Wealth bequeath power for generations to come!

Fool Me Once (Miniseries, S01 E01-08; 2023)

The thing that piqued my interest is the apparent class difference that happens in the UK. It is common knowledge that European societies were separated based on their professions. Pretty soon, the professions were imprinted on their surnames. Weavers became Webbers and Webster, clerks to Clarke, shoemakers to Schumachers, scholars to Scully, tillers to Tyler, and the various Smiths and Taylors.

Specific surnames denoted aristocracy and privileged them to move around the royal family and stand a chance to pick a bone strewn by the monarch. Hanging around with the right crowd ensured prosperity and opportunities to venture out to exotic lands and further fatten the family coffers.

Talking about making an overseas trip and coming back rich, besides the Pirates of the Caribbean, we have, from the East, Robert Clive. Robert Clive owes much of his existence to India, and he had appropriated the word India into his name. Clive of India had amassed so much from political wrangling and military conniving. He started employment in the East India Company as an office clerk and, through his expert manoeuvring, overthrew one of the wealthiest rulers in India to bring home £25miilion in today's money. His status was raised to a Baron for his efforts in bringing in foreign exchange. His family was set for generations to come.

When the imperialist powers moved their mercantile prowess to the East, they tried to pigeonhole their subjects into similar divisions. They found this kind of 'divide and rule' helpful as it also created animosity amongst its subjects. The imperialists laughed all the way to their ship and their motherlands. Years later, from their lootings, they emerged as first-world nations, smelling of roses. Their subjects, even generations later, stay stinking as basket cases. They not only still had to look up to their former colonial masters but also be dependent on them for items of precise engineering.

That was what went through my mind when I viewed this miniseries. It is set in an obscenely colossal manor in the UK as the family comes to terms with the brutal murder of one of its sons. Things take a turn when a nannycam picks up the deceased on camera playing with his daughter.

Pandora's box opens many family secrets, under-table dealings, family dirty linen and shady family businesses involving Big Pharma and poor third-world nations.

Expect a Sivaji's 1964' Puthiya Paravai' kind of ending in this one!

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Cartographic Aggression!

China's ten-dashed line map 2023.

Learned a new word today - cartographic aggression. In simple terms, it is the act of shoving a map in front of someone's face and expecting the someone to respect its boundaries. This is the age-old form of exerting geopolitical dominance, failing which the aggressor will have justification to attack and usurp the non-conformer.

Back at a time when the term Europeans and Flat-Earthers were interchangeable, early Portuguese voyagers managed to put their new discoveries on hand-drawn maps. These maps were State-guarded secrets. Everyone wanted to lay their hands on them to go another nautical mile. In 1538, Geradus Mercator, from a region around the Netherlands (a region known as low countries, which included Belgium and Luxembourg) with available information around him, put up the first world map. He mapped out Asia as separate from the Americas before the discovery of the Bering Straits.

The East India Company, after establishing their first post in Surat, the British representative presented an atlas to Emperor Jahangir. It was politely refused as the Moghul Empire was shown to be puny compared to the rest of the world. Whether it was intimidation or a gift is anyone's guess. 

As time passed, we have realised that a map is not merely a navigational tool. The British surveyors who went into the God-forsaken valleys of Afghanistan and the tundra lands of Siberia not to map the geographical terrain of the world for people to learn. They had geopolitics on their minds. Wanting to halt the Russian Empire's expansion and win in the Great Game of Imperialism, they were strategising their next military move.

Funny, Australia and Antarctica are seen here,

 even though they were discovered later.

(1606 and 1820 respectively) **

So, it is no surprise that China's 2023 Ten-Dash line map, in a single stroke, has stirred the emotions of many countries. In essence, it has staked claim over the whole of the South China Sea, usurping oil-rich islands belonging to Malaysia and Vietnam. On top of that, China had created artificial islands for military recognisance. It had successfully re-flared an old wound with Russia. By claiming a piece of 'island', Bolshoi Ussuriysky Island, which almost brought to a nuclear showdown in 1969, China shows its fangs to its sometimes ally. A dash of line over Taiwan angered the Taiwanese, too. As far as China is concerned, Taiwan is part of China anyway. ASEAN has expressed its satisfaction. The Indian Government, as if its internal squabbles are not enough, is accused of quietly losing 2000 square km of its territory to China. The last time this thing happened, they went to war.

