Just one week to go until the publication of The White Rajah It’s £6.99 in paperback or just £3.99 on Kindle (and if you have Kindle Unlimited you can read it for free).
So what do you get for your money?
The White Rajah is based on the life of James Brooke, the first White Rajah of Sarawak in the mid-19th century. He was a fascinating man: a merchant-adventurer who bought a ship, ostensibly to trade in the South China Seas but really in the hope of extending British influence in an area dominated by the Dutch. He extended British influence even more than he had planned, involving himself so thoroughly in the politics of the local Malay rulers that he ended up ruling his own country: Sarawak in Borneo.
It’s a tale of adventure with battles and plots and midnight raids, but it’s also a more serious story about colonialism and how, even when seeking to do the best for the natives he thought of as “his people” the sudden intervention of Europeans from an alien culture had some unhappy unintended consequences.
James Brooke did an enormous amount of good in Sarawak and even today some people look back on the time of the White Rajahs as a Golden Age. But when his rule was threatened he could be utterly ruthless.
Evil white colonialist or a good man who spent most of his life (and practically all of his fortune) building a peaceful and prosperous society where there had been little but poverty and war? Or is the truth (as truth so often is) somewhere in the middle?
James Brooke’s life will soon be in the news again because a new film based on his adventures is about to be released (straight to DVD sadly, because of covid). Having seen the trailer, I’m not expecting a lot of discussion of the rights and wrongs of colonialism or the moral underpinning of his rule but, like my book, I’m sure it will have pirates and hairsbreadth escapes and heroic deeds with Jonathan Rhys Myers buckling the odd swash (or maybe firing an authentically period pistol). I’m looking forward to it. I’m hoping it might generate some interest for my book, too. Other, non-fiction, books about James Brooke are also available but can honestly be quite hard work. (His diaries are brilliant, though.)
I do love the new cover for The White Rajah. It’s another by Dave Slaney, who consistently produces lovely work. This one features a kris, a traditional weapon of South East Asia. The White Rajah is set in Borneo where the native Dyaks are under the rule of Malays. The Malays traditionally carry the kris and kris do feature quite a lot in the story. I’ve blogged about them before, but perhaps it’s time to revisit the subject.
I first came across kris on holiday in Borneo. This was the holiday where I discovered James Brooke, so kris and Brooke have always been linked in my mind.
What exactly are kris? Most are really too long to be called daggers but too short for swords. In the UK they’re usually depicted (as in the cover illustration) as wavy, though they come in a variety of shapes and sizes with marked differences from one area to another. Some old kris are as small as any dagger and the largest are the size of a sword. There isn’t even any agreement about how it should be spelt. Although ‘kris’ is the usual English spelling, I have also often seen it spelt ‘keris’. Wikipedia throws up even more variants: ‘cryse’, ‘crise’, ‘criss’, ‘kriss’ and ‘creese’, although these appear obsolete terms used by European colonists. Generally, the usual spelling in the West is ‘kris’, while ‘keris’ is more popular in the East.
Despite the variety of spellings, sizes and shapes, kris are easy to recognise. What are the attributes that define them?
The blade
The first thing is that all kris have, to a greater or lesser extent, “watered” blades. I’m going to write a lot more about this in a separate post, which is likely to appeal to a more specialist audience, but for now I’ll just say that the watering here is produced by a technique called ‘pattern welding’. Although the pattern can resemble that seen in the famed damascene steel, these blades are produced by a completely different technique and are vastly inferior in quality. They are quite beautiful though.
Some legends say that this pattern, known as the “pamor”, is made by the waves of the hair of a spirit inhabiting the blade. In fact, the waves are the result of the kris being made from thin bars of iron or steel which are beaten together. I’ll be writing separately about how these and other blades are made in a post for sword/metallurgy geeks.
The top of blade is wider on one side, maintaining a sharp edge. The other side is decorated with a curl in the metal, which resembles an elephant’s trunk (the ‘belalai gajah’). A good example of this is shown in figure 2.
FIG 2. Detail of a Kris Ksay Cantrik from Jogjakarta, Java.
The widening of the blade allows it to form a guard (the ‘ganja’).
Some people suggest that the shape is derived from the shape of a stingray’s ‘sting’. The idea is that people used the sting as a weapon and then produced metal weapons based on the same shape. Unlikely as it is, the oldest kris are very small and thin and the resemblance there is more marked.
