule-it” family!

But given the sensational attempted attack, she might have seen this instead. Talk about discovering your future in-laws!

​

I shall spare you all the details of what happened next – apparently, dear Margaret was in the process of kicking out a creepy stalker whilst rummaging through a pile of “marry us!” mail from pedigree-chasers with the Kuching noblewomen. [4] But needless to say, the whole palace was all a-clamour with servants scrambling to snatch more information as the noblefolk argued over the Clunies-Ross family.

And there was a lot to find fitting. The family knew Malay, knew how to talk anda act to the common rabble, and knew how to live rough with some of the sons being experts in house-erecting and boatbuilding. Heck, given the intermarriage among the younger generations with the Cocos ‘Malays’, they are practically partially Malay!

There’s just one problem: they’re not… high-class enough. True, Queen Victoria had granted the Cocos-Keeling’s to the Clunies-Ross family in perpetuity since 1886, and the press often named the family heads as ‘Kings of the Cocos Islands’. But that doesn’t change the fact that the whole family were basically normal Scots of Jacobite leanings whom control two measly atolls one-fiftieth the size of Singapore. Not to mention, the whoooole shebang was a territorial part of the British Straits Settlements (aka. Malaya’s Crown Colonies), so they’re not technically free. By contrast, the Brooke family are descendants of (illegitimate) Scottish nobility, with branch lines that included viscounts, Lords, judges, and other notables. To top it off, their Kingdom of Sarawak was an internationally recognized independent state that is larger than some mid-sized European nations!

Still, there is no question that the ‘Cocos Kings’ (fun fact: they don’t even call themselves that. Their title before 1907 was ‘Resident Magistrate’, and despite their near-total control of the atolls, the highest title local Cocos Malays speak to them is ‘Tuan’ – Sir) were the closest family to match the spousal conditions set by the Astana. It also helped that, since the Great War was still boiling in Europe, candidates from there aren’t coming along soon while the Clunies-Ross has branch lines across Singapore, Malaya, Australia, and the Dutch East Indies.

And it was so that a line was opened to one Alfred Clunies-Ross, a mixed-race younger son of the family who has grown up to be a good doctor and a brilliant sportsman. Seriously, his medals and awards across cricket, football and especially rugby – he played in the first international rugby match in 1871 in Edinburgh, representing Scotland. They won – are a legend to behold, and he’s pretty much responsible for the birth of Sarawak’s modern sports. Still, Alfred by 1907 was in his 50’s working as a doctor in Singapore, worried sick for his main family back home. He initially thought some lark was playing a prank when a missive from the Astana was sent to his address.

But as communications opened up and the family branches were all notified, it quickly became clear it was no joke. Many of the Clunies-Ross’ thought it as a golden opportunity, marrying up to finally becoming actual royalty of some measure! Others weren’t so sure, as they thought an arraigned marriage of such a power imbalance would quickly lead to a broken family. But eventually, the pro-marriage faction won and Alfred was persuaded to begin planning which of his 8 children should be brought to Sarawak. (Clunies-Ross rugby man / doctor)

One wonders how Clayton and Lily reacted to the news that Dear Mum has found something out of her matchmaking…

********************

Astana Palace and gardens, Kuching, Kingdom of Sarawak, 1 October 1907​

“Do you think this can work?”

Margaret Brooke turned aside, piqued.

Alfred wished he could word it otherwise, but the thought of it all was weighing on his mind for an uncomfortable while. Turning away from watching his daughter out the Astana window, he tried to unwound his thoughts. “I mean… this. All of this. I know that… current situations have forced your hand, and your children aren’t exactly… aligned with what you and everyone else want for Sarawak. God knows my own family have ruling quarrels and we just rule a speck of coral sands. But I can’t help but wonder if…”

She finished the train of thought. “…If we just let the succession go?”

Alfred nodded. As a member of the Clunies-Ross family, and one who married for love at that, the idea of an arranged marriage did not rest well. True, many families around Southeast Asia and even in Europe do so without any qualms, but it is one thing to arrange a union and another to do so to explicitly preserve your family, especially if it’s royalty.

Even now, as he and the Dowager Ranee watched through the Astana windows at their strolling children on the verdant grounds, Alfred wondered if agreeing to her wishes was a sensible idea.

As it was, Margaret was silent. She turned back to stare out at her son, who was now stopping to point at a traveller’s palm at the woman beside him. Her face was unreadable.

After a while, Alfred thought she would never answer. But as he opened to redirect the conversation, the Dowager Ranee spoke. “I have thought about it. Letting it go. Have this kingdom go to one of the Brooke cousins or my own. It has been done before, with my husband and his predecessor. Why deal with the madness if there are other men in the wings?”

She turned to Alfred, her face pained. “But then, I remembered the look on my family’s faces, of my cousins and relatives when I told them I shall be Ranee of Sarawak. Some of them laughed, some of them even scorned me, but most of them were just… confused. ‘Why marry some adventurer and go off halfway across the world? To a land few have seen and fewer even knew?’ I was taking a chance when I married Charles, and even I had my doubts if it will all work out for me.”

But it did. It wasn’t easy, getting accustomed to life here, but I am now a part of this country as much as anyone in Kuching, or in the forest and mountains. And I am proud of that. Now, I have letters from relatives and cousins back home in England, asking me if they could be a part of Sarawak as well, often without knowing a single thing about this place or its inhabitants, much less what to do about governance. If I adopt from them, or choose from them, there will be no full agreement from all the nobles and chiefs. What shall happen to Sarawak if one of them sits here? Will it still be a place of peace? Or something like Dutch Java?”

Alfred never thought of that. To have Sarawak be handed to someone who doesn’t know Sarawak… he shuddered at the thought. He has seen some of the things done in Java and Sumatra, and the lesser his home of the Cocos-Keeling’s got exposed to that, the better.

Margaret returned to staring at the pair out in the garden.

“That’s why I am doing this. To make sure Sarawak will always have a person who knows what to do, and how to govern well.”

--------------------

“I have to admit, this place is far more than where I came from.”

In truth, Ellen Clunies-Ross was a bit overwhelmed, even if she shouldn’t be.

True, she had left the Cocos-Keeling’s for Singapore for her education, and that island alone is like a nation unto itself when compared to the turquoise seas and palm-fringed shores of home. But the point was that she has seen other lands besides the low atolls, and had herself lived a recent cosmopolitan life in southern Malaya. She had seen mountains draped with trees and rivers that flow like the fastest currents, so she should not have been surprised at Sarawak.

But she is. Singapore is nothing when compared to the storied kingdom of the Brookes. Longer than even the length of British Malaya, the land of Sarawak seemed wild and unknown to her eyes, with only small rice-fields and plantations scratching the might of the unending rainforests and mountains cloaking the landscape. Kuching was a town unlike any other, less bustling than the city-state she travelled from, yet still hectic with an assortment of peoples whom seemed to jump from the fantastic newspaper serials she had read.