It is one thing to draw a map but another to recognise its borders. We all remember the aftermath of Sir Cyril Radcliffe's disastrous attempt at carving Pakistan out of India. The British can draw the Durand Line to demarcate Afghanistan from Pakistan, but that does not mean the Taliban nor the Pashtuns will respect it.

A map is a geopolitical statement attempting to exert power over an area. Now, the affected party must state their objection, negotiate, resolve or go to war for it.

** P.S. Of course, discovery is Europe’s POV. The Maoris, Polynesians and Australian aborigines knew they existed in Australia before Cook came and slaughtered them. The same applies to the penguins in the South Seas. Antarctica was their playground. I heard from the grapevine that Vikings 'discovered' Antarctica in their great travel in the 1500s.

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A re-look at history?

Asia Reborn

(A Continent Rises from the Ravages of Colonialism and War to a New Dynamism)

Author: Prasenjit K Basu

The 21st century, especially the second half, is considered an Asian century. Still, no single nation is said to have successfully challenged the Pax Americana of the late 20th and early 21st century. A continent ravaged by events from the 18th through the 20th century, Asia is making a comeback.

As they say, time is cyclical. From the Common Era (C.E.) to the 1600s, when Europe and the Middle East were pretty much in the dark ages, more than half of the world's GDP came from India and China. Both these countries were the world's superpowers and ruled the greatest oceans. Suddenly, there were either domesticated or decided to close their doors. The European and Arabic powers, who all these while were running around like headless chickens, morphed into a force to be reckoned with. They ushered in mercantilism, slavery and colonialism. They embraced Industrial Revolution while the rest of the world was napping.

In the prophetic words of Ibn Khaldun, history is a cyclical process in which sovereign powers come into existence, get stronger, lose their strengths and are conquered by other sovereign powers over time. More precisely, every community is uncivilised initially and tries to acquire power through its inborn fighting and kinsmanship. The generation after that, after living in the cushy life of their conquest, slowly loses their killer instinct and becomes 'civilised'. The subsequent generations will be like the occupants their ancestors had conquered, cultured but weak and without prowess. Barring exceptions, he estimated that a dynasty would last about 120 years. The Ottoman Empire is said to be an exception. It lasted 624 years. The reason for its longevity is the realisation of this edict, the necessary motivation infused by extraordinary leaders, solid traditions and morals, and wise decisions. Even then, the mighty Caliph soon became the sick man of Europe and crumpled on its weight.

As the Europeans ventured out on their voyages to the East, they quickly usurped all the wealth available along the way they went. Kingdoms after kingdom tumbled with their shenanigans and their meddling in local politics. Close to 200 years, it was the rule of the European race over the colonised Asiatic lands.

The turning point came around with Commodore Matthew Perry's legendary stop of his battalion at Kyodo port in 1868. The Japanese woke up to the fact that the world had wised up while they practised a closed-door policy. The Meiji Restoration was an effort to sponge all knowledge from the maestros and improve their own capability. Their efforts proved fruitful when the Japanese defeated their arch-enemy in the north, the Russians, in 1905.

Industrialisation required raw materials, coal, steel and petroleum. Their neighbouring lands, like Manchuria, Sakhalin Islands, and other parts, were run over for this purpose. When the Western powers decided to place a trade embargo on Japan, they had to source their raw material beyond their comfort zone. The Japanese monarch, conforming to the increasing nationalistic wave, decided to follow in the footsteps of the Western imperialist power. That was the Eastern Front of World War 2.

WW2 was an eye-opener to the sleeping giants of Asia. Each was embroiled in its own struggle with the Western colonial yoke. India was caught deep in self-rule efforts. China was trapped in failed dynastic rule and internal squabbles. Smaller nations were manipulated to serve their seemingly caring masters.

Asians, for the first time, saw an Eastern power stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Western and oust them. The manner in which the Brit scooted off at the news of the Japanese invasion left a bad aftertaste amongst their subjects in Malaya. Their new masters, they realised, were worse off than their predecessors, igniting the question of self-rule in the hearts of many South East Asian nations.

The Japanese did one right thing, though. They left a nidus on all the lands upon which the newly independent countries prospered later. The Japanese set up many industries to keep up with the needs of the Japanese Military Industrial Complex and the pressures of WW2. The Japanese model of financing and running industries were emulated in Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria. In fact, after the war, Koreans working in Manchuria returned home to develop their own homegrown businesses.

