Full text of "Raffles"
First edition 1926
Second edition corrected, printed photographically in Great Britain by
LOWE & BRYDONE, LONDON
DR. B.R AMBEDKAR OPEN UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY - LIBRARY
SIR STAMFORD RAFFLES
Reproduced, by permission, from the bust in the possession
RAFFLES
1781-1816
BY
R. COUPLAND
HELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE
nun m>i-Bs.soR of COLONIAL HISTORY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OK OXKOKO
SECOND EDITION
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD
1934
Let it still be the boast of Britain to
write her name in characters of light.
I
ON October 19, 1781, the day on which Cornwallis, hemmed
in by land and sea, surrendered to Washington at York Town,
the first British Empire -died. On April 12, 1782, when
Rodney caught and crippled the French fleet among the
Leeward Islands, the second British Empire, it may be said,
was born. For by ' the Battle of the Saints ' the British
command of the sea was recovered, not to be lost again ;
and it was this command of the sea that made possible, if
not almost certain, the building up of a new British world-
society on the ruins of the old.
A few months before the first of these decisive events, on
July 6, 1781, there was born, on board the merchant-ship
Ann off Port Morant in Jamaica, a boy who in after life
^was to take a memorable part in the work of imperial
reconstruction. The place of his birth was appropriate ; for
Thomas Stamford Raffles' career was to be associated with
the expansion of British trade in the tropics. And, born
afloat and under a far-ranging flag, he was to achieve his
life's work not, like most men, within a more or less narrow
radius of his birthplace, but among seas and islands on the
opposite side of the globe not in the West Indies, but in
the East Indies.
Raffles' father was the Master of the Ann, engaged in the
trade between London and Jamaica. Of his family little
is known except that it had been connected for some genera-
tions in the past with Beverley in Yorkshire, where one of
his ancestors, like one of Wilberforce's, was once mayor.
Nothing at all is known of his mother's family, except the
name of Lyde. And over the son's early years hangs as
dark a veil. It is not till he is about twelve that at last it
rises and discloses him at a boarding-school kept by a
5
RAFFLES
Dr. Anderson at Hammersmith. He is devoted to animals,
it appears, and to gardening ; but of his education, of his
life at the school, there is nothing at all on record except
that it was short. Captain Raffles, it seems, had not made
a success of his profession. He was not merely a poor man,
he was seriously in debt ; and it was a sordid necessity that
his only surviving son should be set to earn what money he
could at the earliest possible age. Before he was quite
fourteen, therefore, an ' extra-clerkship ' having been
obtained for him in the office of the East India Company,
Thomas Stamford said good-bye to Dr. Anderson and
entered, as he put it in later days, ' the busy scenes of public
life/ ' I have never ceased to deplore/ he once wrote, ' the
necessity which withdrew me so early from school/
At. an age, then, when happier contemporaries with great
careers ahead of them had still some years to run at Eton and
a spell at Oxford or Cambridge to follow, young Raffles
entered India House and sat down at his desk. And there
for five years he worked as few boys have ever worked, not
only at his office duties, but, in every leisure moment he
could snatch, to continue his education. Born with the gift
of tongues, he applied himself to French and mastered it.
He read widely in the English and French classics. He set
himself, with a special and lasting zest, to acquire some
scientific knowledge of the animal and vegetable world.
And, all the while, the boy was harassed and cramped
by the anxieties and exigencies of poverty at home. ' I
shall never forget ', he said long afterwards, ' the morti-
fication I felt when the penury of my family once induced
my mother to complain of my extravagance in burning
a candle in my room/ A rather depressing, a rather
stunted life, very different from life at Eton ; but after
five years of it the picture brightens a little. Raffles'
private work before and after office-hours had not prevented
him from satisfying his employers. His industry and
capacity, indeed, had made such a deep impression at India
House that in 1800 he obtained by merit a post on the
regular establishment which would normally have been
RAFFLES 7
filled by patronage. It meant a substantial rise in salary,
and it enabled him to earn extra pay by doing extra work.
He was presently getting as much as 100 a year and con-
tributing to the upkeep of his family but at a cost. He
had always been delicate ; he was probably ill-nourished ;
and now for the first time, but not by any means for the last,
he began to overstrain himself. Once there was a whisper
of consumption. Neither then nor at any time, however,
would Raffles surrender to his body. On the one recorded
occasion on which he was positively ordered to leave his
work and take a fortnight's holiday, he set out on foot for
the Welsh mountains, walked no less than thirty or forty
miles a day, and returned to his desk in the best of health
and spirits. And so for five more years he toiled on five
tremendous years while Europe shook beneath Napoleon's
tread, the years of Marengo and Hohenlinden, the armistice
of Amiens, the camp at Boulogne, the prelude to Trafalgar
and Austerlitz. What did Raffles think of the history that
was being made around him ? What were his opinions of
the great men of the day ? Did he worship Pitt, like most
of those more favoured youths ? Or was he inclined to defy
majorities and to defend unpopular causes ? Was Fox
his leader ? And what were his own ambitions ? Did he
aspire to play a part himself among the heroes of that
epic age ?
He certainly had ambitions. ' You always said ', he
wrote in 1811, at one of the great moments of his life, to
an intimate friend of those early days, ' I was a strange, wild
fellow, insatiable in ambition, though meek as a maiden.'
And one can hazard a guess as to whither his hopes were
pointing. He had no need to look beyond the records of
India House for precedents of young men, unendowed with
family influence or wealth, rising rapidly to fame and
fortune. What was to prevent him from treading the path
that Clive had trod ? He belonged, undoubtedly, to the
species of Englishman that has always instinctively responded
to the call of the East. For such men the very names of
ancient Indian cities have a fascination of their own ; and
8 RAFFLES
even the heavy atmosphere of India House, even the dull
materials of his daily work, the business-correspondence, the
bills of lading, the financial statements, may have been
tinged for Raffles with romance. And there was a more
substantial consideration that pointed to the East. Intensely
devoted to his family, especially to his mother, bitterly
exasperated by the unceasing fight with poverty, the big
worries of debt, the little worries of scraping and stinting to
make both ends meet from day to day, young Raffles must
have longed above all else to ' make his fortune ' and to
make it quickly. And where had fortunes been so quickly
made as in India ? The home-coming of the Nabobs had
been one of the most portentous events in the social life of
eighteenth-century England. Their great days, it is true,
were over now. The one sinister phase of the British
connexion with India had passed, and passed for ever.
Englishmen could no longer amass fabulous wealth in a few
years by illicit trading or less excusable means in Bengal.
But the servants of the Company in India were now far
better paid. Good, if by no means extravagant, salaries
were now regarded not only as the obvious preventive of
corruption but as a means of attracting ambitious young
men to face the exile and the climate, so much deadlier then
than now. And once his foot was on the official ladder, an
Indian civil servant might climb high and, at a relatively
early age aitd with perfect honesty, be able to build up what
would seem quite a little fortune to a clerk who stayed at
home.
It is fairly safe to assume, then, that Raffles, throughout
those laborious years of apprenticeship, was hoping that
his industry might some day be rewarded by an appointment
in the East. That, at any rate, was the fate that came to
him suddenly in 1805. The East India Company, as will
be seen, had hitherto made little advance in the south and
east beyond its field in India proper ; but it had recently
acquired possession of the Island of Penang or Prince of
Wales' Island, and the Court of Directors had now decided
to constitute it, together with a strip of territory on the
RAFFLES 9
Malayan mainland known as Province Wellesley, a regular
Presidency with a Governor and Council.* To this new
Government Raffles was appointed Assistant-Secretary with
a salary of 1,500 a year. It was much more than he could
have expected. Such a post was by no means at the bottom
of the ladder. It was, in fact, a remarkable promotion for
a clerk of twenty-four. And he had won it by merit again
and merit alone. In urging his appointment, Mr. Ramsay,
the Company's Secretary at India House, had declared that
the departure of so competent a subordinate ' would be
like the loss of a limb to him ' ; but he could not, he added,
obstruct the promotion of one who possessed ' such superior
talents and so amiable a character '. As for Raffles, the
world, at a stroke, had been transformed for him. Never
again, perhaps, was he to feel such an overwhelming sense
of relief or enjoy a personal triumph quite so unalloyed.
Now at last he could satisfy his filial piety. He could begin
to disperse that cloud of debt. He could ensure that his
parents' declining years were saved from the misery of want.
He could take his eldest sister out to Penang with him.
More, he could set up as a family man himself. He could
marry the charming and gifted woman, Olivia Fancourt,
with whom he had fallen deeply in love, and take her with
him too. And now at last, also, no longer a prisoner in
Leadenhall Street, he could begin to deal with that insatiable
ambition. He was going East.
* A map will be found at the end of this book.
CJBJL. B
II
THERE followed another five-year period of very hard work.