The man walking beside her was the queerest of all.

“Are you intimidated?” The Rajah asked.

Ellen glanced at the Astana and could almost see a familiar figure from the corner of her eye. “A little.”

Clayton seemed to understand, smiling. “It is a little straining, isn’t it? Feels like we’re back to being children with them, with all this.”

She giggled. “Next thing we know, they might even watch over how we eat!”

“Maybe!” But there was a seemingly odd way in which the Rajah said that, Ellen noticed. Throughout the day, several times, Clayton seemed to react queerly to certain phrases or threads of conversation. In fact, when Ellen tried to open whether he had some person for his heart, the man seemed to hurry his answer quickly, saying that his hectic hours and recent happenings left no room for dalliances or even flirtations!

“Oh look!” The Rajah cried out, pointing upwards at a silhouette. “A rhinoceros hornbill! Oh it left quickly. You see…”

But Ellen was struck by what she just saw. As is proper, Clayton was wearing a loose long-sleeved dress shirt despite – or maybe because of? – the tropical heat, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. But some of the fabric mass slipped back as he pointed upwards, and Ellen could not help but wonder at the small number of scars and… patterns… revealed on his upper arm, a reminder that the man is more than what he seems.

Is jungle warfare that bloody? No, tribal skin-inking?

She wondered, again, just what kind of man is Clayton Brooke.

____________________
Notes:

Spoiler: You know the usual

[1] Precise information on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands’ early history are equally murky in OTL. A lot of the above backstory is mined from various sources, each biased in their own way.

[2] Accounts of Alexander Hare are equally spotty, especially when looking for the least biased sources on his Bornean adventure. Besides from a smattering of unflattering accounts of him from British and Dutch sources, the only other information about Hare comes from Indonesian historians, which provide vastly different accounts. For instance, Indonesian scholars place his harem of women collected in Borneo had girls bought from Basotholand all the way to China, and his new harem in the Cocos Islands counted at 14 women while British accounts place the number at 40. The Cocos women themselves are an unknown, as there’s no way of proving whether they’re Cape Malays, or remnants from his multicultural Bornean harem. The presence of two villages from the era called Kampung Melayu and Kampung Banten (Malay Village and Banten Village – the Banten were Sundanese) and the varied complexion of Cocos women by early visitors indicated there was some variety in Hare’s… collection. L

[3] This is OTL! Charles Darwin had some unfavourable things to say about the island’s Cocos Malays, though this could be because his assistant did not get along with the Clunies-Ross. As for Joshua Slocum (a sailor who accomplished the first circumnavigation of the world single-handedly – if you ignore the African assistant he had at one stretch), he was nothing but positive of the Cocos Islands, the local Malays and the Clunies-Ross family.

[4] I don’t think I need telling which post is this referencing.

As for skin-inking/tattooing, I should note that European royalty were quite fannish of body art during this time period, seeing them as symbols of adventure and the exotic. King Edward VII had a Jerusalem Cross inked on his arm in 1862, and his sons George V and Albert Victor copied him decades later. Tsar Nicholas II had a dragon tattoo on both forearms when he toured Japan as Tsesarevich in 1891. The most notable European royal to be adorned, however, was Frederik IX of Denmark (admittedly, way past timeframe) who had nine tattoos inked all over his body in Chinese designs.

 

[Al-numbers]

Downtown Kuching, Kingdom of Sarawak, 15 December 1907 ​

Ampingan did not know what to expect, but it certainly was not this.

“Tumpang lalu!” a voice shouted from behind him and Ampingan hurriedly stepped aside as a group of elderly Malay ladies shuffled past to enjoin in the already long line for the foreign-looking sweetmeats. Nearby, a trio of children in colorful finery chased each other around the legs of passers-by, giggling to themselves as the adults scolded them for their brazenness and yanking of clothes. In a neighboring pavilion, two large families began to filter out from the serving tables, only to be replaced by three large groups now swarming around the spiced rice and roasted buffalo meat.

As a Kadazandusun from the north, the scene looked like organized chaos.

“There you are!” Ampingan turned around to find his wife Semitah emerging from the crowd, holding what looked like packets of food wrapped in banana leaf. “Come! I found a good place by the river! Some new friends I made saved a spot!”

Walking towards her, Ampingan took one more look at the scenes surrounding him. The wedding of the Rajah and the new Ranee was intended to be a grand affair – how could it not, with their title as rulers of Sarawak – but he never thought the celebrations would be this lively. Kuching was bedecked in tents and pavilions, with the city’s great field now covered in towering gold cloth peaks held up by wooden pillars, sheltering the throng of locals enjoying the great feast from the midday sun. Musicians and performers walked the streets, attracting crowds that closed the roads to hundreds of quarrelsome rickshaw drivers. On the Sarawak River, a multitude of boats, prahus, and sampans packed the wake-tossed surface like water-striders, transporting hosts of locals, foreigners, and forest peoples to and from the celebrations.

Semitah walked quickly through the throng, her feet weaving through fruit sellers and laughing children before stopping before an open riverside hut. Within, there were already a few couples sitting down and enjoying themselves to food. “I’m back!”

“Ah, with your husband? Welcome!” A woman rose up and greeted Ampingan. “Come, come! Sit! Your wife mentioned you were from Penampang, and it is so nice to see such familiar faces down here.”

Ampingan was surprised. As far as he knew, he is the only trader from there who has come this far south. “Oh, you’re from there too?”

“We were from there.” Another man spoke up, his food-stained hands pointing at the informal group. “But some of us decided to head south for our own reasons before the War. My family came down to Maling for trade, while Kunul and Saiful over there married Malays. I’m Sagan, Jon Sagan, and the sweet lady that greeted you is Mary Mainah.”

“Sweet, really?” Mainah laughed at the playful tone, but perhaps it was for the better as she did not saw Ampingan’s flinch at the… Kristian names. Is everyone down here a convert? For some reason, the increased number of fellow Dayaks he saw going to mosques and churches down here are somewhat unsettling. What happened to all your pride?

But right at that, a horn sounded from the direction of the Astana and hundreds of heads drew to the Sarawak River. From the hut, it seemed that all the boats and vessels are hurriedly heading to the banks, clearing the waters for a few decorated prahus. “Oh, the boat races! I never knew there would be that today!” Kunul exclaimed.

And with that, Ampingan was left to wander in his confused thoughts.

********************

​

Catherine Margare Tonek, Clayton Brooke: The Rajah of Transition, (Bimasakti Press: 2000)

The match with Ellen Clunies-Ross may have saved a royal family from succession anxieties, but it also led to an unexpected complication: the wedding itself.

