0010 Aceh in 1884: Heart of Dutchness (Part 1)

PREVIOUSLY on 1884 

7 January 1884

Sultanate of Aceh

Osram ne nsoromma

As a new day dawns, the Dutch troops are getting ready to land on the northwest coast of Sumatra under Acehnese control. Their mission is to rescue 29 sailors of S.S Nisero --  18 of whom British --  being held hostage by Teuku Imam Muda of Teunom, after the British ship with its cargo of sugar from Surabaya ran aground near his territory two months earlier.

The Dutch-Aceh war, now in its 11th years, have caused strains in the relationship between the two Powers, as British Penang has a near monopoly on Aceh’s lucrative pepper trade accounting for half of the world’s total. Now with, Teuku Imam’s demand for Britain’s guarantee that his ports would be permanent free from Batavia’s shipping restrictions has caused heightened tension between Britain and Holland. After two months of negotiation and its ultimatum failed to secure the hostages, Holland has now decided to give force to its threat.

Teuku Imam Muda, Raja of Teunom (c. 1898)

This is not the first expedition to Aceh for Kwabena. As a barely trained soldier, he was among the first to be sent to Aceh war in a unit consisting mainly of African soldiers from the Gold Coast just like him. It was  part of the first Dutch invasion of Aceh under General Köhler's command… 

It was eleven years ago....

After two days of bombardment, the colonial force made a landing between the port of Ulèë Lheuë and the mouth of the Aceh river. They were suddenly ambushed by klewang-wielding Acehnese who had been hiding in the bush and lost a dozen of soldiers before beating back the attackers.

Six days later after the heavy fighting, the fortified Masjid Raya, the Great Mosque, was seized. But while General Köhler was looking through a binocular to survey the area under a tree behind the mosque, a rain of bullets fatally hit him and nearby soldiers. The shots are followed by a swarm of Acehnese who rapidly cut down survivors like falling leaves.

Aceh villager with klewang and blunderbuss (c. 1874)

Shot in his shoulder, Kwabena managed to block an attacker’s blade with his musket but was attacked by another from the side who opened a gash on his leg. As he fell on the ground bleeding into stupor, he saw General Kohler lying in a pool of blood not far away.

Just when the attacker was about to strike Kwabena the same fate with a deadly blow, his klewang stopped midair and slowly lowered. His fellow Acehnese, having finished off their victims, gathered around and started pointing at the unconscious soldier and discussed something among themselves. One, who appeared to be their chief, ordered his men to carry him back into the jungle with them….

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When Kwabena regained his consciousness in a hut, he found his hand tied but his aching wounds had been dressed and the bleeding stopped. He was puzzled by his own escape from death. Why did the Acehnese fighters spare his life and carry him here?

The chief he previously saw approached Kwabena with a few of his men. His hand clutches on something that Kwabena recognized immediately. It was the leather pendant that his wife had given him before he left his homeland.

The chief asked him in Dutch, “Are you an Ottoman?” Kwabena was puzzled by the question. The chief showed him the pendant and repeated the question but couldn’t get an answer to his satisfaction. He turned to say something to one of the men, who quickly disappeared and came back with what surprised him even more: a tall man dressed much like the Acehnese but appeared to be a white man.

The white man introduced himself in Dutch, “My name is Thepen. The chief wants to know if you are a subject of the Ottoman Empire.”

Kwabena shook his head, “No. Why would they think that? I'm just a Dutch soldier.”

Thepen: Your pendant says that you are protected by the Ottoman flag.

Kwabena: What are you talking about? It’s an adinkra symbol, Osram ne nsoromma. The moon and a star symbolizing love, bonding and faithfulness in marriage. My wife gave it to me.

Thepen chuckles and turned around to interpret Kwabena’s answer to the chief. He was stunned by the answer for a moment, while his men bellowed out their laughs.

Thepen: The chief said you’re a very lucky man. Without that pendant your wife would already be a widow.

Kwabena: But why didn’t they kill me?

Thepen: You see? For them, the symbol of a crescent moon and a star means the Ottoman flag which the Acehnese Sultan also adopted as Acehnese flag. These people are expecting the Ottoman troops to help them fight the Dutch. You have to thank your wife for saving your life.

Flag of the Ottoman Empire from 1844, also adopted by the Acehnese Sultanate

The chief then says something

Thepen: The chief said that you wife may have saved you with the pendant once, but only the Grace of God can keep you alive.

He then lowered his voice and said: If I were you, this would be the moment where you found a new religion ...

Religious conversion is not hard when your life depends on it. Besides, Kwabena has seen many ex-soldiers near Java Hill who have returned from the Dutch East Indies as converts. Happy to be alive, he nods and says thank you to the chief.

 

 

Meanwhile, the first Dutch expedition ended in a disaster. Having lost its commander and many men to diseases and Acehnese defense, they retreated to Batavia three weeks after landing. The Acehnese reoccupied their capital with highest morale than ever, having won a major battle against a European Power. It’s something unheard of, not only in Sumatra but the whole archipelago.

Over the next few weeks, Kwabena slowly recovered from his injuries under the care of Thepen who trained Acehnese soldiers to use small arms for a local rajah. One day, the Dutch man came in with another white man.

Thepen: Kwabena, this is my mate John Swendsen from Norway. He just came back from Penang.

Kwabena reaches to give Swendsen a handshake.

Kwabena: How did you end up here? Did you know each other from before?

