by Nigel Barley
About twenty boats were jammed together, forming one confused mass: some bottom up; the bows or sterns of others only visible; mixed up, pell-mell with huge rafts; and amongst which were nearly all our advanced little division. Headless trunks, as well as heads without bodies, were lying about in all directions; parties were engaged hand to hand, spearing and krissing each other; others were striving to swim for their lives … while on both banks thousands of Dayaks were rushing down to join in the slaughter, hurling their spears and stones on the boats below. For a moment I was at a loss what steps to take for rescuing our people from the embarrassed position in which they were, as the whole mass (through which there was no passage) were floating down the stream, and the addition of fresh boats arriving only increased the confusion. Fortunately, at this critical moment, one of the rafts catching the stump of a tree, broke this floating bridge, making a passage, through which (my gig being propelled by paddles instead of oars) I was enabled to pass.’18
Finally they decided to retire to the steamer at Patusan, where Belcher came aboard. What was said at Belcher’s meeting with James, following his uncomplimentary report on Sarawak, went unrecorded but on the way he had fatefully engaged pirates from Halmahera – or maybe again it was just an innocent Dutch anti-piracy patrol – and even more fatefully drawn up a claim, calculated at the usual rates, for £12,000 to be paid to himself and his crew. Keppel submitted no accounts for the much sterner action they had just been through.
New alarms. Sherip Jaffar of the town of Banting, himself not beyond suspicion of piracy, had been joined by Sherip Sahib and was said to be collecting troops. Ill-health alone, Sahib asserted coyly to James’s messengers, prevented his accepting an invitation to a conference at Kuching. Meanwhile Makota was taken prisoner by Sarawak forces. In a gesture that outraged local decencies, James did not execute him but simply favoured him with a lecture and set him free. Perhaps the sheer diplomatic awkwardness of executing a senior Bruneian royal prince for defending what was still Bruneian territory had a role in this act of clemency.
The ships sailed again for Banting and, in an act of gross intimidation, sang ‘Rule Britannia’ lustily outside the town to the accompaniment of fireworks. It worked. Jaffar was deposed, in due form, by Badrudeen while Sahib fled to the Dutch border, knowing that James would not pursue him there. As Keppel describes it:
A second conference on shore took place, at which all the chiefs of the surrounding country attended … On this occasion I had the satisfaction of witnessing what must have been – from the effect I observed it to have produced on the hearers – a splendid piece of oratory, delivered by Mr. Brooke in the native tongue, with a degree of fluency I had never witnessed before, even in a Malay … From these people many assurances were received of their anxiety and willingness to co-operate with us in our laudable undertaking: and one and all were alike urgent that the government of their river should be transferred to the English.19
The process by which little Sarawak would grow had begun, all quite legal and driven entirely by local demand, of course.
Chapter 8
Treachery
It was time for Hassim to be sent back to Brunei. He was a nuisance in Kuching, implying a higher authority than James himself. Moreover, James had plans for him in the capital. He was to be the next Sultan of Brunei, though the price James paid was high: separation from beloved Badrudeen, who was needed there to give the ever-vacillating Hassim a little backbone. They travelled aboard Belcher’s Semarang, the royal ladies shaded from impudent eyes by elaborate screens. Once they arrived, Pangeran Usop, Makota’s friend, fell from grace and Hassim was reinstalled as heir and principal adviser to the Sultan. Sarawak, the tail, had begun to wag Brunei, the dog.