For the Brookes so far – and for most transplanted Europeans, at that – a colonial wedding is a primarily Christian affair that often involves a ceremony in a church, attended by close family members and friends. A feast may be prepared afterwards, but such affairs are only for the wealthy and are mostly little more than a social gathering for fellow white colonists. For Rajah Charles, his marriage to Ranee Margaret was practically unspectacular, having occurred in the cool latitudes of England.

By contrast, the Malays and Dayaks of Sarawak view weddings as a community celebration. The union of a man and woman would be marked with multiple rituals, celebrations, appeasements to spirits, and a solemnization ceremony in a local prayer hall for village Muslims. Family members, relatives, neighbors, and close friends would often be involved in the preparations, which can range from sewing wedding clothes to setting up offerings; the grandest weddings of ex-Bruneian lords would have entire platforms and pavilions built out of sticks and bamboo as imperial Bruneian custom dictates the nuptial couple to be ‘Rajahs and Ranees for the day.’ In fact, to have a humble wedding or a simple ceremony is to give the impression of being completely destitute and friendless to most Malays and Dayaks.

Needless to say, Sarawakian weddings were far from humble.

Thus, a grand celebration was pushed by the Astana staff and local notables, with feasts and entertainments that would echo the grandeur of old Brunei, showcasing the might and splendor of the Brooke dynasty. Given the regional circumstances and Sarawak’s rebuilding of the far north, the new Rajah Clayton had to personally turn down some of the more outlandish proposals, which were noted in his journals. Among the more eye-popping suggestions were:

• To import the Dean of Singapore to officiate the wedding vows;
• To reconstruct Kuching’s wood-built St. Thomas’ Cathedral in stone and marble;
• A three-day feast with ingredients sourced from all across the kingdom;
• A fireworks display with shells imported from Singapore and/or China;

But given the attention of Malay nobles and out of a need to present continuity with tradition, a few proposals were carried out, albeit in a reduced form. After the wedding ceremony in the cathedral, a troupe of Malay and Dayak warriors would hold performances of hunting, dancing, and traditional martial arts before the newlyweds [1], and a one-day bersanding ceremony would be held in which headmen, nobles, and great chieftains would travel to bear gifts and give congratulations to Ellen and Clayton. On the day, a public feast was held for Kuching’s residents with musicians and entertainers being hired to enliven festivities, though they were eventually halted due to the Sarawakian propensity to rain in evenings.

But the highlight of the day was the morning and midday boat races known as the Regatta, in which teams of Dayaks raced up and down the Sarawak River and past the Astana to receive grand prizes, cheered by adoring crowds…

********************

On the opposite side of the Sarawak River…​

Karol Michałowski had seen many things, but he had never seen this.

As his father was too infirm to travel, it was Karol who took up the responsibility of attending the marriage ceremony of the Sarawak Rajah to give his thanks; as the uncrowned first family of Medan, and one of the few whom had ties to European nobility, the Michałowskis were unsurprised at being invited. But the scene before him was unlike anything seen in Medan.

Before him, the Sarawak River was being cleared of all activity. The cacophony of vessels, sampans, and the like were all corralled to the banks to open space for a few long canoes paddled by forest natives. The riverbank was already packed with locals jostling for a better view as the contesting prahus lined themselves on one stretch of the rippling waters. Despite the friendly atmosphere, the Dayaks on board seemed determined to put on a competitive streak.

All this, for a wedding? When will we have one of these for our own?

A signal was raised, and the music began. Slowly, Karol watched alongside as the couple of the day presented themselves to the Astana riverfront, followed by an array of courtiers, ladies, and chieftains all ready to officiate the Regatta. The face of the new Ranee Ellen seemed awed, but as the group stopped before the riverside pier, Karol noticed the Rajah Clayton looking… stiff. And far-sighted.

Odd.

He looked to the river. Following the Rajah’s gaze amongst the crowd on the sampans and on the opposite riverbank, among the hundreds of locals and travelers cheering for the teams. Amongst the mass, Karol saw a figure.

It was a Dayak, with a strong bare-chested body and multiple tattoos on his arms and legs, collected perhaps over a lifetime of wandering. He seemed to stare uncommonly too, not at the assembling boats, but… to the royal couple. To the Rajah himself.

But Karol blinked, and the man was gone.

____________________

Notes:

From old family tales as well as sources on old Malaya (Wikipedia is frustratingly bare on this; a good alternative is the book What I Saw In Malaya by Jeanne Cuisinier as a general backgrounder) old Malay weddings are supposed to be grand events that involve the entire community, and this spirit has not changed in any way ITTL. The wedding events also act as a public signal to everyone which person is ‘off the suitors market’, so to speak.

[1] These type of performances is still carried out in traditional weddings among Malays and a few Dayak tribes. Performances of dances and martial arts are seen not only as entertainment for the couple and guests, but also for blessing the event and the bride and groom.

 

[Al-numbers]

The Astana, One Night Before…​

The office looked exactly as it had.

In the dark of the wee hours, lit and silhouetted by dim lamplight and the moon streaming through the closed shutters, the curves of the rattan and wood furniture seemed to jump out in harsh angles and black shadows. In the inverted world of the nightly palace, the familiar seemed alien.

But with the outlines of memory, the main desk and chair were easily reached. Fingers felt their way down towards a hidden knob on one side, grasping it and slowly pulling just so. The idea of incorporating tricks from old puzzle boxes seemed odd and even comedic upon commission, but now it was dearly thanked, for the hidden compartment within the wood contained one of the most precious objects in the room.

Through the wavering lamplight, the space was illuminated to show a series of journals.

The figure stared, just for a while. He had tried to sleep, to make sure the following morning and all its happenings would begin on a rested note. But he couldn’t, and in his heart of hearts, he knew why.

