Part One: The Family That Stole Malaysia

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M hmm, what kind of kind of struck out? Honestly, Uh,
my Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, the podcast
where I talk about bad people. But this morning I
woke up like seven minutes before we started recording, and
so I'm I'm pounding coffee into my face and it's one. Um,

(00:24):
just for the rock, It's it's the morning, Sophie. It's like,
this is like nine am for you. Yeah, this is
like seven am for me. Um. I don't think anyone's
ever awoke this early, except from my guest today, doctor
kind of holda. Yeah, you just nailed that intro. By

(00:46):
the way, thank you, professional broadcasting at its finest. Thank you,
Thank you. I was we just did the Rush Limbaugh episode.
So I've been I've been thinking of a true professional
and trying to trying to really nail it down, which
is why I got drunk last night and slept until
I did not like that reference to Rush Limbaugh. L

(01:07):
Rush Bow. Yeah. Uh, you are a podcaster, one of
the hosts of the House of Pod podcast. Um, you
are are my my go to source for medical advice
or bastard. Um we we we got to hang out.

(01:29):
One of the last times, uh, that I got to
hang out with anybody outside of um my riot friends
in Portland right before the plague went down. That would
have been what when when I was on your podcast,
that would have been like January. It's worth noting because
you came and I looked this up because somebody posted
this and they posted the transcript. I don't know how
they did that, but they posted the transcript of the episode,

(01:51):
which we don't do, but someone else did and they
posted it because it was like January third, and I
asked you, I said, listen, how is the world gonna end?
And you said, here's what's gonna happen. Some kid's gonna
go off to China for like vacation. He's gonna come
back to his job at like Starbucks, and he's not
going to have enough insurance to cover his days off.

(02:12):
He's gonna have some sort of illness and he's gonna
spread it to everyone at his job, and it's gonna
spread throughout the country and it's gonna be awful, and
we're all like, alright, dude. It was a little paranoid,
and then it happened like a couple of months later.
I remember very distinctively, and it was I think you
were one of our last in studio guests too, so

(02:32):
early January. Don't you know, the world, don't ever ask
this fool to predict anything. He's a goddamn nightmare. It's creepy.
It's accurate that one. Well, thankfully we do seem to
be fingers crossed knock on wood, um, nearer to the
end than the beginning of this particular biblical plague. Um hopefully.

(02:56):
Uh So I thought we'd we'd talk about a subject
that has absolutly nothing to do with mediciner plagues. Yeah,
but does have a lot to do with Malaysia. In fact,
we're talking about the family that stole Malaysia today. Um.
Have you ever heard of the brook dynasty? No? Are
they like the diamond people? No? Um, I think they

(03:18):
used to. I think they also owned a company that
made cookies. But no, they are a family who is
the only family in the history of imperialism that I'm
aware of, uh, to steal an entire country for their
own personal property, and that as like part of a country,
not as not steal it for the British Empire, for themselves,
for the Brooks. Yeah, for the Brooks. Yes, this one

(03:40):
for the Brooks. Yeah, a large chunk of Malaysia was
their personal property for quite for like a century. They
gave it up in the late nineteen forties. Oh my god, No,
I have not heard. I'm excited. Yeah, yeah, this is
a fun one. We're mostly going to be talking about
James brook who was the guy who actually stole Malaysia um,
but which had a little bit about the rest of
his family at the end here. So without further ado,

(04:04):
let's talk about the Brooks. So, once upon a time
on the island of Borneo there existed a powerful kingdom
called Brunei. Now there's still a Brunei in Borneo, and
it's got a sultan and he's super rich. Everybody's heard
of this. Brune I used to be for a while
was a protectorate of of the British crown and stuff,
and how that happened is kind of in this story
as well. Modern Brunei, though, is really tiny. It's like

(04:26):
a micro state, like right, It's it's smaller than some
people's neighborhoods. Back three or four hundred years ago, though
Brunei controlled a large chunk of the island of Borneo.
It was a sizeable country and it was a big
part of like kind of modern Indonesia Malaysia. Um. It
was a powerful force within that area. The reason why
it's a micro state today lays with the actions of

(04:48):
a single British family called the Brooks. There why it
went from like a whole glass country to a tiny
little micro state. So today Borneo is split between several
Malaysian states. It's part of Indonesia and the Kingdom of Brunei.
So the island of Borneo part of its Indonesia, part
of its Malaysia, part of it's the Kingdom of Brunei.
It's a very complicated place geographically, there's a lot going

(05:09):
on with map lines there um. But back in the
early eight hundreds it was pretty much just Brunei with
a little bit of Dutch um. The Dutch control with
chunk of it for god knows what reason, mainly for
trading spices and ship The Sultan of Sulu, who was
this vassal of the Spanish owned Philippines, also owned a
little bit of the east part, eastern part of Brunei
or eastern part of Borneo. But mostly Borneo was controlled

(05:32):
by Brunei. Now that changed in eighteen thirty nine with
the arrival of a very dumb, young adventurer named James Brooke.
He was born on April twenty nine, eighteen oh three,
as the son of Judge Thomas Brooke and Anna Maria
Stewart was you might guess from the judge part, James
was born into enormous wealth and privilege. His father was
in Yeah, an English judge. We're talking like judges back

(05:54):
when that means something not like not like now with
our fucking bullshit. Sorry, I might be going of court soon.
I probably shouldn't talk. They're so rad. Everybody loves a
good judge with the wigs man incredible look, powder and mallets.
Who doesn't like a mallet? This is These are judges

(06:17):
from the powder and Mallets era. And he's a judge
in um in India, so he's got to wear like
James's dad, Thomas has to wear like that whole judge
get up and like sweltering degree Indians something mallet situation.
They're like, I feel like I could, I could do things.
The past must have smelt so bad, you know, just

(06:39):
all the stuff they wore, lack of showers, and bathing,
just coding like themselves with powder on top of the
stenchion b O, just to try and mask it. Just
dousing themselves with tobacco smoke to try to dull it
for everyone to burn their noses out. Yeah. So Thomas
Brooke James Brooke is born eight oh three to a

(07:00):
judge named Thomas Brooke who lives in India. Um and
he ruled upon the High Court of Benares interpreting the
laws of the East India Trading Company, which ruled India
at this time. So he's not a judge for like
the government. He I mean, he is, but the government
is a corporation, like he is a corporate judge. It's
very cyberpunk, even though it's happening in eighteen o three.

