Dislocated to Success (22 page)

Contrary to popular belief, quite commonly from my own benches, I do sometimes play Mr Nasty whilst conducting diplomacy and can do so quite effectively. Whilst not quite at the Tebbit level of bluntness, there are times when you put away the carrots and reach for the big stick. My meeting with the Marathas was one of those times where firm language and the word "No" had to be used more often than normal and without the usual diplomatic circumlocutions.

It is usually fairly obvious that people have cis advice, although it seems the further East you venture the more likely that they are kept in the background. Given the tenor of the initial discussions, I gathered that their main advisor had at best a pass degree in Law from the Polytechnic of North London. There were various phrases being used which were redolent of the chippier sort of legal practice found above a suburban shop.

I quickly rejected their claim to Bombay, and their demand that we stop protecting the Portuguese, and frankly broke into slightly mocking laughter at their request for compensation for the tragic losses to their army which had suffered when it got "lost" near the Portuguese forts. I did consider handing them a bill for medical attention to their wounded, but considering that most of their wounded decided that Bombay was a better place than the Maratha army, I demurred.

I also made it quite clear where British interest lay - that we were interested in free and open trade, and that we did not have any intention to interfere in the internal politics of India. However, we did point out that there were substantial numbers of British citizens with interests in India who - given a suitable rule of law - might invest in, say, the Gujarat. However, the constant wars and arbitrary governance were not conducive to this.

As a nice break from the tedium of talks, we gave them a nice picnic and demonstration of Bombay's latest asset - a squadron of Abbot self-propelled guns. Artillery demonstrations are always very impressive to trans potentates and this one was rather good; they were somewhat impressed.

Not that that really improved the mood of the talks; there were further issues with various claims of the Marathas, mainly concerning Hyderabad and the Lower Deccan. Their conquests in that area had been stopped by our arrival and they were almost seeking permission to continue with them. I was heavily non-committal on such matters; I merely pointed out that we already had good relations with several small states on the West Coast and with Hyderabad, and that we were trading with them and we did not like disruption to our trade.

Trying to at least make things not entirely negative, I pointed out that they of all states had massive opportunities for commerce with us and that we would be perfectly happy to discuss removal of any tariff barriers. To be fair, this wasn't rejected out of hand, but there were some lengthy and very cis-inspired speeches about economic hegemony. However, I think there was some glimmer of hope that the rising prosperity of the Greater Bombay area might filter over the Ghats.

South India was quite complex: you had the Dutch, Portuguese and French possessions, you had the various Indian states, some of which proclaimed their independence and some of which had varying levels of fealty to the Mughals and the Marathas. We had invited everyone who wanted to come to discuss trade at Padmanabhapuram, where we already had a thriving consulate with the Travancore Kingdom. Most accepted, although Mysore had to decline in the end; the last ruler had died a few weeks ago under some suspicious circumstances and the new ruler was also having trouble with his military, and - whilst sending warm felicitations - declined to send people at this time.

The Travancore Kingdom had already reached a suitable agreement with us on trade, and were content to merely bask in the prestige of hosting the British. There was a lot of faffing and minor points of protocol, but with the help of a lot of old notes cribbed from the India Office Archives we didn't make any complete howlers. However, the time it took did allow me to discover Keralan food, which is bad for the waistline but extremely delicious and - once spices were flowing again - very ration-compatible.

One of the minor points was a small delegation from the Church of England to discuss matters with the local Christians. Obviously, I kept a studied indifference to this, but I understand that they were given a warm welcome and that the discussions went well. Certainly, there has been a small flow of Keralan students to the UK to study theological matters ever since.

The main discussions were with Hyderabad, which was the big dog in the area; however, at that time it was a rather worried big dog. It had, as it did at the time of Partition, a ruling Muslim elite and a large Hindu population. It was very aware that its nine years of independence from the Mughals was somewhat fragile, and of the history of defeats it would have suffered, and that it was landlocked. Its considerable wealth meant that it was certainly a target for expansionists. I held long discussions with the Nawab, who was most personable, but we did not come to any conclusions except that the UK would send some advisors that could assist with economic planning.

The Zamorins and the Cochins were somewhat more wary; both were nominally under the protection of the Dutch, who had a very nice little set-up at Cochin. Both were rather keen to get rid of the Dutch, although neither wanted to replace the Dutch with ourselves. The Dutch, however, were happy to allow trade deals as long as there was a certain percentage for themselves. So we secured some valuable trade in cinnamon, other spices and hardwoods, although the cinnamon came with a considerable tariff which I was unhappy with.

The various Nawabs of the Carnatic were less wary; they had also only recently stopped recognising Delhi, and their main concerns were now Hyderabad and the French at Madras. They did not have many surpluses, nor did they particularly seem to want anything but guns and an alliance against each other, but the Nawab of Arcot did take me aside on a matter which I could not, as a minister of the Crown, help him with. I did, however, suggest to him that he should send someone to London to investigate Hatton Garden.

On a more minor note, the small Kingdom of Coorg made an agreement with us to explore coffee plantations there; I arranged for a small delegation of them to go back to the UK to discuss how to start what had been a very lucrative trade back in OTL. They also had black pepper and rice to sell, and joined the Zamorins in a bid to improve the roads in the area.