History suggests that all the colonial masters left their colonies bare. Amongst the various colonial masters, the British are said to be the gentlest of the lot. The Belgians, Spanish, Portuguese, Germans and French were notorious for inflicting brutal scars upon their subjects. Even though the British are known to have left their conquests with functioning governmental machinery, infrastructure and contended society, of late, they are mostly praised for their diplomatic behaviour and geopolitical manipulations. A sample of their calculated meddling was in China. In the name of wanting with the reluctant Chinese, and ended up turning the whole nation into opium addicts. For their effort, the British were gifted with a lease on Hong Kong and areas around it for 100 years. 

This voluminous book is an excellent go-to book to help join the dots to all the history topics we learned during our school days. History was taught to us as if events on the world stage happened in isolation. With age, we realise that every event is linked to each other. The underlying basic themes are geopolitical control, economic dominance and painting a positive narrative of the oppressors. Living true to the age-old adage, money does make the world go round.

The author, P Basu, is an economist by day and a history buff by night. His two decades of nerdy research into the history of Asia helped connect the dots between each and every colonial power's move from unproductive to the rice shores of natives who ushered them in with reverence. In return, the colonialists usurped their happiness, overstayed their welcome and made a slave out of their hosts. They destroyed the natives' civilisation and philosophical wisdom to propagate foreign materialistic self-centred ideology. A new world economic module that emphasised capitalistic mercantilism over humanism prevailed worldwide.

In the epilogue of the book, Basu explains how the Japanese invasion of Asia helped Asians to re-discover themselves to emerge as a force to be reckoned with. The Japanese business module of financing, learning from the Masters and encouraging tertiary education amongst its citizens has shown positive results in Korea and Taiwan. Even though Malaysians, under the premiership of Dr Mahathir Mohammad, were 'Looking East' towards the Japanese, they failed miserably. Starting on a better footing than South Koreans, they fared poorly. They emphasised racist policies and never shed their rent-seeking attitudes. The strive to excel through sheer hard work was never on their plates.

(P.S. The book is strife with many trivia that would excite many a nerd. With the weakening of the Qing dynasty, the wreckage of the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion, China was carved up by many European powers. They controlled many geo-strategic areas and ports. The Germans acquired a German base port in Shandong District. German settlers started a brewery in the Tsingtao area to quench the thirst of many weary Europeans in China. This, of course, is now the famous Tsingtao Beer from China.)

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Write t

The Queen is dead, long live the King!

©Elanour Tomlinson

We are often advised to say only the nice things about the recently departed. Somehow, all the ill feelings and the wrong paths crossed are temporarily swept under the proverbial carpet. Everyone, including the ones who tend to benefit from the deceased's passing, is expected to carry a sombre outward appearance - wear a sad face, dress down and avoid merriment. 

After the so-called mourning period, it will be pretty much no-holds-barred, I guess. 

But now, even before the dead are laid to rest, the wokies are already at it. I am referring to the recent demise of one of the longest reigning monarchs of the once most enormous Empire of the world, where the sun never set. True, she inherited a bounty of loot from the world over. At one time, pirates scaling the Atlantic high seas were free to pilfer gold from Spanish vessels legitimately under the auspices of the British Crown as long as they paid their dues to the monarch.

True, they went out with their imperial stance with a chip on their shoulders and a stiff upper lip to match. And plunder wealth from civilisations that had found peace with their place in the sun, create mayhem to liberate the oppressed and destroy other cultures with their new economic model.

This turn of events is inevitable. Every nation wants to improve life for itself. The designated / king does that for his subject at the expense of a gamut of benefits for himself and those under his umbrage who held his torch. This way of conquest was thought to trickle down the food chain and continues to date.

There were plundering imperialists, and there were cruel plundering imperialists. Some maimed their subjects without caring about their future. In a way, the British made some humane decisions to ease their administration but ended up causing their Empire's own destruction along with other compelling factors. They laid down plans for proper administrative machinery, invested in education for natives to help (and look down on their own cultures) and created an extensive web of transportation networks. 

