At this point, I'm just wondering what other islands might fall under the influence of Sarawak, and whether the kingdom takes on a naval expansion of sorts, to supplement the British Royal Navy,of course, not not work against it, no sir!Hehehe... will you believe me when I say I have planned for them to appear here since 2 years ago?
Of Rajahs and Hornbills: A timeline of Brooke Sarawak
- Thread starter Al-numbers
- Start date
To those who are wondering, the latest update is on the previous page.
Interestingly though, many Malay and Dayak peoples of lower Sarawak have myths in which a Sumatran Minangkabau notable (or nobles) traveled to the region and somehow become local community leaders or mentors that impart wisdom. Given the Minangkabau's matrilineal system of descent where daughters hold more lands than sons, making the latter go on wandering journeys across the archipelago, this could have some basis in truth. Given the greater mercantile nature of Sarawak, a few intrepid Malays and Dayaks may embark to see if the storied valleys and mountains of the Minang Lands are true.
One dynamic to consider is that Sarawak is emerging as a trading kingdom on its own right, but one that's also in a crowded neighborhood full of companies and states with greater commercial and economic power. This will induce an effect where Sarawakian traders will go to places that can offer the best profit margins + places with less competition, which might lead to focusing on spots like Cambodia, the southern Philippines, Sulawesi and the Moluccas, and maybe even Papua!*
*Great War conditions notwithstanding.
Sadly, the Batak peoples of Sumatra are too far inland for Sarawakian traders and officials to reach them. For their part, the peoples of Lake Toba are trying their best to keep themselves together against the onslaught of Dutch, Polish, Russian and other Indo-European expatriates expropriating their highlands for commercial use.
Interestingly though, many Malay and Dayak peoples of lower Sarawak have myths in which a Sumatran Minangkabau notable (or nobles) traveled to the region and somehow become local community leaders or mentors that impart wisdom. Given the Minangkabau's matrilineal system of descent where daughters hold more lands than sons, making the latter go on wandering journeys across the archipelago, this could have some basis in truth. Given the greater mercantile nature of Sarawak, a few intrepid Malays and Dayaks may embark to see if the storied valleys and mountains of the Minang Lands are true.
One dynamic to consider is that Sarawak is emerging as a trading kingdom on its own right, but one that's also in a crowded neighborhood full of companies and states with greater commercial and economic power. This will induce an effect where Sarawakian traders will go to places that can offer the best profit margins + places with less competition, which might lead to focusing on spots like Cambodia, the southern Philippines, Sulawesi and the Moluccas, and maybe even Papua!*
*Great War conditions notwithstanding.
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Uuuuuugh, I really do need to stop thinking 'Batak = Toba.' 😓 You are right; there are Batak subgroups on the coast, and they are probably getting really impacted by all that is happening. In fact, the west coast of Sumatra is probably much busier than OTL due to the economic rise of Aceh and the commercial plantations of the Toba interior. As to whether they'll meet any wandering Dayaks... that's hard to say. Any Sarawakians travelling that far is either doing so for trade or tracing back old legends. Whether that means coming across them and forming long-term bonds is... unclear, as any Sarawakian would want to either stop at Padang (Minangkabau country) or the Acehnese west coast. The Batak would definitely be bewildered at how Sarawakians view their foreign ruling family, considering how things are going on their backyard.
And about the Rejang and the Mentawai/Nias Islands, I've heard of the theory about them being descended from a Bidayuh tribe in Sarawak - more specifically, of the Bukar-Sadong subgroup. Whether the theory is credible... it definitely has some pitfalls. While Rejang lore does indicate a foreign homeland, the Rejang language shares little similarity to the Bukar-Sadong or the Rejang-Baram languages of Borneo. Another black mark is that the Bukar-Sadong were semi-nomadic wanderers themselves, roving from Kalimantan into Sarawak as late as the 1700's.
With this said, it's not too implausible for an offshoot tribe to wander down the rivers of Sarawak / West Borneo and cross the seas - the Iban were conducting sea raids as far south as Banjarmasin and as north as Sabah as far late as the mid-1800's, during James Brooke's period! But the "'Rejang are distant Dayaks'" hypothesis does need more concrete evidence.
As for what happens to them and for the Nias and Mentawai Islands... its still up in the air. Their isolation from the mainland and difficulty in contacting them has preserved their unique cultures, but with a D.E.I that is more active in Sumatra, their days at being left alone by everyone may be numbered. On the plus side, any visiting Sarawakian would be astounded at how some of the Nias, Mentawai and Rejang cultures are similar to theirs, especially the tradition of erecting megaliths!
