Let us Talk of Many Things; of Books and Queens and Pirates, of Mystery and Kings...: Lies That Blind by E.S. Alexander

Welcome to my Blog!
Wander through wonderful worlds
real and fictional,
meet interesting people,
visit exciting places
and find a few good books
to enjoy along the way!

PIRACY, SOUTHEAST ASIAN STYLE

Edward Thatch, better known as Blackbeard; William Kidd; Calico Jack Rackham. Most of us in the West are familiar with the names of these real-life ‘pirates of the Caribbean’. Many of you may also be familiar with the exploits of Ching Shih, the female pirate leader who terrorised shipping in the South China Seas in the early part of the 18th century. But how many are familiar with the marauding activities of ‘Bugis’ and ‘Lanoons’, or have heard about the piracy rife throughout Southeast Asia? A region that, today, TIME Magazine describes as ‘The Most Dangerous Waters in the World.’

Back in the day, pirates sailing the Malay Archipelago would attack Dutch and British ships, relieving them of their cargoes of silk, spices, and slaves, by using pistols and daggers. Nowadays, with a third of global trade and a quarter of the world’s oil transiting through Southeast Asian waters, so TIME tells us, regional pirates continue to kill and plunder, only now with machetes and Kalashnikovs.

While writing my historical novel, based on events that took place in the late 18th century in Malaya, I became interested in why men across this region turned to piracy. Certainly, there are those in any culture who are drawn to easy pickings and a life of freedom and adventure, (assuming, of course, that you didn’t get caught and hanged). But as I began delving into the plight of Malay fishermen, also known as orang laut or people of the sea, it seemed that there was a social phenomenon at play, similar to the Enclosure Acts in England that began in the 16th century. Those Acts deprived smallholders, and landless labourers, the right to graze their sheep and cattle under the centuries-old common field system. Men who had previously been free to catch rabbits and other game to feed their families became labelled as poachers and were jailed or executed as criminals. On the other side of the world something similar oppressed ordinary people, only much earlier. Fishermen, obliged to pay heavy duties on their catches and to give up ownership of their belongings at the whim of a chieftain or sultan, turned to piracy as a means of making a living.

The practice of piracy so infested the waters known as the Straits of Malacca that one sultan who ruled over the Kingdom of Queda—to which the island of Penang, the setting of my novel belonged—sent an army to Penang to clear it of the 3,000 or so people living there. These individuals were such a threat to ships that they were forcibly expelled. By the time the antagonist of my novel, Captain Francis Light, arrived there were barely more than fifty families living on Penang.

The fierceness of such desperate men cannot be overstated. As the author of the Hikayat Abdullah, published in 1849, wrote: ‘A voyage from Malacca to Singapore was looked upon almost as a journey to the grave…’

Lanoon war boat
© public domain

But not all of those who raided ships and plundered coastline property in the region were born poor. The problem of piracy in the region was compounded by the fact that the Malay custom of sultans having several wives, and many more gundeks or concubines, meant that the royal courts were awash with anak raja or princes. With the sultan’s treasury unable (or unwilling) to support them, they became ‘sea-raiders’, benefiting from the protection of the court as long as they adhered to royal guidelines as to who could be attacked and where.

According to James Low writing in The British Settlement of Penang, first published in 1852: ‘…it only takes a couple of hours after a crime is committed to place the perpetrator beyond the fangs of the law… piracy being the perquisite of the younger and unprovided for branches of Malayan families of high rank.’

Indeed, the sultans and their chiefs were often complicit in encouraging systemic piracy. As the real-life character, Francis Light, points out in my novel (words taken directly from one of his letters to his East India Company paymasters in Calcutta): ‘The feudal government of the Malays encourages these pirates, since every chief is desirous of procuring these desperate fellows to bring him plunder and execute his revengeful purposes’.

Southeast Asian pirate
©Public domain Wikipedia Commons

However, the pall of piracy can also be laid at the door of the colonising forces in the region during the 17th and 18th centuries. The Dutch, in particular, were notorious for enforcing their monopolies. Indonesian and Malay hatred of the Hollanders was so great that, even today, if you put the word belanda into Google Translate, it will come up as ‘Dutch’ or ‘the Netherlands’. Why is that an insult? Because belanda also refers to the long-nosed proboscis monkey found in the jungles of Borneo.

As a result of Dutch dominance in the region, otherwise law-abiding Bugis settlers based in Selangor lost their livelihoods as coastal traders. The only way they could escape the onerous Dutch-imposed taxes and laws and survive was to turn to piracy. Engaged in that activity they found relatively easy and frequent pickings, since the Straits of Malacca was the fastest, most direct route for Dutch and English traders to sail between Macau and the eastern ports of India.