Slowly, a journal was chosen. Sitting down on the chair, the figure began to read…

********************

​

…“Are you sure.”​

​

“Yes.”​

​

And with that, came the hours of pain…​

…Now, standing by the longhouse’s entryway, Clayton could not help but gently touch at the results. On either side of his shoulders, open skin bare and red, are scrawled two large flowers. He couldn’t help but admire the handiwork; the soot ink coloring the image strikingly black against his body. Each petal symbolized the patience of the bearer, and the spiral on the center represents the long life that now awaits him. The weight of the kingdom is now laid on his shoulders.​

​

The Bungai Terung.​

​

The hallmark of a man on the beginning of his journey…​

…The congratulations were many and were thanked, but Clayton resolved to lie and wait for the skin to cool its inflammation before taking a dip in the river below. Though that did leave him the last to bathe, it was a welcome break for privacy…​

…Usop was already in the water, waiting for him. “You look… good.” ​

​

That smile was one Clayton wished he could keep.​

​

“For an adult boy, that is. Most boys receive a Bungai Terung at twelve years old.”​

​

At that, the man laughed.​

​

Clayton splashed some water in his face. After that, the moments seem to bleed into a playful circle of water and air. But even then, it seemed no time had passed when Clayton finally held Usop in his arms. They had swum into a shady part of the river, partially from the longhouse’s view.​

​

There, for a moment, it seemed as if he and him were the only two beings on the world...​

...In that place of dappled sunlight and golden fields, away from prying eyes, Clayton’s eyes could finally drink their fill. Usop’s toned body was a tapestry of art, a canvas of swirls and flowers, animals and spikes. Protections and records of a man who has seen much of Sarawak, all glistening with beads of water. Against most Borneans, the Melanau are never one for tattoos, but Usop was no ordinary Melanau.​

​

He embraced him, and Clayton angled his head to make it perfect…​

********************

“Uncle?”

He looked up. A young face was at the door. What was his nephew doing, so up late at night?

He closed the cover and went to the doorway. The young lad must have felt as restless as he.

Slowly, the figure escorted the boy back to his rooms. Even without preparations hanging over eveyone’s heads, young children should not wander the palace halls in the dark.

Returning to the office, his heart was calmed by the sight of the journal still closed on the desk, untouched. Turning the pages, he stopped at one of the most recent entries, skimming over the inked words slowly with his fingers.

He closed his eyes, and for one moment, just so, he could almost hear the rustling of the golden paddy fields.


____________________

Notes:

The Bungai Terung is a tribal tattoo that is commonly found amongst several Dayak ethnic groups in Sarawak, most commonly the Iban and Kayan. It is traditionally inked when a boy reaches adolescence, for the Bungai Terung is a tattoo taken before he takes on a ‘berjalai’ = wandering/journey of adult life. The tattoo also holds spiritual significance for granting strength to the wearer as the ‘weight of the world’ (adult life and responsibilities) now lay on his shoulders.

For the record, we have actually encountered a Sarawakian bearing Bungai Terung before, just not as explicitly.

 

[Al-numbers]

Pelagus Rapids, Rajang River, Kingdom of Sarawak (21 December 1907) – Deep in the forested interior ​

Shouts and hollers punctuated the roaring air.

For Cosmo Clunies-Ross, he desperately hoped they were cries of joy at seeing an escape from this torment.

All around, he seemed the only one who was supremely terrified. The recent rains have swelled the Rajang’s upper reaches into a brownish torrent, and the prahu he was on shuddered and heaved with every trough and crest of the raging riverwaters, but the crew of rowing Dayaks seemed less scared and more determined at being surrounded by their roiling predicament. The other longboats were even more so, with several of their crew shouting and even smiling as they all raced down the Rajang’s rapids like a group of fired arrows.

Gasping with horror at a looming outcrop of bedrock, Cosmo braced himself for the inevitable as his prahu’s punters pushed their bamboo poles onto the jagged surface to shove them all past the obstacle. Opening his eyes, he saw yet more large boulders strewn about the raging river, surrounded no doubt by roiling currents and underwater ridges, ready to send his boat – and his face – to a smashing, bloody end.

He held onto the prahu’s side and kicked inwardly at himself.

He was stupid. He was so, so, so stupid. It had seemed so clear, so possible, to try and see if he could court the princess royal of Sarawak to score what his cousin had done with the Rajah. Unfortunately, he should have heeded dear Ellen’s call of staying in Kuching at her side as she accustomed herself as Ranee, not to follow the Brooke family into the jungle wilderness of Borneo to inspect their domains. After having to endure rainy days, creepy skulls, loathsome mosquitoes, and cooked boar, he thought his limit was already breached. Until he discovered the Pelagus rapids.

Now, deep in the interior, surrounded by thick rainforest and far removed from any comforts of civilization, shivering in terror as they went through another swell and edged past a strong eddy, Cosmo could not help but be reminded of the river’s tale… a gigantic snake who wished to court a lady, only to be caught by her husband and cut to seven pieces, forming the Pelagus… the waters drowning all who are foolish to tempt it, to even hear it’s splashing waters...

Daring his eyes to look aside, he was even more stuck by how the Brookes seemed to have the opposite reaction. Clayton was directing the school of prahus like a chief, while Lily seemed to be enjoying herself with her slight smile and dead-straight forward look, so different from his. Even the Dowager Ranee Margaret, at her age of 57, looked more exhilarated than frightened at where she was, even as her boat rocketed past a short fall and bobbed in the wake.

Cosmo realized the drop a second before it came, and he never thought his knuckles could be so white. I think I’m going to be sick.

********************​

Kristine Murang, From Cocos to Kuching: A history of the Clunies-Ross in Borneo (Miri University Press: 1991)

…After returning to Kuching, Cosmo Clunies-Ross promptly dropped off any plans to marry Lily Brooke. Despite this, he did enjoy the country enough to build his own house in the capital’s outskirts and alternated time between Sarawak and the Cocos Islands.

He never tried to follow his in-laws into the interior again.


____________________

Notes:

Remember when I wanted to pivot back to the Great War? Oops.

The Pelagus rapids are a series of turbulent stretches of the upper Rajang River, situated between the interior towns of Kapit and Belaga. The rapids are long known for its dangerous obstacles such as jutted stone outcrops and strong water currents above jagged bedrock, which hampered travel for many Dayaks in the region. At times of scant rains, many people simply preferred to walk around the rapids instead of going through them, because of how difficult it was to traverse the river.

Belaga is one of the deepest inland outposts of Sarawak IOTL and ITTL, and both Charles Brooke and Charles Vyner Brooke experienced the Pelagus rapids first-hand in their war expeditions. Interestingly, Margaret Brooke herself went down the dangerous rapids during a visit to Belaga with her husband, and she described the experience of rapid-shooting as more exhilarating than scary in her book, My Life in Sarawak:

Spoiler: excerpt from one chapter

“As I write, it all comes back to me as though it only happened yesterday, for the impression was so intense that at times I fancy myself again in that spot, flying down the rapids like a bird. I think if, at the end of my life, I had to give an account of the happiest time I have ever spent, it would be of those too brief minutes when Salleh [her guide] and his picked crew steered our boat down those foaming waters.”

Cosmo Clunies-Ross is a TTL cousin of the real Cosmo of the family, and the legends of the Pelagus ITTL is just one of the several myths and stories attributed to the rapids IOTL. Thankfully, the waters are calmer now, not least because the Sarawak government blew up parts of the Pelagus in 2012 to make it safer for travel.