Swendsen: Thepen and I were originally sailors. We met each other when he was training soldiers for the Raja of Kedah. After that we tried our luck as trade partners in Penang, but luck ran out and none of the Europeans would help outcasts like us. We were destitute until the local Muslims helped us. Then we entered the service of the Raja of Simpang Ulim and converted to Islam.

Thepen: They call us “rice Muslims” because we were a charity case, I guess.

Kwabena: I guess now I am one too.

Swendsen: I heard how you got here. That’s quite incredible.

Kwabena shows him the pendant that saved his life: Yes, I only have my wife to thank and this.

Swendsen takes a closer look and turns to Thepen with a smile: Very nice. Maybe we should make ones too.

Thepen smiles back: Why not? If we can find some nice leather.

Kwabena: I’m curious. Why did Aceh adopted the Ottoman flag?

Swendsen: You see? In the 16th century, Sultan Alauddin al-Kahar of Aceh sent envoy to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent requesting to come under the Ottoman Empire’s suzerainty in return for military support to fight the Portuguese. There’s still an Ottoman canon called lada secupak guarding the dalam – royal enclosure – that testifies to that relationship. Again in 1850, Aceh sent envoy to the Ottoman Empire to renew the relationship. A few years later, Sultan Ibrahim also sent $10,000 to help the Ottoman’s expenses in the Crimean War.

Kwabena: Wow, you do know a lot about Aceh history.

Thepen: Of course, that’s his job nowadays, running to foreign consuls trying to find alliance for Aceh.

Kwabena: They must be pinning their hope on the Ottoman.

Habib Abdul Rahman in Turkey (1873)

R: Yes. Five years ago, 65 Acehnese notables signed an appeal requesting Ottoman protection against the intransigent Dutch, but it did not get anywhere. So our chief diplomat Habib Abdul Rahman is again carrying Sultan Mahmud’s letter to Constantinople. He must be somewhere between Mecca and Constantinople, as we speak.

Kwabena: How about other Powers?

Swendsen: Our other chief diplomat Panglima Tibang went to Singapore with the Sultan’s letters for the French and American consuls. France used to be interested in a base in this area to match British Singapore. Our sultan still has letters from Louis Phillipe and Napoleon III. But after the Opium Wars, all they are interested in is China by way of Vietnam. So the Sultan’s letter did not attract their interest this time.

Thepen: After their recent defeat at the hands of the Germans, France is very messy right now.

Kwabena: How about the Americans?

Swendsen: Consul Studer was sympathetic. That’s why I was sent as advisor and translator to the Sultan’s retainer to offer trade privileges in exchange for driving away the Dutch. We will have to wait for what President Grant says.

Thepen: We have to be careful not to repeat the same mistake. According to a captured Dutch officer, it was the first meeting with the American consul on possible treaty that alerted the Dutch consul in Penang, Read, who wrote a letter that so panicked the Kompeuni into declaring war. They must have a spy who tipped them off.

Panglima Tibang (c. 1878)

Swendsen: Especially now with the rumored discovery of oil on the island, they definitely do not want any other European Power on Sumatra, after all the sacrifices they have made to keep the British out since the 1824treaty. Britain controls north of the Strait of Malacca, and Holland south of it.

Kwabena: Sounds like what they did more recently in 1867 and 1870.

Thepen: Yes, you must have heard about those because it also concerned the Gold Coast where you’re from. 

Kwabena: Of course. Not only we heard about it, but the whole region and all the peoples went through chaos because they never bothered to ask our opinions, let alone consents. First, they swapped forts so that each would have continuous areas of control, and suddenly natives of the same tribes were separated, and enemies suddenly found themselves within the same border. 

Swendsen: I heard even the French wanted to get involved, trying to exchange their worthless forts for British Gambia which is surrounded by France's Senegal and Casamance.

Kwabena: I didn't know about the French, but it was messy enough just between Britain and Holland. There were wars among tribes and war against the Dutch which went so bad that they wanted out altogether.

Thepen: And that’s when they made the agreement. Britain gets all Dutch possessions on the Gold Coast. Holland gets to do whatever it wants on Sumatra, as long as it doesn’t jeopardize British Penang’s monopoly on the pepper trade. Also the Dutch got Indian workers to work in Suriname.

Kwabena: They carve out empires and swap lands and peoples like a game of cards.

Thepen: Like the good old day when the Pope halved the worldfor Spain and Portugal. I know Britain would rather have Sumatra in Dutch hands rather than more powerful counties.

Swendsen: My country – well, actually the Danes – also used to have slave forts on the Gold Coast -- part of which was robbed from Sweden. But after the end of the slave trade, it’s not profitable anymore, so they sold it off to Britain. I wonder why the Dutch hanged on to theirs for so long. Maybe gold?

Kwabena: I think the real reason is they have turned the source of slaves into a supply of cheap recruits to fight for them in Java and the Moluccas. I am one of them.

Thepen: I am sorry for that. I apologize on behalf of my people – well, they’re not my people anymore – but they have done that for a long time. Long before recruiting soldiers from Africa, they once used their exclusive access to Japan to recruit samurais to do all kinds of dirty works for them, like the annihilation of the natives of Banda islands just to take away their nutmeg plantations. Many atrocities have been committed like using opium to siphon the wealth of other counties, Java war, Bali invasion… 

Painting displayed at Museum Rumah Budaya, Banda Neira, Maluku, Indonesia

Swendsen chuckles: VOC, the Violent Opium Company. The Brits really learned from the best and went further until they were rewarded with Hong Kong.

