Word: sultanic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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There is probably no finer house in Malaya than Bukit Serene (peaceful hill), the green-tiled granite palace of the Sultan of Johore. But the Sultan has never occupied Bukit Serene. Four years ago he was persuaded to let it indefinitely to Malcolm MacDonald, the British commissioner general in Southeast Asia, at a nominal rent-just enough to pay the wages of the palace's 37 gardeners...
...Sultan, an old Oxonian, had no reason, especially in his personal history, to like British officials, or planters, or Singapore's British businessmen. They had not openly objected to his marriage back in 1930 to Scottish-born Helen Wilson (after he had shed an unspecified number of Moslem wives, and she had shed a husband who happened to be the Sultan's personal physician), but they left him in no doubt about their views of his method of divorcing Helen. In the traditional Moslem manner, the Sultan called it off by saying "Talak [I divorce you]" the required...
...thought something should be done about this state of near-anarchy is handsome Hamengku Buwono, 40, Sultan of Jogjakarta and Indonesia's Defense Minister. A 24-carat Sultan with an impeccable anti-Dutch background and the strongest man in the government, he decided to pull together at least one corner of the disorganized fabric: the army. The Indonesian army is an unwieldy, unreliable mob of 250,000 poorly armed, badly disciplined ex-guerrillas who grabbed guns to fight the Dutch, stayed on as "soldiers." Enthusiastically backed by his professional high command, the Sultan ordered unfit ex-guerrillas dismissed...
Three of its seven divisions promptly revolted against the Sultan Defense Minister while-to avoid charges of mutiny-professing continued allegiance to the chief of state, President Achmad Soekarno. Regiments fought within themselves and against each other...
Confronted with this rebellion, the weak government fired the Sultan's pros, promoted the insurgents, and virtually handed them the army. Overwhelmed by futility, the Sultan last week resigned. History, he said, would judge whether he had been right...