 

[Al-numbers]

‘Safiat Almajhul’, Arabia: A Complicated History (Silverback Press: 1975)

…In retrospect, it should not be surprising that the Arabian Peninsula was primed for espionage and revolt.

Home to different branches of Islam whose adherents have launched sporadic uprisings and rebellions across Ottoman history, it wasn’t hard to see why French interference was already afoot even before the fall of 1905. South of the Holy Cities lie the administrative Vilayet of Yemen, the domain of the Zaidi Shiites whom have long viewed Ottoman rule as practically illegitimate (albeit for different reasons amongst themselves). By early October, flighty spies from Italy and France were crawling all over Sana’a and the surrounding mountains, pledging on behalf of their governments to recognize Yemeni independence in exchange for rebellion.

On November 7th, the Imam of the Zaidis, Muhammad bin Yahya Hamid ad-Din, declared for revolt.

Attacks on Ottoman troops were already underway till then, but Muhammad’s sanction led the way for a complete uprising in the mountains of Yemen, helped in part by the caches of rifles smuggled from Italian Eritrea and French Obock [1]. For the Ottoman troops stationed there, life quickly devolved into hurried ambushes and wildcat attacks from Zaidi bands, whom arrived with little warning and lightning ferocity before melting away into their rocky surroundings. In quick order, a large region of Yemen found itself completely without any foreign overlordship, with outside support growing as Kostantiniyye’s efforts to contain the situation – namely, holding the valleys and mountains in brutal fashion to sympathising locals – further eroded trust.

Diplomatic schemes were also successful in the Najd, as Italian and French meddling found a deep well of discontent. Over the decades, the Bedouins of the Arabian interior had grown their misgivings over the growing cosmopolitanism of the Ottomans and their increasingly Westernised ways, buttressed by the seemingly twisted ideologies that were spewing out from Cairo, Kostantiniyye, and the Levant. A substantial number of Bedouins have even subscribed to a new Islamic creed as a result, one that has caused ferment and rebellion for the past century: Wahhabism. Led the Saud family and espoused by radical imams, their idea of an Islam purified of any innovation found much resonance among the interior dwellers.

In fact, parts of the Najd was solidly following the Wahhabi branch of Islam by the eve of 1905, and this made it worthwhile for the French spy, Raymond Thibault, to slip into the region to sow discreet separatism and gain military intelligence. He didn’t need to dawdle long; the Wahhabi-aligned Saud family quickly made contact as they sought to use the Great War as a golden opportunity. From their base in Kuwait, Raymond and the intrepid Abdulaziz ibn Saud quickly spun a tight web of fighters, carriers, and informants that revealed the weaknesses of Ottoman troops – though a fair few were put off by a foreigner’s presence in their uprising. As early as late August, raids and ambushes were struck against disparate garrisons while pilgrim caravans from Mesopotamia were shamefully harassed.

A pilgrim caravan crossing the Arabian Desert, photographed in 1904. Despite much protection, many such caravans from Iraq were ransacked, or held for ransom.
​

But as the months rolled into 1906, the scale of the Wahhabi Revolt became darkly apparent. The Ottomans had defeated previous Saud-Wahhabi rebellions over the past century, but they never sought to supress the puritan ideology itself, seeing it as a time-consuming and wasteful endeavour [2]. This allowed Wahhabism to remain strong amongst the Bedouins and provided a deep well of support and manpower for Raymond and Abdulaziz, whom happily snatched important towns and orchards across the interior. In February, Riyadh was captured and remade into the new centre of the rebellion. In March, southern Iraq saw the beginnings of massive raids.

Despite this, the rise of Zaidi Yemen and the Wahhabi Revolt would be checked, for both rebellions created a backlash from two significant sources.

One of them was the Sharif of Makkah and Madinah, the stewards of Islam’s holiest cities. For decades, the squabbling clans that filled this position had harboured separatist inclinations against distant Kostantiniyye, which had a penchant for intervening in local politics if they turned unpleasant for the Sublime Porte. Since the start of the Great War, many French and Italian contacts urged the Sharif to revolt and to declare himself King of the Arabs and Caliph of Islam, bringing the title home to the land of its birth. However, the revolt of the Zaidis and Wahhabis convinced him of how empty those promises were, and the espousing of Abdulaziz to march on the Holy Cities and destroy “all the vestiges of idolatry placed on Islam”, turned many Sharif-affiliated clans away from the endeavour. If being King and Caliph meant being eaten away by hostile neighbours, then better to side with the enemy that is known. By 1906, the Sharif implored for Ottoman and Egyptian troops to defend the sacred cities against destruction and denounced both the Zaidis and Wahhabis for “planning to destroy the sanctity of the Holy Mosques.”

The Sharif of Makah and Madinah, photographed in Ottoman official dress. circa 1900.​

This denunciation found resonance in the second source of the backlash: the appalled reaction of the Arab and Turkish public. Though ethnic nationalism had been curdling in the Ottoman heartland, and although new Islamic movements are afoot in the major cities [2], the absolute majority of the empire’s Arabs and Turks still believed in a unified empire. To them, the Zaidis and the Wahhabis were nothing more than appalling men who are using the instability of the world to sow division at a time when it is most needed. Newspapers from Cairo to Trabzon were filled with calls to defend the Holy Cities and even the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid called for, “the internment and immediate confiscation of every French and Italian business for their role in supporting the Arabian fiends.”

And thus, the revolts were halted, but not without terrible cost. Stretched thin over multiple battlefronts, the hastily-cobbled Ottoman and Egyptian battalions found themselves facing wildcat and manoeuvrable bands in the mountains of Yemen and the Najd. Often times, a squadron of soldiers unfamiliar with the terrain would find themselves surrounded by hostile forces without even knowing of it, leading to severe casualties. The intransigence of the local Bedouin and their continued refusal to cooperate further hampered pacification efforts – the reprisal measures against rebellious sympathisers made for a number of burned bridges among the communities. Though the Holy Cities remained in firm control and the vital rail lines of the Hejaz were protected, a large portion of Arabia remained a cauldron of war.

It would be in mid-1906 that events begin to turn in Kostantiniyye’s favour. News of the Zaidis and Wahhabis had spread far and wide across the Islamic world with many being equally appalled by the nature of the revolts and the brazen nature of French and Italian backing for them. British India was particularly affected to send in Indian soldiers to protect Aden, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal from any hostile takeover. However, the disparity of the Royal Navy’s power in the Indian Ocean vis-à-vis the French and Italian fleets with their Jeune Ecole strategy meant that any Arabian adventure would be unsafe unless every major French and Italian colony in the ocean basin falls into British control.

