Heroes Day: the eve of Armistice Day

We all know 11 November is Armistice Day, when we remember those fallen in battle, especially in major wars that everyone knows about. But few people other than Indonesians are familiar with the Battle of Surabaya, celebrated on 10 November as Heroes Day in Indonesia.

This is despite the fact that one the main protagonists, apart from Indonesian nationalists, were the British armed forces (including many Indians), with numbers of Dutch personnel and a few Australians. It was a battle for independence for Indonesians and for reassertion of colonial power by the Dutch, with British and  – for a while – Japanese caught in between.

During the battle, there were propaganda broadcasts by ‘Surabaya Sue’, a Scots woman whose life included many moves, name changes, adventures and delusions. If she is to be believed, at least two Australians present crossed over to the Republican side, as did significant numbers of Indians.

To see how the battle worked out, click  DUTCH EAST INDIES October 1945: the Battle of Surabaya part 1 and DUTCH EAST INDIES November 1945: the Battle of Surabaya part 2.

Happy Heroes Day to Indonesia, and respectful remembrance to all Commonwealth forces who did what they thought was their duty.

ANNA UNMASKED

Ever seen the musical The King and I? Or watched Jodie Foster in Anna and the King of Siam? Sure these films are different, but they both portray Anna Leonowens as a plucky Christian English governess alone in the Siamese court, battling fearlessly for enlightened principles against a barbarous autocracy, and guiding Siam (Thailand) along the path to reform.

This sort of imagery built upon that in the 1944 book Anna and the King of Siam, based on Anna’s own writings about her Siam sojourn in the 1860s. All the above were exercises in myth-making, as revealed in a carefully-researched biography by Alfred Habegger called Masked: The Life of Anna Leonowens, Schoolmistress at the Court of Siam (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014).

Jodie Foster with Chow Yun-Fat

For her self-crafted persona, Anna concealed that she was no ‘lady’ in the sense used then, but rather the daughter of an English sergeant and a half-Indian woman, who attended a charitable school in India. She married an Irishman, following him through doomed career moves in Singapore, Australia and Penang until he died penniless. For a while, she tried to run a school in Singapore before scoring the job of governess to King Mongkut’s many progeny. Cutting all ties with her family (she had previously quarreled with a number of them), she set off for Bangkok with her two kids and created a new identity for herself as a pure English lady.

Despite conflict and breakdowns, Anna displayed true grit as well as arrogance, surviving there for five years. However, her influence on king and country was far less than she made out. She was not, for instance, the architect of slavery abolition in the kingdom. And to this day Thais vehemently object to King Mongkut being portrayed as a bit of a boof and to suggestions Anna played a key role in Siam’s modernisation.

After Siam, Anna moved to North America, where she re-tooled her identity as a writer and lecturer. For many years, she enjoyed fame based on her mythologised life, negative tales (and outright lies) about King Mongkut, his hareem and Siam in general. In the process, Anna shamelessly plagiarised other people’s writings and boldly faced down anyone who fingered her falsehoods. She was active and apparently respected in the fields of education and women’s rights, dying at the age of 88 in Canada.

So, a remarkable woman who showed real pluck in handling the cards life dealt her, but also a fraud to some extent. Nevertheless, Anna’s self-styled legend seems likely to endure in popular imagination.

Source: http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/new/?ID=2155#!