The details of the decoration at the top of blade vary considerably.
The tang (the bit of the blade that fits into the hilt) is very narrow. This is a significant weakness of the kris as a weapon. European sailors fighting natives armed with kris would typically use a belaying pin (essentially a large, heavy stick) to disarm their opponents by striking the kris blade, which would snap at the tang.
The hilt
The hilts are usually made of wood, often kemuning, which some people claim has magical qualities. Weapons owned as status symbols may well have hilts of horn, ivory (elephant or walrus) or bone.
The hilts of kris are always carved into symbolic decorations, often with a religious element. Many hilts represent the garuda bird, which carries the god Vishnu in Hindu myth. Sometimes these images are elaborate, but, in many cases, they are very stylised and can appear quite plain. Examples of two extremes of decorative style are shown below.
Although the most common image is that of a more or less stylised garuda, other patterns are seen. Sometimes, the figure is that of a crouching man. The Erotic Museum in Berlin has several examples of hilts which represent people engaged in sexual acts.
A particularly interesting type of hilt istajong, known in the West as a “Kingfisher” hilt. This is characterised by a long “beak” extending from the end of the hilt. Carving these takes considerable skill, and such hilts are rare. The workmanship would have made them valued when they were originally produced, but their scarcity nowadays means that they are worth considerable sums to collectors.
Although Western collectors attach great significance to the hilts, it is important to remember that the culture is that produced the kris saw the true magic and value of the weapon as lying in the blade. The blade will be preserved as the furniture is changed. This is particularly the case with kris that have been traded by collectors. It is common for hilts to be removed from blades so that a particularly good hilt can be matched with a particularly good blade to make a more saleable piece.
The sheath
Kris sheaths are also distinctive. Sheaths are made of wood, although they may be covered with a metal sleeve. The end of the sheath might be tipped with a chap of bone or ivory (thebuntut). They are distinguished by a wide wooden crosspiece (thesampir) which protects the guard of the weapon. This is often described as “boat shaped”. Thesampirmay be a relatively functional rectilinear shape or an elaborately carved piece of decorative work.
Scabbard with metal sleeve. Jogjakarta.
The kris as a spiritual object
Kris are valued as spiritual objects. Although there is some uncertainty surrounding their origin, it is likely that the very first kris were thekris majapahit. ‘Majapahit‘ refers to the Majapahit Empire, which was based on Java in the 14th to 15th centuries. The very first kris were made when iron was a rare and precious metal. Early kris may well have been made of meteoric iron. They were very small, and may have been intended for use in religious ceremonies, rather than combat. The symbolic carving of the hilts reflects their continuing religious links.
Kris majapahit
Traditionally, the manufacture of kris was surrounded with ceremonies reflecting the fact that the early smiths were practising an art which was viewed as as much magical as technological. Some stories say that women smiths would temper the blade by drawing the red hot metal through their vulva before throwing it into water. Another version says that every kris would be tempered by being stabbed into the body of a prisoner, so that a person would be killed for every kris that was made.
Although kris are functionally defined by their use as weapons, they have always been much more than that. Often beautifully decorated (sometimes with gold worked into the surface of the blade) and with hilts and scabbards so ornate as to make them almost useless for fighting, kris are symbols of status, and of craft and cultural values at least 700 years old. Collected enthusiastically by Europeans (especially the Dutch), they can still be found and bought at affordable prices in the markets of Malaysia and Indonesia. The huge variety of styles and the stories that go with them make these a source of continual fascination to any traveller in the region.
FURTHER READING
Draeger and Smith (1986) Comprehensive Asian Fighting Arts. Kodansha America, Inc
Gardner (1936) Keris and Other Malay Weapons . Progressive Publishing Company: Singapore
Hill (1956) The Keris and Other Malay Weapons, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 29, Part 4, No. 176.
About ‘The White Rajah’
The White Rajah is the first of three books about John Williamson. Williamson is a fictional character, but his adventures take him into the lives of some very real historical figures.The White Rajahis quite closely based on the life of Sir James Brooke. Like the true story of his life, it raises issues about colonialism and our attitudes to what we now call Third World countries. But like his life, it also has pirates and rebellions and battles. And there’s an orang-utan who, if I’m entirely honest, probably wasn’t there in real life. It took quite a long time to research and write and is available for pre-order on Kindle at £3.99. You can use this book link to buy it, wherever you are in the world. Please do.