But by mid-July, the French and Italian presence in the Indian Ocean had whittled down enough for a hastily-made Indian Expeditionary Force to be shipped to Aden and the nearby Horn of Africa. At the same month, a new Ottoman offensive was made to subdue the Zaidis. Faced from a two-pronged offensive and with French Obock and Italian Somaliland now in chaos (Germany declared war sometime earlier), Muhammad bin Yahya finally acquiesced to a ceasefire. A preliminary agreement was made in which the Vilayet of Yemen would be granted some concessions in local religious law, but be otherwise reabsorbed into the Ottoman Empire, much to the disgruntlement of Yemeni locals.

Ottoman troops posing with still-loyal Yemeni irregulars at the end of the Zaidi uprising, circa 1906.
​

The fight against the Wahhabis would last longer. Though a section of the Indian Expeditionary Force did head for the Persian Gulf to aid Ottoman forces, their initial inexperience in desert warfare created increasingly disturbing casualty counts as Bedouin fighters staged lightning attacks from the desert wastes. However, the Indian forces quickly adapted fast and quickly gained the upper hand as Ottoman supplies steamed in from Mesopotamia. By mid-August, a new stream of replacements arrived from Calcutta as Abdulaziz and Raymond fled from Riyadh against an Indo-Ottoman offensive; as quickly as the Wahhabi revolt arrived, it was quickly slipping away.

It wouldn’t be long afterwards until both men were captured, attempting to flee for Oman.

With that, the Arabian Peninsula returned to relative peace (albeit with underground rumblings). French Obock and Italian Somaliland similarly fell in August with some help from the German colonies, although separatist Somali clans would continue their resistance till the end of the year. By the 15th of December 1906, Kostantiniyye announced that the Red Sea was safe again for pilgrims to travel for the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah…


__________

Notes:

After a whirl of Sarawak and a month of silence, the Great War is finally back! (whoo hoo, 100th page!)

Much of this update is based on the situation in the Arabian Peninsula during the early 20th century. Zaidi Yemen – Northern Yemen to us modern folks – was truly a rebellious region during this time as the locals did not see Ottoman rule as representative of Islam, especially as the Tanzimat replaced much of the old traditional laws with new ones influenced from Europe. From 1904 to 1906, much of Yemen and even the Asir region of south Arabia revolted, and it was only because the Ottomans pledged to halt the use of modern civil law (in the region only) did the fighting came to an end - temporarily.

Likewise, Wahhabism was never fully extinguished in the Najd IOTL. The movement had embedded itself into the local population with local Wahhabi imams and jurists holding strong and keeping the puritanical doctrine alive. For the Ottoman state, it was too costly, time-consuming, and simply gruelling to expunge Wahhabist creeds among such a disparate population to such a local level, though they did realize the danger. This was why the movement bounced back after WWI and the Saud family’s campaigns.

But even with all this, it really should be said that the Arab Revolt of WWI was actually unpopular among the majority of Arabs. Despite popular history (and Lawrence of Arabia), many Arabs of the time saw the Hashemites as basically trying to carve out a realm for themselves. Sharif Husayn’s (the then Steward of the Holy Cities) call for revolt failed to generate any strong response in the Arabic-speaking provinces and many Arabs even saw him as a traitor for dividing the Ottoman Empire! While there was anti-Ottoman sentiment, the majority of Arabs did not want the empire to fall to pieces.

1. See post #1493 for the wartime situation in the Horn of Africa.

2. This is true IOTL. According to The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia by David Commins, the Wahhabi movement had an entrenched core of support in the Najd due to the Ottomans not prioritizing in de-converting the local Bedouins (see above reasons). Instead, the state prioritized in decapitating the Saud leaders and the major Wahhabist preachers, thinking that was all that was needed to stop the movement.

3. See post #1861 for a look into the new Islamic movements swirling in the Ottoman Empire.

 

[Al-numbers]

Adanze Ayeni, When The Elephants Fight: The Great War in Africa (Abayomi; 1997)

…February 1906 saw two important developments for the Great War in Africa. Ironically, one of which saw no war.

In fact, the affair in question was mostly fought in the conference halls of Lisbon. Being the colonial overlord of a large chunk of south-central Africa, the Portuguese Empire was in a unique position during the global eruption. Throughout the Great War’s first year, many attempts were made by many sides to sway the Portuguese government into committing action for – or against – their colonial neighbours, edging heavily with remarks to one particular sore spot: territorial ambitions. While Portuguese Africa was a largely contiguous entity, there existed one weak link dividing the empire’s western and eastern coasts: Mutapa.

Situated on both sides of the Zambezi River, the native kingdom of Mutapa managed to switch allegiances to Great Britain at the last possible minute, which allowed for a British colonial corridor stretching from southern Cape to Nyasaland and Tanganyika [1.]. However, this also cleaved Portuguese Africa into two separate halves, which did not please Lisbon.

Resolving this issue took the better part of the 1900’s, with talks breaking down multiple times on the fracture points of foreign law and white settlement, especially in the British territories. However, the outbreak of global war brought these discussions to a head, and it was perhaps the threat of Portuguese (or British) belligerence that the two sides finally agreed to a compromise. Most of Mutapa would be annexed to Portuguese Mozambique and Central Africa, but a narrow corridor would exist that allowed free movement between British Mashonaland and Nyasaland [2.]. This corridor would be dually-governed by a special administration, consisting of British and Portuguese heads overseeing a condominium government. Thus, Mutapa would be part of both the British and Portuguese Empires.

Naturally, no locals or notables from Mutapa were invited for the February 6th ratification.

The month also saw another, more dangerous development: the completion of the French-laid Trans-Sahara Railroad. Envisioned as a dream project by some of the more ambitious businessmen and colonial expansionists in the Third Republic, the astounding 2,610 kilometre railway was intentioned to bring commerce, transportation, and military control over the interior of French West Africa with a starting terminus at Biskra (in Algeria) to Timbuktu on the Niger River. Such a railway would not only ease transportation of goods and soldiers, but also tie France’s main bulk of her empire together with the metropole.

Construction began in early 1900, but the ballooning of coasts, appalling work conditions, and the realities of building tracks across sand seas quickly slowed the pace of construction. Work further crawled as oil deposits were found whilst rail engineers were drilling for water holes, creating a surge in interest from petroleum corporations and the French government whom now called for works to be redirected. Additionally, spur routes were quickly envisioned to Dakar, Guinea, and the French Ivory Coast, in the hopes of striking valuable mineral deposits. Needless to say, these new plans for the railway, while ensuring interest, vexed engineers.

In fact, the Trans-Sahara railhead was still at the western end of the rocky N'ajjer plateau when the Great War erupted, forcing an abrupt change of plans. With Timbuktu so far away and the belligerent Sokoto Caliphate now a serious threat, the Timbuktu terminus was hastily scrapped for a more direct route to the Niger River, terminating at the riverside village of Bourem. Scores of workers – most of whom were African or Algerian convicts – bled and suffered under the hot sun in the speed-up of construction, pushing the railway ever further south at colossal human expense. On February 26th, the railway reached the outskirts of Bourem, with a linear boneyard over 13,000 workers trailing behind.

