“THE MURDERER OF problems and negotiate their relationship BANGKHUNPHROM”: THE with the West. SEMI-COLONIAL SIAM Introduction AND ITS EARLY LITERARY 1 ADAPTATIONS Translation played an important role in the colonizing process. The colonizers often 2 Thosaeng Chaochuti translated important texts such as religious and legal documents into local languages in order to allow the colonized to consume Abstract these texts and more importantly to submit to their authority. Vicente Rafael (1988) It has been widely acknowledged that gives an example of this use of translation translation played an important role in the in his book Contracting Colonialism: process of colonization. Colonizers often Translation and Christian Conversion in used it to reinforce their hegemony over Tagalog Society under Early Spanish the colonized who, in turn, employed it to Rule . He writes that in the 16 th century encourage either submission to or Spanish priests not only translated the resistance of that hegemony. Focusing on Bible into Tagalog but also preached in Vajiravudh’s translation, or more precisely that local language so as to facilitate the adaptation, of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The conversion of the local people, which was Murders in the Rue Morgue,” this article synonymous with the submission to the illustrates how the story reflects not only divinely anointed Spanish King. So the desire to be civilized like Westerners translation enabled, in this case, both but also the strategies that the Siamese conversion and colonization elite employed in order to achieve the simultaneously (Rafael 1988: 154–166). trappings of civilization, namely the Venuti (1998) also writes in The Scandals construction of a primitive Other and the of Translation: Towards an Ethics of imitation of Europeans. These strategies Difference that in the first decades of the were, however, inherently problematic. 20 th century the Dutch attempted to Imitation did not, for example, pave the undermine the nationalist movement in way towards acceptance but reinforced Indonesia by translating adventure instead the stereotype of the mimicking romances that were filled with racist natives. The article shows, however, that stereotypes such as novels by Rider the Siamese elite were able to use the Haggard and Jules Verne. They hoped, by tactic of adaptation, both literary and so doing, not only to decrease the otherwise, to navigate through these readership for radical writings but also to encourage the Indonesians to absorb the racist idea that they were inferior to white men and therefore needed to be guided by 1 This article was funded by the National Research University Project of CHE and the them (Venuti 1998: 167). Ratchadaphiseksomphot Endowment Fund (HS 1025A). Translation was not, however, a tool 2 Lecturer, Department of Comparative exclusive to the colonizers. It was also Literature, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn employed, to various ends, by the colonized. University, Bangkok, Thailand. Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access “The Murderer of Bangkhunphrom” Venuti argues that for them “translation European powers. What these narratives fashions images of their hegemonic others often neglect to point out, however, was and themselves that can variously solicit the fact that Siam was, similar to China, submission, collaboration, or resistance” forced by these very powers to make (1998: 159). To illustrate the use of several political and economic concessions. translation as resistance, Venuti (2005) Thus, the country was more properly a points in his article “Local Contingencies: semi-colony rather than a fully independent Translation and National Identities" to the nation. 3 This semi-colonial status meant example of China. In the second half of that translation was no longer a simple the 19 th century China was faced with both affair of “soliciting submission [...] or military and commercial invasion by resistance” against the hegemonic others foreign powers. After losing the Opium as Venuti argues. It became a complicated War to Britain in 1842, China had to grant matter that involved both the Siamese economic and political privileges to several nobility’s desire for and wariness of Western countries who then established farangs or Europeans. This paper seeks to colonies in various ports. Later in 1898– understand the complex role that 1900 the local movement against the translation played in Siamese history by foreign presence known as the Boxer examining Prince Vajiravudh’s Uprising had to be repressed by an translation 4 of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The international force. In this social and Murders in the Rue Morgue” (Poe 1969). political climate, Lin Shu and Yan Fu The first portion of the paper will focus on started translating Western literary works Poe’s short story. It will interpret the tale in the hope of encouraging their fellow as a struggle between a primitive Other