(07:23):
You know, you have to like put in reference to
something I can understand, so because I have, you know,
the most part, a pretty awful American education. So do
you have to like put it in reference to a
game or some sort of Disney movie. Yeah, that covered
this the help. It's like it's like Blade Runner, but
everyone's dying of cholera all the time. So James had

(07:44):
a few siblings. He had an older brother, who joined
the army and again the army is the corporate army,
and died immediately, leaving James to be the sole inheritor
of the family fortune. He also had four sisters, two
of whom died young, not in India, but in the
filth Strewent Petri Dish that was nineteenth century Britain. Now
somewhat unusually for a boy boy born into his social class,

(08:05):
James spent the first twelve years of his life in India.
He fell in love with the country, it's culture and
the feeling of adventure that seemed ever present on the
outskirts of Empire. But he also grew up very aware
of the many failures of the East India Company. The
first Great Bengal Famine, which may have killed as many
as thirty million people accord, occurred in the early seventeen seventies,
about a generation before James's birth. The nars is on

(08:28):
the outskirts of Bengal, and the shock waves of so
much death and social collapse would have been evident even
in his youth. You know, twenty thirty years after thirty
million people die, you're going to see some of the
like the shock waves of that it's not. It hasn't
passed entirely. Um. Now we've covered that on a previous
episode Behind the Bastards. But the short of it is,
once the East India Company stole Bengal, the uprooted millennia

(08:51):
of agricultural traditions to maximize profits and wound up starving
the whole country to death. So, unlike many imperialists of
his era, James did not grow up with a rosy
idea of the British Empire. His biographer Nigel Barley notes,
quote India became, to the whole Brook Dynasty an enduring
and terrible example of how not to run a country. So,

(09:12):
if you've ever been to India, Benares Is includes as
a region that includes a modern day city called Varanasi,
which is where James would have spent a lot of time.
Varanasi is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on
the planet and it's the city that it hosts what's
called the Burning Got, which is where you can stand
along the banks of the Ganjis every night and watch
people burn the bodies of their loved ones. Um. It's

(09:34):
a place you can actually like, I've been there. It's
it's a a pretty powerful place to see. It's one
of those intense places I've ever been, and it would
have been. It was that intense when when James was there,
and he grew up as a big kind of like
childhood event of his watching these these burnings on the
banks of the Ban, the Ganjis and Varanasi. Um and

(09:54):
this has an impact on him. Um So Yeah. Now,
obviously the year Appean dwellings in Benaras were deliberately built
upriver from where the actual like native Indian people lived,
but it would have been hard to miss this entirely,
and in general, James Brooke got to explore a lot
in his youth in India because Thomas Brooke was bad
at imposing boundaries on his son. He was not a

(10:17):
particularly bright man. He's described by a biographers as not
really clever, but a good talker, which in nineteenth century
English terms means he had a dull mind. But he
went to a good school, so he was a dumb
guy who had a good education. Yeah. Yeah, And this
is like you'll hear the people described this way a

(10:38):
lot in British imperial history. These are the kind of
men who build the British Empire. They are dumb men
who are well educated, which is a very dangerous combination.
Those are the kind of guys that will do genocides
for profits. Yeah. So Thomas was a doting father, which
is probably a part of why he allowed James to
stay in India so late. Normally, a kid like James,
born to the upper crust would have left India at

(11:00):
age six to go attend school in in England. Um.
It was that was it was uncommon for them to
stay in India too long, and part because Indie was
seen as being very dangerous, but in part because if
you're an upper crust kid, you want to get into
that British education system is as quickly as possible. Um. Now.
So again, the fact that he waited until he was
twelve was kind of odd, um and probably good for James.

(11:23):
When one considers all of the inhuman crimes of the
British Empire, it's worth noting that said crimes were carried
out by men who had been separated from their parents
at age six and shoved into a boarding school when
they were of kindergarten age. Well, the thing I'm sure
I'm going to hear more about this. But the sense
I'm getting is that even though he's seeing all this
bad stuff and he has the opportunity to be like

(11:45):
this shouldn't happen, or he sees the drawbacks at least
of this colonialism, he's not going to learn the right
lessons from it. That's the sense I'm gonna get, just
because I know the show and it bums me out already.
He is not going to learn the right lessons of it. Um.
But he's all going to grow up to be very
different from a lot of the other imperialists of his
era because he has a different background. Right. The whole

(12:06):
British education system is geared towards producing the kind of
men who can who can further the empire, and he
doesn't really get trapped in that in the same way
that other people do, um, because his parents keep him
out of it for a much longer time. UM. So
when he's twelve, he finally uh gets sent over to
England to go to boarding school. Um. And the fact

(12:28):
that he goes so much later than his peers makes
it a lot harder for him. All the other boys
of his age group had had five or six more
years of formal schooling. Than him by the time he
arrives at boarding school. He also had to adapt from
the freedom of unsupervised life in India to being the
prisoner of a boarding school. One of his biographers, Johnson
Jin writes, quote, the want of regular training was of

(12:49):
infinite disadvantage to young Brooke, who thus started life with
little knowledge and with no idea of self control. So
he's kind of a wild kid by the standards of
you know, British this idea at this point. Um his
education at King Edward the sixth Grammar School in Norwich
was something of a disaster. He hated arithmetic and grammar,
and he much preferred doodling in his notebooks. His early biographers,

(13:11):
who were all propagandists of the British Empire, guys like
Robert Payne Well write quote, it was remembered that he
never told a lie and demonstrated at an early age
a character of the utmost nobility. Uh. They'll say that
he was seen by the other boys as a natural leader,
and these are all lies. There's no evidence in any
of this, like um, and he was a very good

(13:32):
liar later in life. So this this, this is just
kind of like traditional biographer lying nonsense. The reality seems
to be that he was somewhat ostracized. His one good
friend was another boy named George Western. Uh, and one year,
instead of going off to holiday, George announced that he
was heading to see and joined the Navy as a
cabin boy. He probably died horribly, but James thought that

(13:54):
the whole idea sounded terribly romantic, and he couldn't stand
to stay at school without his only friend. So when
George leaves, he borrows money from a schoolmate and left
with a very public announcement that he too was going
to see. Uh. Now, the reality is that he actually
took the money he'd taken from a classmate and headed
to hide at his grandmother's yard. Uh. He camped in
her garden until her servants caught him. Actually, I'm sorting

(14:16):
to like him now, Yeah. No, I mean there's there's
parts of this kid that are fun. Yeah. So he uh,
he camps in his grandma's yard until her servants find him,
and she sends him back to his school headmaster. Um,
but the headmaster refuses to admit him because he'd proven
himself to be quote a rebel. Uh. This could have
caused great scandal, But not long after his parents returned

(14:38):
from India so his father could retire, and being again
very indulgent parents, they just hired a private tutor for
their son. They described him as a wayward pupil. We
might say he had severe a d h D because
he went on to quote torment and terrify this poor teacher,
which sounds like some cousins I've had this this kid

(14:59):
is this? Is this so interesting? Like, you know, to
imagine what these kinds of kids would be like now, Like,
I think one thing that probably has not changed is
if you come from money, no matter how bad a
student you are, no matter how many social failings you have,
you're still gonna be okay and end up running a
small country. Yeah, You're you're going to, like, even if

(15:21):
you're a bad student, even if you you you can't
abide by the rules, you're gonna wind up conquering like
a large chunk of Malaysia. I feel like this could
be like George W. Bush's story, Like if this we
put this like into a different time. Yeah, I will
say one of the differences between him is um he
strikes me as one of those like you know every

(15:42):
now and then you have those like rich kids who
drop out of fancy college and just like join the
military or something because I just got so much fucking energy.
He's kind of that, that sort of kid. He really
has this you know, like he's bad at school. He
doesn't really learn any of the things he's supposed to learn,
but he's he's devouring all of these like cheap kind
of pulp fiction novels that are coming out about fighting

(16:04):
pirates and fighting bandits in India, and like, you know,
these stories that are written to propaganda as the men
who are building the British Empire. Like he falls in
love with that ship. Yes, that's who he wants to
be as Alan Quarterman. I don't know if that fiction
comes in at this point in time. I don't know
if it had been written, but like precursors to that

(16:24):
were out at least, and he he grows up desperately
wanting to have a life of adventure in the near
in the far East, you know, like that's the you know,
he wants to meet uh what they would call like
strange and foreign cultures and and find jim stones and
romance princesses and all that stuff. Yeah, um, and because
he comes from wealth and privilege, He's going to get

(16:45):
a chance to try to do all of that, which
is maybe why fiction should be illegal so adulthood. Adulthood
came early to Englishmen in those days. At age sixteen,
he was old enough to join the military. Just it's
actually not all that different now, Like I have friends
who joined at seventeen, so it hasn't changed a lot um. So,

(17:07):
being hungry for glory and generally unable to focus, that's
the path that he chose. He rose through the ranks quickly,
not on merit, but due to the fact that rich
families in those days could purchase ranks for their sons.
By age eighteen, he was a lieutenant, a job even
his most faughting biographers admit he was quote wholly unfitted for. Uh.