Thepen: In turn, the VOC also learned from the Portuguese and beat them at their own game.

Kwabena: This may be a rude question. But why are you on the Acehnese side, and not your motherland's? Is it only because the Acehnese supported you during your hard time?

Thepen: I have completely lost all respect in Holland after I read Max Havelaar. Now I don't only hate the Dutch, but all imperialists.

Swendsen: Which means pretty much all of Europe. 

Kwabena: Do you think the Ottoman will help Aceh again this time, like when they helped Aceh fight  the Portuguese?

Swendsen: I sure hope so. Acehnese in Penang and Singapore are also finding ways to recruit fighters from across the archipelago to join Aceh’s war. For them, this is a jihad, a holy war. It’s like going to Mecca for pilgrimage, but they don't even have to go so far.

Thepen: Let’s hope that they can get to Aceh. If the Dutch finds out, they will definitely try to stop them.

Swendsen: They must be preparing for another invasion after the monsoon. We should be prepared, whether outside helps come or not.

Thepen: That’s my job to train our men so that we can beat them off Aceh again like Koxinga kicked their asses off Formosa two centuries ago...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Next on 1884.

0009 Art in 1884: On the barricade

PREVIOUSLY on 1884 

Nuenen, the Netherlands

30 December 1884

The Potato Eaters (1885) by Vincent van Gogh

As he lays down in bed, Vincent sees a cloaked visitor standing at the door of his studio who, with a hypnotic look, beckons him to follow. He has seen that face before but where and when?

Without thoughts, Vincent follows the visitor into the cold darkness of the Northern sky studded with stars that look like swirling comets overlooking a landscape of saturated colors where trees dances like emerald flames. They walks past a derelict church and toiling peasants into a city with busy streets where Vincent sees Sien and Margot being pushed away from him, his brother Theo ignoring him while feasting with rich clients, and finally at the bank of a river, his two cousins calling out to him to board a steamship ready to depart for the Dutch East Indies. 

When Vincent looks at him again, the cloaked visitor has morphed into a naked androgynous figure pulling him onto Fokke's ghostly Flying Dutchman filled coffee beans which, as he looks closer, swell into severed human heads. As he turns around in disgust, the visitor has taken the form of Matatuli, the author of Max Havelaar, laughing at him … 

Water Sprite (1882) by Earnst Josephson. It was a sketch of this painting
that Theo mentioned to Vincent in the letter.

Vincent wakes up… shaken by the strange dream with the face of the stranger still lingering in his memory – infinitely good and tender but also sad and melancholy, as though he had seen all the evils in the world… Indeed, he has. It was the face of Dante painted by Giotto. As it is said, the first thing Giotto puts in the facial expressions is goodness.  

In a letter Vincent received the day before, his brother Theo, an art dealer in Paris, wrote about a sketch by a Swedish painter with a prominent “Dantean figure -- the symbol of an evil spirit that lures people into the abyss.” And it crept into his dream, despite – or because of – its perplexing description.

Surely the two cannot be reconciled, Vincent thinks. A sober, austere Dante, who returned from Hell was entirely filled with indignation and protest at what he saw in the Inferno. He cannot be the same as a Mephistopheles who lures unsuspecting people into eternal condemnation with a promise of sweet rich rewards. We can’t have a Dantean figure play a satanic role without a huge misconception of character, can we?

Portrait of Dante by Giotto

Was the dream an agonized warning against or a sweet invitation to Hell? The answer entirely depends on the identity of the visitor, but what if Mephistopheles’ finest trick is to impersonate Dante convincing the world that Satan is already facing his punishment in the Center of Hell? Would there be  a way to see through his trick – a moral yardstick that can always tell right from wrong?

Man breaking up the soil (1883) by Vincent van Gogh

For months, Vincent has been grappling with the question. To him, there is one thing that stands above all: love for humanity. Just as in Les Misérables, a student sings of his love for his mother — the Republic — at the time of the Revolution of ’30,

“If Caesar had given me

Glory and war,

And if I was forced to forgo

My mother’s love,

To great Caesar would I say,

Take back your scepter and your chariot,

I love my mother more, hey!,

I love my mother more.”

With his art, Vincent hopes to sing his “love for mother” — that is, love of mankind. The old foundation of universal brotherhood that has been tested and found good for so many centuries is enough for him. Isn’t love of one’s fellow man something to take for granted in everyone as the basis of just about everything? He’s like to think so, but some people, however, believe there are better foundations.

Vincent remembers, when as a volunteer lay pastor among poor miners of Wasmes, he threw himself to his duties and was faithful in helping and comforting those people who worked in very dangerous mines where many die, whether going down or coming up, or by suffocation or gas exploding, or because of water in the ground, or because of old passageways caving in and so on. The great danger was tragically shown when many people lost their lives in the collapse of the L’Agrappe coal mine at Frameries, just east of Wasmes.  

Miners' wives carrying sacks of coal (1882) by Vincent van Gogh

Wasmes was a somber place, and at first sight everything around it had something dismal and deathly about it. The workers there were usually people, emaciated and pale owing to fever, who looked exhausted and haggard, weather-beaten and prematurely old, the women generally sallow and withered. All around the mine were poor miners’ dwellings with a couple of dead trees, completely black from the smoke, and thorn-hedges, dung-heaps and rubbish dumps, mountains of unusable coal. 