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Speaking of Nias, the village houses on the island would awe any Sarawakian traveller, Malay or Dayak. The Melanau and highland-dwellers would be especially pleased.
Dang, that is beautiful. I love the visuals for this TL.
I am looking forward to seeing now this version of the Great War ends, and how the peace will shape the world.
How are things in China by the by ITTL?
I am looking forward to seeing now this version of the Great War ends, and how the peace will shape the world.
How are things in China by the by ITTL?
A complicated kind of basketcase. There are, in descending order of seriousness:
- A Japanese invasion of Korea, Manchuria, and northern China with the aim of folding the Korean peninsula under its suzerainty (and thereby enable annexation).
- Japanese-funded anti-Qing uprisings in China's south, some of which are republican in character.
- A swell of heterodox secret societies and armed groups across the Yellow Sea, with some of them being fanatic against the Japanese.
- A rise in Christian armed brotherhoods in Manchuria for the same reason.
There were also many Christian groups and other sects in China's south OTL, will they be here too and will we learn more about them and the overall situation in China more in future chapters?
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We might; Some of the politicians in early republican China were part of Christian groups from the south, and the current war may very well alter their careers.
That is, if things go according to plan.
Whew done. man this timeline is good.
Quick question did William Wing Loring and other US civil war veterans get recruited by the Egyptian army like OTL? And did the do any better modernizing the army under a different Khedive?
Quick question did William Wing Loring and other US civil war veterans get recruited by the Egyptian army like OTL? And did the do any better modernizing the army under a different Khedive?
First off, happy Eid al-Adha everyone!
Thank you! And what an interesting character. Given the Khedivate of Egypt's better financial situation in TTL, I can see Loring hanging on to his military post long enough to handle Egypt's situation in the Upper Nile. The Dervish Caliphate in Kordofan may have annihilated the first Egyptian army that tried to squash them, but men like Loring may have stabilized Egypt's southern border to keep the Dervishes from overrunning Khartoum.
Perkahwinan of the Rajah: Part 2
Charlie MacDonald, Strange States, Weird Wars, and Bizzare Borders (weirdworld.postr.com, 2014)
“Well, they are the first family of the Cocos Islands.” …And how did they become the first family?”
“what are the Cocos Islands?
Let’s just start from the beginning.
In the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, off the southwestern mouth of the Sunda Strait, lies two volcanic atolls fringed by dangerous reefs. Bedecked by tropical flora and endemic wildlife, the islands lay undisturbed until 1609, when a captain-employee of the Honourable East India Company stumbled on the place and mapped it.
Or, maybe he did. A lot of early Cocos-Keeling history is incredibly spotty, and the captain-employee (William Keeling – guess what happened to his last name?) did not even mention the islands in his later journals! It didn’t help that the early sources are biased in some shape or form, so bear in mind that this backstory may or may not be entirely accurate, alright? [1]
So after their discovery, the Cocos Islands remained undisturbed except for the occasional captain or surveyor dropping in. The real juicy story began in 1825, when a Scottish merchant captain by the name of John Clunies-Ross – along with his serendipitously named ship, the Borneo – stepped onto the atoll sands, planted a honking Union Jack on it, and planned to move in along with his family.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one with such ideas.
Here’s where things got complicated: During the Napoleonic Wars, the British took the Dutch East Indies and administered it for a while. This involved putting in new administrators, and one man in particular for the south Bornean city of Banjarmasin: Alexander Hare. This man is incredible, but for the purposes of not bloating this post, I’ll summarize by just saying thus: he collected an assortment of young women, made a deal with the Banjarmasin sultan that bequeathed him 1400 square miles of Bornean land, made it his own independent state of Maluka, and began populating it with men and women convicts from Java! When word got out, he fled with his supporters and his bevy of brides, first to Batavia, and then to the Cape Colony. In 1826, he set his sights on the Cocos Islands.
So, Hare paid a captain – coincidentally, John Clunies-Ross’ brother – to send himself and a volunteer force of either 14 or 40 Malay women (either Cape-bought or East Indies-taken) to populate the islands. And yes, in more ways than one. Ew.
