Siamese White (eBook)

Maurice Collis (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
316 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-30997-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Foremost among the biographies that Maurice Collis wrote during his wide-ranging literary career is Siamese White - an account of the career of Samuel White of Bath who, during the reign of James II, was appointed by the King of Siam as a mandarin of that country. The book superbly embodies that old adage - truth is stranger than fiction. 'A magnificent story, full of interest and excitement, but there is more to it than that. Collis, who has lived for years on the scene of these high happenings, is able to give us a first-hand picture of a fascinating land: of a lovely archipelago, of rivers and rapids, of an immemorial track through jungles haunted by tigers and malaria.' Evening Standard

Maurice Collis was born in 1889, the son of an Irish solicitor. He entered the Indian Civil Service in 1911 and was posted to Burma, rising to the position of district magistrate in Rangoon in 1929, where the independence of his judgments displeased his superiors who moved him to the position of Excise Commissioner. He returned to England in 1934. He wrote over twenty books, including volumes of autobiography, travel writing, novels, histories and three plays. He died in 1973.

Textauszug

XI. WHITE MEETS PHAULKON

Making his way down one of the canals, White landed at his brother’s house. The reader will recall that George White was associated with a Greek called Constant Phaulkon, who had come out to the East with him seven years before. To this remarkable person Samuel was now introduced.

By one who had met him, Phaulkon has been described as a man of medium height, full of fire, with something dark and unhappy about the expression of his face, but nevertheless agreeable to talk to, and, when he had a mind, of the most engaging manners. He possessed a remarkable breadth of outlook and, without being well-read, seemed to know everything, for his conversation was sparkling and he was a great linguist.

His origins were obscure. Emerging from the underworld of the Levant, he went to England in his teens, pressed by a vague ambition to make his fortune. He was one of those rare and fascinating youths who mature early and by their brilliance, industry and charm captivate all who meet them. Though of formidable genius, such persons do not at first alarm, for they combine usefulness with servility, but when their talents and guile have lifted them into power they arouse a terrified loathing in the hearts of their opponents.

By one of those strange chances, which make history, George White had met Phaulkon in England and engaged him as his assistant. He was now twenty-nine years of age, which for men of his type is fully mature. He had had five years’ experience of the coast trade towards Persia and, latterly, two years at the Siamese capital. Helping his patron, George White, to make a fortune, he himself had laid by a substantial sum of money. But his ambitions were immense. He had taken stock of the position of affairs in Siam and felt that his time was coming. It was the country, it was the moment, for an adventurer.

When White and Phaulkon met, they warmed to each other. White was twenty-seven, two years Phaulkon’s junior. There was a certain resemblance between them. Both of them were brave and crafty; they both regarded the East as their prey. Entirely unscrupulous, they differed more in degree than in kind. White had a sense of actuality, of what could be done in certain circumstances. He wanted money, not glory. Phaulkon had the unbridled imagination of genius. He saw himself something far more extraordinary than a rich man. But he had as yet taken no part in public affairs. His activities had been confined to trade. It was as a man of business that he was then considered to have great ability. Business ability it was which would bring him into prominence, for important problems confronting Siam at the moment were business problems.

In his brother’s house, with such a man as Phaulkon to speak to, White had every opportunity of appraising the situation. It was exceedingly complicated, In a book of this kind I can do no more than indicate the main elements, so that the preposition which George White and Phaulkon were about to make may be intelligible.

The reader will recall the general layout of affairs in 1677. The East India Company, as a company, was concerned chiefly with the purchase of cotton goods in India and their sale in England. As individuals, its members in the Bay of Bengal were interested in the coast trade to Siam, That trade was managed by Mahomedans and shared by interloping Englishmen, who assisted in some cases the Company’s employees to make money in it privately.

Yet this was not the whole picture. For many years the Company had considered that the Siamese trade was not altogether a coast trade. The Japanese came to Ayudhya and they brought articles which were saleable in England at a profit. But they dealt with the Dutch and the Mahomedans. Though the Company had maintained agents in Ayudhya off and on from the beginning of the century, they had never been able to get into the Japanese trade. This was due to the opposition of the Dutch, who, with their headquarters in Java and a fine factory with twenty-five European assistants in Ayudhya, kept out all intruders. They were so strong that thirteen years before Samuel White’s visit they had lain in their ships at the bar of Siam, and by a blockade had forced the king to give them a monopoly of those items in the Japan trade which interested them. In addition, they found it worth their while to join in the coast trade to the extent of importing goods into Sum via the Straits of Malacca.