(17:28):
He was stationed in India, where Robert Paine writes, quote
James was in fact a bad soldier with a happy,
go lucky attitude towards the army. His main task was
drilling the native troops, and he liked to tell the
story of how he was once drilling them and marching
them across the parade ground when it occurred to him
to tell them to march over a neighboring hill. He
never saw them again. Collected scandalous story like like they

(17:53):
just laughed. Yeah, they just left there, Like you think
this British Empire thing's gonna go anywhere. That's true. He
collected scandalous stories. This is not This will not be
the first time that his troops run away from him.

(18:14):
He collected scandalous stories about the officers and their wives
and liked retelling them. The army amused him, but made
a few demands on him. There were occasional big game hunts.
There was always some pig sticking somewhere, but it was
altogether more pleasant to bait the senior officers. He knew
obscurely that something was wrong. He was bored by the
society of white men thirsting for action and devilment. He
was in a strange mood, caring and not decided, and

(18:36):
caring and not caring, decided and not decided. No woman
seemed to have interested him in India, and he spent
a good deal of time composing poems, no better and
no worse than hundreds of poems written by his contemporaries.
We'll read one of his poems later weirdly erotic, so
my favorite. He wrote constantly to his parents while he

(18:59):
was stationed in India, and his focus was rather predictably
self centered for a man of his age. Mostly he
spread gossip about different wars and conflicts breaking out across
the Empire and his hope that he might get to
participate in them. He crowd over his promotions, and he
repeatedly begged his father for money. For a long span
of time. He repeatedly requested that his father by him
an elephant, as he quote, simply cannot manage without one.

(19:21):
I want the teslas of the day, and considerably better
for the environment. If Elon Musk was just trying to
get everybody to write elephants, I would have an issue
with Yeah, that would be rad as hell. Act, everybody
with a how to like fucking shooting bows at each
other from the top of an elephant. Imagine bow hunting

(19:43):
comes back into boat vogue too, probably still guns, Yeah,
I mean that would also be pretty rad. I would
love to get into a gunfight from the top of
an elephant anyway, So what you know, you want to
get into an elephant based gun fights, Sophie, Come on,
I don't grant that otto. But everyone's got a fucking

(20:05):
elephant that's actually gonna make that game. Someone's got to
make that game. Yeah, they'll be cross fired and then
the elephants will get hurt. And then you made me
feel bad the elephant gun thing. Plus I however, I
think of elephant fights. I think of that really scary,
those evil elephants from one of the Rings. Oh the elephants, Yea,

(20:26):
they're not evil, they're just being used by evil men. No,
but they're so scary and they get hurt and it
hurt my heart. You know it doesn't hurt my heart though, Robert.
The products and services that support this podcast, I hope
one of them is an elephant manufacturer. Uh, we're back, um,

(20:50):
And I just want to thank Elephants International for sponsoring
this podcast. Elephants International. When you want an elephant, they're
basically your only choice. The only the only elephant brand
I know is a skincarebra, racist skincarebra and drunk elephant.
Don't buy that, Oh Jesus, that I will say. From

(21:11):
the few months I spent living in India, you did.
I did run into in a couple of cities. Once
in Delhi, and a few times in Jaipur, and then
one or two other places people writing elephants in traffic
with like eighteen wheelers next to them and stuff. And
it's always seeing seeing like a crowded city street full
of traffic and just a dude sitting on an elephant
is just the most powerful flex I've seen in my

(21:32):
entire life. Just the look of those men writing their
elephant through town, just like, Okay, you know what, that's
unbelievably powerful energy. If they have like a boom box
with them while they're doing it, I'm all for it.
I think that would be amazing. That would be rad
as hell. So at this point in his life, newly

(21:54):
on the cusp of adulthood, Brooke dreamed of making a
quick fortune in the foreign service. There was always up
trinity for grafton bribery in the service of the East
India Company. And then after he made his money, he
planned to make a glorious return to the comfortable life
of an English gentleman. He wrote home, quote, my prospects
are now so good that a few years hence I
hope to return to England with a fortune which will

(22:15):
render unnecessary my revisiting this country With what joy shall
I give? With what joy? I give up what are
termed the luxuries of India for a cottage and a
snug fireside. This I am determined to do. So, he
seems to have initially wanted to like, well, I don't
really want to stay in India. I want to make
my money, come buy a farm at home, and never
leave again. You know, that's his initial goal. But this

(22:36):
changes with his first experience of action. In late eighteen
ninety four, the company went to war with Burma. Now,
since this was a company army, much of the fighting
was then with the regular units, which had been risen
up and organized for profit by a corporate like entity
whose employees acted as militant subcontractors. James volunteered to raise
up a unit of a regular cavalry locals who would

(22:57):
act as scouts for the campaign. Nigel Barley notes quote,
he had found his niche a big fish in a
small pond, operating on the margins of established order, and
this was the kind of position to which he would
gravitate all his life. So he finds this like very
enticing and a lot better than you know, traditional military service.
Uh So, once he put together this unit, he had

(23:18):
to show it off to his superiors, and his standard
way of doing this was to like get all of
his soldiers organized out and order them to charge. Charging
was in fact the only drill training that he ever
gave his men. Um just blitz. He was every blitz,
every play kind of guy. Yeah, yeah, he just blitz.
Just just go rush at those guys. Then one day

(23:38):
there's an actual battle and he orders his men to
charge a group of Burmese fighters, which they promptly did,
but then forgot to come back and he never saw
his soldiers again. He's the worst. I love it. It's
the worst. It's very funny. So in January James saw
his first close combat against the Burmes in Roumapur, a PSAM.

(24:02):
After shouting out what he what he described as a
few inspiring words to his comrades, he charged headlong into
a well defended elevated position, which is what most military
experts would call a bad idea. One has to say
that James Brooke was at least fully willing to engage
in the same foolhardy acts of bravery that he demanded
of his men, and on this occasion, stupid bravery worked.