So when dear John came back two years later to the atoll, imagine his surprise to find a new owner making love all over it, after bringing in-tow his wife, children, 8 sailor-artisans and mother-in-law. Long story summarized: things quickly deteriorated, Hare was eventually driven-off to a single island, and his women eventually deserted him for Clunies-Ross and his sailors! Hare, left with only 4 or 5 of his wives, fled to the East Indies and eventually died in Bencoolen (now modern-day Bengkuku). [2]
With that done, the Clunies-Ross quickly made themselves the de facto rulers of the islands. Soon, the Cocos-Keeling atolls had an industry (fishing & coconut plantations), staffed by locals (mixed-race descendants of the sailors and women) and with some convict labor from Java, and paid by a currency (minted by John Clunies-Ross himself). For extra cash, the local catches and crops were traded abroad on the occasional passing merchant ship. For law, an occasional vessel would travel from India, Ceylon, or Singapore bringing a magistrate to decide matters.
Still, life on the Cocos-Keelings slowed to a leisurely pace, and the atolls became much more known for the relaxed local lifestyle and the open character of the ruling family. I should note though that until the Great War, the Cocos Malays were explicitly forbidden from ever leaving the atolls. If you do leave, you can’t return, which makes the paradise more illusory than anything. Naturalists and adventurers like Charles Darwin and Joshua Slocum made stops on the place and their local accounts were wildly divergent; Slocum remarked how idyllic the Cocos locals were, while Darwin saw the women and convicts as little more than slaves (ouch!). [3]
The atolls were later annexed into the British Empire and tossed between Ceylonese and Malayan control. Its strategic location also made them a meeting point for telegraph cables that snake out to West Australia, India, Ceylon, and southern Africa’s Cape Colony. Even so, life on the Cocos-Keelings continued as it was: slow and ‘seemingly’ peaceful.
And given as such, is it any wonder that the Clunies-Ross themselves intermarried with locals?
And thus, another new, beautifully odd facet to the world is born.
(Also, before you complain about the picture not being old, this is the only vintage British-era photo of them in, like, colorful splendor! I spent a week searching!)
Alright, backstory over.
Fast-forward to the Great War, and things go way popping! Thousands of kilometres to the southwest, the French colony of Madagascar spent nearly the last two years fending off British forces from southern Africa. But their luck couldn’t last forever and on March 1907, a combined Indian-African thrust finally took the island and sent the remaining Franco-Italian ships there scrambling for the deep sea. With enemy battleships on pursuit, one of the French gunboats, the Marmont, decided to take a lovely detour to the Cocos-Keelings and smash the telegraph cables there to cut off British communications to her Indian Ocean domains. Hey, if you’re going down, might as well do it while pissing off your enemies as well.
For the Marmont, at least they tried.
One cat-and-mouse chase and attempted scuttling later, the French vessel found itself embarrassingly stuck on the Cocos reefs, unable to move as storm waves bashed its hull against the corals. The ‘Battle of the Cocos Islands’ became instant fodder for all the media over the Indian Ocean, shouted at loud over papers and codes.
And it was on one of the newspapers that matchmaking Margaret found out that the Brookes aren’t the only “let’s-takeover-a-foreign-island-and-rule-it” family!
But given the sensational attempted attack, she might have seen this instead. Talk about discovering your future in-laws!
And there was a lot to find fitting. The family knew Malay, knew how to talk anda act to the common rabble, and knew how to live rough with some of the sons being experts in house-erecting and boatbuilding. Heck, given the intermarriage among the younger generations with the Cocos ‘Malays’, they are practically partially Malay!
There’s just one problem: they’re not… high-class enough. True, Queen Victoria had granted the Cocos-Keeling’s to the Clunies-Ross family in perpetuity since 1886, and the press often named the family heads as ‘Kings of the Cocos Islands’. But that doesn’t change the fact that the whole family were basically normal Scots of Jacobite leanings whom control two measly atolls one-fiftieth the size of Singapore. Not to mention, the whoooole shebang was a territorial part of the British Straits Settlements (aka. Malaya’s Crown Colonies), so they’re not technically free. By contrast, the Brooke family are descendants of (illegitimate) Scottish nobility, with branch lines that included viscounts, Lords, judges, and other notables. To top it off, their Kingdom of Sarawak was an internationally recognized independent state that is larger than some mid-sized European nations!
Still, there is no question that the ‘Cocos Kings’ (fun fact: they don’t even call themselves that. Their title before 1907 was ‘Resident Magistrate’, and despite their near-total control of the atolls, the highest title local Cocos Malays speak to them is ‘Tuan’ – Sir) were the closest family to match the spousal conditions set by the Astana. It also helped that, since the Great War was still boiling in Europe, candidates from there aren’t coming along soon while the Clunies-Ross has branch lines across Singapore, Malaya, Australia, and the Dutch East Indies.
