In The Footsteps of Stamford Raffles Read online

‘But …’

  There was no stopping him now. He was off with all the ethical momentum of a Jesuit sniffing out sin. ‘So you must buy a Rambo from me. Then, I will get commission. I will use it to take him to the Ministry. There! All solved! Don’t worry. I will make sure he wears one of those things – not on his finger. Everyone is happy!’

  We looked at the boy. His hands were shaking so hard he had dropped the headboard. Varnish was dripping in unheeded symbolism off his quivering brush and running up his arm in a wiggly line. He was panting.

  ‘No,’ I said, truculently. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s in for. Perhaps he doesn’t even want to go. Absolutely not.’

  It only took a few weeks for the Yogyans to build the forty-five-foot-high walls of the huge palace. The tiny fort the Dutch Company insisted on having took years. But the battle between them was all over in a few short hours. The British forces, running out of ammunition, turned once again to brute courage, escaladed the walls and turned the Javanese guns on their own defences. ‘Gillespie was himself,’ Raffles wrote. The Sultan of Yogya was swiftly taken and deposed, his son neatly installed in his place. The army of the Sultan of Solo played no part, but watched, saw wisdom and quietly crept away. It gave Raffles the opportunity for another outburst of estateagent’s hyperbole to Lord Minto:

  ‘The European power is for the first time paramount in Java … A population of not less than a million has been wrested from the tyranny and oppression of an independent, ignorant, and cruel prince, and a country yielding to none on earth in fertility and cultivation, affording a revenue of not less than a million of Spanish dollars in the year, placed at our disposal …’

  – By order of the Honourable, the Lieutenant-Governor

  There was one shadow on all this. The troops had plundered the palace. The loot was assessed at $750,000. Raffles was furious. He had not come to Java to pillage it. He had come to free it from tyranny that it might rise to greater glory. It was an act worthy of the Dutch. This was the start of his bitter feud with Gillespie, the Commander of the Forces. Nevertheless, he took his share in manuscripts and diamonds. He was always a practical man.

  * * *

  Dutch paratroops stormed down the same road, past the same fort in 1948. Indonesians see the battle with the Dutch as simply a repeat performance of that with Raffles. They do not see the Dutch as enslaving them and the British as bringing them freedom from Oriental despots. On both occasions a small but well-organized foreign force seized the palace in an attempt to crush Indonesian nationhood. The similarity is clear to the little children visiting the Museum of the Revolutionary Struggle. But then they see no conflict with the message of their Rambo satchels, each showing the military moron zapping slit-eyed gooks.

  Since the age of Raffles, the whole state has been harnessed to writing an alternative history of resistance and defiance – one more in keeping with present concerns. Local bandits have been dressed up as precocious nationalists, ineptness has become noble self-sacrifice, bloodthirstiness righteous wrath. Every area has to have its local hero for statuary purposes, dominating an important traffic roundabout in revolutionary fervour.

  This time, for Bung Karno, there would be no battle to the death. Official history glosses lightly over what was a rather controversial phase in the development of the Republic. Bung Karno simply waited in the palace behind a white flag until the Dutch came to collect him. Finally, they hauled him off to internment in Montok on Raffles’ tiny island of Bangka. It was no longer called Minto. Most of the army melted away into the hills to begin a bloody guerrilla war. Years later, when writing his memoirs, Sukarno would dwell on the indignity of being transported from the palace in a jeep. In Yoyga, people were still fighting with carriages.

  One other thing stayed in his mind, the kindness of a Dutch soldier to one of the older freedom fighters who was ill:

  ‘The soldier assigned to watch Hadji was no officer or intellectual. Just a human with a heart who could not seem to understand why all this fighting. “What is all this about?” he kept asking. He had been told his army was liberating us.’

