Malaysia is different culturally for a couple of reasons. First, it comes from a different background than the others. These were the people who were here to begin with, the natives that were displaced by the various colonists.
They originally belonged to a confederation of islands that were called Johon, which was ruled by a sultan. Things went along pretty well until the Sultan died. He had 2 sons, the older who was a "lie-about" and the younger who was pretty ambitious. When dad died, the older guy was off on a trip so the younger jumped at his chance for power.
The older brother was OK with this – he got his own little island and an allowance, so he didn’t raise much of a fuss. The little brother then entered into a contract with the Dutch to give them a monopoly over the spice trade that came out of there. They offered military support in exchange for this.
As might be imagined, this annoyed the Brits to no end. They then sent Sir Raffles (you’ve heard his name before) who knew some of the history and the interpersonal relationships going on.
He went to the older brother, brought him back to the capital and helped install him as the new ruler.
This started a “letter war” between the Dutch and the British, which was a series of very formal, very strongly worded diatribes against each other. After all, nobody gets in a snit better than the British.
The problem – they were allies in Europe because they were fighting Napoleon at the time, and nobody really wanted to waste any energy or resources on a war over this tiny island. As a result, they resolved the matter with the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824. Essentially, they divided the country as it was then in half, with the British getting everything above Singapore and the Dutch getting all the land below.
Nobody seems to have taken what the natives wanted into account, although they were still kept around as figure-heads.
Incidentally, there is one sky-rise type building here -- it's an art deco thing designed by an American. Talk about looking out of context with the neighborhood!
No comments:
Post a Comment