If not for the English, this blog would not be in English or an incomprehensible language that could hardly pass for English. We were lucky that English became the lingua franca of the world, the modern language of communication. Left to our politicians to steer us to the future, we would still be a fumbling fishing village ruled by despots, not that they are not preventing this from happening. An unthinking obedient herd of the population led by their leash to the slaughter is their idea of utopia. If we had been savaged by colonists, we would have been brutalised by our own kind. As the Tamil saying goes, "Whether Rama or Raavan rule, it doesn't matter to me, I don't give a damn!"

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A full circle?

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Decided to give this classic movie another shot after the recent turn of events in Jerusalem. Every group seems to be trying to garner some brownie point from the clash. Something that arose as a real estate and enforcement issue has now snowballed to another intifada of sorts. The interesting thing that caught my eye is some faction's labelling of Erdogan as Palestine's saviour and the call for him to re-establish the Ottoman Empire.

If we remember well, the Ottoman was labelled as the sick of Europe towards the end of the 19th century. The Arabs were planning a revolt that appeared to go nowhere. Since the Turkish (Ottoman Empire) were aligned with the Germans in WW1, the British felt it made military sense to support the Arabs to fight the Turks. The Arabs always felt superior to the Turks as the Prophet was an Arab whilst the Turkish ancestors were originally barbaric nomads who embraced Islam. 

Ottoman Empire c.1900

The Middle East then was as tumultuous as it is now, with each tribe factions wanting to control water wells (not oil wells; petroleum was not discovered yet) and territory. TE Lawrence, an archaeologist, a paper pusher and a lieutenant in the British Army stationed in Cairo, wanted a piece of the action in the field. So he joined the Bedouins to be the military advisor to Prince Faisal of Mecca. He crossed the Jordanian deserts to help them defeat the Ottoman Army, bomb their strategic railway line and march all the way to Damascus. All these occurred circa 1917, during World War 1. All the while, the British and the French were busy carving up the whole of the Middle East for themselves.

Peter O'Toole and Omar Shariff
(Lawrence and Shariff Ali)

The experience in the desert war front and the doublespeak of the Army may have proved too much for Lawrence to stomach. Much of what is narrated in this story is based on his book, 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom'. There are many controversies about the TE Lawrence character. Many historians disagree about the accuracy of the facts depicted. He is said to be narcissistic who tend to self-aggrandise. He is plagued with a traumatic upbringing. He was born out of wedlock to a nobleman. Two of his siblings were casualties of WW1, and it affected him deeply. TE Lawrence was doing espionage works for the British Army and is said to be doing it even after his 'Lawrence of Arabia' stint.

Back home, he enrolled in the Air Force under a pseudonym. But, some wonder whether this fascination with going under various surname, which he had done later, had something to do with his own 'borrowed' surname.

Lawrence of Arabia's path (1916-18)

There is a dispute about his sexuality. Many of his Arabs helpers were not mere companions or guides. Their relationship is said to be mere platonic. Nevertheless, the LGBT community place him as a gay icon. Many Arabs would like to believe that Lawrence was so mesmerised by the Arab culture and the Islamic religion that he dressed like an Arab and began quoting the Koran. But, perhaps, he was just an opportunist, working in cahoots with the Imperial forces to cheat the Arabs blind.

Coming to the news that amused me. So, it looks like the Arabs, after being oppressed and illtreated for more than 500 years by the Turks under the Ottoman Empire, need the Turks' help to free themselves (Palestinians are Arabs) from a common enemy, Jews.

But then it does not compute. With so many denominations within the religion and each proclaiming to be holier than the other as well as calling for each others' head, I wonder how long they would stick on to fight the common enemy before they pull the trigger against each other? The Arabs feel superior to the other Muslims because the Prophet was an Arab; the Persians place themselves above the Arabs with their long civilisation to back them up. The Turks with their Mongol ancestry are one notch lower than them. All of them look at the Africans as slaves and Asians as lesser beings.

Turkish media’s ‘Palestinian activist’:
‘Erdogan, come liberate Palestine.
Come establish the Ottoman Empire again.’

Another thing that fascinated me whilst watching this movie was the aversion that the Arab tribes had against each other. In this movie, we witness the blatant killing of a traveller of low social standing for drinking water off a well belonging to a nobleman. And I guess things have not changed much since then. And the audacity of the world to equate caste discrimination as synonymous to Hindu culture only. The want to dominate is universal.

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