  – C. Adams, Soekarno: An Autobiography

  * * *

  I awoke strangely tired and crapulous. There was no doubt that this was Lukas’s hangover, enjoyed by proxy. It was difficult to open the door. A large batik painting was wedged across it. I could not bear to look at it, wishing I had held out for a Bung Karno, not a Rambo. On the ground outside the door was a red plastic tub, the sort detergent comes in. I picked it up. Someone had put in an inch of water and floated frangipani blossoms on top. Their thick, whorish perfume flooded the air, adding to the sense of hangover.

  There was a loud whistle. I bleared over the edge of the balcony to see the boy from the woodshop grinning and waving, pointing to the frangipani tree over his head and puffing out his chest. I raised the tub and smiled in a half-hearted toast, then realized the awkwardness of drinking frangipani water, but it was too late, I was already committed. What was it I was drinking to? To international friendship, perhaps, or to the common core of humanity that underlies difference. Or perhaps simply to the international conspiracy of men.

  White Elephants and Other Beasts

  The East India Company was a great white elephant. It had probably been technically insolvent for years. Its only profitable trade was that with China, while India had always lost money. In theory, it was a joint-stock company owned by all stockholders; in fact, it was run by twenty-four directors in a self-perpetuating oligarchy, and the government exerted authority through a Board of Control.

  Curiously, for an enterprise of this sort, it owned very few vessels. Each ship was chartered for its separate voyages and divided up into sixteenths and thirty-seconds, owned by individuals. Often a particular individual would own a majority in a vessel and he became the ‘husband’ of the ship, with ‘rights to bottom’, deciding which charters it should accept. The freight rates were pitched artificially high in a system that extended from generation to generation, known as the ‘system of hereditary bottoms’.

  The Company employees were cross-cut with links of marriage and friendship, interests that led them to war on the aims and policies that they nominally supported. Most traded in their own right in the same goods as the Company, kept their own goods in the Company warehouse and shipped at discount on Company ships. A stroke of the pen could convert transactions that showed an unexpected loss into Company business, while those that made a profit became private speculation. The Company had unwittingly become an insurance policy for its employees.

  The great white elephant staggered from century to century, while the parasites that swarmed upon it grew fat. They never quite killed the beast, but slowly it grew more and more ponderous in its movements.

  * * *

  ‘A favourite and national spectacle is the combat between the buffalo and the tiger. A large cage of bambu or wood is erected, the ends of which are fixed into the ground, in which the buffalo is first, and the tiger afterwards, admitted, through openings reserved for the purpose. It seldom fails that the buffalo is triumphant, and one buffalo has been known to destroy several full-grown tigers, in succession. In these combats the buffalo is stimulated by the constant application of boiling water, which is poured over him from the upper part of the cage, and of nettles, which are fastened to the end of a stick and applied by persons seated in the same quarter. The tiger sometimes springs upon the buffalo at once: he very generally, however, avoids the combat until goaded by sticks and roused by the application of burning straw, when he moves round the cage, and being gored by the buffalo, seizes him by the neck, head or leg. The buffalo is often dreadfully torn, and seldom survives the combat many days. In these entertainments, the Javans are accustomed to compare the buffalo to the Javan and the tiger to the European, and it may be readily imagined, with what eagerness they look to the success of the former.’

  – T. S. Raffles, History of Java

  Raffles was unusual in asking the mea
ning of these contests. Generations of Governors-General would sit through them – the symbolism occasionally upped a notch by the use of an albino tiger – and be baffled by the pleasure the Javanese took in a contest whose outcome was so predictable in advance.

  ‘They no longer have the fights,’ said Lukas. ‘If they did, I’m sure the Sultan would have chosen me to apply stinging nettles to the private parts of the tigers. Nowadays, we have the circus. Let’s go.’

  It stood on the plain before the palace where the old combats took place, but many of the features of the European circus had been introduced and the dominant idiom was cheap tinsel rather than the warrior tradition. There was a Big Top. There was ice-cream – though skewers of spiced meat seemed to be in greater demand. There was that very Indonesian doubling-up of jobs. The clown, when excused from the ring, hawked sweets. The acrobat turned up again, extravagantly and implausibly toupeed, as a disastrously bad plate-twirler. He broke so many plates the act had to be abandoned halfway through. Lukas at first enjoyed it all without discrimination, taking alternate bites from meat in one hand and ice-cream in the other.