(24:24):
The Burmes were so shocked to see a single man
charging them down, raving a saber and shrieking like a Hellian,
that they broke and ran. James earned a commendation for
bravery and was written up repeatedly for his raw physical courage. However,
this kind of bravery tends to bite people in the ass.
From the book White Raja quote. A few days after
the General and command heard of a strong stockade being

(24:46):
in front and sent out Lieutenant Brooke to reconnoiter, but
he was not able to return in time to prevent
the advance guard from falling into an ambuscade. As the
Foremost company turned a corner in the road, they were
received by a volley which knocked over a number of men.
In the midst of the confusion, Brooke came galloping up,
putting himself at the head of the men charged, and
Foremost fighting fell. When the affair was over and the
enemy driven from their stockades, Lieutenant Colonel Richards asked after

(25:09):
Lieutenant Brooke, who he had seen fall, and he was
reported dead. Take me to his body, was his reply,
and they rode to the spot. Poor Brooks, said, the colonel,
getting off his horse to have a last look at him,
kneeling over him, he took him in his hand. He's
not dead, he cried, and instantly had him removed to camp.
So Brooks active military career had asked, like his actual
time fighting had been about two days, and because of

(25:29):
the severity of his injuries, he was spent the next
five years recovering. So that's kind of the next half
decade of Brooks life is he gets shipped back home
because his injuries are so severe, and he spends most
of it like in bed or in hospitals that the
doctor and me just kind of wants to know. Maybe
they didn't say it, but what do they say? What
his injuries were? That brings us to one of the

(25:51):
great mysteries over James Brooke. You're gonna like this one.
So most sources at the time would note somewhat surreptitiously
that he had been shot in the jump um. This
rumor is common even today. I found a Daily Beast
article that included the line, A painful war injury in
what Victorian's delicately called his private parts probably discouraged brook
from marrying. Because this guy again he conquers a large

(26:14):
chunk of land he never has natural descendants, right, So
one of the rumors that was kind of spread, may
have been spread by him, was that he had been
he'd been shot in the junk and so he was
unable to reproduce and that's why he never had any descendants.
Now more reputable modern scholarship suggests that this may have
been a face saving lie, because depending on what you

(26:35):
read and who you ask, it's likely that Brooke was
either gay, a pedophile, or a bisexual man with a
quasi sexual interest in extremely young men. We don't really know.
We'll talk about this a lot throughout the episode, and
I'll see where you land on this because one of
the reasons why we don't really know if he's gay
or a pedophile is a lot of times he's romancing

(26:55):
people who are called boys, but who are also legally
adults in the society that he's So there's sixteen seventeen,
but that's also their adults who were like lieutenants in
the military. So it I I don't know, like how
he it's odd, it's very it's very uncomfortable, and there's
a lot of very kind of abusive stuff in Brooks
background with this, But we don't know. I don't know

(27:16):
entirely how to characterize the man um but it seems
likely that he was not in fact shot in the junk,
but that was a kind of a face saving thing
because he was not interested in women as a general rule.
That seems accurate to say, not super interested in women,
and he needed you know, you could get punished with
execution for being a gay man and this, and it

(27:36):
happened like the British like put people to death for
being homosexual. So if he was, even if he was
just kind of not straight like, even if he may
have been sort of like more on the a sexual
side of things, we don't really know. He had to
come up with the reason why he wasn't having kids,
and may have been shot in the junk was the reason.
It's a good way to get sympathy. Yeah, good way
to get sympathy, good way to have people not ask

(27:59):
anymore about But that conversation, it's pretty much right there, somebody, Yeah,
well I have a terrible injury and it's rendered me infertile.
You know, people aren't going to ask much more, got it.
So we don't exactly know how he was injured, but
it was bad you know, five years of recovery time
is a pretty severe, um, pretty severe injury, and obviously

(28:19):
medicine mac then is mostly like screaming and mercury. But um,
it's a little bit better today. I should also note
that information would come over come forward in the early
nineteen fifties to suggest that he had at least one
bastard son that he hit away from the public eye. Again,
we don't really know. It's all very muddled with this, dude.
We'll talk some more about this later. So in any case,

(28:41):
whatever the matter of his actual injury is, whatever the
case of his sexuality is, Brooks spent nearly five years recuperating.
He was better by eighteen thirty, but his journey back
to India to resume his service with the company was
dogged by bad weather and worse luck. He didn't arrive
in Madras until twelve days before his deadline to return
to service. Out his dad, being like an influential person

(29:02):
within the company, was able to kind of pull some
strings to get him more leave time. Um, but Brooke
like didn't want to. Basically, what happens is he winds
up arriving late, realizes he's not going to get to
India in time for his deadlines. So he applies for
a position to serve the company in Madras and that
was refused and this made James Brooke very angry, so

(29:22):
he resigned rather than get dismissed from the company. This
was his public claim, at least now, the reality seems
to be that his journey back through company controlled Southeast
Asia had really like he'd seen a lot of things
that made him angry at the way the company did things,
and he no longer wanted to serve them. Um and
I'm gonna quote from a rite up by the University
of Canberra here. Brookes subsequent musings in his journal suggest

(29:45):
a growing divergence between the company's activities in India and
his own emerging ideas about Britain and its role in Asia,
which might have motivated him to seek new opportunities. He
continued on in Castle Huntly to Chi that's the ship
that he's traveling on to China via Penang, Malacca and
Singapore with him on board, where James Templer, whose brother
John would become his close friend and supporter, and Arthur Crookshank,
who would also later become one of Brooks protegees and

(30:06):
Borneo the ideas Brooke began to set down in his
journal June. In Pain's view, bemoaned the deterioration of the
native character arising from their intercourse with the whites. So
you see what he's saying. This is interesting because it
talks about the kind of racist that Brooke is becoming.
Because you have different kinds of racists in the British Empire.
You have the people these non white people's are inferior

(30:29):
to us and we need to rule them. And you
have these these non white people's um are being hurt
by us. Uh, and so I need to like I
need to uh fix them right. And then you have
the idea that like I need to like raise up
these people who are who are not inferior inherently but
have an inferior culture. I mean to make their culture

(30:50):
of it. There's a couple of different kinds of racists,
like so close to getting it, but then just takes
that left turn when you should just kept going with
that thought. Yeah, and and book is I don't know
if you call this the least offensive kind of the
racist that you could be in the British Empire. Service
but he rather than being kind of the standard sort
of white supremacist, he's the noble, savage kind of white supremacist, right,

(31:12):
and he felt that the decadent values of modernity were
responsible for ruining the noble natives of India. Now interspersed
within this bigotry was a morsel of troop truth. Brooke
had spent his early career stumbling into a subcontinent that
had seen its cultural substrate torn apart in the name
of short term profits. Inter Village crop and water sharing
arrangements built up over centuries to mitigate the shifting tides

(31:34):
of climate had been ripped apart by venal corporate administrators
who wanted to suck as much money out of the
area as quickly as possible. This had reduced many people
who had once been independent farmers two beggars on the street.
The introduction of hard liquor had also had a visible
negative impact on many of the now urban poor. James
Brooke did not entirely blame his fellow English for the
state of affairs um which is again part of his racism.