Vincent once took in a very sick patient, burned from head to foot by an explosion in the mine. He sat up with him and helped to bandage his wounds for months while his patient slowly recovered. Then the church authorities dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood” after they found him sleeping on straw in a small hut having given up his comfortable lodgings at a bakery to a homeless person. 

The dignity and respectability of institution must be rooted in its love of mankind,  Vincent believes. He no longer counts himself a friend of present-day Christianity, even though he believes the founder was sublime. He has seen through present-day Christianity only too well. Then, again, he has had his revenge since then. How? By worshiping the love that they — those at the theological school — call sin, by respecting a whore etc., and not many would-be respectable, religious ladies…

Sorrow (1882) by Vincent van Gogh 

Vincent has made peace with himself over the fallout with the Church. But family is a different thing. That’s why the heated quarrel with Theo has been traumatizing him since August.

Vincent thinks, the issue here is that if he and Margot choose to love each other, be attached to each other — indeed have been for a long time — this is no wrongdoing on their part nor something for which people may blame either him or  her. And in his view it’s absurd that people felt they should get worked up about her being twelve years older – supposedly in his or her “interest”.

Vincent couldn’t care less that after he proposed a marriage to Margot, people started to gossip or stopped visiting his father, the village minister, because they don’t want to meet him. Equally troubling for him is how they browbeat his “bad behaviors”, that is, associating with “dirty and drunk peasants” who model for his sketches and even living like them. 

“Why not paint something more cheerful, more respectable? People don’t want to buy at the poor and the suffering.”  Theo can go on and train himself well in that system of prudence and respectability and suchlike, then he will go far, precisely in mediocrity. To Vincent, the life we are in is such a mystery that the system of ‘Respectability’ is certainly too narrow — so, for him, that has lost its credit. 

Avenue of poplars in autumn (1884) by Vincent van Gogh

Now it’s dismal outdoors — the fields a marble of clods of black earth and some snow, usually a few days of fog and mud in between — the red sun in the evening and in the morning — crows, shriveled grass and withered, rotting vegetation, black bushes, and the branches of the poplars and willows vicious as wire against the dismal sky. It’s quite in harmony with the interiors, very gloomy in these dark winter days, and with the physiognomies of peasants and weavers from whom one doesn’t hear complaints, although they have a hard time of it. 

A weaver who works hard makes a piece of 60 ells, say, in a week. While he weaves, a woman has to spool for him; that is winding yarn on to the bobbins — so there are two who are working and have to live on it. On that piece he makes a net profit of, say, 4.50 guilders in that week — and nowadays when he takes it to the manufacturer he’s often told that he can only bring a new piece in a week or a fortnight’s time.  

Weaver (1884) by Vincent van Gogh

So not only wages low, but work fairly scarce. There’s consequently often something harried and restless in these people.

It’s a different mood from that of the miners he lived with in a year of strikes and many accidents.4 That was even worse — but all the same, it’s often heart-rending here too — the people are quiet, and literally nowhere have I heard anything resembling inflammatory arguments, even though they look as little cheerful as the cab-horses or the sheep that are transported by steamer to England.

‘I would never do away with suffering, for it is often that which makes artists express themselves most vigorously’, Millet once said. Sensier even said of  Millet: A peasant dedicated to hard work on the land, he constantly had in his heart compassion and pity for the rural poor. He was neither a socialist nor an ideologue, and yet, like all profound thinkers who love humanity, he suffered at the sufferings of others, and he needed to express them. To do that, he had only to paint the real peasant at work. 

For his part, Vincent regards and respects the genuinely human, living with nature — not going against nature — as refinement. “The most touching things the great masters have painted still originate in life and reality itself.” Vincent thinks, “Painting peasant life is a serious thing, and I for one would blame myself if I didn’t try to make paintings such that they give people who think seriously about art and about life serious things to think about. He will paint them the same way that Breton writes about them in his poem “Return from the fields (To François Millet)”

 The Gleaners (1857) by Jean-François Millet

’Tis that uncertain hour in which the evening star,

Still pale against the pale night sky,

Appears, twinkles, slips behind a veil,

Tiring the watcher’s searching gaze.

’Twixt wheat and vetch,

With dusty thistles lined,

The tawny path still can be descried

Among the fertile fields.

From high above, ineffable,

Amethyst-colored light caresses it

And the artist, for want of other word,

Can only call it purple.

Across the flat or gently sloping mead,

Losing their furrows, finding them again,

It winds among the grass, where sounds

The cricket’s shrill and reedy song.

By banks gilded by eventide it goes

Under the clear air

Through which is heard the church bell’s sonorous note,

Tolling in silent village streets.

The Potato Planters (ca. 1861) by Jean-François Millet

The peasant twice browned

By the twilight and suntan,

Forehead bathed in the pale light,

Makes his way home, his labour done.

Bearing on his shoulder scythe or spade,

Slowly he goes,

Moistening his dry chest

With mist, and with the scent of wheat.

Slowly he goes, at his unhurried pace,

With calm and heavy tread;

The west, like a furnace smoldering,

Turns him a deep and fiery bronze.

Beneath his cottage’s black roof,

Where rises a faint blue strand of smoke,

There glows a spot of red;

The soup is singing on the fire.

His partner’s strong and firm,

The children thrive,

Old age approaches – what is its sting,

Set beside childhood’s gay springtime?

Thus he plods from habit long ingrained,

Thus will he plod until his dying day;

Content if through his humble toil

The wheat is heavy and the barley fair.