It began on the voyage out a business in those days of
several months. When Raffles embarked in April, 1805,
he set himself to learn the language of the native people
among whom he was henceforth to live, and soon after his
arrival at Penang in September he could speak and read
and write Malay with ease. It was a notable achievement
in itself, and in its results it had a decisive influence on
Raffles' career. For it enabled him to get to know the
Malays. It was and is no easy thing for an Englishman
really to know that shy, reserved, mercurial, attractive
people. It cannot be done, indeed, as Sir Frank Swettenham
has said and no one can speak with more authority
unless, in the first place, the Englishman can talk with them
freely in their own tongue. And the second essential
qualification is sympathy, the true sympathy that reveals
itself in natural tact and courtesy and consideration. Raffles,
then, had only to acquire that first essential, the language ;
for with the second the most precious gift that any Euro-
pean can possess whose lot it is to live among the child-races
of the world he had been born. And so, before he had
been long at Penang, the heart of the Malays lay open to
him. From the first he encouraged them to visit him and
talk to him. The more he understood them, the better he
liked them. And they responded. For Raffles, it is dear,
was one of those fine spirits, not by any means so rare as
some superficial observers would have us suppose, whose
privilege it is to temper the inevitable harshness of the
impact of European civilization on a backward people.
He had soon broken through their shyness, so impenetrable
to a stranger of coarser mould. He had soon won their
10
RAFFLES "
confidence, and they were telling him all they knew of their
own people and their customs and traditions. When sea-
farers from other parts of the island-world of Malaya put in
at Penang, they would be brought to visit him, ' greatly
pleased ', as an English officer noted in his journal, ' to find
a person holding Mr. Raffles' situation able and anxious to
converse with them in their own language '. Thus Raffles'
knowledge of the Malays spread steadily beyond Penang and
its neighbourhood. Talking to innumerable natives from
all parts, reading every scrap of written record he could find,
he soon acquired a knowledge of Malaya past and present
such as only one or two other Englishmen possessed. He
became not only something of a savant in that little-known
oriental field, but an enthusiast ; and out of his enthusiasm
there shaped itself presently a dream the dream of his
life. The Company he served had recently been forced
to broaden the basis of its policy in India ; but its policy
outside India, he knew well enough, was still simply and
solely commercial. In so far as it might desire to extend its
operations in the Malayan area and of that there was as
yet no sign at all it would be only with a view to increasing
the annual shipments of pepper and spice to England. But
while this, as Raffles would have avowed, might fairly be
the first aim, might it not be linked with something else ?
Might not the expansion of British trade mean also the
spread of humane, protective, civilising influences among the
Malayan people ? Might not all Malaya attain, some day,
under British tutelage, to a safer, freer, happier life than it
could ever find unaided ?
The growth in Raffles' mind of this idea is an interesting
phenomenon. It was just at this time that the new
humanitarianism was beginning to influence a large and
growing body of public opinion in England. The theory
that commercial intercourse with backward races involved
a moral obligation towards them had been born out of the
great debate that centred round the personalities of Clive
and Burke and Warren Hastings. It had been strengthened
by the other great debate which followed it and made an
12 RAFFLES
even deeper and wider mark on the public mind the debate
on the abolition of the slave-trade, now nearing its long-
deferred conclusion. A new doctrine, in fact, had taken
its place in the science of human politics, the doctrine of
' trusteeship '. But it is impossible to say that Raffles was
directly influenced by this movement of thought in England.
It is most improbable that the young clerk in Leadenhall
Street had met or talked with any of its leaders. One day
it was inevitable that he should make Wilberforce's acquain-
tance ; but that day was still some years ahead. Nor is
there any hint that Raffles in his youth was interested in
English history or politics. His whole mind seems to have
been given to literature and natural science. And, in after
life, as his own policy developed, he never appealed to
established precedents or principles. He never mentioned
Burke. Unlike more gilded youths, unlike a Wellesley or
a Minto or a Hastings, born and brought up in an atmosphere
steeped in the political traditions of their class, Raffles had
grown up in a narrow little world of his own, quite un-
connected with, apparently quite uninterested in, the
personalities and problems of public life ; and it is probable
that he had few, if any, ideas in his mind about the treatment
of backward races when he was suddenly flung into the
East. So his ideas, when he acquired them, though they
might accord with the new humanitarian doctrine, were not
in the least doctrinaire. They were the direct outcome,
it seems, of his personal experience, his innate good sense
and sensibility, and his ' amiable character '. He met the
Malays. He got to know them. He learned to love them.
It was good, he felt, for Englishmen to trade with them :
but it was better for Englishmen to do what they could to
help them.
This process of getting to know the Malays, enjoyable
though it was to Raffles, was no mere pastime. Grappling
with the language and its various dialects, practising the
writing of that exotic Arabic script, reading Malay parch-
ments, even those delightful if protracted conversations
it was all hard work ; and, like the extra work in London,
RAFFLES 13
it could only be done in the early or evening hours off duty.
The better part of the day was occupied by official tasks.
Or rather, obsessed by them. For Raffles had quickly
become an even more indispensable limb to Governor Dundas
and his Council than he had been to Mr. Ramsay ; nor can
they be blamed for making all the use they could of a
subordinate of such unusual competence and of such astonish-
ing capacity for work, especially if, as it would appear, they
possessed little of either quality themselves. The Assistant-
Secretary was obliged, to begin with, to perform the duties
of the Secretary owing to his protracted absence on leave ;
so that, when in 1807 Mr. Pearson was elevated to a seat on
the Council and Raffles became Secretary, it made no real
difference except to his salary. The organisation of the new
administration was mainly Raffles' work. He drew up the
proclamations and the ordinances. He kept the records.
He wrote the dispatches to the Court of Directors. ' Scarce
a letter has gone out, however trifling ', he writes to a friend
at home, ' that I have not drafted, and I have not one
right-hand man. . . . Th6re is about three times the business
in the Secretary's office as there is in England and not
one-twentieth of the assistance'. Owing to his knowledge
of the language, he was appointed official Malay Translator.
And, as if all this were not enough, when a new court of
justice was established he undertook there was no one else
to do it the function of Registrar. No wonder that
Governor Macalister wrote home of Mr. Raffles' ' unwearied
zeal and assiduity'. No wonder that, when Raffles was
once, and once only, away from Penang for the sake of his
health, the Governor should implore him to return ' we
shall not be able to make up any dispatches for the Court
without your assistance '. And no wonder that Raffles'
health had given trouble. In those days Penang was quite
falsely supposed to be exceptionally salubrious. ' The
operation of the climate ', it was said, ' is almost infallible/
It certainly was. In a short period, to quote the Memoir, it
4 proved fatal to two Governors, all the Council, and many of
the settlers '. And Raffles, suffering all the time from
14 RAFFLES
overwork, did not escape untouched. In his first three years
at Penang he had two serious illnesses, of the second of which
he nearly died. ' I am convinced ', he writes in 1808, ' my
health will never permit my holding this office many years
The fatigue of merely writing this letter gives me excruciating
pain. ... I am afraid they will work the willing horse to
death/
But that second illness was a blessing in disguise. It
forced Raffles to take a holiday and to spend some months
in the slightly better climate of Malacca. And this not
only improved Raffles 1 health : it plucked him from the web
of multitudinous administrative business at Penang in which
he had almost choked himself, and set him free for a space
to look beyond his little settlement at the world around it.
With instant zeal for to Raffles a holiday meant anything
but idleness he began to extend his Malayan researches
into the unexplored land round Malacca. At Penang,
besides continuing to study the details of the language until
his doctor positively forbade it, he had compiled a code of
Malay laws. And now, at Malacca, he worked at a history
of the Malay people, reading all the additional written
materials now available, examining the natives of this
district as he had those of his own on their old traditions,
questioning as before the native traders from the islands
who called at the port on their way up and down the Straits.
His general conclusion, which he embodied in a paper ' On
the Malay nation with a translation of. its maritime in-
stitutions ' and submitted to the Asiatic Society at Calcutta,
was that the Malays were a single people, speaking one
tongue, spread over the whole of the great archipelago which
divides the Pacific from the Indian Ocean and links Asia
with Australia. Nor was it only his linguistic and ethno-
graphical studies that were widened by those months of
freedom. It happened that, at that moment, the political
fate of Malacca as a European settlement was under dis-
cussion. No visitor could ignore the question. No one
so alert and open-minded as Raffles could fail to form
opinions of his own about it. And so, almost unawares, he
RAFFLES 15
was caught up in a current of politics that ran faster and
farther than the backwaters of Penang and was presently
to carry him out into the great world-stream of the
Napoleonic War.