An original photograph of a Trans-Sahara Railway locomotive, with a map of the main route across the Sahara Desert. The original route to Timbuktu is shown with the dotted line. Spur routes not shown for simplification purposes.​

But despite the eased transport of men, artillery and supplies through the Sahara desert, the colonial troops and their French officers were unexpectedly matched by an unexpected problem: the surprising ingenuity of Sokoto.

In fact, the armies of the caliphate were not only familiar with modern firearms and tactics, but also – and to the horror of the French – brought their own rifles and firearms to battle! Hurried observations confirmed that at least some of their weaponry was traded from the British colonies of the Niger Delta, but most were of an unknown design. In their racialized and pretentious arrogance, the French had been blind to the Sokoto Caliphate’s greatest strength – intimate knowledge of producing gunpowder firearms.

Since its inception in 1804, the Sokoto Caliphate had warred with her Sahelian neighbours and traded with distant nations, bringing in (or capturing) an immense wealth of foreign weaponry. Aware of their potential, the caliphal court quickly began reverse-engineering them and as early as 1820, the workshops of Kano city were producing their first ever muskets and rifles.

By 1905, Kano was widely known as a centre of military manufacturing, with thousands of firearms produced per month to supply the troops of Sokoto’s many emirates [3.]. Local materials such as wood from Lokoja, iron from Bauchi, and nitrates from bird droppings were used to create firearms and powder that established the polity as a semi-gunpowder empire. Rifled infantry formed a noticeable wing in the assembled armies of the caliphate and by 1850, gunpowder weapons became a mainstay in the polity’s many wars, complimenting traditional groups such as archers and spearmen, though it did not replace traditional armaments or tactics.

Unexpectedly, the rise of the British in the Niger delta helped to further develop these rifle-workshops as the former were adamant in not selling newer guns to Sokoto – not wanting to give them a new weapon to use. As such, the caliphate began to innovate in the hopes of matching the British in firepower, even as the polity’s influence waned.

The French had also underestimated the willingness for the British colonies of the Niger south to make common cause with their northern enemy. This was encapsulated with the September 1905 arrival to Sokoto of Oliver Stone, a British senior officer of the West African Rifles. Eccentric and rough, he nevertheless became an important advisor to the caliphate by providing information of new tactics to the royal commanders in battling French forces in the north and northeast. Ironically, caliphal generals also studied previous battles of the British with their neighbours over the decades in order to match their technologically capable counterparts.

Examples of locally-produced rifles and muskets used by the emiral armies of Sokoto, pre-Great War.​

Against heavy opposition, Oliver Stone also brought several Enfield rifles with him to Sokoto in the hopes of mass-producing them from the Kano workshops. With the Great War, the city’s smiths and craftsmen gained an indispensable role in supplying guns, cannons, and field weapons to the caliphate’s borders. Though they were unable to truly replicate the exact capabilities of the Enfield rifle, their copycats were just good enough for Sokoto to hold back French advances at the Niger borderlands. As the local economy became devoted to war production, firearms manufacturing grew to such a rapid pace that even several British proposals were made to contract Sokoto for guns and armaments, especially for the Dahomey occupation and the Borgu campaign.

Perhaps, the only global comparison to such a proliferation of native-led weapons production – in a world war, at that – could be the hill peoples of Indochina [4.], whom created their own rifles, muskets, cannons, and gunpowder from their mountainous rainforests.

Still, the regional situation by May 1906 did not favour the British and their allies. Despite increasingly desperate supply runs by the British, the Trans-Sahara railway provided French forces with near-enough materials to even the scales against the isolated British colonies of West Africa. A heavy March offensive nearly took the last remnants of the British Gold Coast, which only stood firm due to emergency supply runs from Royal Navy convoys. Sierra Leone fared little better with many British forces beginning to operate in the far-flung backwoods of neutral Liberia.

Meanwhile, a successful war against French Dahomey quickly stalled as angry locals fiercely rose up against their new colonial occupiers, whilst the petty states of the Borgu Confederacy to the north devolved into civil war as traditional rulers fought the forces of France, Britain, Sokoto, and each other in succession…

********************

Wolfgang Holtzmann, A History of War in German Africa (Osprey; 1994)

…Then Germany declared war.

The introduction of the German Empire upended everything about the Great War in Africa. German colonies neighboured French, British, and Italian ones in East and West Africa, staffed with local troops that have seen active service in tough conflicts, such as the schutztruppe of German Equatorial Sudan against the fearsome Dervish Caliphate. Now, they are thrusted into taking over their new enemies’ colonies.

Togoland saw the first conflict, with two battalions of Tirailleurs and Zouaves attempting to swallow the territory from an amphibious operation. If it were not for the presence of British-occupied Dahomey next door, they could have succeeded, but the fight for Togoland became a morass of ambushes and unplanned attacks, with the rebellious locals of Dahomey adding to the fire by slipping into the territory. It wasn’t until the arrival of the Kreigsmarine later in June that Togoland returned to order, though not without some heavy casualties from all sides.

Kamerun was next, with French colonial troops attempting to bombard the coastal capital of Douala in late May. However, the presence of several German gunboats helped to thwart the attack and parry off seaborne assaults until mid-June, when Germany fully entered the Great War as part of the Four Powers; from then on, the territory became the staging ground for the western half of the Central Africa theatre. However, the heavily forested southern border made any colonial wars there near-impossible, prompting the schutztruppe to push westwards into occupying French Oubangui-Chari and defend the Ottoman-aligned sultanate of Ouaddai. An attempt was made to strike southeast towards the Oubangui River in hopes of boating down the watercourse, thereby attacking French Congo and Gabon ‘from behind’. But this was already expected, and French reinforcements quickly turned this campaign into another morass by mid-July.

But the Germans did have one surprising pillar of support in West Africa: the Sokoto Caliphate. Upon realizing that they shared similar enemies, the caliphate’s infantry and cavalry regiments quickly became involved in the Oubangui-Chari theatre as well. Of special note was the Adamawa emirate, which had seen more than half its territory taken by Germany in 1904 and added to Kamerun [5.], and yet now faced a similar French enemy. The Adamawa emir was hesitant to offer aid to a Power that had humiliated and partitioned the land, but the French incursions through the Lake Chad basin were too serious to ignore, as was the threats made by the Sokoto caliph for not cooperating. Eventually, he acquiesced and allowed the caliphal armies to march through into Kamerunian territory, helping German officers to defend Lake Chad and the state of Kanem-Bornu from French incursions, along with providing support in the central Sahel...

