Word: sultanate
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...During the war, the Sultan gave $4,200,000 to the British war effort, did not lose heart even when the Japanese swept down through Johore and captured Singapore. With his wife he swore off liquor until the British reconquest. When Johore was "liberated" in 1945, the joyous Sultan cried out: "Now we can break our vow. Open the champagne...
When Singapore's British society behaved stuffily toward his show-girl fiancee, the Sultan struck back by firing all the Britons in his service and planting shrubs on the fairways and greens of the golf course used by the sahibs, which was on his property. But the romance faltered, and Lydia Hill, wearing a large diamond ring, returned to London and was killed in the blitz. "I am heartbroken," said the Sultan, who had followed her to Britain. A few days later he met reddish-blonde Rumanian Marcella Mendl and married her, explaining: "It was love at first sight...
Despite his lively interest in women and wine, the Sultan brilliantly managed Johore, a jungle state the size of New Jersey with a population of nearly a million Malays, Indians and Chinese. When he took power in 1895 on the death of his father, the Sultan shifted the economy from opium and gambling to rubber. With other Malay states, Johore now produces one-third of the world's natural rubber. He angrily opposed self-rule for Malaya, outraged local nationalists by snapping: "It is all very well to clamor for independence, but where are your warships, your planes...
...Sultan of Johore is 64-year-old Ismail, whose mother was one of Sir Ibrahim's original four Malay wives. But Ismail can rule for only a few weeks in the semi-autocratic fashion of his dead father. Next month Johore will elect an Executive Council headed by a Prime Minister, and the Sultan will become a purely constitutional figurehead. The old days are gone, and the old ways are dying, but even the most nationalist opponents of the late, crotchety Sultan experienced a sense of loss. Said one: "He was Malaya's grand old man. His service...
Died. Sir Ibrahim, 85, fabulously wealthy, fun-loving Sultan of Johore; in London (see FOREIGN NEWS...