Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- A Note on the Language, Spelling and Pagination of Quotations
- 1 Introduction: Booking Southeast Asia: The History of an Idea
- 2 Booking Southeast Asia: And So It Begins, with a Nightmare
- 3 The New Language-Game of Modern Colonial Capitalism
- 4 Raffles’ Java as Museum
- 5 Dressing the Cannibal: John Anderson’s Sumatra as Market
- 6 Brooke, Keppel, Mundy and Marryat’s Borneo as ‘The Den of Pirates’
- 7 Crawfurd’s Burma as the Torpid ‘Land of Tyranny’
- 8 Bricolage, Power and How a Region Was Discursively Constructed
- Appendix A The full Transcript of the Article by William Cobbett on the Subject of the British Invasion of Java
- Appendix B Keeping an eye on the Javanese: Raffles’ ‘Regulations of 1814 for the More Effectual Administration of Justice in the Provincial Courts of Java'
- Appendix C James Brooke’s Detractors in the British Parliament and the Aborigines’ Protection Society
- Appendix D The clash between the HMS Dido and the Ships of the Rajah of Riao: A Case of Mistaken Identity and Misappropriation of the Signifier ‘Pirate’
- Appendix E The Construction of the Native other in the Writings of Hugh Clifford, British Colonial Resident to Pahang
- Bibliography
- Index
Appendix D - The clash between the HMS Dido and the Ships of the Rajah of Riao: A Case of Mistaken Identity and Misappropriation of the Signifier ‘Pirate’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- A Note on the Language, Spelling and Pagination of Quotations
- 1 Introduction: Booking Southeast Asia: The History of an Idea
- 2 Booking Southeast Asia: And So It Begins, with a Nightmare
- 3 The New Language-Game of Modern Colonial Capitalism
- 4 Raffles’ Java as Museum
- 5 Dressing the Cannibal: John Anderson’s Sumatra as Market
- 6 Brooke, Keppel, Mundy and Marryat’s Borneo as ‘The Den of Pirates’
- 7 Crawfurd’s Burma as the Torpid ‘Land of Tyranny’
- 8 Bricolage, Power and How a Region Was Discursively Constructed
- Appendix A The full Transcript of the Article by William Cobbett on the Subject of the British Invasion of Java
- Appendix B Keeping an eye on the Javanese: Raffles’ ‘Regulations of 1814 for the More Effectual Administration of Justice in the Provincial Courts of Java'
- Appendix C James Brooke’s Detractors in the British Parliament and the Aborigines’ Protection Society
- Appendix D The clash between the HMS Dido and the Ships of the Rajah of Riao: A Case of Mistaken Identity and Misappropriation of the Signifier ‘Pirate’
- Appendix E The Construction of the Native other in the Writings of Hugh Clifford, British Colonial Resident to Pahang
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Throughout his account of the Dido's campaign against piracy off the coast of Borneo, Henry Keppel reiterated his commitment to both the anti-piracy campaign and James Brooke whom he obviously admired.10 But it has to be noted that at no point in his narrative – in either of the two volumes of his work – did Keppel offer a definition of what piracy was, or what kind of activity would be construed as piratical. At times the haziness of the concept accounted for the mishaps and misunderstandings that occurred during the Dido's stint in Bornean waters, and one of these instances involved the fateful encounter between the armed boats of the Dido and the ships of the Rajah of Riao.
In their zeal to render service to Brooke, the crew of the Dido and the small company of boats made up of the longboat, dingy and pinnace did occasionally step beyond the bounds of propriety and decorum. Keppel recorded one such incident in volume 2 of his work. It involved the longboat and pinnace of the Dido encountering a number of native boats along the Natunas coast. They sped off when they were spotted.
The Dido's boats chased after the vessels, and as soon as they came into range opened fire on the assumption that they were pirates on the run. Amazingly, and for reasons that remain unclear, midway through the fighting the crews of both ships hailed each other to identify themselves. The crew of the native boats proclaimed that they were men of Riao, sent by their rajah to collect tribute from villages that had sworn allegiance to him. The shooting ceased immediately, for the Rajah of Riao was then an ally of the British and by default any actions conducted by men under his command could not be deemed piratical.
The ill-fated encounter with the rajah's fleet – though it ended up with both sides admitting that they were mistaken – is instructive in the sense that it sheds some light on the murkiness of relations between the British (and other Europeans) the native rulers who were recognised as sovereigns (such as the Rajah of Riao and Rajah Muda Hassim of Sarawak) and other native malcontents and undecidables who were summarily lumped together under the generic label of ‘pirate’.
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- The Discursive Construction of Southeast Asia in 19th Century Colonial-Capitalist Discourse , pp. 226 - 227Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2016