A hundred and fifty years ago, a young Englishman founded a private raj on the coast of Borneo. The world that resulted, boasting stone quays, great swaths of lawn, three Christian churches, and musical levees, eventually encompassed a territory the size of England, its campaigns paid for in human heads.

It is the story of Victorian social mores superimposed on one of the most violent cultures on earth, of pockets of terness amid extreme brutality, and of a remarkable tribe of fugitives, missionaries, and romantics drawn to this remote outpost of the world.