(31:56):
As he reached the Malay Peninsula, he had his first
close contact with Chinese people, many of whom ran businesses
and carried on trading operations in the region, and he
blamed a lot of what he was seeing in India
on the Chinese. He wrote, quote, their habits are most filthy,
their dress in the most unbecoming, their faces the most ugly,
and their figures the most ungraceful to any people under
the sun. They appear cut out of a log of

(32:18):
wood by the hand of someone skillful savage. Their mouths
are wide, their noses snub, and their eyes small and
set and crooked in their heads. When they move they
swing arms, legs and body like a paper clown pulled
by a string. And to sum it up, all their
color is a dirty yellow. So he is a really
racist against Chinese people. So he has this view that like,
Indian people are inherently noble and we've corrupted them, and

(32:40):
they've also been corrupted by these like by the Chinese
right um who he is super racist against like and
this will continue to be a major factor in his life.
He is a huge anti Chinese bigot um and as
a huge anti Chinese bigot, James and a group of
these guys that I mentioned are on the boat with
him the world. This is yeah, yeah, the guys described

(33:02):
as his protege. These are his friends. They might also
be his lovers. Um, it's kind of hard to tell. Um.
But at one point, while they're in Southeast Asia, Um,
they dress up in yellow face. Uh yeah man. Yeah.
A jape involved him and shipmates disguising themselves as Chinese

(33:23):
at the Feast of Lanterns in order to penetrate the
city declared out of bounds to Europeans. Being once in
the whole party threw off disguise and broke some of
the lanterns, which were accounted precious. They barely escaped with
their lives. And how escape was possible is the marvel.
James would always have it just it cracks me up
because if they really did that, it cracks me up
because it's like they do they really believe that they

(33:44):
fooled anybody, did they Actually, we're getting away with this.
They don't even know. They don't even know. We're dressed
in local garb. Look at us, we're nailing it. We're
nailing this. They don't even know. Yeah, they're they're they're
bad at this and they do get caught. Um. So
James would later learn to work with Chinese traders in

(34:06):
the land that he eventually conquered, but he never got
over his bigotry against them, which would eventually lead to
horrific bloodshed. But at this point Brooke had been kind
of He recognized the evils of the East India Company
and some of the evils of colonialism. He knew there
was something immoral going on in all of this um
but unfortunately his reaction to this was to invent ways

(34:27):
that he might do colonialism but nicer. Right. His solution
to this is obviously an an unethical system, is I
can do it better, as opposed to maybe we should
get the funk out of here. Yeah. He even picked
out a spot, Penang in Malaysia, that he thought was
ripe for his kinder sort of colonialism. And I'm gonna

(34:48):
quote from the University of Canberra again. He towed with
the idea of Penang as the spot on which the
experiment should be made for a permanent British colony in
which individuals could reap the rewards of their own effort,
unlike under the company's monopoly. Later, his interest grew to
include Sumatra. Brooke and his companions soon developed a plan
to return to the Eastern Archipelago for and seek for adventure.

(35:10):
They called it the Schooner Plan, awaiting only the financial
means to implement it. So this dude, like, he's not likable.
There's no qualities I've seen that are redeeming. He's just
like a fucking piece of ship. I mean, they all
they all kind of are like. It's he's he's a
he's a young he's a man who was raised to

(35:31):
believe that he and people like him ought to rule
the world, and he recognizes people actually ruling are bad
at it, and the solution is for me to do
it better. You know. Yeah, it's not great. He's he sucks.
I don't like, yeah, this is behind the bastards. You

(35:51):
might have heard of it. Yeah, why, thank you, Robert,
thank you so much. No, but I'm just saying a
lot of times when you're when we do these episodes,
and it's like you can find like one thing where
you're like, okay, well, the one redeeming thing. I mean,
this is such a small thing. But he does seem
to have a genuine affection for India at least, which

(36:12):
is very little, and it's a slightly more mellow form
of racism. But that's I guess something for the time.
I don't like him saying it. Now. I'm still on defense.
I'm still a defense about this guy. I'm not I'm
gonna wait till the ends I make up my mind.
I'm like forty minutes in not into him. Him he

(36:32):
could still pull out of this tail span. He does not.
The schooner plan, and a schooner is a type of boat,
was very much the dream of an upper class English schoolboy. Basically,
his idea was that, like he and his best buddies
that he'd like met and hung out with on this
boat and traveled around Southeast Asia with, we're going to
like learn how to navigate and sail together under get

(36:54):
his ship and sail to get away under his leadership,
to have like adventures and participate in glorious bad goals
and get rich. It was. His biographer describes it as
quote an all boys adventure written large upon the real world.
So again it's the kind of ship that he reads
in these in these fantasy books that are very popular
among young English boys of this day. He just wants

(37:16):
to do it for real, and because he's a rich kid,
he's going to get a chance to how old is
he at this point, He's like early twenties of this.
So it was always unclear how the schooner plan was
going to lead to wealth and influence, for especially how
it was going to lead to them creating colonies in Malaysia. UH.

(37:36):
When James returned home to England and broke the news
to his doting dad that he'd resigned his commission with
the East India Company, he tried to convince the old
judge to invest money in this scheme. He assured his
father that with the vehicle quote equally capable of fight
or flight, he and his friends would be able to
make a fortune trading through Southeast Asia and having adventures
in between deliveries. Now this is have you seen Stepbrothers.

(37:58):
This is the scene where they show the stepdad the
video boats and hose, boats and hose and they're they're
trying to build their media company and they're like, check
it out. We need a boat where it's gonna be awesome.
Boats and hose that's all he needs. And that's so
it's like, um, it's it's like that's what's happening. But

(38:20):
he's saying, we need to buy us a warship, like
we we need we need to get like a battleship
so that we can sail around and have adventures and
that will be profitable somehow, Dad, trust me. So it's
more like boats and guns and boys as opposed to
now being a practical man. James's dad told him that
his plan was nonsense, warned him that he had no
head for business, and that even if he was good

(38:42):
at business, working on a trading vessel was one of
the most dangerous and miserable jobs that a person could get.
But James kept badgering his old man, and as he'd
done with the elephant, his dad eventually threw down the
money to buy a two ninety tons slaver brig. It's
called a slaver big because it used to be used
for transporting slaves. You know, um no, we got that,
yeah yeah, yeah, so yeah. So Iphi's liking this guy,

(39:06):
less and less. Less and less. Dad also not it.
He's This is the era where slavery has been outlawed
and the British Empire is fighting a crusade across the
world against slavery that allows them to do more colonialism,
like they're conquering land and subjugating people in the name
of ending the slave trade. That's a lot of what's

(39:26):
happening in this period. So, um, that's why, like this
is in the news right now. Like, but there's been
a couple of cases recently where it was some fucking
I think it might have been pierced more than somebody,
some British person was, Like, nobody has done more to
fight against racism than the British Empire. Um. And what
the referring to is all of these different anti slavery

(39:47):
wars and crusades that the British Empire fought, and what
they neglect to mention is that they were always used
to subjugate people. They were used as justifications to militarily
occupy places and and the denying pe their sovereignty. Like
that was the only reason for these crusades. Um, it was.
It was I don't know, a modern Americans can't imagine this,

(40:08):
but imagine seeing a real problem and your government uses
that real problem to justify conquering of people and taking
their stuff. Again, very hard to very hard to visualize. Yeah. Yeah,
So James had only been home a few months when
he convinced his dad to buy the boat, and by
all accounts those few months had been much more than
enough for him. He wrote to a friend that quote,

(40:29):
I feel the irksomeness of civilized society greater than ever,
and it's bonds shall not hold me long. My own
families speak to me of the years we are to
pass together, and that it always makes me sad to
think that in my innermost heart, I have determined to
plunge into some adventure that will bestow activity and employment.
So he's he comes home and quits the company, and
his family is happy to have him back and be like, Oh,

(40:50):
We're all going to get to live together in England,
and James kind of feels bad because he has again
the kind of the shot of adrenaline that he had
participating in that war. His experience traveling around is convinced
him like, I'm not gonna stay in England, Like I'm
gonna go get into dumb adventures in Southeast Asia. Um.
And he knows that um. And so in early eighteen
thirty four, James finds himself with the giant boat purchased