…For the French in Ouaddai, the arrival of these two forces were initially met with disbelief, for it was assumed both Sokoto and the Germans would fight each other over territorial claims. But as weeks passed, it became clear that the opposite had occurred, and disbelief turned to irritation. They were so close, so close, to completely bringing Kanem-Bornu and Ouaddai to heel! Their forces had taken both the sultanates’ capitals and even some of their princes, with their fathers on the run. Now, they were facing two combined enemies which aimed to liberate the states.

Initially, resistance to the schutztruppe and Sokoto armies was easy. But the former forces then managed to cut-off French supply routes to the Oubangui River, stranding the Sahelian forces in a sea of enemies. Sokoto imams subsequently made contact with the Senussi order of Ouaddai, transferring enough food and firearms to enable its escaped ruler, kolak Muhammad Salih, to return to his homeland at the head of an avenging army. With an untenable situation, colonial troops retreated from Kanem-Bornu in late October with three different forces closing in. Finally, at the Ouaddaian capital of Abéché, 6,001 French colonial troops made an ignominious surrender – the first in the theatre.

Rare photograph of kolak Muhammad Salih, the ruler of Ouaddai, at the head of a victory parade at Am Timan.​

In East Africa, the local forces faced a different brew of enemies. Till then, the main concern for the colonial administration was the Dervish Caliphate of Kordofan, still frightfully strong although on the wane. Now, orders were given to march into Italian Somaliland and reach the Red Sea coast, relieving the Ottoman-allied sultanate of Majerteen and reinstate British Somaliland. Fortunately, the schutztruppe of the east were better trained and battle-hardened, repelling Dervish attacks throughout the years before the Great War.

Because of that, the Somaliland thrust of early June became such an unexpected success to local command that by the following month, almost the entire Italian colony was occupied – much to the confusion of Italian officials whom saw their Askaris steamrolled by regiments from Equatorial Sudan. However, it should also be noted that several Somali clans did continue an insurgency against foreign rule for the rest of the year, seeing the advancing Germans as inhibiting their freedom. Nevertheless, the sultanaate of Majerteen was relieved in early July with British Somaliland reinstated by the end of that month – albeit under German protection.

It was also during this time that several warships of the Kriegsmarine managed to sneak past the maelstrom of southern Africa (and her choppy seas) and French Madagascar to safeguard the Horn of Africa. Together with remnants of the Ottoman and British navies and an expeditionary force cobbled from India [6], both French Obock and Italian Eritrea fell across the month of August, opening the Red Sea to free travel once more. In a span of several months, the Horn of Africa was neutralized as a theatre of the Great War.

This endeavour did create one unfortunate side-effect, as the Dervish Caliphate began re-expanding south along the Nile and west into Darfur (yet another Ottoman ally) as schutztruppe battalions were relocated for the Red Sea theatre. But this phase of expansion would be the state’s last, as Darfur quickly hashed-out an agreement on accepting German aid in exchange for abolishing the slave trade – Ouaddai and Kanem-Bornu did the same a month earlier. As the months passed into the winter dry season, Dervish-conquered lands were slowly retaken, and the Dervishes would find themselves retreating more and more…

********************

Adanze Ayeni, When The Elephants Fight: The Great War in Africa (Abayomi; 1997)

…the one place where German aid did not help much was in southern Africa, which saw a failed British expeditionary attempt to take French Madagascar [7]. The island – and the surrounding Comoros archipelago – formed a stronghold against the colonies of the Cape and formed a massive thorn to their economy as cargo vessels became subject to commerce raids, halting the local meat and diamond-focused export industry.

By October, another white-led expedition was cobbled-up from the Cape and Natal governments, this time with improved weaponry brought from German supply runs. Initially, this second expedition seemed to be more successful than the first, particularly as British and German gunboats managed to ward off enemy ships to stage a landing on the western part of the island, near Morondava. However, their luck soon started to run dry as the Cape and Natalian forces, whom were all either White or Afrikaner, became surrounded by hostile Malagasy locals.

In a brilliant act of deception, the Governor-General of Madagascar, Patrice Durand – who was appointed to the colony just before the Great War began – managed to convince the Malagasy notables to antagonize any and all British forces and instead support the French Third Republic. Durand claimed how the Cape and Natal’s race-discriminatory policies would be imposed on local society while the French would guarantee equal rights to all Malagasy. Given local attitudes of whites to the Indian and African labour of the plantations and diamond mines of the region, the arguments were not without basis, which further made local notables more wary of any foreign incursions.

As a result, the expeditionary force found itself trapped in the Madagascan interior by August as local forces cut off supply routes to the sea and picked off local companies one by one. On August 12, the half-starving and diseased force surrendered to the Governor-General, marking another setback to Cape Town and Durban.

With the debacle hanging over many heads and the cyclone hanging season arriving in months, a third expedition was ruled out. However, it was during this time that a new suggestion came to the regional Royal Navy squadron: whittle down Madagascar’s naval protection piece by piece, and harangue enemy gunboats so that they run out of fuel. And with the political impact of White and Afrikaner casualties making unsavoury waves, another proposal was hashed out in which Black, Coloured, or Indian forces would go to war instead…

____________________

Notes:

I have to confess, this update to a long while to write and edit. Given the length and breadth of the Great War in Africa, I know I can’t fill in every detail of every conflict (do you notice the absence of a certain controversial rubber-producing colony?). Maybe because of that, I have some mixed feelings on this instalment as the writing and style is not exactly how I envisioned it to be. I’m pretty sure I missed out a few important OTL details!

But in the end, it’s better for things to be finished rather than be perfect.

Spoiler: You know what these are. Notes!

1. The capture of Mutapa and Nyasaland into the British orbit referenced as far back as Post #1067.

2. In effect, this arrangement reconciles the Africa map in Post #1492 with the world map in Post #1754. The British would prefer the stylized map with the whole of Mutapa included, but the basic shape of the corridor was already being drawn by the end of 1905. The reason it took until February to ratify was that the Portuguese wanted more guarantees of dual government, and the British wanted more guarantees of easy travel. Details, details…

3. Lest you think I am joking, the British themselves were surprised at how Sokoto locally-produced actual firearms IOTL. In the book Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate: Historical and Sociological Perspectives by Joseph P. Smaldone, Sokoto even brought field guns (some locally-made, some foreign-bought) to battle the British with the latter taking surprisingly heavy casualties for a better-equipped colonial army with maxim guns.

4. Do you all remember the Hmong people of Laos in Post #1790? Whom also made their own firearms? I hope you do…

5. To see how Adamawa lost almost all her territory to German Kamerun, see Post #1090.

6.Previous update reference!

7.Refer back to Post #1492 on how that debacle took place.