Besmirched with blood: an emotional history of transnational romance in colonial Singapore

Abstract

In 1900, in the British colony of Singapore, a Siamese man, Manit, shot his beloved British wife, Maude, and allegedly attempted suicide. Several competing interpretations of the incident exist. In one, Manit is considered a deranged and treacherous fraud; in another, he is a pitiable cuckold; in the third, he is a respectable gentleman suffering from unrequited love. Surprisingly, given the racialized context of high imperialism in Southeast Asia, the British in Singapore came to empathize with the Asian Manit as a lovelorn gentleman and to disavow their own countrywoman. The court ultimately acquitted him of any wrongdoing. This article considers the competing interpretations and explains why a seemingly race-blind one prevailed. It reviews genealogical records, personal letters, newspaper accounts of court proceedings, and internal Thai government internal records, which provide unusually rich documentation of a romance that crossed national, cultural, and racial boundaries and created surprising transnational affiliations based on emotional empathy. Maude and Manit's relationship and court case provide a captivating glimpse into the sentimental, dramatic, and sometimes brutal details of daily life; the emotional and subjective aspects of history that are often discarded as mere embellishment to more ‘substantive’ histories focused squarely on political and economic power. However, it is precisely the emotive aspects of their relationship and their interpretation that highlight the existence of a transnational, transracial alliance between Manit and British elites in Singapore, based on shared notions of upper class masculinity, common educational experiences, and a mutual spatial and power relationship with the imperial metropole in London. The case cuts across racial divisions and highlights a transracial emotional style. Approaching history through a study of emotional discourse sheds light on a broader racial, sexual, and gendered organization of power in late colonial Southeast Asia.