(41:12):
by his dad, which had a half dozen cannons and
a hold for full of merchandise that he was going
to trade in Singapore. He hired a crew in a captain,
and he brought along some friends who again probably were
romantic interests, and he set sail for the Far East.
The trip was almost immediately a disaster jamesknew. James knew
very little about boats or the nautical life, but he
insisted on being in command over the venture, even though

(41:33):
he'd hired a perfectly good captain. That said, his main
issue with the captain he hired is something most of
us will find sympathetic. Back in the early eighteen hundreds,
British naval discipline was held up with what I think
Winston Churchill later described as room sodomy and the lash.
So basically, the reason that like our boats are able
to function is that we get our crews drunk at night,

(41:55):
they get to funk each other, and we beat them
when they break any rules. Right like that in the
beatings were vicious, like the kind of whipping sailors would
receive from minor and flat fractions of discipline are not
unsimilar to the kind of whippings you would hear about
slaves getting like people would get sentenced to sometimes hundreds
of lashes with a leather whip in the back like
people sailors died getting whipped. It was pretty pretty ugly

(42:19):
naval discipline in this period of time. Um. Now, this
uh was seen as necessary because obviously, when you're on
a boat, especially the kind of boats they had back then,
fucking up can get hundreds of people killed. Right, Which
is not to say that it's cool to whip people
for a problem like that, but that's why they saw
it as necessary. If you don't have strict naval discipline,
you're going to get everyone on the boat killed. James

(42:42):
was not comfortable with cruelty. He preferred kindness, and he
felt that sailors could be kept in line just as
well by a loving attitude. He later wrote on the
subject of discipline, quote, it was necessary to form men
to my purpose, and by a line of steady and
kind conduct, to raise up a personal regard for myself
and an attachment for the vessel. Now we don't really
know if this worked on board his first voyage, but

(43:03):
it definitely piste off the captain and made for a
tremendously unpleasant trip. Now, to make matters worse, James was
as horrible as trade as his father had expected. He
eventually sold their cargo for a massive loss in Macau
and sailed back to England of failure. But he was
still a rich failure because his parents are rare rich,
and his parents also had no desire to chastise him
for his funk ups. Soon after he landed back at home,

(43:25):
his dad died and left all of his surviving children
a considerable inheritance. James received some thirty thousand pounds sterling,
which is the equivalent of about four or five million
dollars today. So now he's independently wealthy. His first voyage
has been a massive failure, but his dad dies and
he's rich. He doesn't have to ask his family for
anything else. So as soon as he gets back, he

(43:46):
sells his old boat and he buys a new one.
And this one is a yacht. Uh And when I
say yacht here, I'm not talking about like just a
rich guy boat. A yacht in this period of time
is a military vessel. This was actually one of the
old royal yachts that he buys um and it has
a full complement of cannons. It's got something like a
dozen big guns. And because of how British naval law

(44:08):
was at the time it legally counted as a military vessel.
This gave James the right to fly a special naval
flag and to wear a special naval uniform, and to
receive salutes from British naval vessels. While English sailors would
know that this was not really a ship of the
Royal Navy anymore, these perks meant that, as far as
any foreigners knew, James was captaining a British Royal Navy

(44:29):
vessel and representing the British government. And he will never
go out of his way to disabuse them of this notion. Right,
that's going to be important for what comes later. So
the British are just okay with this because it's like,
this is a super rich guy and this is how
we treat our rich people. They can do whatever they want.
Is that? Is that what's happening Again, A lot of
the British kind of military apparatus at this point is corporate,
so they're not against the idea of people of private

(44:52):
entities representing the empire with military vessels. He buys a
naval vessel that is still part of the navy, and
because because of what this vessel is, he retains the
right to represent himself as kind of like UM, almost
like a naval national guard sort of thing, right, And
I think that is part of the idea. If there's
an emergency, all of these guys who own these different votes,

(45:13):
we can call on them to serve UM. But yeah,
that's kind of the situation. Yeah, it's it's gonna get
it's gonna get funds. So, with his yacht, which was
called the Royalist, loaded with firepower, and of course a
bunch of new friends, some of whom were probably lovers,
James Brooks sets off on a new adventure, and again
the goal was Malaysia, this time a place called sarah Wak,

(45:35):
ruled over by the Sultan of Brunei. They left Port
on July thirty nine. Upon arrival, their first task was
to carry out a series of gun salutes, which means
firing cannons wildly into the air. This was how Brooke
decided he was going to signal his peaceful intentions to
the locals. Yeah, I see this going wrong. As you

(45:58):
might expect, there's a couple of I mean, cannon salutes
are common things at this time, so it's not necessarily
an aggressive act. But it's also not for nothing that
he does this, because it lets everyone in sarah wak No,
this guy's got a bunch of giant cannons right like that.
It's it's, it's, it's It makes it clear that if
you funk with this guy, he's got he's got some shit. Um.

(46:20):
So you know, James fires his cannons and then he
sends a boat ashore to meet the local ruler, Rajah
Muda Hashim. Now, this guy Hashim is basically the local
governor under the command of the Sultan of Brunei. Um,
he's one of the Sultan's uncles, I think. So he
and Hashim smoked tobacco from foot long cigarettes, and they
drink tea. They listened to a band, and they do
all of the polite stuff you'd expect from a royal welcome.

(46:43):
Hashim and his people assumed Brooke was there representing the
British Empire, since he was dressed in his ship bore
the flag of the Royal Navy. James Brooke told the
Raja that he was just a private person, but he
also presented the ruler with official documents that he claimed
from British authorities. As a result, everyone there assumed he
as in fact an agent of the British government. He
told them his plan in the country was just to

(47:04):
survey the coasts and collect specimens of the local fauna,
but no one believed this either. When they got to talking,
the Rajah told Brook that he was in an air
in the area to put down a rebellion by the
local Malaise, who were laying siege to the local capital,
and we're purported to be allied with a nearby unfriendly sultan, Rajah.
The Rajah's forces were not well armed, or well trained,
or particularly numerous, and neither were the rebels. In practice,

(47:28):
this meant that this war was mostly just a bunch
of inconclusive street fights, with neither side able to really
bring things to a close. The Rajah initially tried to
downplay the rebellion, framing it as more of a mild
squabble between children. James offered to help him anyway, and
this sort of led the Rajah to believe that he
was doing this on behalf of the British Empire. Nigel
Barley writes quote, they, being the authorities in Brunei, had

(47:51):
no idea they were entering into a political alliance not
with a government, but with a spoiled young man from
Bath squandering his inheritance. So within hours, this oiled young
rich kid with a yacht had turned himself to the
ostensible commander of a foreign military and their efforts to
crush an insurgent rebellion. If he understood the gravity of
the situation, James did not show it. When he landed

(48:11):
on Sarah Wak, Sure, he convinced himself that he was
the first white man to set foot there, and so
he went barefoot through the jungle. This proved to be
a bad idea, and his feet got horribly infected, which
rendered him unable to walk under his own power, and
he would have to be carried around for the next
several days. So stupid, He's doing so great life though
he's nailing it upward, fails upward every turn. He has

(48:37):
failed upward into commanding the royal effort to fight an
insurgency in Malaysia. I mean, just like the like scam
of it all, and then like he does all these
unnecessary things. I don't I don't like it. I mean
he's just having a good time, He's just having oats.
The injury did not dim brooks instant enthusiasm for the

(48:58):
wilds of sarah Wak. He took his boats sailing to
the interior, where it was immediately attacked by pirates made
up of a knuckle of another local people, the Dyaks Uh.
These Dyak pirates killed several Malays before being driven off,
and James considered this all to have been very exciting.
When it was explained that the Dyaks had a pin
shot for taking and preserving heads, he was even more excited.