The most difficult discussions were with the representatives from Kandy. Whilst the Dutch had much of Ceylon in a fairly iron grip, Kandy had remained independent, mainly due to the terrain and the lower economic value of the area. Unfortunately, Kandy had no good port through which we could conduct extensive trade - and we certainly weren't going to ally with them. They even promised to rule the whole of Ceylon as a tributary state if we would assist them in removing the Dutch. This did cause an amusing incident when I heard my translator, Mr Mendis, had explained to them that the British had ruled after the Dutch, and did they really want that to happen again? - and they told him emphatically that was the case.

This did lead to the question of how all this trade would reach our shores; Bombay was perhaps too far, and whilst the Portuguese offered Goa, that might have also created diplomatic difficulties. We agreed that we would accept any cargos at Bombay and that we would encourage the various trading companies to use suitable ports along both the west and the east coast. We also tried to arrange a free-trade area, or at least one where goods destined for Britain would be charged no extra tariffs. Even at the time of writing of this book, this has not yet come to pass - although there have been discussions and meetings about it on a regular basis since my visit.

Phuket was actually the place I stayed longest on this trip; there had been a succession of meetings arranged with various major potentates, minor sultans, rajas, kings - and also with groups of merchants, including the local representatives of the VOC. I also had to be very careful not to tread on Heseltine's toes, as the Lease was formally his territory.

As you can imagine, I had a small entourage of translators, several of which had their cards marked as perhaps not being fully reliable - although I tend to find that was just an abundance of caution. Most cis translators knew firmly where their bread was buttered and acted in that respect; the more ambitious types had long since left the UK or were plotting in some basement in Dalston.

I was, however, amused by my assigned Thai translator, as I vaguely remembered when he had been a houseboy for a friend who was a curator at the British Museum. The great thing about Loom was that apart from the L-R problem, he spoke good English, and that - being originally from the North East of Thailand - he was fairly capable in Lao and Khmer dialects. He was also, like many of his former profession, deliciously indiscreet, and I learned quite a bit about what was actually going in the lease - which wasn't as rosy as reports said, although far from being bad.

Most of the diplomacy occurred by them coming to me, and I either held court on Belfast or in a rather charming little hall which at least had air-conditioning. However, the more important the personage, the more I had to deal through middlemen; this wasn't actually a bad thing, because it meant that we didn't have to deal with some much-formalised protocol.

However, initially, I had to pay my respects to the Second Guardian of the Palace Gate at Nam Theung - which was the small port opposite the lease at the north of the island. This involved a jolly expedition by jeep to the North of the island and a ferry boat across. We had thrown up a decent single-track road network, and we were expanding that to cover all villages before anything else. Loom claimed that it was, in places, better than the roads that he been here before. I could see signs of involvement - a small school house, a clinic, a sign for various companies "improving things" - but Loom confirmed that most of the island had barely noticed the farang.

The meeting with Second Gate was quite perfunctory, just one of those things that has to be done; most diplomacy is dealt with by the Governor and is at the colonial level. We did have a discussion about whether there might be assistance to improve the waterways of Ayutthaya and I did sign a second contract for another Great Road, the Thais being extremely pleased with the progress of the first one. He also asked if we were interesting in buying more rice as production was increasing - well, that was a very easy question to answer. Whilst the quantities seemed huge to the Thais, it was only a moderate amount to us.

I also had a number of very much meet-and-greet encounters with the minor powers; very few had anything to offer and we didn't have much interest in them. It was very much on the level of pledging eternal peace and friendship, they would then ask for guns and we would say no. The only differences for this were a couple of the Malay states, who were, well, a little hostile because of their rejection some time before. However, I quite simply reminded them that if they imposed tariffs, we would impose tariffs in return.

Burma, or rather, the Toungoo kingdoms thereof, was a somewhat different matter. The one thing Michael was short of for anywhere east of South Africa was energy. There were plenty of energy reserves around, but very few of them in the right place. The Thai coal reserves were in some of the more inaccessible and more independent parts of Ayutthaya and the gas was mainly offshore. However, Burma had substantial easily-accessed oil in several places. However, the Toungoo weren't exactly in a healthy state and they knew this. My Burmese translator was a formidable young lady whose father had been quite a prominent politician in the old Burma. She was not impressed with the attitude of the Toungoo to say the least, and I got the feeling that she was of the "leave things well alone" group. I must admit that I tended to agree with her, letting people develop at their own pace whilst offering opportunities for trade and development was in line with my thoughts for most of the world. The Toungoo, however, offered a very simple deal. If we could deal one way or another with their problems with the Manipur tribes who were raiding them, we would have as much access to oil as we wanted. This sounded fraught with complications, but I said I would take it back to London for discussion; the idea was rejected, easier to ship coal from Whitebank which was probably the sensible move anyway.

Compared to many of the others the Koreans were a joy to deal with. Agreed, they did blackguard all their neighbours, and they seemed rather easy to take offence over small protocol matters, but they were also remarkably hard-headed and had clearly agreed a number of issues beforehand. They also had delegation leads who were cis, although obviously the trans were very much in charge.

Their offer was simple: they understood that we brought change that could not be resisted and that was permanently transformational. However, they were concerned about the problems that it would bring; not least with their two major neighbours. They wished to open their society up - slowly, but not too slowly.

They proposed trade; they had originally considered a lease of the island of Jeju, but they had reconsidered. They suggested that in five ports and cities they would establish a free trade zone - and they meant a proper free trade zone; we could agree a tariff regime after that for anywhere else. They were also willing to allow British companies to operate in Korea for extractive, manufacturing and agricultural industries - but they did require three things: firstly, a very moderate profit tax; secondly, a commitment to train Koreans in non-manual roles; and thirdly, that part of the extracted minerals would be sold within Korea at reasonable market prices.