I hope you all saw last Friday’s blog post with my news of the republication of The White Rajah and the lovely new cover. Now it’s time to tell you more about what you get when you buy the book.
The White Rajah is based around the life of James Brooke of Sarawak. An English adventurer, he arrived in Borneo in 1839 and became embroiled in a civil war that was going on there. Although he had only 28 men and six small cannon on his ship, his intervention in the war proved crucial. After it was over, he was rewarded with the rule of one of the provinces there and he became the Rajah of Sarawak, starting a dynasty that lasted three generations and which was known as ‘The White Rajahs’.
James Brooke was almost the ideal Victorian hero and his exploits inspired Conrad’s Lord Jim. It’s not surprising that his adventures, with headhunters and pirates, battles in the jungle, and intrigue with Sarawak’s Malay nobility, have long been considered as the basis for a film. Errol Flynn tried to get such a movie made back in the 1930s (with him as the star, of course). Since then there have been several more attempts, but now one is finally to see the light of day. Sadly, covid means that End of the World will go straight to DVD, but it does look like a spectacular film, even though it may not be that careful of historical fact. (The posters say it is “The true story that inspired The Man Who Would Be King,” which is rather stretching a point to start off with.)
I’m hoping that interest in the film will generate more interest in my book, which sticks reasonably closely to the facts (and reasonable conjecture) about James Brooke’s life. The book may also interest readers who think that there must be more to the arguments about the British Empire than ‘The British Empire was an unmitigated Good’ vs ‘The British Empire was an unmitigated Evil’. Brooke’s rule (and especially the main incidents in my book) captures the ambiguity of British rule. As the epigram in my book (written at the time of his death) says:
‘When his Biography comes to be written, there must be in it, dark chapters as well as bright ones, but while those who loved him the best, could fondly and sadly wish it had been otherwise, they will ever be able to think of their leader, as the Father and Founder of a nation and as one of England’s greatest sons.’
The Monthly Packet, 14 September 1874
The White Rajah was the first book I ever wrote and, unlike the others, it has undergone significant revisions between editions. This edition, though, is identical to the one published by Endeavour/Lume Books, because I think I have finally got the book I meant to write. It will be published on 21 May, but it is already available for pre-order at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B092XZCZDC
Last year I was asked to write a short story for a collection of stories set in Victoria’s reign. I always wanted to write some short stories of Brooke rule in Sarawak, so I produced a tale about a tiger hunt. Like The White Rajah, it is told by Brooke’s (fictional) companion, John Williamson. If you want a feel for the sort of book The White Rajah is, you might like to read it. It’s just 4,200 words and it’s available on Smashwords at 99p but you can get a free copy (via a Smashwords voucher) if you sign up to my newsletter.
It’s less than a month since the publication of Burke in Ireland. I had been hoping for the chance to concentrate on writing the next book in the series, but have been rather caught up by events.
I had always intended to republish the John Williamson Papers which start with The White Rajah – the story of a mid-19th century adventurer who became the ruler of a small country in Borneo. It was the first novel I wrote and although it sold quite well when it first came out, it’s rather languished of late. My experience with James Burke has shown that self-publication gives me the opportunity to market my books more aggressively, so republication was on my list of things to do. Still, there had seemed to be no hurry; but that has changed.
Ever since Errol Flynn tried to make a film about James Brooke (the eponymous White Rajah) back in the 1930s, attempts to make a film of his life have failed so often it seemed there was a curse on the movie. The latest attempt was supposed to be released last year but covid intervened. Finally, though, a movie of Brooke’s life (or some version of it) is about to hit the screens on 21 June – except that (covid again) by ‘screens’ I mean ‘videos’.
That’s a shame because the film (now titled The Edge of the World) is a major release, starring Jonathan Rhys Myers and the trailer looks fantastic. What I can see of the trailer (and what I’ve read of the romantic sub-plot) leads me to suspect that the film is not, perhaps, as closely based on the historical record as is my book but, with luck, interest in the film may lead to more interest in the book. In any case, it does mean that my plans for the reissue of the John Williamson Papers have had to be accelerated to make sure that the book has time to establish a presence before 21 June. It will be published on 21 May, but it is already available for pre-order at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B092XZCZDC
The first stage of the re-launch is traditionally the reveal of a new cover. The cover for The White Rajah was done by Dave Slaney (who does all my covers). I think it’s rather lovely. Here it is.