(49:18):
With very little knowledge of either group, Brooks started stereotyping them,
and I'm gonna quote from the book White Rajah again.
His infatuation with adolescence was being fully extended to to
include the whole supposedly childlike people's. They were all becoming
midshipman under his especial care, and already he was leaping
to judgment, forming the stereotypes that would anchor brook rule.
The Malays were natural gentlemen, but when bad could be

(49:41):
sinuous and duplicitus, and they were lazy. The Dyaks were
naturally honest, chased, passionate, and faithful people of the land,
not the town. It was like the difference between cats
and dogs repeatedly. The DIACs are explicitly compared to hunting
dogs with a bad master. The master may be changed
for a good one, but the dogs will take time
to learn to not not a snap and bite, but
they were a good breed and they would eventually be

(50:03):
won by kindness. Yeah, yeah, real. And again this all
he starts coming up with these ideas about people because
he convinces this local ruler that he's a great military mind.
And the ruler sends him to the interior and he
gets a bunch of people killed in an ambush. Oh,
he's just the worst, these guys murdering all of my

(50:23):
these guys murdering all of them that I were sent
out with. They're like good dogs with bad rulers. He's like,
as long as Crookshanks is okay, I don't care that.
It really is the attitude. No one white has died yet,
So no one has died yet in his right, you
know who won't get a bunch of a bunch of
Malaysian volunteer soldiers murdered in an ambush and then right

(50:49):
racist propaganda about them. We are back. So with his
adventure done, and only some of them and the Rajah
had lent him dead. Brooke considered his visit to sarah
Waka's success, which again included him going into the jungle
briefly and getting a bunch of people killed. He promised
to return in a few months and then sailed off

(51:10):
to funk around in other parts of Southeast Asia. This
one up not being as fun as he expected, so
he headed to Singapore after a few weeks, where stories
of his pirate fighting exploits had spread. Now, local merchants,
who long had to deal with direct pirates, praised him
for bringing the might of the British Empire against those
dastardly bandits. Being recognized by a couple of dudes absolutely
ignited James's ego, and he went home to his and

(51:33):
he wrote home to his mother quote, I really am
becoming a great man, dearest mother. The world talks about me.
The rulers of England make threatened to write me. Newspapers
call me patriotic and adventurous. The geographical society pays me compliments.
Am I not a great man? No, bitch, you are
not a great man. His adventures include getting some guys

(51:55):
killed in the jungle and then briefly firing a bunch
of cannons that pirates and news like that, that's what
he's done, completely up his feet and completely this is amazing.
Am I not a great man? Mommy? Am I great? Yes? Mama?
So the British Governor of Singapore did not think that

(52:17):
that James Brooke was a great man. In fact, he
yelled at James for inserting himself into politics with a
sovereign nation. He's basically like, you're just a guy with
a boat. How dare you like stick yourself in the
middle of a civil war? Like? What is wrong with you?
So there is at least a single rational person in
this story so far. Brooke was so offended by this

(52:37):
that he left Singapore straightaway and sailed for sarah Wak,
where he could hang out more with his new friends,
only some of whom he had gotten killed the first time.
Now the Rajah was happy to have him back, or
more accurately, was happy to have his cannons back, and
James was introduced to the Raja's younger brother, Pince Badrudine,
who was hot as fuck. Let me like this, this

(52:58):
dude smoking. You have to assume smoking because of the
very thirsty letter that James writes back to his mom,
interesting quote. I wish you could know the panjarin bud Rudine, who,
with the amiable and easy temper of his brother Muda Hashim,
combines decision and abilities quite astonishing in a native prince

(53:18):
and a directness of purpose seldom found in an Asiatic.
As a companion, I found him superior to most of them,
to most about me. And there is something particularly interesting
in sounding the depths and shadows of an intelligent native
mind and examining them freed from the trammels of court etiquette. Wow,
it's amazing how even the dumb people back then could write. Well,

(53:41):
it is right, like like he's so dumb, but he
can actually actually put together words in the way they sounded. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's that's the values of a classical education. I get.
But he's I mean, that's an incredibly horny letter. Yeah,
he's thirsty. That's what the kids say. Bud Rudine was
very young, and at this point James had both the

(54:02):
wealth and worldliness to seem very impressive to an inexperienced
young prince. He adopted James as a mentor and started
drinking wine and copying the way the Englishman dressed. James
rewarded this behavior with lavish attention and constant praise. When
it came time for James to go help the Rajah
with his war, there was no question that Bodredine would
stay behind. The Rajah had phrased the rebellion as less

(54:24):
of a war and again more of a petty squabble
between children. This was not quite accurate, but it certainly
was not war as James had known it. In Burma
and Sarawak, both sides sides tended to fight by building
fortifications and engaging in short skirmishes in which people rarely died,
and then ran back to build more fortifications. There was
not much willingness to charge headlong into decisive battle, and

(54:45):
this frustrated Brooke, who again only knew how to charge
headlong into the enemy. He wrote, quote, we found the
Grand Army in a state of torpor, eating, drinking, and
walking up to the forts back and again daily. But
having built these imposing structures, and their appearance not driving
the enemy away, they were at a loss of what
to do next. James took it upon himself to break

(55:05):
the stalemate. The only way he knew how from the
book White Rajah quote. The solution was as always that
they should charge, even if this had to be on
foot rather than on horseback as an India, and it
was Boddine's overawing presents that would make them but the
Malay's wrong footed James turned things around and refused to attack,
urging that they dared not risk Bodredine's precious royal life.

(55:25):
Bud Redine insisted that if I went, he would likely
likewise go, and the Malaise insisted that if he went,
they would not go. So Boderdine and James retired and
directed the artillery from a place of safety. All went
well until the surreptitiously advancing assault troops betrayed themselves by
making the mistake of praying too loudly, attracting the attention
of three old muskets in the hands of the defenders,
at which they prayed still more loudly and swiftly retired

(55:48):
at the front. Everyone built more forts, and James looked
for more things to charge. So this is I realized, now,
why why why he likes boats? Because that's like the
one place his soldiers can't run for him. You know,
they're on a boat. They can't leave him because it
sounds like everyone must soldiers must think he's an idiot. Yeah,
they they think he's danger endangering their lives because again,

(56:11):
the only tactic he has his run headlong at the
enemy's guns. Um. He's very zapp Brannigan energy here. Uh So,
eventually the fighting came down to James taking the field
with his fellow Europeans, all combat veterans charging. Yeah, this

(56:31):
time he wears shoes and they do charge the enemy
who breaks and runs. Um. And after this, James decided
continued battle would be tedious. He he called a parlay
and he told the rebels that if they quit, he
would guarantee them their lives, and he'd stopped the soldiers
he was with from looting their villages. James had no
authority to promise any of this, and in fact, one
of the other local rulers, a prince named Akoda, had

(56:53):
already promised his men that they were about to get
to loot all of these enemy villages. But James declared
the formal rebels under his personal protection and insinuated that
taking vengeance on them would be crossing the British Empire,
and so as a result, this little war ends peacefully
with a number, but with a tremendous amount of anger
on Prince Makoda's part. The Raja, however, was overjoyed to