The Song of the lark (1884) by Jules Breton

When Vincent worked as an art dealer in London in 1873, he was shocked by the poverty on the streets of London. But social reform was gaining traction. Publications like John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and George Eliot’s Middlemarch deeply influenced his idea of art.

For Vincent, there’s a cardinal point of distinction between before and after the revolution — the reversal of the social position of the woman, and the collaboration one wants between men and women with equal rights, with equal freedom. To his mind conventional morality is all back-to-front and he hopes it will be turned around and replaced in time.

This old society is going under through its own fault — there’s a new society that has come into being and grown, and will go on. There is what emanates from revolutionary and what emanates from anti-revolutionary principles. The minds that can’t agree are real. The mill is there no longer, but the wind’s still there.The barricade may no longer be visible in the form of paving-stones like in 1848, but still definitely exists and persists in society as regards the irreconcilability of old and new. 

Daumier’s The Revolution of 1848. A family on the barricades

Vincent had always believed that he and Theo were like the two brothers in Daumier’s The Revolution of 1848. A family on the barricades who were on the same side and both fell, one a day after the other, for the same cause. So among all the troubles that he is going through, the most distressing thing for him was to find that the barricade actually stands between him and his brother, Theo in front of it as a soldier of the government, himself behind it as a revolutionary or rebel.

Vincent knows that his duty compels him to love my father, my brother — and he does — but we live in an age of innovation and reform, and many things have changed utterly, and in consequence of this he sees, he feels, he believes differently from his father and from Theo. 

In the past Vincent may have been very passive and very gentle and quiet, but he has made up his mind that was enough. If one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by offending no one — and that’s a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. And for his part, Vincent has no intention of being bored. 

He says to himself, “Do a great deal or die.”

By the end of that winter, Vincent would have made many sketches which led to a major breakthrough “The Potato Eaters” (1885).  Two years later at the height of his creative career, he would say, “What I think about my own work is that the painting of the peasants eating potatoes that I did in Nuenen is after all the best thing I did.”

Peasant burning weed (1883) by Vincent van Gogh

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Note: Apart from the imagined dream sequence in the beginning, almost all of the content are from http://vangoghletters.org which contains all of the artist's works and letters.

Next on 1884

0008 Hawaii and China in 1884: Breaking idols

PREVIOUSLY on 1884 

November 1884

Kingdom of Hawaii

As the Hawaii islands become visible as dark lumps on the vast dawning horizon, the eighteen-year-old Chinese student’s heart swells of gladness to see from the ship’s deck the land that for three years he called his second home, even as he feels apprehensiveness about seeing his elder brother again. While he watches the islands slowly growing, the young man – known as Tai Chu to his Hawaiian teachers and classmates – contemplates the reason he was asked to return to Hawaii after being sent back to China just a year ago. If it has anything to do with the incident in the village, his brother could have just written an angry letter. Not that it would make any difference.

Life is hard in China. Many dreams of a better life in faraway lands. America with its gold mines have beckoned cheap labor since the dawn of the gold rushes. Tens of thousands of Chinese men have crossed the oceans to the unknown land of the “ocean-men”. Some returned with riches beyond their dreams, while others are never heard from again. 

But Tai Chu’s dream of faraway land has little to do with gold or silver. He has exhausted all the little knowledge that the temple school can provide him and hungers for more. Much more. 

Then a school comrade who had returned from a distant town told him about a wonderful thing that the “Jesus-men” had hanging on the wall of the temple school there which can answers any questions about mountains, rivers, and towns even before you ask them. The story excited his desire to go to the lands of these Jesus-men and Ocean-men and lean more of their ways. Tai Chu was sure they must have many more things than this unnamed object that will expand his knowledge.

Chinese miners working California's gold mines

But since Tai Chu’s father had lost one brother to the ocean and another in California, such adventure became a forbidden topic in the family, and Tai Chu would have been forever doomed to languish in the village of Cuiheng, if it was not for his maternal uncle Young Mun-nap who took the risk to go to Hawaii and became a successful Honolulu merchant. Tai Chu’s brother, twelve years older, then followed out to start a new life in Oahu first as a vegetable and rice farmer, then a merchant. 

When his brother who he calls Da Ko came back eight years later to marry a wife his parents had arranged for, Tai Chu begged his parents to return with him to Hawaii, but they would not think of risking two precious sons on the same ship. Da Ko left, but Tai Chu persisted. Eventually they relented and allowed him to go with the English steamship that Da Ko and his business partner rented for the Chinese "coolies" who volunteer to work on rice plantations at the Hawaiian King’s invitation (and commission of one hundred dollars per head.)

Tai Chu remembers the first time, at thirteen years old, he saw in Macau the steamship SS Grannock. He was intuitively vindicated that something was wrong in China. Why is it that China, that believes itself to be the greatest on Earth, cannot do something that these foreigners do? Is it not an indication that they are superior to us at least in some ways and we can learn from them, rather than building a world based solely on our own proud knowledge however ancient? Upon seeing the wonderful steamship and the vast ocean, he knew deep in his heart that he wished to learn from the West and seek for the infinite truth.

King Kalakaua of Hawaii (reign 1874-1891)

His train of thought is interrupted when a nearby group of Chinese recruits asks him excitedly in their native Cantonese, “Is that Hawaii?” Tai Chu nods, “Yes, brothers. We are almost there.” The men became even more excited. 

One of them is looking seasick and has a hand on his stomach says, “Thank Buddha. I can’t stand being on this rocking ship anymore…” Suddenly, he runs to grab on the nearest railing and starts vomiting into the sea but the strong wind lands it on his own gown.