This threat to Siam’s independence worried the king and his advisers. The Dutch were steadily swallowing the island kings of Java and Sumatra, They might swallow Siam.

For a number of years the direction of Siamese commercial affairs had been in the hands of a minister, called, in the English letters of the period, Ophra Synnoratt. He was a Mahomedan and it was he who had assisted his co-religionists on the Mergui overland route, giving them more concessions and administrative posts than they had ever enjoyed before. He justified this to the king and to the Siamese mandarinate on the ground that their prosperity would balance the Dutch menace. In point of fact, the policy was partly successful, for the Dutch found they could not compete with the Mahomedan traders. Though the Indians had to unload at Mergui and handle their goods across the peninsula, they were able to undersell the Dutch in Ayudhya, though the latter had shipped straight from India. But there was a growing objection to the Mahomedan ascendancy in spite of their check to the Dutch. The latter were still strong enough in ships to dominate the gulf. The Mahomedans could do nothing on the sea to protect Ayudhya. Moreover, they were alleged to be disloyal to the crown and to have themselves designs of seizing the country. Finally, it was said that they were dishonest on a grand scale and that the king did not get his rightful dues.

This Ophra Synnoratt died about the time of White’s visit. His death synchronized with a reaction against Indian dominance. His place was taken by a Siamese mandarin. The king, looking round for assistance in his weakness, saw in a new light the agents of the East India Company, who had long been resident, as I have said, in Siam, but who had made little headway. He began to smile upon them, offering better land for their factory, free timber for building, tin concessions, promising to buy English broadcloth (obviously a useless article in a permanent temperature of 75° to 90°F.), making it clear that if they worked up their position they would be given a share in the Japan trade. He desired chat there should be less of the petty trader about them and more of the national venture. He suggested that they might send him from England gunners and engineers.

The little men representing the Company at Ayudhya were dazzled. They wrote home: ‘This King from our arrival to the present hath treated us with a civility beyond expectation, and his respects for your honours are such that should we seek a Comparison to express it this side of England, we should be to seek.’

In the calmer atmosphere of London the directors were not so optimistic. They did not see exactly where the profit was coming from, nor had they the smallest intention of spending money on engineers and gangers. It was to be plain business and modest business at that. But they replied: ‘Because you apprehend that it may be a means to introduce a trade to Japan and that the King is so desirous of a trade with us … we have resolved to make an essay.’

They sent out £5,000 worth of woollen manufactures.

Now, this policy to encourage the East India Company against the Dutch and the Mahomcdans suited George White and his free-trading friends as much as it delighted the factors at Madras. It meant, if successful, that the interlopers, and the factors in their private capacity, would make fortunes from the coast trade. If the Company, as such, was strengthened enough from home to take and work the concessions which the king was ready to give it, then all the English in Ayudhya. even the hangers-on and the beachcombers, were in for a good time.

This was the inside information which George White was able to give his brother. There is little doubt that he and Phaulkon at this stage of Samuel’s enlightenment must have put to him proposals which may be summarized in the following way:

‘You must know that the coast trade is of two kinds, the merchants’ trade and the royal monopoly trade, for the king has a sole right to the primary acquisition and sale of elephants, saltpetre, tin, lead, betel nuts, and scented woods. A merchant who desires to sell in Siam or export to India any of these goods must buy them from the king on pain of death.

‘Moreover, the king himself directly exports these articles on his own ships from Mergui. As you know, the royal ships have been officered and manned heretofore by Indians. But with the present policy of encouraging the Company and Englishmen generally, the king wants English captains for his merchantmen. He thinks Englishmen will be more honest, or less cunning, or at least less able, as having fewer confederates, to deceive him. They are also better seamen, and his ships will be held in greater respect.

‘Phaulkon and I could get you such an appointment. I need not enlarge upon the prospects. As captain of one of his majesty’s ships with cargoes for Golconda, you would be in a very favoured position. Besides a much larger salary than you draw at present, you would have room on board your ship for cargoes of your own and you would be able to dispense patronage to your countrymen in the Company, assisting them in their private trade for a consideration. Such an appointment means joining the service of the King of Siam, or rather...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 4.2.2016
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Schlagworte: Colonialism • englishmen • Faber Finds • Government
• ISBN-10: 0-571-30997-6 / 0571309976
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-30997-9 / 9780571309979