(57:13):
have things over. Finally, he declared James a permanent residence
of sarah Wak and gave him the right to trade
within the country. James briefly tried to set up living
as a merchant, bringing goods from Singapore to the isolated kingdom,
but he proved to be as bad as trading as
he had you know, as he'd always been. He's never
any good at business or making money. So in short order,
he decided to go back to the only thing he'd

(57:34):
ever really wanted to do, having adventures while pretending to
represent the Royal Navy. When he'd left sarah Wak, the
Rajah had promised to build him a house as a
sign of gratitude. Hashim had also promised to have a
large shipment of antimony or which was mine in the
area for him, like ready for him to go trade
in Singapore. Um Now. When he landed, though, he found
out that none of this would be done. There'd been

(57:54):
no ore gathered, there had been no house built, and
he was really angry. He was even more furious when
he learned that, in accordance with ancient custom, the rulers
in Brunei, which included the Raja's nephew, the Sultan, were
about to allow a hundred Dyak war canoes to row
down the river and raid Malay villages on the interior.
This was in fact brutal, but it was a crutal
crucial source of revenue for the Bruneians who ruled sarah

(58:15):
wak Um. So basically, you've got the Sultan of Brunei
who runs this country, and whenever you have kind of
like a small group of people running an entire country,
they're gonna do the same ship the British Empire always did,
which is play different ethnic groups off of each other.
And the way that Bruneians do this is they have
an agreement with the Dyaks where they they'll let them
go and raid and murder and like take slaves and

(58:36):
and steal from villages in exchange for the day as
paying bribes to the rulers in Brunei. And this is
part of how the government perpetuates itself, right, this is
kind of what they have instead of taxes on the
day as is, they let them raid and they get
some of the money that they get from raiding. And
it's also how they stopped the Dyaks from rebelling and
fighting against them. The safe the regular raiding season was

(58:58):
seen as kind of like a safety valve for diet aggression.
And this all made James furious, Like again, he comes
into this system that has been set up for a while,
and as brutal as it is, is the system that
things work by in Sarah Wak, and he thinks it's immoral,
so he demands the whole thing be canceled. So he
was ignored in this. The Rajah was like, this is
how we do things here. You're just some like white

(59:19):
dude who came in. I'm not going to I'm not
going to change our entire system of government for you. Um.
And when this happens, James Brooke gets angry and he
sails his warship inland and he basically trains his cannons
on the Capitol and threatens the Raja into action. So
the Rajah is like, well, I don't have any cannons.
You have a warship, So I guess I'm going to
call off the raid. But after his little stunt, James

(59:40):
could tell the local leadership was no longer amenable to
his presence. So he had been like the Rajah had
been happy to make him a permanent resident and give
him like some official status here after he threatens the
Rajah with cannons. This is kind of no longer the case,
as you might expect, So James decides that since things
have become unfriendly, he's going to make some more threats,
pointing out that he has the power to bring the

(01:00:02):
British Navy down on Brunei, which is the capital of
the entire region. Now at just this point, purely by coincidence,
a company steamship entered the port to trade this served
and again, because James isn't a navy vessel, when the
company's steamship goes in, they have to salute him. So
they do this whole salute and makes it look to
the people on the ground like this boat is coming
in to support him, and it makes it seem more

(01:00:23):
credible than like, oh shit, he really can bring the
entire Royal Navy down in our assets. If not fortuitous,
that has happened at the exact moment. This happens like
four times to him the luckiest dumb guy. Yeah. So
this obviously serves to make James is boasts more credible
and knowing a moment when he sees one, James sails
to Brunei and marches on the on the Sultan's palace

(01:00:45):
with a company of heavily armed men. So basically, after
scaring the local rulers in Sarawak, he sails to the
capital of Brunei and comes ashore with like a hundred
dudes strapped with rifles. So he comes to the Sultan
with a bunch of armed mercenaries and a list of
green princes bramming blaming Prince Mkota for trying to kill
him and trying to capture English soldiers. This was mostly nonsense,

(01:01:06):
but it gave James a justification for what he What
he was about to do next. Makota, James said, was
a destabilizing influence in the area. The Raja was not
safe with Prince Mcoda around, and in order to make
things safe for the Sultan and Brunei, the Sultan needed
to make James Brooke the governor of sarah Wak for life. Otherwise,
James couldn't guarantee the Rajah or the sultan safety. So

(01:01:29):
and again he's saying that, like, I'm here, I wanted
you need to do this so I can protect you
from Prince Mkoda. But he's doing this while pointing a
bunch of cannons at the Sultan and with a company
of armed mercenaries at his back. So this is actually
pretty smart of him. This is like one of the
smarter things he's done. Yeah, he he figures out how
to be how to be a white guy in this period.

(01:01:49):
So again, and the Sultan at this point is not
just staring at a bunch of guns. He's staring down
a bunch of guns held and controlled by a guy who,
as far as he knows, speaks with the authority of
the queen of a land. So the Sultan submits. James
Brooke was made the governor of sarah Wak and in
his mind he James kind of believed that he was
doing all this for selfless purposes, or at least that's

(01:02:11):
how he portrayed it to other people. I don't know
if i'd say he believed it, but that's how he
He kind of writes home about this. Uh. Nigel Barley,
his biographer writes, quote, James always considered his actions to
be genuinely for the benefit of locals, whether the locals
realized it or not, so that his interests in There's
would naturally coalesce. It was a fundamental tenant of his
rule that the Brooks governed only by consensus, Bruneyan's by

(01:02:34):
unprincipled oriental oriental despotism. But this was hardly the free
entreaty or election by grateful natives that Brooke history would record,
so he would kind of he becomes the governor of
sarah Wak through threatening a guy with guns. But he
justifies this by saying the Bruneians are dictators right there,
and they're they're ruling by terror and fear and violence,

(01:02:54):
which is true. But he also is kind of ignoring
the fact that he became the ruler by reatening to
get gunned down. The existing pretty slick, though I'll give
him credit for that. It is slick. It is it'll
get sick because he's not He's not what he wants
to be. At this point, he has been made the

(01:03:15):
governor of a region of Malaysia for the rest of
his life, and he's been made it through like a
handshake agreement. He doesn't have any paper that like signifies this.
He doesn't have his descendants don't have any right to
the position. So his next tasks are going to be
finding out how to turn himself from like governor of
this island to basically king. So that's the journey we're

(01:03:35):
going to cover when we go to part two of
the James Brooks story. But for right now, it's time
for part two of the coma story where you plug
your plugables. Oh that was really good again, thank you.
I am a professional broadcasting I'm learning a lot um.
You can find us at the House of Pod on
Twitter and you can listen to our podcast pretty much

(01:03:57):
in all the same place as you listen to your
other podcast called the House of Pod. It's a medical podcast,
but you know, I think you might enjoy it if
you're not a doctor. People seem to do that. Uh,
it's kind of relatable and if you want to hear
how doctors actually talk when they're like, you know, talking
to each other, uh, in non front of like you know,
like a lecture hall or something like that. This is

(01:04:18):
the show for you. You like it, try it, you
don't you know free that was a great pitch. Check
out the House of pod Uh and I don't know,
check out buying a naval vessel and conquering chunk of Malaysia. Um,
keep it a shot, you know it might work out
for you. Always that probably isn't a good way to

(01:04:40):
end this episode. I can almost go the music in
the background, which, yep, here we go. Let's let the
music uh, distracting the fact that I just endorsed imperialism.

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