A loud laugh is heard from a Hawaiian man standing not far from them. His western costume and lack of queue set him apart from the rest of the passengers who are mostly Chinese. Tai Chu has seen him around during the three week’s journey but has not spoken with him. 

Tai Chu scoffs, “It's uncivilized to laugh at someone’s unwellness.”

Surprised to be scolded by a Chinese and in English at that, the Hawaiian explains himself, “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I was just laughing because I was just standing downwind from his projectile vomiting a moment ago.”

He then gives a handkerchief to the seasick Chinese to clean himself.

Tai Chu: “Sorry for my misunderstanding then.”

“No worries. Are you Chinese? Where did you learn your English?”

Tai Chu answers, “In Hawaii. Where did you learn yours?”

The Hawaiian laughs, approaches Tai Chu and holds out his hand, “In Hawaii too. My name is Samuel. You can call me Sam. What’s your name?”

Tai Chu: To make it easier for you, people In Hawaii call me Tai Chu. 

Sam: What do you do in our Hawaii?

Tai Chu: It’s not just your Hawaii. It’s my Hawaii too. 

Sam: Why is that?

Tai Chu: I lived here for three years. It was here that I had a real education; and it was here that I came to know what modern, civilized societies and governments are like. That’s why I say it’s my Hawaii too. You must be kanaka maoli, native Hawaiian. What were you doing in Hong Kong?

Samuel: I am. I was just visiting Canton and Hong Kong on my way back to Hawaii after finishing my study in Tokyo.

Tai Chu is intrigued. The few Japanese in Hawaii that he has seen are poor workers in plantations, but he has heard that unlike most Asian countries, Japan is adopting Western knowledge at a fast pace.

Tai Chu: What did you study?

Sam: I got a scholarship from King Kalākaua to study nautical science in Tokyo. Our king was very impressed with Japan’s modernization when he stopped there on his around-the-world trip three years ago, so he wants to use Japan as a model for Hawaii’s strengthening. 

Tai Chu: King Kalākaua is a wise man. I had the honor of receiving a prize for English grammar from his hand during my graduation ceremony two years ago. You know what he gave me as a prize? An English-language book about China!

Sam: So it wasn’t very useful to you then. You must have known everything already.

Tai Chu: On the contrary, I didn’t know anything. That book opened my eyes about my own country. At the village’s temple school, we were made to rote memorize incomprehensible sayings of Confucius and Mencius from two thousand years ago, but nothing of China’s present conditions. We were not taught history because the government are afraid that we would rise against them if we knew too much of our own history. We were not taught the geography of China itself. I didn’t even know what a map is. I had no opportunity to know about good government, since there was no one in the village who knew what government meant other than the threat of the sword of the soldier. The government wants to keep us ignorant, teaching only that the Son of Heaven rules China and that China is the greatest – the world itself. Therefore, the Son of Heaven rules the world. Imagine my surprise when I learned that China is not the center of the world, let alone the world itself. And that it is being ruled by foreigners – the Manchu!

Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Empire (reign 1875-1908)

Sam: That is horrible. That is why China is so weak and being attacked by France right now. I had a plan to visit the Fuzhou Navy School, but it had already been flattened by French bombardment a few months ago. 

Tai Chu: All Chinese are outraged by the French. In Hong Kong, there was a large protest and a riot by all the dockworkers who refused to service French ships. And this show of strength of the Chinese people happened on a Chinese island yielded to Britain due to the Qing Empire’s weakness.

Sam: I also read about the Opium War and got worried about Hawaii too. But in our case, it would be a Sugar War. After bringing diseases that decimated our populations, the haole brought sugar plantation and made claims on our land. Although bringing modernity and prosperity, it is gradually taking away our independence. More and more are falling under the control of the white men. They are only kind and generous to you as long as it serves their interests.

Tai Chu: The Manchurian Son of Heaven would have been overthrown by the Taiping patriots too if not for the support of European interested to protect their opium trade.

Sam: Weren't they led by a man who claimed to be Son of God and brother to Jesus?

Tai Chu: You may think Hong Xiuquan was mad, but he was a true patriot who recognized that the Chinese people were suffering because the weakness and corruption of the Manchu government. With the large-scale import of Opium that the government failed to eliminate, the country grew poorer and weaker. Farmers were heavily overtaxed, rents were rising, and peasants were deserting their lands in droves. Banditry became common, in addition to droughts and famines. Would Hawaiians not rise up against such a government – all the more so because they are foreigners?

Sam: Of course, we would.

A scene of the Taiping Rebellion, 1850-1864

Tai Chu: Please tell me more about Japan. I know that Japan has taken the Ryukyu kingdom and also has an eye on Korea. That’s because China’s own weakness and stupidity. We have to learn how they become so strong and survived Western imperialism.

Sam: They were also forced to sign an unequal treaty with the United States at the threat of the gunboat, and then with other Western powers. They begrudgingly agreed to it in order to buy time for strengthening themselves with modern knowledge and technologies. It’s amazing how much they have modernized in fifteen years. 

Tai Chu: Is it even more modern than Hawaii?

Sam: No doubt about it. And they did it mostly by themselves, always mindful of foreign influence which came attached with the enterprises and loans.