Ill
FOUNDED at the opening of the seventeenth century within
two years of one another, the English and the Dutch East
India Companies began their careers as deadly rivals. They
both concentrated at the outset on the Spice Islands or
Moluccas in the heart of the Malayan Archipelago. And
since the Dutch had already expelled the Portuguese from
that area and established themselves in their place, they
regarded the English as interlopers, obstructed their trade
by all means in their power, and finally, after a bitter struggle
which culminated in the bestial tragedy at Amboyna in
1623, succeeded in eliminating English trade throughout
the islands. And there the conflict virtually ended. There
was little further clash between the Companies : there was
no fighting for sole possession of the field. And the reason
was simple. The scope of the Eastern trade was so vast,
so inexhaustibly vast ; and the English merchants, driven
aside to continental Asia, discovered, as they pushed their
operations ever deeper inland from their ' factories ' on the
coast, that Indian trade, so far from being, as had been
supposed, altogether inferior to that of the Spice Islands,
was big enough to employ all and more than all their energy
and capital. And meanwhile the Dutch merchants, though
at one time they held a strong position in India, found in
the end that it paid them better to concentrate on their
monopoly of the insular field, with its outpost in Ceylon
and its homeward port-of-call at Cape Town ; their hold
on the continent relaxed and was finally broken by the loss
of Chinsura in Bengal. Thenceforward the two Companies
could work side by side without feeling any serious com-
petition. There was room for both ; and they had marked
out, so to speak, their separate ' spheres of influence '. But
16
RAFFLES 17
there was one point at which these continental and insular
spheres touched and overlapped the point at which the
most westerly of the Malayan islands impinges on the
south-eastern corner of the Asiatic continent. And this
point, as it happened, was of supreme importance in the
strategy of the Far Eastern trade. For through the Malacca
Straits between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula lay one
of the two shortest and safest routes to Siam and China
and Japan. The other gateway to the Farther East was
the Sunda Straits between Sumatra and Java. Both were
narrow the Malacca Straits, at their narrowest, less than
40 miles wide, the Sunda Straits less than 20. So a nation
which occupied both sides or even one side of either of them
could easily prevent, if it desired, the merchant ships of any
other nation from sailing through. Just at this point,
therefore, the old Anglo-Dutch rivalry never quite died
away. The trading-posts of the two companies were
interspersed. In Sumatra, which the Dutch, though they
had never effectively occupied it, regarded like all the other
islands as their preserve, the English had established
themselves at Bencoolen on the rough west coast, with one
or two small and temporary posts dependent on it. The
Dutch, on the other hand, had encroached on the continent
by their capture and retention of the Portuguese post at
Malacca ; and it was not till 1786 that the British approached
the Malayan coast by the purchase of Penang from the local
Sultan. In 1800 they extended their foothold to the adjacent
mainland by the similar acquisition of Province Wellesley.
But between 1786 and 1800 the political situation in the
Far East as in many other quarters of the world had been
transformed by the effects of the great convulsion in Europe.
In 1794 the French revolutionary armies occupied Holland,
and from thence onwards the Dutch Republic, though still
nominally independent, was practically a pawn of France.
In the East Indies, therefore, every Dutch post was now
equivalent to a French post, a refuge for French warships
or a base for French attacks on British trade and territory.
And when the forces of the French Revolution were com-
C3.E. C
ig RAFFLES
mandeered by Napoleon, this Eastern danger grew with the
growth of his power and his dreams. He tightened the
French grip on Holland. In 1801 he forced a new constitu-
tion on the impotent republic, designed to keep it more
firmly under his command ; in 1806 he converted it into
a monarchy with his brother Louis on the throne- Finally,
in 1810, he discarded all pretences, and, deposing Louis,
annexed Holland to France. And all the time, of course,
he was planning to use the Dutch possessions overseas for
his one paramount purpose, the overthrow of Britain. The
idea of achieving that purpose by seizing India and destroying
British commerce in the East had early entered his mind
and never left it. In 1797 he warned the Directory that
Egypt must soon be occupied as the first stage on the road
to India ; and in the following year he led the ' Army of
the East ', which he called ' a wing of the Army of England ',
to Egypt and Syria. But before he could proceed further
with his grandiose plan for an overland march through
Asia, the situation at home compelled his return to France,
and for some years he was preoccupied with Europe. In
1803, however, he began to resuscitate his oriental project.
In 1805 he declared that the ' Army of England ', baffled
at Boulogne, should become ' the Army of the East and go
to Egypt '. In 1808, now near the zenith of his power, he
proposed that a combined force of French, Russians and
Austrians should march to India ' nothing is so easy as
this operation ', he strangely said. To prepare the way,
he had concluded, in 1807, a treaty with the Shah of Persia,
binding the latter to break off relations with the British, to
stir up the Afghans against India, and to give a French
army free passage through his country, and he had
followed this up by the dispatch to Persia of 24 French
officers and 300 men as an ' advance guard '. So much for
the continental side of the great design more dangerous
to British India in appearance, perhaps, than in reality.
But, since France was, like Britain, an amphibious power,
there was also a maritime side. In the islands of Mauritius
and Bourbon France had long possessed useful bases for
RAFFLES 19
naval attacks on India and Indian trade. To these the
subjugation of Holland added the Cape of Good Hope,
Ceylon, and the Malayan Archipelago. Napoleon, in fact,
had obtained a strangle-hold on the Indian Ocean. But
the British Government, well aware of the danger, struck
quickly. Within a year of Holland's overthrow both the
Cape and Ceylon as well as Malacca were seized, and the
encircling chain was broken. There remained, however,
Mauritius and Bourbon, on the west, both strengthened now
against attack, and on the east, nearer and more threatening,
the Malayan islands. In 1797 Daendels, an able and
ruthless Dutch Jacobin who had become a general in the
French army, had suggested an assault on India from a
base in Java, the centre and stronghold of the Dutch ad-
ministration ; and, if the Dutch fleet had not been crippled
at Camperdown, this project might well have been carried
out in concurrence with Napoleon's invasion of Egypt.
The idea, in any case, lingered in Napoleon's mind ; and
when, four years later, he began to reconstruct his plans
for the march through Asia, he sent Daendels, now a Marshal,
to Java to strengthen its defences, reorganise the Dutch
colonial troops, and await the moment for a descent on India.
Again the danger was obvious, and again the British Navy,
with Nelson's captains in command, was not idle. In 1806
and 1807 two Dutch squadrons were caught on the Java
coast and destroyed ; and in 1808 the Moluccas, the very
Spice Islands themselves, were occupied. In 1810 Mauritius
and Bourbon were captured by an expedition dispatched
from India by Lord Minto, who had gone out to Bengal as
Governor-General in 1807. Only one link remained in
Napoleon's chain Java. And on the capture of Java,
though for a time he held his hand in doubt as to the Home
Government's intentions, Lord Minto had set his mind
from the first.
The coasts and seas of Malaya had thus become a not
unimportant field of the world-war when, in 1808, Raffles
visited Malacca and learned to his astonishment that, at this
moment of all moments, the Directors at India House had
20 RAFFLES
determined to abandon it. The new presidency of Penang
was to be the only British settlement on the Straits. Malacca
as a trading-post was to be virtually destroyed. The
massive old fort was to be demolished ; the commercial and
industrial part of the native population persuaded to
migrate to Penang ; and the place thus reduced to a derelict
Malayan village. When Raffles arrived, the first step in
the execution of this policy had already been taken. The
fort was gone. The ordnance and stores had been removed
to Penang. But every day that Raffles stayed at Malacca,
the more mistaken the policy seemed, until at last he
resolved to do what he could to prevent or postpone further
action. It was no business of his. A young and obscure
official might well think twice before he ventured to intrude
an unsolicited opinion on a matter of high policy at India
House : he might well despair of exercising any influence
over the Directors' counsels. But Raffles was not the man
to be deterred by such considerations. At the close of his
holiday he sat down and drafted a minute clear, concise,
and overwhelming in force of argument and presented it as
a personal report on Malacca to his own local Government.
The Directors' policy, he argued in the first place, was
impracticable. It hinged on the migration of a great
part of the native population at Malacca, and by nothing
short of force could those natives be impelled to migrate.
The town was not a mushroom growth, nor its people
wanderers. Three-quarters of them were born there, and
their families had been rooted there for centuries, ' Attached
to the place from their birth, they are accustomed to the
local regulations ; and in the bosom of their family feel that
they are at home. . . . From the antiquity and former
celebrity of the place it follows that the country is well-
cultivated and that valuable buildings, public and private,
have been erected by the inhabitants, ... It is no common
advantage that will induce them to quit the tombs of their
ancestors, the temples sacred to the Deity, their independence
and estates on which they depend for their livelihood and
respectability. , . . The present population must therefore
RAFFLES 21
be considered as attached to the soil ; and from every
appearance it seems they have determined to remain by
Malacca, let its fate be what it will. . . . The offer made by
the Government of paying the passage of such as would
embark for Penang was not accepted by a single individual/
So much for the project of migration. But, if the natives
stayed, could the British go ? And here appears the first
concrete expression of Raffles 1 protective attitude towards
the Malays. It seems to him impossible to desert the
people of Malacca merely to strengthen the commercial
position of Penang. ' The natives ', he wrote, ' consider the
British faith as pledged for their protection. When the
settlement fell into the hands of the English, they were
invited to remain ; protection and even encouragement were
offered them. The latter has long ago ceased ; and they
are in daily expectation of losing the former. 1 And then
he descends to an argument better calculated, perhaps, to
carry weight at India House. ' For our protection they
are willing to make great sacrifices ; and they pay the heavy
duties imposed on them with the cheerfulness of faithful
and obedient subjects. The revenues of Malacca are never
in arrear. 1 And there were other material arguments.