Things were going well for James. It even seemed that his campaign at home to establish Sarawak as at least a British moral responsibility if not a formal protectorate was working. In 1845 Captain Bethune of the Driver arrived with Mr Wise, James’s commercial representative in London, and brought a florid and empty letter appointing him Confidential Agent to Her Majesty’s Government in Borneo. Never mind, it could and would be turned to use. The British were pressing ahead with the realisation of one of James’s most ill-considered fantasies, the takeover of the Bruneian island of Labuan as a coaling station, and Sir Thomas Cochrane, Commander of the Far Eastern Fleet, pledged himself to help James with the active suppression of pirates. An impressive array of ships sailed from Singapore and as they passed through Brunei a broadside through the roof of Pangeran Usop, friend of Makota and enemy of British influence, intimidated the anti-British opposition, while a raid on the ‘pirate’ Usman of Marudu lifted a major threat both to Brunei and Sarawak. Returning via Brunei again, James discovered that Usop had attempted a military insurrection and been driven away by brave Badrudeen. ‘Pangeran Badrudeen fights like an European; the very spirit of the Englishman is in him; he has learned this at Sarawak.’1 Badrudeen even cared for Usop’s women, and chivalrously divided their lord’s gold amongst them. Sultan Ali, perhaps predictably, declared himself their particular protector and seized it all back. Usop was outlawed and he and his brother were ‘strangled with all the respect due to their relationship to the Sultan’. A rival American attempt to gain exclusive mining and trading rights foundered and the year ended with Sarawak finally at peace, with the British party in the ascendant throughout the whole of Borneo and trade flourishing. James even got excited about the number of plates sold in Kuching per month and began to think about designing his own flag. It was all bound to turn out badly.
‘If I am lying may I be eaten by a crocodile.’ Thus a solemn Malay oath. The Malays and Dayaks might have warned the Rajah to beware of the omens to be read in crocodiles, but he would not have listened. Many years later, Ranee Sylvia would write a poignant romance about a poor crocodile hunter of Sarawak whose adored young wife pined for ever more gold bracelets and so ran off, leaving him heartbroken. Years afterwards he found her remains, complete with bracelets, in the hairball in the belly of a crocodile he slew. So she had not been faithless after all, simply eaten. To this day, the Sarawak Museum exhibits similar hairballs cut from the stomachs of crocodiles, one containing a watch, another a dental plate. They are greatly appreciated by local visitors, who see in them something akin to the workings of divine dramatic irony.
The first to fall foul of crocodiles was young Williamson, the Eurasian interpreter, who was discredited owing to the excessive influence of Malay ladies in his court decisions. Quite what this meant in practice we can only speculate, but James was so outraged by it that he used the ultimate sanction, short of capital punishment, in his little country. He ceased to invite Williamson to dinner. The effect was dramatic far beyond its nutritional implications. Williamson went into a decline, others sought to act as intermediaries, a reconciliation was arranged; and an invitation to dine was again issued. But perhaps they all drank too deeply of the cup of friendship. On his way back across the river from the astana to the town, Williamson plunged from the little ferry into the water ‘and did not rise’. The local crocodiles got him. James would be accused by his enemies of a Caligula-like act of assassination.
But James was no murderer – even a crocodile’s fate was carefully weighed up, as if in the lawcourt. A man-eater was captured and brought to him, and a discussion arose concerning its fate.
One party maintained that it was proper to bestow all praise and honour on the kingly brute, as he was himself a Raja among animals, and was now brought to meet the Raja; in short, that praise and flattery were agreeable to him, and would induce him to behave genteelly in my [Brooke’s] presence. The other party said that it was very true that on this occasion Raja met Raja, but that the consequence of honouring and praising a captured crocodile would be that the crocodile community at large would become vain and unmanageable, and after hearing of the triumphant progress of their friend and relative, would take to the same course with double industry, and every one eat his man for the sake of obtainin
g the like fame.
Having maturely weighed the arguments on both sides, taking also into deep consideration the injury which so unwieldy a captive might do in roaming over my garden and grounds, followed by a host of admirers, I decided that he should be instantly killed without honours; and he was despatched accordingly, his head severed from the trunk, and the body left exposed as a warning to all other crocodiles that may inhabit these waters.2
And in Brunei a still larger crocodile, the old Sultan, was intriguing again to rid himself of the pro-English faction at court.