Tai Chu: I’m envious. In China, the government can’t even protect us from bandits and pirates, not to mention foreign powers. There was a man in my village who returned a rich man from working the gold mines all the way in America only to be robbed of all his wealth in his own home. But worse than the bandits and pirates are the government officials. Our neighbor is a well-to-do family with three brothers. One was executed and the others thrown into jail with false charges because a corrupt mandarin wanted their house. There is no law and order in China. The government is our worst enemy. Hawaii is a small kingdom, but it has law and order, and the people are happy and prosperous. I love China and the Chinese people, but if we don’t rid itself of this corrupt government, although there are 400 million people, we won’t keep up with Hawaii, let alone Japan.

Manchu queue

Sam: Yes, and I was surprised to see that people are still so stuck in their old ways with their dresses, their queues and all. Didn’t you get teased about your Chinese gown and your queue in school?

Tai Chu: You have no idea. I was one of the first few Chinese students. And it took months of fighting and defending myself to get the big bullies to leave me alone, although I don’t mind so much about the smaller kids because they are too young to know and it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

Sam: Wouldn’t it be easier to cut if off?

Tai Chu: Yes, it would be easier for me. But what about other Chinese kids who come after me? I’d rather fight the bullies and let them get used to it, so that other Chinese kids who come later and may not be so strong will not have to fight them again. The queue is imposed on us by the Manchu, but here it’s become part of our identity that connects us with China. One day when we can overthrow the Manchu rule, I will cut my queue at the same time as every Chinese man. 

Sam: That’s very noble of you. I sure hope that we kanaka will learn to live harmony with people of other races who come in peace. I forgot to ask. Who do you have here?

Tai Chu: My brother has leased land from the government to develop a cattle ranch at a small town in the Kula area of Maui island. He is also involved in recruiting Chinese men to work in the plantations.

Sam: I feel sorry for them. It’s a tough life out there especially in the sugar plantations. 

Sugar plantations in Hawaii

Tai Chu: What are you talking about? They are happy to have a new life here. If life is tough in Hawaii, it’s ten times tougher back home. The Qing government is not doing anything but squeezing taxes out of them and their families, so they have to leave. And they are treated better here in Hawaii than in many places. The United States now bars Chinese workers. Hawaii is not like Cuba and Brazil, where they will probably end up like slaves. At least that’s what my brother says.

Sam: You really think it’s really better in those white-owned plantations? The only reason more and more of them come here is because they can get away with cheap Asian labors and treating them no better than slaves. Not only that, those haole, they have no aloha aina, and will destroy our beautiful islands and replace them with these plantations. 

Tai Chu: What’s aloha aina?

Sam: It’s the deep love of our islands and our sea and of all the life that the land and the sea nourish.

Tai Chu: Is it not enough that it sustains the people? 

Sam: Sustenance of the people is important, but if we have no respect and love for the land and the sea we are betraying our self.

Tai Chu: It’s like the way we Chinese worship our ancestors.  

Sam: Yes, the land and the sea are our father and mother.

Tai Chu: I will remember this, and I am deeply thankful to Hawaii for helping our people to prosper and someday maybe they can contribute to strengthen our motherland which is now being surrounded by enemies.

Ali'iolani Hale, completed in 1874, was the home of the Hawaiian Legislature in the days before annexation.

Sam: At least you know who your enemies are. For us, it’s become more difficult. May white settlers have become naturalized as Hawaiian on paper, but in their hearts they are not. My father is in the King’s government and he told me that some of them want the United States to annex our kingdom – not as a state within their Union but as a safe haven for importing a massive number of cheap brown workers whom they can mistreat all they want while keeping their mainland a white promised land. You know what happened to the Ryukyu Kingdom?

Tai Chu: It was a tributary state to China but taken by Japan a few years ago.

Sam: According to the Japanese, Ryukyu was a tributary state to both Japan and China. But China was not able to control or protect its tributary state, so Japan had to exert its control. Otherwise America would have annexed it as their own Hong Kong to the danger of both Japan and China.

Tai Chu: Is America becoming imperialist too?

Sam: It already is. How do you think they grew from a tiny portion on the Atlantic side of the continent to swallow up all the way to the Pacific coast which they see as their 'manifest destiny'. With Monroe Doctrine they aim to be the sole power of the Americas. On the Atlantic, they still have to contend with the British navy. But they dream of making the Pacific their own ocean. My family is from the area now leased to them in exchange for free trade in sugar. They now call it Pearl Harbor. In the long term, both Cuba and Hawaii are in danger of being annexed because of our strategic locations and sugar...”

The conversation makes Tai Chu think hard. He’s most disturbed about the conditions of Chinese workers, remembering the bondage slaves in his village who often get flogged by their angry masters and mistresses. He had protested against the system times and again until he realized that the bondage slaves can’t be freed until the minds of the “free” people of his village are liberated from ancient hierarchical traditions which the Manchu’s authoritarian government uses to legitimize themselves. All the barbaric customs of child-selling, female infanticide, concubinage, foot-binding, idol-worship and other reprehensible practices can only be eliminated with modern education instilling a sense of equality and citizenship among the people.

He hopes that the Chinese recruits on the ship have not not escaped debt enslavement at home to be enslaved in a foreign land. That adds one more thing to the list of heavy topics that he will have to convince his brother. It’s one thing to try to reason with strangers, but another thing with one’s own family.

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After saying goodbye at the dock, the two new friends part way. Sam goes to Honolulu with his awaiting family while Tai Chu waits a smaller boat that will take him to Maui where his brother awaits him. Tai Chu's apprehensiveness returns again. 