  Then came a high-wire act with an extraordinarily fat trapeze artist, who did nothing but hurl tiny children out into space from one swinging bar to another, where other members of the troupe approximately caught them by an arm or a leg. Lukas buried his face in his hands.

  ‘Adu! The poor babies. I can’t watch.’ When he looked up his eyes were wet. ‘They are stolen babies,’ he sniffed. ‘Or they are babies that have no fathers. Their mothers sell them.’ In his world there was no possibility of a father doing such a wicked thing.

  The dwarves he liked, screaming with laughter before they did anything. ‘Small people are funny,’ he explained without defensiveness.

  Then the children came back, hideously rouged and lipsticked, in Lurex suits with frilly cuffs, to tumble and somersault. A tubby boy of about four was the comic element through his inability to perform any of the tricks. This led to the other children constantly falling over him and sitting on his face. Lukas was unsure whether to laugh or not, muttering ‘Poor babies’ from time to time and crossing his arms over his chest in frustrated paternity. There was a delay of five minutes, then the chimpanzees appeared wearing the costumes the children had just taken off. It was immediately apparent they had been cut to fit the chimpanzees, not the children. Then dogs, clearly in terror of their trainer. When one misbehaved, he poked it very deliberately in the eye with his finger. Ponderous Sumatran elephants followed, extraordinarily hairy, like mammoths, and did very slow, inconclusive tricks, like jokes without a punch line.

  After a great deal of palaver a clanging, rickety cage was set up in the ring and tigers were introduced, together with a tall Chinaman in evening dress, but no buffaloes. Lukas took this very ill.

  ‘Why couldn’t they find an Indonesian?’ he hissed. There seemed to be rather too many answers to that. The Chinaman stalked around with the feline grace of a narcissistic PT instructor, waving his whip so that the tigers roared and struck out with flailing paws.

  ‘They are drugged,’ declared Lukas huffily. ‘I have seen. You can pay money to be photographed hugging the tigers round the back. They could not do that if they were not drugged. Also they have no claws. They pull out the claws and sell them to dukuns. Stinging nettles would be a good idea.’

  The beasts leaped through fiery hoops, licked the Chinaman’s face, jumped from stool to stool, running over his back. He did a final round with the whip and the flailing paws. Roars and applause. As he left the ring and passed near us, I saw him hastily pull down the cuff of his shirt to cover a trickle of blood.

  We queued to get out.

  ‘Shall we go and be photographed with the tigers?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘No,’ said Lukas, hunched, hands in his pockets, suddenly small. ‘We might see the poor babies. It would upset me.’

  * * *

  There are many loose ends to Raffles. Olivia, for example, is a shadowy figure. She has no voice of her own. History has reduced her to a fashion feature. She is known only for introducing itchy European clothes amongst the mixed-race ladies of Jakarta. Her successor, Sophia, Raffles’ second wife, known as ‘the Editor’, would do her best to expunge her from the record and had the undoubted advantage of ready fertility. Later commentators have inferred that Raffles’ first marriage was barren, though there are certain ambiguous references to ‘family’, in which term Raffles seems to include his entire circle of intimates. His most enthusiastic biographer, Boulger, speaks clearly of the children Olivia bore him. Were there children? Was Boulger merely confused or did he have access to information now lost? There is a possibility suggested by good Lord Minto:

  ‘A rajah of Bali, an island adjoining the east end of Java, has sent me, amongst other presents, five boys and two girls all slaves, at my service. They have been some time kept at Mr Raffles’ house, who has agreed to take one or two. They are all emancipated of course, but remain an orphan charge upon us. The boys are from about eight to thirteen years old, and are all, fine, spunky-looking boys. The girls are four or five years old. Now to give you a notion of the manners and scenes they are accustomed to: they were all dressed in their bettermost upon the occasion of their first being shown to me. They perceived that there was sort of solemnity, which seemed to give them some uneasiness. While they were paraded in this manner, and they were all gazing around them, two Malay spears unfortunately caught Taylor’s eye, in the corner of the room, and of necessity he began tossing and brandishing them about, and at length the scabbards were pulled off the bright blades at the ends of the weapons. The moment this happened, the poor boys all huddled together, and the youngest left the rest, and came with his little hands joined together, in the most supplicating manner, and with the most imploring face, walking from one of us to the other, and evidently begging for his life, though he did not utter a word, nor even cried; but he appeared terrified … It was with some difficulty, even after the spears were removed, that the children were reassured. They certainly thought that they had been dressed out to be sacrificed or put to death for some cause or other … Next day they were all very merry and happy. George [Minto’s son] has taken one of the boys to serve him on board of ship, and that boy has fallen on his legs. Mr Raffles will take care of one or two, and the rest have fallen to my lot. They will probably grow into very good servants. The girls will puzzle me most. I have some thought of baking them in a pie against the Queen’s birthday, unless I should strike out some other idea in the meanwhile.’

  Returned to India, he writes further:

  ‘We have had a christening of seven souls at once … Five of them were presents from various Malay kings and potentates … I have given the surnames of Man and Friend to the two eldest … I gave them the truly Christian names, of Homo [“man”] and Amicus [“friend”], that I may always be put in mind to treat my humble property like men and friends instead of cattle. Indeed, they deserve it; for better, gentler boys were never born in Christendom. However, they were to have Christian names in the usual sense of that word at their baptism, and one of them is Francis Man and the other Edmund Friend …’

  We hear no more of Raffles’ ‘one or two’. Given the crass sentimentality of Raffles about children in later life and his enthusiasm for Balinese, it seem unlikely that children as winsome as these should escape unadored and unadopted. Later, in Bengkulu, he will adopt another freed slave. So if there were children that died in Java, it is possible – not more than that – that they were the companions of Francis Man and Edmund Friend.

  * * *

  ‘Of course you must go to Borobudur,’ said Lukas. ‘You cannot come to Yogya and not go – even if you have been before. It is bad luck not to go. We Javanese have many beliefs of that sort but I am a good Muslim so I only believe 90 per cent of them.’ he winked.

  We were at his favourite tippling place. He had recovered from the post-circus depression and was cheerfully relaxed.
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  ‘You are my friend,’ he said expansively. ‘I will lend you my motorbike.’

  A hush fell over the circle of drinkers. This was serious generosity indeed. Who knew how many years Lukas had worked to have enough to buy the sleek black machine that he wheeled, every night, into his bedroom.

  ‘I have no driving licence.’ He waved the objection aside.

  ‘My friend here is a policeman. If there are difficulties, he can arrange them for you.’ The man rolled over the collar of his leather jacket in a smooth, well-practised movement to flash some sort of a badge.

  ‘What if I have an accident and wreck your machine?’ Lukas laughed and pointed.

  ‘My other friend here is a mechanic. He will mend it.’ The man reached in his back pocket, pulled out a spanner and waved it delightedly.

  There was no escape.

  ‘What,’ I asked, ‘if I just scratch it so it is not beautiful any more?’

  At the last minute, Lukas decided to come with me.

  * * *

  Two years after his storming of the Yogya palace, Raffles would be credited with the ‘discovery’ of Borobodur, the great Buddhist temple outside the city. That is to say, the Dutch did not know it was there. It was unexpectedly revealed by the survey of landholdings necessary before the new land revenue system could be put in place. Unlike other scholars of the age, his first reaction was not to hack the temple apart to ornament the gardens of Buitenzorg but to have it promptly cleared of encroaching jungle and properly surveyed. Then, being Raffles, he had to visit it for himself. He has reaped a good press for this. It is regarded as a mark simultaneously of his disinterested, scientific curiosity and his boyish love of history. One is the mark of civilization, the other a human enthusiasm endearing in a public figure.

  There is perhaps another facet of Raffles’ passion for ancient architecture that invites attention. In Indonesia, as we have noted, he had become a Mason.