Malacca was a more natural trading-centre than Penang ;
and, unlike Penang, it lay where the Straits were narrowest.
Dismantled and deserted by the British, it would soon be
re-occupied and re-fortified by others. ' The possession of
Malacca will ever be a most desirable object to a European
power. . . . Every ship that passes up or down must be
observed from it, and should this station ever be held by an
enterprising enemy, not only Penang but the more important
China trade would be materially endangered. ' But supposing,
on the other hand, Britain retains her hold on Malacca . . .
The thought tempts Raffles to a first, brief, tentative dis-
closure of his great idea, his dream. The masters of the
Malacca gate might become in time the masters of Malaya.
With the assistance of Malacca, he declares in his last
paragraph, all the Malay rajahs to the eastward might be
brought under British control.
22 RAFFLES
This report was a remarkable performance. Still more
remarkable, it achieved its object. It was duly forwarded
by the Penang Government to India House, and the Court
of Directors, unable to withstand its trenchant logic, at
once decided to reverse their policy. ' This document ',
wrote those eminent men of business, ' has in so compre-
hensive a manner laid open to our view the present circum-
stances of the settlement at Malacca and the dangers which
may arise by the total abandonment of it that we agree as
a temporary measure to the continuance of the present
establishment there and the more readily (they charac-
teristically add) as we find . . . that the charges, including
every possible contingency, are fully provided for by the
revenues of the place/ As for Raffles, he is to be commended
in the grand official manner. ' You will communicate to
that gentleman that we entertain a favourable sense of the
talents he has evinced upon that occasion/ Thus, in a
moment, the young civil servant had emerged from the
obscurity of a minor colonial secretariat. Alone and on his
own initiative, he had saved the British hold on Malacca ;
and he had done it by laying bare certain hard facts as to
the strategy of trade and politics in that marginal area of
the East Indies. Nor could the Directors miss, though
most of them might shut their eyes to it, the wider and more
positive policy that lay beneath the surface of Raffles'
report. Quite apart from the little hint at its close, it
pointed beyond the immediate problem of Malacca. It
pointed forward. It pointed east and south. A gateway
is plainly not a cul-de-sac.
IV
THE Report on Malacca had attracted attention in other
quarters than India House. Two years before Raffles came
to Penang, there had also come east, as an Assistant-Surgeon
in the Company's service, a scholarly, capable, uncouth, self-
made Scot who might long have been forgotten by posterity
if he had not figured as an admired friend of Sir Walter's
in Lockhart's unforgettable biography. The government of
India was scarcely John Leyden's natural mitier ; but,
whatever he did, that remarkable man was certain to
succeed, and all the more certain when the head of the
Government he served was an Elliot from his own Scottish
dale. Lord Minto at once recognised his ability and learned
to prize his fast-acquired knowledge of the East. ' A perfect
Malay ', he called him, and he devoted one of his private
letters home to a detailed account of the ' stupendous
learning ' and the other virtues of ' so distinguished a
worthy of Teviotside '. So Leyden was soon climbing the
official ladder in Bengal and acting as one of Lord Minto's
most useful confidential advisers ; and thus, when he
chanced to visit Penang in 1805 and there fell in with young
Raffles and found in him, as in nobody else he had met in
the East, a passionate interest akin to his own in oriental
peoples and their life and languages, and so struck up a swift
and cordial friendship, the requisite link had been forged
between the Secretary at Penang and the Governor-General
at Calcutta. Lord Minto soon learned that in Raffles his
Government possessed another Leyden, another official
who knew all about the mysterious archipelago over which
his own thoughts were always hovering, another ' perfect
Malay '. When the Moluccas were captured in 1808, he
even entertained the idea, though it came to nothing, of
33
24 RAFFLES
appointing Raffles to take temporary charge of them. And
when a copy of the Malacca Report, wisely sent by Raffles
to Leyden, was put before him, he instantly approved of it
' A most useless piece of gratuitous mischief ', he ex-
claimed, of the destruction of the Malacca fort and he
warmly supported its arguments in a dispatch to the Court
of Directors. ' He desired me to say ', wrote Leyden to
Raffles, ' he should be gratified in receiving immediately
from yourself any communications respecting the Eastern
parts of a similar nature/ This welcome letter reached
Raffles towards the end of 1809, when rumours were abroad
of Lord Minto's intention to attempt the capture of Mauritius
and Bourbon. If it should succeed, what next ? What of
Java and his dream of a British hegemony over all the rajahs
of Malaya ? At such a moment, when such decisions were
impending, to be imprisoned in Penang, more than a thousand
miles away from anyone who could influence the course
of history, was intolerably irksome to Raffles' eager,
ambitious spirit. His status at Penang, moreover, had
begun to gall him. He felt restive and the feeling was
presently to become habitual under the authority of
official superiors who were, it was obvious, less competent
and well-informed than himself. He resented being treated
as the humble servant of the Government when, in actual
fact, he was something like its master. ' A Secretary ', he
wrote home at the end of 1808, ' is in general the organ, but
in some places the very soul. I am neither the one nor the
other. , . . You may therefore guess the situation. . . . The
arrogance that a temporary exaltation has given to some is
scarce to be borne with except by such a patient body as me/
And now perhaps the possibility of his removal from Penang
was being discussed at Calcutta. Nothing, it seemed, had
yet been done about the Moluccas. Was he to go there or
not ? It was not easy to concentrate on his official routine
with all this uncertainty hanging over him ; and soon he
could stand it no longer. In June, 1810, he took leave, and
in a small and dangerously frail sailing-ship set out across
the Bay of Bengal for Calcutta.
RAFFLES 25
Lord Minto was delighted at Raffles' sudden arrival,
though he was obliged to tell him that the appointment to
the Moluccas had now been promised to another. But to
Raffles as to Lord Minto the Moluccas were a minor issue ;
and the young official promptly took occasion to observe
that there were other islands worth the Governor-General's
attention Java, for instance. ' On the mention of Java ',
he wrote, years afterwards, ' his Lordship cast a look of such
scrutiny, anticipation, and kindness upon me that I shall
never forget. " Yes ", said he, " Java is an interesting
island. I shall be happy to receive any information you can
give me concerning it." This was enough to encourage me,
and from this moment all my views, all my plans, and all
my mind were devoted to create such an interest regarding
Java as should lead to its annexation to our Eastern Empire/
It was not unnatural, perhaps, for Raffles to suppose that
it was he who had planted the idea of the conquest of Java
in Lord Minto's mind ; but, in truth, Lord Minto had
scarcely ceased to think of it from the day he was appointed
Governor-General. It was an essential part of a single
plan the British counter to Napoleon's designs for the
encirclement of India. First, Bourbon. Next, Mauritius.
Then, Java. And, at about the time of the conversation
recorded above, the news of the surrender of Bourbon
(July 8, 1810) had already reached Calcutta. Mauritius fell
on December 2 ; but, long before that, Lord Minto was
counting on the success of his second stroke and beginning
to plan the third. His difficulty was that nobody knew
anything about the Malayan world nobody but Leyden
and that young official at Penang. Hence his satisfaction
at Raffles' unexpected arrival and at his interest, not so
unexpected, in Java. Lord Minto at once determined to
fit him into his plan to set him, indeed, at its very forefront.
In October, 1810, he appointed him ' Agent to the Governor-
General with the Malay States ', ' as an avant-courier and to
prepare the way for the expedition.' Raffles was to select
his own headquarters and he chose Malacca. In December
he was back there, no longer an overworked minor civilian
CJJU D
26 RAFFLES
on sick-leave from Penang, but a high official, entrusted
with wide authority and with a task big enough, surely, for
that insatiable ambition.
In his execution of that task Raffles must have exceeded
even Lord Minto's expectations. The Agent-General at
Malacca was soon displaying the same enormous capacity
for work which had distinguished the clerk at India House
and the secretary at Penang. Within three or four months
he had drafted a series of invaluable reports, providing a
mass of detailed information (much of it never available
before) about not Java only, but Borneo, Celebes, Banka,
most of the Archipelago in fact ; about the tribes that
inhabited them, their rulers and their character ; about their
products, their various spices and their minerals ; about
the methods of the Dutch trade and its slight hold on all
this wealth of raw materials, and the absence of any other
trade ; about the prospect of opening up commercial
relations through the islands with Japan ; about the
prevalence of piracy in those seas and the slave trade and
the American traffic in arms ; about Islam and Christian
missions, and so forth a veritable encyclopaedia. And
that was not all. Since the capture of Java would mean the
transference of the whole of this island world from Dutch
control to British, he sketched the main lines of the policy
which a British administration should pursue. As regards
Java, at any rate, this policy was in the main to be adopted
and its examination may be deferred. One interesting
suggestion, however, which was not put into effect, may be
mentioned here. In his researches into Malayan history
Raffles had discovered that in ancient times all the Malay
sultans and rajahs, while independent sovereigns within
their own territories, had owned a kind of feudal allegiance
to a ' superior or suzerain ', who ' had the title of Bitara '.