One night, when the brothers [of Hassim] were scattered, the signal was given: bands of armed men left the palace, and pulling silently in the darkness, arrived unobserved near the houses of the different brothers. They attacked simultaneously. The young princes had but few followers with them. Badrudeen fought gallantly: he defended the entrance of his house for some time, but with three or four followers he could do little against a murderous band of forty or fifty. Finding that he with his kris held his own, and that they could not force an entrance into the house, one of the assailants fired. The shot took effect in Badrudeen’s left wrist, and as that arm fell he received a severe wound in the right shoulder and several wounds in the body. His few followers were either killed or fled. He managed, however, to gain the inner apartments, where he found his sister, a favourite concubine, and Jaffar, a slave lad. The latter he commanded to reach down a barrel of powder and spread the contents on a mat. He then called the women to sit near him, and turning to the lad said: ‘You will take this signet ring (One which Mr. Brooke had given him) to my friend, Mr. Brooke, tell him what has occurred, let him inform the Queen of England that I was faithful to my engagements and add,’ he said, ‘that my last thoughts were of my true friend, Mr. Brooke.’ He then ordered the lad to save himself. Jaffar opened the latticelike flooring, slipped down a post into the water, and swimming to a small canoe was enabled to paddle quietly away, while the murderers, suspicious, were cautiously making their entrance into the house. Jaffar had not proceeded many yards when a loud explosion told him that the gallant prince had set fire to the powder, rather than fall into the hands of his enemies.’3
Hassim, suddenly decisive at the last, similarly tried to blow himself up into, or as, a hero, but inevitably botched it. A solitary survivor of the blast, he finally blew his brains out with a pistol. Only two of his brothers escaped the massacre, one wounded, one insane. The news arrived dramatically in Sarawak aboard the Hazard, whose commander had been saved from an assassination attempt by Jaffar, who had paddled out to the ship to warn him that the so-called emissaries of Hassim who had come aboard were in fact to be his killers.
And to what was all this attributed? To the conflict between the piratical mode of life and legitimate trade, or that between vassalage to the English and proud independence, or that between two different notions of legitimate succession to the sultanate? No. According to St John, it was umbrellas.
One of the customs of Brunei was, that when a non-noble passed before a house inhabited by a royal personage, he was obliged to fold his umbrella and expose himself either to the hot rays of the sun or to the rain. The custom had fallen into desuetude, but these princes determined to revive it. The principal street of Brunei is the main river. Whenever a non-noble was seen passing before Muda Hassim’s palace with his umbrella up, officers were ordered to pursue and bring his canoe to the landing-place, and he himself was to be brought before the Rajahs to be fined. This gave rise to much abuse. The insolent followers of the princes, secure from all punishment, beat and otherwise ill-treated the most respectable members of the merchant class and thus alienated from the cause the most devoted partisans of Muda Hassim.4
But for James, as usual, it was all about loyalty and betrayal. The death of Hassim was a loss for the country but, as for Badrudeen, this was the stuff of the London stage – mustachio-twirling villains, wronged love, noble death and, above all, deathbed declarations and tokens of kept faith. James was desolate.
The signet, my own crest and gift to him, that Badrudeen sent to me in his dying moments, as a pledge not to be false to him in death. It is a poor, a melancholy consolation that he died so nobly; his last thought was upon me – his last request that I should tell the Queen of England how he perished. Surrounded by traitors, who still held back from his desperation, wounded to death, he applied the match which blew himself, his sister, and another wounded and faithful woman into eternity. A nobler, braver, more upright prince could not exist. I have lost a friend – he is gone and I remain; I trust, but in vain, to be an instrument to bring punishment on the perpetrators of the atrocious deed … My suzerain the Sultan! – the villain Sultan! – need expect no mercy from me, but justice he shall have. I no longer own his authority, or hold Sarawak under his gift … he has murdered our friends, the faithful friends of Her Majesty’s Government, because they were our friends.5
Adding insult to injury, the Sultan also stole Badrudeen’s ring, James’s signet ring, from young Jaffar before he was able to hand it over to James.
James was incensed to the point of madness.
Violent passions and sleepless nights are hard to bear. I lay no blame on anyone. I look forward as much as I can, and backward as little, but I ought not and cannot forget my poor friends who lie in their bloody graves. Oh how great is my grief and rage! … But the British Government will surely act, and if not – then let me remember, I am still at war with this traitor and murderer – one more determined struggle – one last convulsive effort – and, if it fail, Borneo, and all for which I have so long, so earnestly laboured, must be abandoned and …6
The journal ends with a jagged line teetering across the page. For once, he has no more words. Badrudeen was for James both a breathing corporeal presence and the incarnation of an abstract idea. In what seems inevitably a homoerotic, though possibly unconsummated, passion for the prince, James loved the notion that the whole of Brunei could undergo a regeneration, that it could attain a beauty that was at once physical and deeply moral. Badrudeen’s death is the beginning of the death of James’s optimism.