The disdain between the local inhabitants and the European powers intent on colonising them went both ways. At least, that’s the sense I got from reading a letter that Francis Light wrote in January 1794 to the Governor-General in Bengal, just months before an armada of Malay pirates and mercenaries amassed to reclaim Penang on behalf of its legal owner, the Sultan of Queda:

‘(The Malays) may be divided into two orders, the one of husbandmen who are quiet and inoffensive, and easily ruled…The other order is employed in navigating prows (boats). They are, in general, almost without exception, a bad description of people, addicted to smoking opium, gaming and other vices; to rob and assassinate is only shameful when they fail of success. Ten or fifteen men will live in a small prow…For months they will skulk in bays and rivers, where there are no inhabitants, watching for unwary traders; they spend their whole time in sloth and indolence…and are only roused by the appearance of plunder which, when they have obtained it, they return home or to some other port to spend. Here they are obliged to part with a share of their plunder to some chief, under whose protection they squander the remainder, and again proceed in quest of new adventure.’

But is this ‘turning a blind eye’ by Malay sultans and chiefs any different to the attitude Queen Elizabeth I took with Sir Francis Drake? After all, she not only encouraged this English ‘privateer’ to attack Spanish galleons but afforded him protection and status. The same was true for Sir Henry Morgan, variously referred to as an ‘adventurer’ or ‘buccaneer’. But look more closely at his activities and he was, essentially just a royally rewarded (this time by Charles II) bloodthirsty pirate.

What would you risk to avoid obscurity?

Malaya, 1788

Aspiring journalist Jim Lloyd jeopardises his future in ways he never could have imagined. He risks his wealthy father’s wrath to ride the coat-tails of Captain Francis Light, an adventurer governing the East India Company’s new trading settlement on Penang. Once arrived on the island, Jim—as Light’s assistant—hopes that chronicling his employer’s achievements will propel them both to enduring fame. But the naïve young man soon discovers that years of deception and double-dealing have strained relations between Light and Penang’s legal owner, Sultan Abdullah of Queda, almost to the point of war. Tensions mount: Pirate activity escalates, traders complain about Light’s monopolies, and inhab-itants threaten to flee, fearing a battle the fledgling settlement cannot hope to win against the Malays. Jim realises that a shared obsession with renown has brought him and Light perilously close to infamy: a fate the younger man, at least, fears more than death. Yet Jim will not leave Penang because of his dedication to Light’s young son, William, and his perplexing attraction to a mercurial Dutch-man. He must stay and confront his own misguided ambitions as well as help save the legacy of a man he has come to despise.

Inspired by true events, Lies That Blind is a story featuring historical character Francis Light (1740-1794) who, in an effort to defy his mortality, was seemingly willing to put the lives and livelihoods of a thousand souls on Penang at risk.

Buy Links:

Universal Link: https://books2read.com/u/bwaxNe

Amazon UK:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lies-That-Blind-Century-Penang/dp/981495442X

Amazon US:

https://www.amazon.com/Lies-that-Blind-Century-Penang-ebook/dp/B09HKXYT12

Amazon CA:

https://www.amazon.ca/Lies-that-Blind-Century-Penang-ebook/dp/B09HKXYT12

Amazon AU:

https://www.amazon.com.au/Lies-that-Blind-Century-Penang-ebook/dp/B09HKXYT12

About the author

E.S. Alexander was born in St. Andrews, Scotland in 1954, although her family moved to England a few years later. Her earliest memories include producing a newspaper with the John Bull printing set she was given one Christmas. She wrote and directed her first play, Osiris, at age 16, performed to an audience of parents, teachers, and pupils by the Lower Fifth Drama Society at her school in Bolton, Lancashire. Early on in her writing career, Liz wrote several short stories featuring ‘The Dover Street Sleuth’, Dixon Hawke for a D.C. Thomson newspaper in Scotland. Several of her (undoubtedly cringe-worthy) teenage poems were published in An Anthology of Verse.

Liz combined several decades as a freelance journalist writing for UK magazines and newspapers ranging from British Airway’s Business Life and the Daily Mail, to Marie Claire and Supply Chain Management magazine, with a brief stint as a presenter/reporter for various radio stations and television channels, including the BBC. In 2001 she moved to the United States where she earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. in educational psychology from The University of Texas at Austin.

She has written and co-authored 17 internationally published, award-winning non-fiction books that have been translated into more than 20 languages.

In 2017, Liz relocated to Malaysia. She lives in Tanjung Bungah, Pulau Pinang where she was inspired to embark on one of the few forms of writing left for her to tackle: the novel.

Social Media Links:

Website: www.esalexander.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ES_Alexander7

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ESAlexanderLTB/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/E.S.-Alexander/e/B09HQLL4T8

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59131359-lies-that-blind