He suggested that this title, ' equivalent to Lord Protector ',
should be resurrected and that the Malay chiefs should be
prevailed upon it was important that it should ' seem
to be their spontaneous and voluntary act ' to bestow it
on the Governor-General of India, who would then be
RAFFLES 27
invested with ' a general right of superintendence over and
interference with all the Malay states, which might be acted
upon when circumstances should render it necessary '.
Raffles, in fact, not for the last time, was anticipating
history. He was suggesting a form of control, the Pro-
tectorate, which was in course of years to be widely adopted
and to prove of great utility not only in Malaya but in
tropical Africa and other backward areas of the British
Empire. And by protection Raffles meant protection, not
exploitation in disguise. His dream of a British East
Indies, which now, it seemed, was suddenly on the point of
coming true, had appealed to him, as has been observed,
not merely nor mainly because it meant a great expansion
of British trade but also because it meant, at least to him,
a safer, happier, better life for the native peoples of Malaya.
At the close of his last long report he says, ' I have now only
to congratulate your Lordship on the most splendid prospect
which any administration has beheld since bur first acquisi-
tion of India : the pacification of India completed, the
tranquillity and prosperity of our Eastern possessions
secured, the total expulsion of the European enemy from
tho Eastern Seas, and the justice, humanity, and moderation
of the British government as much exemplified in fostering
and leading on new races of subjects and allies in the cause
of improvement as in the undaunted courage and resolution
of British soldiers in rescuing them from oppression. 1
This last report is dated June 10, 1811 ; and, a month
before that, on May 9, Lord Minto had himself arrived at
Malacca. He had decided, to the consternation of the
official clique at Calcutta, to take the lead in person of the
Java expedition. He had decided, too, that Raffles was
to be his ' right-hand man '. In February he had written
to inform him that, ' Mauritius and all the French islands
being now in our possession, there is nothing to retard our
further views to the eastward ', and to take him into his
confidence as to the size and objects of the expedition. ' It
is proposed ', he announced in a second letter, ' to style you
Secretary to the Governor-General when we come together.
28 RAFFLES
. . . Secretary is the highest office below the Council. . . .
I hope you do not doubt the prospective interest I have always
taken, and do not cease to take, in your personal views and
welfare/ Then follow some vague sentences about the
difficulty of promising appointments on which other autho-
rities have to be consulted ; and then ' I am happy to
say that I do not expect an obstacle to my very strong
desire on this point ; and if it should occur, the utmost will
be done to make the best attainable situation worthy of your
services and of the high esteem I profess, with the greatest
sincerity, for your person. 1 A clear intimation of the
Governor-General's entire satisfaction with Raffles' execution
of his task at Malacca. And an intimation, not so clear,
of a yet higher post awaiting him.
But Raffles was too busy to wonder overmuch what the
future had in store. He had his reports to finish, and, now
as always, every spare moment was filled with his literary
and scientific pursuits. During these months he contributed
a paper to Asiatic Researches, a periodical edited by another
Malay scholar, William Marsden, who had recently served
in Bengal ; and, soon after Lord Minto's arrival, a meeting
was held, with the Governor-General in the chair, of the
Malacca branch of the Asiatic Society. For yet other
moments in those hectic days there was the business of
marrying off two of his sisters in succession, one to a naval
officer, the other to a civil surgeon at Madras. But before long
Raffles 1 whole mind, and Lord Minto's too, was occupied with
a question on which the whole fate of the expedition might
depend. The Dutch monopoly of the Malayan Archipelago
had been only too effective. The British sailors did not
know their way about it. Of one thing only they were
certain : the approach to Java was very dangerous, especially
for a cumbrous fleet of transports and their escorts. As
to the direct route through the Karimata Straits, everyone
agreed it was impossible. The alternative, on the other
hand, was a very lengthy route north-eastwards from the
bottom of the Malay Peninsula, right round the northern
coasts of huge Borneo, and so at last to Java from the
RAFFLES 29
north-east. If that route were adopted, the expedition
could not sail till next year : for Java would be swamped
by the autumn rains before the British troops could reach
it. It was an intolerable dilemma, all the more intolerable
because the choice seemed to depend on hearsay rather than
on knowledge. But knowledge, personal knowledge, Raffles,
true to character, determined to have. On his own authority
he dispatched a Captain Greigh to attempt the direct route
in his own ship and report results. The results were ex-
cellent. ' The report of Mr. Greigh ', wrote Raffles to Lord
Minto, ' sufficiently establishes the practicability of the
Karimata passage/ So, since Lord Minto was prepared to
trust Raffles and the man whom Raffles trusted, the direct
route was decided on. In successive divisions the great
fleet of 100 ships, of which 57 were transports bearing nearly
11,000 troops, sailed from Malacca. The first division left
on June n. On June 18 Lord Minto and Raffles embarked
on H.M.S. Modeste. Before long the swift frigate had caught
up the straggling fleet and taken the lead. On July 29 the
Governor-General and his Principal Secretary were in sight
of Java.
THE leading members of the expedition approached their
goal with varied feelings. Sir Samuel Auchmuty, the
general in command of the troops, was doubtless mainly
thinking of the fighting ahead, of striking a blow in this far
island at the great enemy who seemed so unassailable in
Europe. And for Lord Minto, too, the capture of Java
was primarily a stroke of war, the last stroke in his campaign
for the destruction of French power in the Indian Ocean
and the safety of the British position in India and of the
merchantmen bearing the sinews of war to England. But
in Lord Minto's mind there was another thought ; and in
Raffles' mind this thought was uppermost. They felt
themselves to be coming to Java and the island-world
around it as deliverers.
It has always been easy for Englishmen, conscious of their
long and wide experience in the government of native races,
to suppose that they are better qualified for the task than
any other people. But with regard to Dutch rule in Java
and in the year 1811 such an assumption was defensible.
The British record, it is true, was by no means clean. It was
only in 1807, only four years before, that Britain had ceased
at long last to take her share, the lion's share, in what must
be regarded as the greatest crime ever committed by the
white races against a coloured race the slave trade. It was
not half a century since the natives of Bengal had suffered
from all the evils inherent in a system of government in
which power was dissociated from responsibility. And not
far from Java itself, on the coast of Sumatra, the agents
of the British East India Company had (as will be seen)
adopted similar methods to those of the Dutch, though on
a very much smaller scale. But if those things were un-
3
RAFFLES 31
deniably written on recent pages of the British record, it
is no less undeniable that a new page had now been turned.
With the almost unanimous approval of the British parlia-
ment and people the British slave trade had been for ever
abolished ; and long before that, with Olive's last administra-
tion, with the reforms of Warren Hastings, and with the
enactment of Pitt's India Bill, the purification and amend-
ment of British government in India had begun ; and,
fostered by Burke's passionate philanthropy, this process
had steadily continued, till now, in i8ir, not in its ideals
only but in its practice, the British government in India
could be described, not unfairly nor hypocritically, as an
efficient, just, and humane government. On the other
hand, the Dutch government of Java at that date it is
no less certain was neither efficient, nor just, nor humane.
The government was still entirely controlled by the Dutch
East India Company, and its sole object was still the pro-
duction of the greatest possible commercial profit. To that
end it had, in the first place, secured an absolute monopoly
of the spice-trade. European rivals had been excluded
from the Archipelago, the natives had been forbidden to
trade with any but the Dutch, and strong measures had
been employed to enforce this decree. The native shipping
of Java, which had hitherto ranged far and wide among the
islands, had been confined to the Java coast-trade on pain
of confiscation. Beyond the limits of effective supervision
by Dutch officials, illicit trading had been punished by the
destruction of all the local spice-trees. In one case, that
of the Banda Islands, the recalcitrant natives had been
exterminated. These methods had been ultimately success-
ful. Some smuggling still persisted, but in general the
native trade was crushed. The islanders sold their spices
only to the Dutch and at -the Dutch price. Secondly, in
order to maintain high prices in Europe, the Dutch had
limited production. Besides the uprooting of trees, crops
had sometimes been destroyed as they stood and great
quantities of spice burned or buried. So much for the
economic side of Dutch government. Its administrative
32 RAFFLES
side was no better. Like its British rival in India, the Dutch
Company had found itself obliged to assume some measure
of territorial control in the neighbourhood of its chief
commercial settlement. But it had shrunk, even longer
than the British, from direct administration. In 1811 the
actual government of Java, except in the district round
Batavia (the headquarters of the Dutch Governor), was still
mainly in the hands of the native princes or regents ; but
Dutch Residents were stationed at their courts to supervise
them, and they were bound not only to pay a proportion
of the yield of their subjects' labour to the Company, but
also, when required, to see that their subjects grew the
crops which the Company needed. In areas directly
controlled by the Company, the natives were sometimes
compelled to sell the whole of the crops to the Company
at a low price and to buy back what they wanted for
nearly twice as much. From this system the Company,
the Regents, and the corrupt agents they employed were
the only gainers. The natives paid twice over first to the
Regents or the native landlords, and then to the Company.