The rush of immediate practical considerations overtook such simplicities. He was now HM Confidential Agent, not a free man. The Governor of Singapore sent over the Phlegethon, but under the false impression Kuching was under attack. Admiral Cochrane became involved, but was uncomfortably aware that Brunei was a sovereign country. James raged of burning and deposing but it was not until six months after the massacre that the British turned up to actually do something. Cochrane approached Borneo Proper with a fleet of British ships and after a little diplomatic posturing sought to enter the town. Fortunately for later Brooke history, the Bruneians fired on him and so relieved him of all further need for justification. The flag had been insulted, a treaty thus violated, and there must be a response.
The engagement was not without risk. The Bruneian forts were formidable and the thin iron plates of the Phlegethon easily pierced by local gunfire. But the defenders lacked resolve and so their forts were swiftly taken and the guns silenced. The Sultan fled and Cochrane toyed with the idea of investing James with his title but, old hand that he was, knew that he could not get away with it in England. Instead, a provisional government was established under Hassim’s brother Mohammed and his brother-in-law Munim, until Sultan Omar Ali formally submitted, in a grovelling apology to the baffling foreign queen he had never seen but who caused him such annoyance.
James got yet another piece of paper giving him the title to Sarawak and the right to mine coal. In one of their most foolish acts of acquisition, the British got the pestilential and profitless island of Labuan as a coaling station and oaths of loyalty and friendship and, in return, undertook to suppress piracy along the north coast of Borneo. James nobly assumed responsibility for the dependants of the Hassim/Badrudeen camp, ‘a perfect menagerie of old women and children’, and shipped them back to Sarawak.
After yet another excursion with the Navy ag
ainst Balanini pirates, he handed the Sarawak administration over to Arthur Crookshank, the police magistrate and a sort of nephew. (Nepotism was a Malay cultural practice that James intended to continue in Sarawak.) It was high time to pay a visit to England.
Chapter 9
Home and Away
James Brooke arrived in Southampton on 1 October 1847 after a journey that he described as ‘the Inferno with a French cook and cool claret’.1 He had been away for nine years and it came as a shock to find that he was famous. Wise, his agent, and John Templer had long been lobbying on his behalf but, more importantly, Keppel had just published parts of James’s journal, to largely favourable reviews. The Times recommended that the government support and protect ‘the heroic and indefatigable Mr. Brooke’, and went on in the terms of a laudatory obituary.
Much as we owe … to guns and grapeshot, we are indebted still more to the peaceful and meritorious exertions of one man, for the advances which have happily been made towards civilisation and peace amongst the Malay people of whom we speak. England owes a debt of obligation to Mr. Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, which she will not easily repay. One volume of Captain Keppel’s book contains the diary of this gentleman and we know not when we have read a history of true greatness so modestly narrated; a series of events so full of interest and striking novelty. The career of Mr. Brooke, whilst in the highest degree romantic, has been throughout one of practical benevolence.2
The natives had not bowed down to guns, then, but to pure Englishness. James was the hot topic of the moment, the proof that Englishness, civilisation and progress went hand in hand. He travelled everywhere and met everyone, was endlessly lionised and became a freeman of the City of London, courted by the ancient Goldsmiths’ and Fishmongers’ Companies, a member of the foremost clubs. The government upgraded his appointment to that of Consul-General for Borneo at £2,000 a year, but still neither recognised it as a sovereign state nor accorded it British protection. Oxford gave him an honorary doctorate, while even the school from which he had run away and which had refused to take him back was now anxious to claim him as its own and offered a dinner in his honour. He met lords and ministers and military and merchants and churchmen and everywhere he did what he loved to do – talked about Sarawak. And finally he met the Queen.