Word: sultanates
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Cried Pretender Don Juan: "I am not prepared to be treated by General Franco as if I were the Sultan of Morocco...
...after five years of secretive, studious preparation, Raffles purchased from Johore's Sultan the rights of "protection" over Singapore island. When the news reached London, months later, the East India Company directors were outraged; they had already lost more money than they could afford in such wildcat schemes of trade expansion. But while they debated what to do, the new city of Singapore sprang almost overnight into what Raffles described as "the emporium and pride of the East." Within a year "it was a common sight to count 20 vessels at one time in the harbor"; nine years later...
...Wind Rises. The Company began in 1872 when a Scots engineer named William Clarke Cowie (who looked like a bartender in one of the very best hotels) ran a Spanish blockade to deliver his cargo of arms to the Sultan of Sulu, ruler of North Borneo. The grateful Sultan granted him shipping rights in his domain; later, at a resplendent dinner, he let Cowie persuade him to cede sovereignty over North Borneo to a British syndicate (in an expansive mood, the Sultan threw in the mother-of-pearl dessert plates on the table, along with his realm). Cowie...
...vigor, as that of all companies must, in time abated. Last week, the Company was up for sale to Britain's Labor Government. The price was not yet fixed (the Company had rejected a Government offer of ?2,100,000), and assorted descendants of the original Sultan of Sulu were raising claims to the island. But there was no doubt that the grandly anachronistic rule of the last corporate Raj was doomed. Said the president of the court of directors, white-haired, parchment-skinned, 76-year-old Major General (retired) Sir Neill Malcolm: "[The Company] is not quite...
While a five-hour debate raged in Parliament, eight of the Sultans prepared to leave for London to protest in person. A ninth, the fabulous, 72-year-old ex-playboy Sultan of Johore was already there, leading the fight from a swank suite in Grosvenor House. Gone were the days when British officials used to remove him (for his own good) from Singapore nightspots at 10 p.m.; now he was telling the British where to head...