They were obliged, moreover, to perform various feudal
services for the Regents and to work for the Company on
making roads and bridges, on irrigation, on building courts
and prisons and other public works, and on transporting the
Company's servants and stores about the country. Clearly,
under such a system, the pious exhortations of the Directors
in Holland that the native should be well treated could have
but small effect. ' The Dutch came without question ', says
an American student of European colonization, ' to regard
the native as simply one of the factors entering into the
making of money, a factor to be treated in the same objective
way as* water, soil, or any other non-sentient or inanimate
element/ Nor, finally, could it be pleaded that at least
these ruthless economic and administrative methods had
achieved their purpose. The finances of the Company, after
a great boom in its earlier years, had steadily declined, not
only because the economic system was vicious and short-
sighted in itself, but because it was inefficiently and corruptly
RAFFLES 33
administered. Ill-chosen to begin with, the Company's
officials were miserably paid ; and so, like the British officials
at one time in Bengal, they ' made their fortunes ', as a
Dutch Director-General confessed, ' at the expense of the
master whom they served ' and of the natives. They
engaged in smuggling. They created local monopolies of
their own in the vital commodity of rice. ' Overweights
and short payments ', says the Dutch historian, Van
Deventer, ' in every form and in every branch of delivery
and management, served the officials as an ample com-
pensation for what the Government withheld from them/
From time to time, high-minded Governors and other
officials had protested and pleaded for reform ; but nothing
effective had been done.
So bad indeed was the general situation in Java at the
end of the eighteenth century that a Dutch Commission,
appointed to report on it in 1790, decided that ' they could
not fix their thoughts upon it without being affected by
sentiments of horror and detestation '. Since then, it is
true, some reforms had been attempted. Daendels, the
' Iron Marshal ', had made a great show of efficiency.
Having forcibly pacified the restless interior, he had over-
hauled the defences of the island and the machine of
government, provided regular salaries, stamped out official
corruption, and diverted the flow of wealth from private
pockets to the coffers of the Government. Raffles himself
paid a notable tribute to these reforms. ' A much more
regular, active, pure, and efficient administration ', he
declared, ' was established in this island by Marshal Daendels
than ever existed before in any period of the Dutch Com-
pany.' In truth, however, Daendels had left the greatest
evils untouched. Worse, he had given them Government
sanction. The money to pay the officials' salaries came from
the same source as their old illicit fortunes from the
unhappy natives. The Regents were left with unchecked
powers of over-taxation. The old abuses of compulsory
deliveries and labour were wholly unredressed. Indeed, so
far from lightening the burden, Daendels had suddenly
34 RAFFLES
introduced a new form of economic tyranny. Ignoring the
fact that, as long as the war lasted, the European market
was barred to all Javanese products old or new, he had
ordained that a great part of the whole native population
should be set to cultivating coffee. Thus the Marshall's
administration had not proved an unmixed blessing for the
Javanese ; and it had been very costly. The provision of
new coffee plants, together with heavy expenditure on
defence and public buildings, had so taxed the treasury that,
not for the first time, paper-money had been issued, which,
despite Daendels' characteristic decree that it was to be
accepted at its face value, had inevitably and rapidly
depreciated. When General Janssens took Daendels' place
in 1810, he complained that his predecessor had ' exhausted
all the resources ' of the colony. The Dutch administration,
in fact, was virtually bankrupt. And that was not the only
price to be paid for Daendels 1 ' reforms '. His methods of
suppression and his enforcement of coffee-cultivation had
bitterly alienated the natives. If Lord Minto needed
confirmation for his designs, he could find it perhaps he
did in a report from the British Resident at Bencoolen
that ' the natives are disgusted with the Dutch in Java
and would willingly side with the English in expelling them '.
Nor were the Dutch residents much better pleased with a
Napoleonic master who brooked no opposition and banished
or imprisoned his critics at will. If this was what French
hegemony meant, they began to ask themselves, might not
British rule be preferable ? . . . Can the impartial student
doubt, then, that, under all these circumstances and at this
particular period, Lord Minto and Raffles were not entirely
blinded by national arrogance or prejudice in conceiving
their coming as a deliverance for Java ?
1 The English come as friends ', declared Lord Minto to
the natives of Java in a proclamation published at the
moment of landing. But there was a risk that these words
might be belied and the future relations between the British
and the Javanese distorted and inflamed at their first contact
RAFFLES 35
by such acts as conquering armies, in heat of blood, have
often enough committed, especially, perhaps, when the
conquered have been ' heathen folk '. It was a real danger,
and Raffles had foreseen it. He had told Lord Minto that the
troops, both British and Sepoys, regarded the Malays as a
detestable race of pirates, cut-throats, and traitors. ' These
sentiments in the minds of our soldiers ', he wrote, ' will
not naturally tend to induce a line of conduct on their part
calculated to convey to the natives of Java any strong
impression either of our justice or humanity.' Due warning
had accordingly been given, and the results were admirable
Lord Minto was soon writing to his wife of ' the exemplary
behaviour of the troops who paid their way and did not even
kiss an old woman without her consent '. And again : ' You
see the trees laden with cocoa-nuts and plantains, acres
of onions, cabbage, and many tempting things, not one
taken, nor the slightest offence given to a single inhabitant. 1
Meantime Batavia had been occupied without bloodshed,
since the enemy had decided to withdraw to a well-fortified
position, seven miles inland, at Cornells. Daendels had
boasted of organising an army 17,000 strong ; but Janssens
reported, after the event, that he had only been able to
muster at Cornelis about 8,000 effectives under arms. Of
these, over 2,000 were European troops, including a battalion
of French voltigeurs : the rest were natives, trained and
officered by Europeans. The British, on the other hand,
their numbers already diminished by sickness since the
expedition left Malacca, had about 9,000 men ; but, since
more than half were British regulars, General Auchmuty
did not hesitate to take the offensive. On August 10, the
British army, gallantly led by Colonel Gillespie, attacked
and carried an advance entrenchment of the enemy. On
August 26, by a frontal assault under heavy fire, it drove
them from their main position at Cornelis. The British
casualties were 633, including over 50 officers. The Franco-
Dutch army was practically wiped out. At least 2,000
were killed or wounded. More than 5,000 were made
prisoners General Janssen escaped into the interior with
36 RAFFLES
a mere handful of cavalry. Thus virtually ended a notable,
though now a little-known, campaign in the annals of the
British army. And there was one feature of it which Lord
Minto, who was present at both actions, recorded with
special pride, ' The humanity of the men to their wounded
prisoners on that day ', he wrote of August 10, ' was admir-
able. No distinction of colour on that occasion. Our
soldiers picked up English, Dutch, and Malay, without
distinction, in the jungle and carried them with great labour
to the hospital ' a work, it may be added, in which Lord
Minto himself assisted. ' The Malays and other native
troops ', he continues, ' are all in amazement, having been
made to believe that we are savages and should treat them
with all sorts of barbarities if they fell into our hands/
That the people of Java were indeed, for good or ill, in
British hands was now certain. The battle of Cornelis
had determined the mastery of the island. It was impossible
for Janssens, who, as it chanced, had been forced five years
earlier to surrender the Cape of Good Hope to the British,
to evade the repetition of his fate. On September 18, he
signed the capitulation.
And now came the second and the harder task to
construct an efficient British government on the fragments
of the Dutch a task which was overshadowed from the
outset by one great uncertainty. The British held Java,
but who could tell how long they would continue to hold it ?
The merchants at India House had no doubts about it.