At Maui’s pier, his brother in a Chinese gown and a cue stands out from the crowd. Tai Chu greets his brother with a bow and a chest-level fist-to-palm gesture. His brother whom he calls Da Ko, pats him lightly on the shoulder and leads him to a horse-drawn cart that will take them to the ranch.

After a welcome feast of Chinese food which Tai Chu has been craving for on the ship, the two brothers sit down on the veranda for some tea. After answering Da Ko’s questions about how the family is doing, Tai Chu brings up the topic that has bothered him since the morning.

A modern Xuanwu (Northern Emperor) shrine

Tai Chu: Is it true that the white plantation owners treat workers like slaves?

Brother: Who told you that?

Tai Chu: A Hawaiian friend. He said they are often whipped.

Brother: Don’t listen to such nonsense. Our men should be grateful they have a job, rather than starve back home. The owners are doing them and this country a favor.

Tai Chu: Are they?

Brother: Stop questioning too much about what goes on between the Hawaiian and white people. We already have enough problems as it is. As more and more Chinese are coming to Hawaii, the white people are envious that we get along better with the natives. Now they are starting to complain that Chinese men are marrying native women and getting an advantage. If there are more problems, then they may import Filipinos and Japanese instead. So keep your head down. Don’t cause any troubles here like you did in the village.

Tai Chu knew this issue will be raised sooner or later: All I did was just breaking an old idol, and our family already paid to repair it. 

Brother: You don’t get it, do you? It’s not just an old idol. It’s the Northern Emperor, the god protecting the whole village. He protected me so that I safely reached Hawaii, and he protected you on your journeys too.

Tai Chu: So how come it didn’t protect our two uncles? Did they not pray to him every day? It's just a powerless idol that can’t even defend itself. 

Brother: I see that the banishment from the village didn’t do you any good. I sent you back to China last year because I thought you were getting too much influenced by the Western ways with the Bible and all. I thought going home would help reorient you in the correct way of our ancestors. I didn’t imagine the outrageous things you would do. Talking bad about the government? Lucky thing our village is remote and there are no Manchu officials to hear you. Otherwise it won’t be the idol’s arm but your neck that will be broken.

Tai Chu: The Manchu government is useless too, like the idol. They demand us to kowtow but can’t even fight the French, let alone protect us as they are supposed to. They talk so much about the Emperor’s mandate from heaven. If that's true, Heaven must be angry with them now. Oppose Qing, Revive Ming!

Brother: Stop doing things that will bring trouble and misfortune to the whole family or I will have nothing to do with you anymore. I don’t want our family to suffer because of you. They have suffered enough.

Tai Chu: That’s one thing you and I agree on, Brother. Our family has suffered enough. They have suffered because of poverty, ignorance and superstition that the government lays on us. Why did our uncles have to die far from home trying to get our family’s conditions? Why does Father have to suffer the corrupt officials who come to collect the "white deed" taxes from us every year even though we don’t own those lands anymore? Why did Mother, our aunts and sister had to suffer the torture of foot binding that could have mutilated them for life? That’s why I tried to awaken our family and our village from this nightmare.

Foot binding - a "badge of honor" for respectable women in imperial China

Brother: What nightmare? What you did was a nightmare! If you still don’t listen to reason. I will have to ask that you transfer back half of the property I registered under your name while you were here last time. I thought I was doing it for the family, but at this rate you will bring disgrace, misfortune and who knows what calamity to the family.

Tai Chu: So that’s why you paid me to come back all the way here, instead of writing an angry letter. Don’t worry Brother. We can go tomorrow to the lawyer’s office and do it. Although eternally grateful, I have no desire whatsoever for the property that you have given me. I have to follow my conscience. I don’t want any harm to fall on my family. But I believe that what I do is good for the family, the village and China. 

Brother: You got it backward. You don’t put yourself first. It’s not “What is good for you is good for the family.”, but rather “What is good for the family is good for you!” Today you break a sacred idol. What will you go on to break next?

Tai Chu: Whatever useless has got to go. Even an empire has to be broken if it doesn't do our people any good... 

At this, Da Ko gets so upset that he storms into his bedroom and slams the door shut. He doesn’t want to continue the conversation lest he says something he may later regret.

Looking out into the darkness of the night, Tai Chu remains in his chair and thinks about the future. The young Chinese will keep the words that he has spoken to his beloved brother on this day. 

In ten years, he would have started his struggle to dismantle one of the largest empires the world has ever known. Although he was known by different names during his lifetime by different people, he would soon become known forever to most of the world as Sun Yat-Sen, the Father of Modern China.

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Notes:

1. The early years of Sun Yat-sen’s life is not well documented – at least in the English language. The main source of this installment is Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese Republic by Paul Linebarger who interviewed Sun Yat Sen himself many years later when much of it has slipped from his memory. 

2. Throughout his life, Sun Yat-Sen did not speak much about Hawaii and her loss of independence, although he revisited the islands several times throughout his campaign to overthrow the Qing Empire. Samuel is a fictional character that was invented to tease out what the young revolutionary might have thought and how it compared with the situation in his China.

Sources:

1. Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese Republic by Paul Linebarger

2. Sun Yat-sen in Hawai’i: Activities and Supporters by Yansheng Ma Lum and Raymond Min Kong Lim

3. Sun Yat-Sen and Hawaii by William M. Zanella

4. Hawaii: A History by Ruth M. Tabrah

5. Sugar: A Bittersweet History by Elizabeth Abbott

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 Next on 1884.