And it was so that a line was opened to one Alfred Clunies-Ross, a mixed-race younger son of the family who has grown up to be a good doctor and a brilliant sportsman. Seriously, his medals and awards across cricket, football and especially rugby – he played in the first international rugby match in 1871 in Edinburgh, representing Scotland. They won – are a legend to behold, and he’s pretty much responsible for the birth of Sarawak’s modern sports. Still, Alfred by 1907 was in his 50’s working as a doctor in Singapore, worried sick for his main family back home. He initially thought some lark was playing a prank when a missive from the Astana was sent to his address.
But as communications opened up and the family branches were all notified, it quickly became clear it was no joke. Many of the Clunies-Ross’ thought it as a golden opportunity, marrying up to finally becoming actual royalty of some measure! Others weren’t so sure, as they thought an arraigned marriage of such a power imbalance would quickly lead to a broken family. But eventually, the pro-marriage faction won and Alfred was persuaded to begin planning which of his 8 children should be brought to Sarawak. (Clunies-Ross rugby man / doctor)
One wonders how Clayton and Lily reacted to the news that Dear Mum has found something out of her matchmaking…
********************
Astana Palace and gardens, Kuching, Kingdom of Sarawak, 1 October 1907
Astana Palace and gardens, Kuching, Kingdom of Sarawak, 1 October 1907
“Do you think this can work?”
Margaret Brooke turned aside, piqued.
Alfred wished he could word it otherwise, but the thought of it all was weighing on his mind for an uncomfortable while. Turning away from watching his daughter out the Astana window, he tried to unwound his thoughts. “I mean… this. All of this. I know that… current situations have forced your hand, and your children aren’t exactly… aligned with what you and everyone else want for Sarawak. God knows my own family have ruling quarrels and we just rule a speck of coral sands. But I can’t help but wonder if…”
She finished the train of thought. “…If we just let the succession go?”
Alfred nodded. As a member of the Clunies-Ross family, and one who married for love at that, the idea of an arranged marriage did not rest well. True, many families around Southeast Asia and even in Europe do so without any qualms, but it is one thing to arrange a union and another to do so to explicitly preserve your family, especially if it’s royalty.
Even now, as he and the Dowager Ranee watched through the Astana windows at their strolling children on the verdant grounds, Alfred wondered if agreeing to her wishes was a sensible idea.
As it was, Margaret was silent. She turned back to stare out at her son, who was now stopping to point at a traveller’s palm at the woman beside him. Her face was unreadable.
After a while, Alfred thought she would never answer. But as he opened to redirect the conversation, the Dowager Ranee spoke. “I have thought about it. Letting it go. Have this kingdom go to one of the Brooke cousins or my own. It has been done before, with my husband and his predecessor. Why deal with the madness if there are other men in the wings?”
She turned to Alfred, her face pained. “But then, I remembered the look on my family’s faces, of my cousins and relatives when I told them I shall be Ranee of Sarawak. Some of them laughed, some of them even scorned me, but most of them were just… confused. ‘Why marry some adventurer and go off halfway across the world? To a land few have seen and fewer even knew?’ I was taking a chance when I married Charles, and even I had my doubts if it will all work out for me.”
But it did. It wasn’t easy, getting accustomed to life here, but I am now a part of this country as much as anyone in Kuching, or in the forest and mountains. And I am proud of that. Now, I have letters from relatives and cousins back home in England, asking me if they could be a part of Sarawak as well, often without knowing a single thing about this place or its inhabitants, much less what to do about governance. If I adopt from them, or choose from them, there will be no full agreement from all the nobles and chiefs. What shall happen to Sarawak if one of them sits here? Will it still be a place of peace? Or something like Dutch Java?”
Alfred never thought of that. To have Sarawak be handed to someone who doesn’t know Sarawak… he shuddered at the thought. He has seen some of the things done in Java and Sumatra, and the lesser his home of the Cocos-Keeling’s got exposed to that, the better.
Margaret returned to staring at the pair out in the garden.
“That’s why I am doing this. To make sure Sarawak will always have a person who knows what to do, and how to govern well.”
--------------------
“I have to admit, this place is far more than where I came from.”
In truth, Ellen Clunies-Ross was a bit overwhelmed, even if she shouldn’t be.