Their intention had been merely to extirpate a rival Dutch
commercial centre. Their explicit orders to Lord Minto
were ' to subdue the Dutch Government, to destroy the
fortifications, to distribute the ordnance, arms and military
stores amongst the native chiefs and inhabitants, and then
to retire from the country '. But this was never Lord
Minto's intention, nor Raffles'. In the first place, it was
stupid strategy. To evacuate the island was to invite
re-entry at the first opportunity by the French. And,
secondly, it was stark inhumanity. In every little town in
RAFFLES 37
which Dutch traders or planters were congregated, they
would be at once exposed, without any troops to protect
them, to the savagery of the people whom they had taught
to hate them, whilst the island as a whole, released from all
European control, would revert to an age of barbarous
internecine war. On these grounds, Raffles had insisted,
before the conquest, that a subsequent evacuation was
unthinkable, and Lord Minto had entirely agreed. To obey
the Directors 1 orders, he afterwards declared, was 'absolutely,
because morally, impossible '. One day Java might be
safely left to itself, but not yet. ' The exclusion of European
masters from Java ', he wrote to Robert Dundas early in
October, ' is impossible in the present state of things. To
make them richer, happier, and to give the people itself a
feeling of independence, which they are now totally without,
would be the best receipt for making their country less
accessible to European invaders. But in our times this
cannot be looked to, and the Government we have established
must instantly be replaced by the French whenever it is
withdrawn.' Lord Minto, in fact, had long determined
and in those days before the telegraph-cable Governors-
General could take such risks to ignore the wishes of his
merchant chiefs at home. But there were others in London
he could not ignore the diplomatists. Already the news
of the Peninsula campaign had awakened hopes in English-
men's hearts all round the world. A victorious end to the
endless war might be soon at last in sight. And then the
fate of Java would be settled not by the aspirations of a
Minto or a Raffles but by high politics in Europe ; and
the interests of the Javanese would inevitably rank second,
if they ranked at all, to the requirements of European
concord and stability. ' All that I fear ', said Lord Minto
in his letter to Dundas, ' is the general peace.' But even
that cramping uncertainty could be no argument for evacua-
tion or inaction now. It ' ought not surely to prevent us
from beginning to perform the first duty of Governments in
improving the condition of a people that has become tributary
to our authority and tributary to our prosperity '. To take
38 RAFFLES
so strong a line on his own initiative, to commit the Company
and the British Government to the costly experiment of a
regular annexation and occupation of Java, was clearly to
risk official disapproval, coldness, possibly disgrace. But
no such reckonings could dim Lord Minto's ardour. He
cared nothing for rewards, he said, if he were ' happy
enough ... to witness a substantial amelioration in the
condition of the five millions who inhabit this beautiful
country or even a tendency to that result from the founda-
tions I shall have laid.' f
So the decision to remain in Java was taken. It had
indeed been taken long ago. But, if the Governor-General
could lay the foundations of good government by principle
and precept, he could not build it up himself. Already he
had been long away from India. Chafing officials and a
mounting heap of uncompleted documents were waiting in
Calcutta. It was high time for Lord Minto to return to his
desk. And he could go with an easy mind. He could leave
the building to hands which he knew were guided by the
same ideas and the same ideals as his own. On September n,
a week before the actual capitulation, he carried out the
design he had formed in the days when the Java expedition
was still in preparation and issued to Raffles, ' in acknow-
ledgment of the services he had rendered and in consideration
of his peculiar fitness for the office ', a commission to act
as ' Lieutenant Governor of Java and its dependencies '.
Then followed five weeks of profuse and intimate discussion
between the Governor-General, and his delegate. On
October 19, Lord Minto sailed for Bengal. ' While we are
in Java ', he said to Raffles before he left, ' let us do all the
good we can.'
VI
THE young Governor first set himself to establish peaceful
and friendly relations with the population he now ruled.
The conciliation of the Dutch colonists proved easy enough.
Lord Minto's proclamation on landing had appealed to them
to recognise the British as the true friends of their captive
homeland. ' England has in every period, sometimes in
concert with other Powers, sometimes single and alone, been
the champion and defender of Europe, the hope of those
whose fate was not yet consummated, the refuge and
consolation of the fallen/ And in another proclamation,
issued on September n, the Dutch -toad been promised the
same status before the law, the same trading facilities, the
same eligibility for office under the new Government as
Englishmen. To these wise overtures the Dutch at once
responded. The sentiments of the colonial community
as a whole, as has been noticed, had been severely strained
by Daendels' administration. ' II parait certain ', wrote
Janssens in a confidential report to his Government, ' que
tous, tant Europ&ns qu'indig&nes, ont desir voir passer la
colonie entre les mains de 1'ennemi. On attributera cela i
une detestable Anglomanie, tandis que ce n'&ait que le
souhait ardent de voir finir une administration qui dsolait
tout le monde.' An exaggeration, doubtless ; but, probably,
with a good deal of truth in it. For the Dutch, it must be
remembered, all these years, were divided into two parties ;
and some, at least, of the minority, who had supported the
House of Orange, if they were not positive Anglomaniacs,
yet recognised in England the champion of that House and of
their national freedom. Naturally, therefore, the Dutch
colonists of this Orange faction had hoped that the East
39
40 RAFFLES (
Indies would at least be able to maintain neutrality and had
bitterly resented their being used as one more instrument
for Napoleon's world-ambitions. As to the Republican
and pro-French party, the best of its ' patriots ' could have
no illusions as to the possibility of reversing the decision
of Cornells as long as the British command of the sea pre-
vented the arrival of reinforcements from Europe. A far
more practical, a far more immediate question was whether
they were to be deserted to the dreaded vengeance of the
natives. And, since the British were their only available
protectors, since a British government was their only
safeguard against revolt and massacre, they wanted, for
the time being at any rate, to keep the British in Java, not
to turn them out. They might hope, one day, at the end
of the war perhaps, to see the Dutch flag flying again at
Batavia ; but in the meantime it would be plainly impolitic
not to make friends with the newcomers, and well-nigh
suicidal to plot and scheme against them. Social relations,
therefore, were quickly established. Many of the Dutch
attended a dinner and a ball given by Raffles to Janssens
and two other Dutch generals shortly before Lord Minto's
departure. And Raffles was soon on the friendliest terms
with the two Dutchmen, Mr. Muntinghe and Mr. Cranssen,
on his Council. The concord, indeed, was almost universal
almost, but not quite. The gallant Colonel Gillespie,
the military member of Council, was uneasy. He scented
' conspiracies and plots '. But, as Raffles wrote to Lord
Minto in January 1812, it was ' all without reason '. 'There
is not among the Dutch the least symptom of dissension,
and all classes of people have come most quietly under
British rule. ... As soon as it was known that the oaths
might be taken, the public offices were crowded from
morning till night with the inhabitants. . . . The late
members of Council came forward in a body ; and, after
taking the oaths before me, I am sorry to add, got most
jovially tipsy at my house in company with the new Coun-
cillors/ The Dutch, in fact, were ' perfectly content and
happy '.
RAFFLES 41
The conciliation of the Javanese was a far graver problem.
Even the ' Iron Marshal ' had not brought the whole of
Java under Dutch control. Nearly half the island had
never acknowledged the supremacy of the Dutch Govern-
ment ; and some of the native chiefs saw in the British
conquest an opportunity of repudiating all foreign inter-
ference and authority. Swift and firm measures were
needed to prevent the general unrest from growing into
something like a general rebellion ; and, at this first test,
Raffles proved that the competent departmental official
could also be a man of bold initiative and decisive action.
He at once determined, in a manner which a not indiscri-
minating Dutch historian has applauded as ' worthy of
a statesman ', that the basis of peace and order in Java must
be a universal acceptance of British sovereignty throughout
the island ; and, in the third month of his office, he set out
for the central and eastern districts to negotiate in person
to that end with the two most powerful native rulers, the
Sosohunan or Emperor of Java at Solo and the Sultan of
Mataram at Jokjokarta. The interview with the former
was quite satisfactory. The Emperor willingly signed a
treaty, in which he accepted the overlordship of the British
Government in return for a guarantee of his crown, his
territories, and his security. The Sultan was more formid-
able. Raffles was received with pomp and ceremony, and,
as he drove through Jokjokarta, he observed that the road-
way was crowded on either side by ' about 10,000 armed
men of various descriptions, mostly cavalry '. But he faced
the Sultan coolly, obtained from him a promise to obey the
new Government, and confirmed him in his office. It seemed,
as if at least the foundations of a good understanding had
been laid. In the following May, however, the Sultan broke
loose and set himself at the head of a league of princes to
drive the British out of Java. Raffles again acted promptly.
Most of the British troops were away on an expedition to
Sumatra ; but he gathered what force he could, about
1,200 men, marched on Jokjokarta, carried it by storm,
seized and deposed the Sultan, and set his heir on the throne.
C.S.B. r
42 RAFFLES
All was over by mid- June. The league collapsed. The
chiefs submitted. In a few weeks and with very little
bloodshed British sovereignty had been established through-
out the island. Thenceforward, during the whole of Raffles'
administration, the peace remained unbroken.
Meantime he had begun to organise his government. The
supreme control was vested in ' the Lieutenant-Governor-in-
Council ', though, under the terms of his Commission, the
Governor could act, if he thought fit, without the consent
and even without the knowledge of his Council. But
Raffles had little difficulty in securing the co-operation of his
colleagues. There was friction at times and in the end a
serious difference of opinion between him and Colonel
Gillespie. But he found in his successor, General Nightingall,
a devoted friend and ally. The two Dutch members were
as loyal as they were hardworking.