countrymen to adopt some of the ideas that and a white man and will investigate the were espoused in these works and that strategies used by the former in order to they believed would enable them to resist overcome the oppressive self/Other, foreign invasion. Lin Shu’s preface to the civilized/uncivilized binary in which he novel The Spirit of Bambatse by Haggard finds himself inextricably caught. The suggests, for example, that “such Western second section of the paper will then literary texts are valuable because ‘they examine Prince Vajiravudh’s translation of encourage the white man’s spirit of the story. It will argue that since this exploration’ and can instill a similar translation involved major changes to the ‘spirit’ in his Chinese readers” (Venuti characters and the story-line, it qualifies 2005: 187). more as an adaptation and exemplifies a different and perhaps more effective Although Venuti focuses here on the means that the Siamese elite were, as discourse of resistance, one may perhaps question whether these translations do not 3 A semi-colony has been defined by Tamara demonstrate, at the same time, a kind of Loos (2006: 2) as a country whose status is admiration or even desire for the hegemonic between that of a sovereign state and a colony, Other. In order to explore the complexities a country that is “neither fully under the and ambiguities that are involved in the act authority of a foreign power nor completely in of translation, we will turn to the example control of its own population or territory.” of Thailand. Thailand or Siam was, as 4 Prince Vajiravudh (1881–1925) became the mainstream accounts of its history invariably Crown Prince of Siam in 1894 and ascended emphasize, never formally colonized by the throne as the sixth King in the Chakri dynasty in 1910. 31 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 04:14:12AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue No. 18, 2009 semi-colonial rather than colonial subjects, figure appears to conform to contemporary able to employ in their dealings with views of the racial Other. Eighteenth- farangs. century naturalists believed, for example, that the natives in the colonies were “Aping” the white man: the morally inferior to them and their own attempt to transcend the self- people. Carl Linnaeus did, for instance, describe the Homo Afer as “phlegmatic, other binary in Poe’s “The cunning, lazy, lustful, careless, and Murders in the Rue Morgue” governed by caprice”6 (Haller 1971: 4). The same sentiment was echoed by One of the most intriguing features of plantation owners in Jamaica. According Poe’s tale is the fact that the perpetrator of to them, their African slaves were “an the horrific double murders turns out to be inferior species” who “were ‘addicted to an escaped orang-outan. The choice of this stealing,’ practiced ‘low cunning and particular animal is telling because it was contempt of truth,’ and were possessed often compared in the eighteenth century with ‘the greatest aversion to every species to the primitive people that the Europeans of labor.’ The blacks were, in other words, were encountering for the first time either lazy thieves and liars” (Baker 1970: 434). directly during their travels to the colonies This conflation between the racial and the or indirectly through accounts of those criminal Other is also found in Poe’s tale travels. English naturalist Robert Dunn where we have, on the one side, an orang- argued, for example, that the brain of an outan who commits two gruesome murders African, “in marked resemblance to the and, on the other, a law-abiding detective orang-outan’s, developed auspiciously at who subsequently solves these murders. first but never proceeded past that of the Caucasian in boyhood” (Haller 1971: 35). Poe further conforms, in his portrayal of Friedrich Tiedemann, a German anatomist, the murderous ape, to the contemporary similarly claimed that an African’s brain belief that the racial Other was irrational “closely resembled the structure of the or lacking in reason. In his attempt to brain of the orangoutan” (Haller 1971: 35). justify the war against the American Given this association between “the man- Indians, for instance, Francisco de Vitoria, like beasts and the beast-like men of a Spanish theologian, jurist and professor, Africa,” (Haller 1971: 30) one could wrote that “these barbarians are not argue, as critics such as Nancy Harrowitz altogether mad,” but “they are not far from and Ed White 5 have done, that the ape in being so” (Todorov 1999: 150). In a Poe’s tale is not just an ape but rather a similar manner, the narrator of Poe’s tale representation of the racial and primitive concludes, when asked to reflect on the Other. 6 Carl Linnaeus introduced in Systema naturae This interpretation is further corroborated a taxonomic system that divided mankind into by the fact that Poe’s portrayal of the four major groups based on skin color, namely Homo Americanus, Homo Europaeus, Homo Asiaticus, and Homo Afer.