True, she had left the Cocos-Keeling’s for Singapore for her education, and that island alone is like a nation unto itself when compared to the turquoise seas and palm-fringed shores of home. But the point was that she has seen other lands besides the low atolls, and had herself lived a recent cosmopolitan life in southern Malaya. She had seen mountains draped with trees and rivers that flow like the fastest currents, so she should not have been surprised at Sarawak.
But she is. Singapore is nothing when compared to the storied kingdom of the Brookes. Longer than even the length of British Malaya, the land of Sarawak seemed wild and unknown to her eyes, with only small rice-fields and plantations scratching the might of the unending rainforests and mountains cloaking the landscape. Kuching was a town unlike any other, less bustling than the city-state she travelled from, yet still hectic with an assortment of peoples whom seemed to jump from the fantastic newspaper serials she had read.
The man walking beside her was the queerest of all.
“Are you intimidated?” The Rajah asked.
Ellen glanced at the Astana and could almost see a familiar figure from the corner of her eye. “A little.”
Clayton seemed to understand, smiling. “It is a little straining, isn’t it? Feels like we’re back to being children with them, with all this.”
She giggled. “Next thing we know, they might even watch over how we eat!”
“Maybe!” But there was a seemingly odd way in which the Rajah said that, Ellen noticed. Throughout the day, several times, Clayton seemed to react queerly to certain phrases or threads of conversation. In fact, when Ellen tried to open whether he had some person for his heart, the man seemed to hurry his answer quickly, saying that his hectic hours and recent happenings left no room for dalliances or even flirtations!
“Oh look!” The Rajah cried out, pointing upwards at a silhouette. “A rhinoceros hornbill! Oh it left quickly. You see…”
But Ellen was struck by what she just saw. As is proper, Clayton was wearing a loose long-sleeved dress shirt despite – or maybe because of? – the tropical heat, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. But some of the fabric mass slipped back as he pointed upwards, and Ellen could not help but wonder at the small number of scars and… patterns… revealed on his upper arm, a reminder that the man is more than what he seems.
Is jungle warfare that bloody? No, tribal skin-inking?
She wondered, again, just what kind of man is Clayton Brooke.
____________________
Notes:
[1] Precise information on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands’ early history are equally murky in OTL. A lot of the above backstory is mined from various sources, each biased in their own way.
[2] Accounts of Alexander Hare are equally spotty, especially when looking for the least biased sources on his Bornean adventure. Besides from a smattering of unflattering accounts of him from British and Dutch sources, the only other information about Hare comes from Indonesian historians, which provide vastly different accounts. For instance, Indonesian scholars place his harem of women collected in Borneo had girls bought from Basotholand all the way to China, and his new harem in the Cocos Islands counted at 14 women while British accounts place the number at 40. The Cocos women themselves are an unknown, as there’s no way of proving whether they’re Cape Malays, or remnants from his multicultural Bornean harem. The presence of two villages from the era called Kampung Melayu and Kampung Banten (Malay Village and Banten Village – the Banten were Sundanese) and the varied complexion of Cocos women by early visitors indicated there was some variety in Hare’s… collection. L
[3] This is OTL! Charles Darwin had some unfavourable things to say about the island’s Cocos Malays, though this could be because his assistant did not get along with the Clunies-Ross. As for Joshua Slocum (a sailor who accomplished the first circumnavigation of the world single-handedly – if you ignore the African assistant he had at one stretch), he was nothing but positive of the Cocos Islands, the local Malays and the Clunies-Ross family.
[4] I don’t think I need telling which post is this referencing.
As for skin-inking/tattooing, I should note that European royalty were quite fannish of body art during this time period, seeing them as symbols of adventure and the exotic. King Edward VII had a Jerusalem Cross inked on his arm in 1862, and his sons George V and Albert Victor copied him decades later. Tsar Nicholas II had a dragon tattoo on both forearms when he toured Japan as Tsesarevich in 1891. The most notable European royal to be adorned, however, was Frederik IX of Denmark (admittedly, way past timeframe) who had nine tattoos inked all over his body in Chinese designs.
[2] Accounts of Alexander Hare are equally spotty, especially when looking for the least biased sources on his Bornean adventure. Besides from a smattering of unflattering accounts of him from British and Dutch sources, the only other information about Hare comes from Indonesian historians, which provide vastly different accounts. For instance, Indonesian scholars place his harem of women collected in Borneo had girls bought from Basotholand all the way to China, and his new harem in the Cocos Islands counted at 14 women while British accounts place the number at 40. The Cocos women themselves are an unknown, as there’s no way of proving whether they’re Cape Malays, or remnants from his multicultural Bornean harem. The presence of two villages from the era called Kampung Melayu and Kampung Banten (Malay Village and Banten Village – the Banten were Sundanese) and the varied complexion of Cocos women by early visitors indicated there was some variety in Hare’s… collection. L
[3] This is OTL! Charles Darwin had some unfavourable things to say about the island’s Cocos Malays, though this could be because his assistant did not get along with the Clunies-Ross. As for Joshua Slocum (a sailor who accomplished the first circumnavigation of the world single-handedly – if you ignore the African assistant he had at one stretch), he was nothing but positive of the Cocos Islands, the local Malays and the Clunies-Ross family.
[4] I don’t think I need telling which post is this referencing.
As for skin-inking/tattooing, I should note that European royalty were quite fannish of body art during this time period, seeing them as symbols of adventure and the exotic. King Edward VII had a Jerusalem Cross inked on his arm in 1862, and his sons George V and Albert Victor copied him decades later. Tsar Nicholas II had a dragon tattoo on both forearms when he toured Japan as Tsesarevich in 1891. The most notable European royal to be adorned, however, was Frederik IX of Denmark (admittedly, way past timeframe) who had nine tattoos inked all over his body in Chinese designs.
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Ayyyyyy the update is here!
Ah, so Ellen is observant enough to notice that Clayton's different from most other men, but also potentially trusted enough down the line to give the Rajah the discretion that he needed?
Since Alfred introduced modern sports to Sarawak (the Pacific Islanders and Kiwis will have a potential new Borneon rival?), are the Clunies-Ross the one? 👀
Ah, so Ellen is observant enough to notice that Clayton's different from most other men, but also potentially trusted enough down the line to give the Rajah the discretion that he needed?
Since Alfred introduced modern sports to Sarawak (the Pacific Islanders and Kiwis will have a potential new Borneon rival?), are the Clunies-Ross the one? 👀
OH'HO!!! So the prodigal marriage is finally underway. But will it pan out for the better? I certainly hope so. I don't like how some cousins in Britian are being placed above Clayton's Nephew though. He should be allowed to ceremonially adopt his nephew. If I'm not mistaken scots had a traditional closeness between uncles and their nephews on their sister's side. Its what Tolkien based the relationship of Thorin Fili and Kili on. Still, I hope their able to make something out of their marriage.
I especially enjoyed that bit at the end about Clayton's Tattoos. Maybe you could elaborate on how it came to be? Maybe he and some fellow warrior took it on after a battle?
Another great chapter. Hope your doing well.
I especially enjoyed that bit at the end about Clayton's Tattoos. Maybe you could elaborate on how it came to be? Maybe he and some fellow warrior took it on after a battle?
Another great chapter. Hope your doing well.
Well, she does notice that her maybe-spouse has a closet of secrets and a life hidden from most notions of public royalty. Ellen doesn't know yet if it's something that should be opened.
That is something new. I'd always thought the reason Charles became Rajah after James Brooke was because the latter was childless; to have a Scots tradition of being close between uncles and nephews does change the dynamic. At this point, things would be too late for any adoptive changes, but we might see some members of their extended family attempt to become a part of Sarawakian society. I'd always feel the Brookes/De Windts back in the British Isles deserve an update of their own (and maybe a family tree to see who is related to whom).
As for their marriage... hold that thought.
We might see a flashback or two on how Clayton got some body art on him... and maybe some look into his personal personal life.
For the sports, I should note that sporting clubs were popping up all over British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies since the late 1880's. Football/soccer manuals were printed in Malay by 1895 and the first regional rugby match took place between the Singapore Cricket Club and Malaya's Selangor Club in 1902. Of course, it's one thing to build a club full of European expatriates, but another to have a passionate sportsman who played during the first international rugby match. As your in-law.
As for the Clunies-Ross family being the one...
...
...
...
yes
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Nah, the reveal was accidental. Clayton rolled up his shirt sleeves to beat the heat and his pointing shifted the loose fabric just enough above the elbows to expose some of his body art.
One less-discussed point on colonialism - and especially in Southeast Asia - was that long-term European residents in the tropics wore lighter clothes and looser fabrics to stay cool in the heat. While they would often don suits and dresses in public, a fair number of colonialists wear less in private compounds or in informal social settings. Some even adopted local sarongs, shirts, and batik cloths to keep the heat out!
Don't be surprised to see a future white Sarawakian wear something like this in the hottest days.
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