In five of the twenty-one districts into which the island
was divided there was no established native ruler. These
districts, therefore, were directly controlled by the Governor-
in-Council through subordinate British officials. In each
of the remaining districts, the principal chief, after taking
an oath of allegiance to the British Crown and obedience to
the Governor, was recognised as ' Regent ' holding the
supreme executive authority in all local affairs but advised
by a British official stationed as Resident at his court. To
provide these Residents as well as the staff required in the
other districts and at headquarters Raffles had to improvise
a civil service partly from the best of the old Dutch officials,
but mainly from such Englishmen as he could find in Java
or could collect at short notice from elsewhere. On the
Residents, out at their lonely posts, rested the chief burden
of the day-to-day government of the country. Raffles
provided them with carefully drafted instructions, but at
every turn they had to act on their own initiative and their
own resources. In one of the most masterly of all his official
papers, the Minute of February 11, 1814, Raffles paid a fine
tribute to their work. ' Placed in situations which, but a
few years ago, were considered only as affording a fortune
RAFFLES 43
to the individual . . . and so uncertain in their tenure that
every blast that blew was expected to bring news of a change
which would remove them from the island, they have,
without an exception, felt the honour and character of the
British nation prompt them above every selfish consideration,
and in the short space of six months enabled me to effect a
revolution which two centuries of the Dutch administration
could scarcely dream of. ... I might challenge a better
illustration of the British character to be afforded.'
As regards the legal system Raffles decided to follow the
example set in British India. Justice between native and
native was to be administered as far as possible in accordance
with native law. In its final form Raffles' system left minor
cases wholly to the native courts. Major cases and nearly
all criminal cases were tried before a circuit-judge who
visited each district once in three months. The facts were
determined by a native jury of five. No pleaders were
allowed. The law was expounded by the chief priests and
native fiscals, and the opinion of the circuit- judge was given.
If all these agreed, sentence was pronounced and executed.
If not, the decision was referred to the Governor. Punish-
ment by torture or mutilation, hitherto customary, was
explicitly and universally abolished. For cases in which
Europeans were concerned, courts were established at the
three chief commercial centres, Batavia, Samarang, and
Sourabaya. For civil cases the Roman-Dutch law was
continued in force. In criminal cases, for the most part,
the milder English law was prescribed. The only other
innovation was ' trial by jury '.
There was one further question of law in which Raffles'
sympathies were engaged. Slavery, in some degree, had
probably existed in Java from early times, but it had not
been very prevalent. Some of the Javanese owned slaves,
it appears, but not many. Nine-tenths of the 30,000 slaves
in Java at the time of the British conquest, so Raffles
declared, had been imported by the Dutch mainly for
domestic service. The Javanese themselves had never
been enslaved, but the supply was maintained by a vigorous
44 RAFFLES
slave-trade among the neighbouring islands. To abolish
slavery at a stroke was at least as impossible in Java as it
had been for Lord Wellesley in British India in 1805. Raffles
could not thus destroy, by mere right of conquest, the
private property of colonists or chiefs. But he promptly
doubled the duty on the importation of slaves and prohibited
the trade in children under fourteen ; and, as soon as the
British Statute constituting the trade as felony was pro-
mulgated, he re-enacted it as a colonial law. The sources
of supply were thus dried up. Further, Raffles decreed
that all slaves must be registered on the West Indian plan,
so as to prevent any illicit increase in their number. Finally*
he proposed to amend the colonial law so as to give slaves
personal rights which could be vindicated in the courts and
to allow them to possess property with which, after seven
years, they might buy their freedom. These last proposals,
however, had not been approved by the Government of
India before Raffles' administration came to an end ; and,
meantime, the Court of Directors had sharply censured him
for ' disposing prematurely of property that might belong
to the Company ' ! Raffles, however, could console himself
with the fait accompli. The slave trade abolished, slavery
could not long survive. Many of the Dutch colonists,
moreover, shared their new Governor's philanthropic senti-
ments ; and, before he left Java, a Benevolent Society was
founded, in which several Dutchmen took part, on the
model of the African Institution in England and with the
object of promoting the welfare of the slaves and providing
for those who obtained their freedom.
The establishment of law and order was Raffles' first
duty ; but behind it, behind all his government, lay the
basic question of finance ; and his hardest task was to make
this bankrupt dependency pay its way. He knew well
enqugh that the Merchant Company he served would reassert
its original policy of withdrawal unless it could be reassured
on this cardinal point. And one of his first acts was to
make a survey of the financial situation and draft a sanguine
report too sanguine, as the event was to prove for the
RAFFLES 45
Directors. In 1812-13, he promised, the colony would
yield a substantial surplus. Then he set to work to raise
his revenue. The Dutch had raised theirs from their
monopoly of trade and the system of forced contingents and
forced labour. As to trade, Raffles soon made up his mind
against continuing the monopoly. ' Java cannot be held ',
he wrote, ' on the same footing as Ceylon. It is by extending
its trade, and not by confining it, that the interests of its
local government can alone be secured/ Moreover, the days
of the Company's exclusive rights in the East were now
numbered. The Charter Act of 1813 limited its monopoly
to the trade with China. Raffles, therefore, threw the trade
in Java open ; and in place of the monopoly he imposed a
duty of 3 % on the principal exports and a duty of 6 %
on imports. The system of farming out the collection of
duties was abolished and official customs-houses established
at the three chief ports.
But there was little to be expected from the proceeds of
external trade. The Dutch monopoly had cramped it.
The British blockade during the war had paralysed it. It
was on the internal revenue that Raffles built his hopes.
The island, he saw, was exceedingly fertile. Cultivation
rioted in the valleys and had climbed far up into the hills.
And the cultivators ? Were they as thriftless and lazy
as was commonly said ? Was it impossible with such a
population for Java to yield anything but a negligible
fraction of its potential wealth ? Raffles did not think so
not if the whole economic system could be reorganised
on right principles. And to Raffles these principles were
obvious. First, the cultivators must be freed freed from
the manifold obligations and compulsions, the almost servile
conditions, of the old rtgime. His primary aim, indeed,
in Java was to use ' the opportunity of bestowing on a whole
nation the freedom which is everywhere the boast of British
subjects '. Secondly, the cultivators must be able to feel
that their labour on the land was not mere serfs' labour for
their lords and masters but in their own interest and for
their own profit and the means by which they might raise
46 RAFFLES
and civilise their standard of life. ' They are neither sunk
in barbarism, nor worn out by effeminacy : they have been
both mistaken and misrepresented : they are neither so
indolent as to refuse to labour when they feel that the fruits
of it are their own, nor so ignorant as to be indifferent to the
comforts and luxuries of civilised society/ But to apply
these principles meant an economic and social revolution ;
and in his most impetuous mood Raffles knew well enough
that such a revolution could not be effected in a day. De-
tailed information, for one thing, was required ; and so he
began by appointing a Commission of three experienced
Dutch residents with Colonel Colin Mackenzie as chairman
to examine the whole question of the revenue system and
land tenure. Raffles, meantime, by constant conversation
with the colonists and still more with the natives and by
frequent and prolonged excursions in the interior of the
island, was acquainting himself at first hand with the ways
and customs of Javanese life. And gradually, as his
knowledge grew, he built up his new system, till, at the
end of two or three years, not indeed without effort but
with astonishingly little friction, the great revolution was
as complete as administrative machinery could make it.
The first stage was the stage of enfranchisement. Ail
compulsory cultivation of coffee or other crops was abolished.
Forced labour was likewise abolished except for public
works, and for those a fair wage was paid. The ' contingents '
or forced sales of produce to the Government were tem-
porarily continued ; but they were reduced to a minimum,
and finally, it seems, dropped altogether. Lastly, restric-
tions on native trading were as far as possible removed.
The cultivator was free to sell his produce anywhere to
anyone. The second stage, the harder and the longer, was
the transformation of the old semi-feudal system of land-
tenure with all its obligations into a system of individual
lease-hold and systematic taxation. The abolition of
vassalage was proclaimed. The native princes or Regents
were no longer permitted to control the land on which the
cultivator worked or to command a share of its produce.
RAFFLES 47
They were compensated for this loss of income by the allot-
ment of defined estates, free of rent, and a liberal salary
from Government. Their social degradation was more
than made good by the new importance and security of
their political status. For, as has been seen, they were
recognised as the supreme rulers, under the British Crown,
of their districts ; they carried out all the main executive
functions, including the control of police, on the Govern-
ment's behalf ; and their authority was backed by the
Government's power and prestige. Instead of semi-indepen-
dent rival princelings they had become fellow-officers of State.
The lands thus withdrawn from feudal control were leased
as far as possible to their actual occupants for relatively
short terms and in large or small areas according to local
circumstances. The rent for these lands was to constitute
the one form of agrarian taxation in lieu of all the varied
obligations of the old system. It was assessed at the outset
at the value of two-fifths of the rice-crop. Once that share
had gone to the Government, the rest of the yield of field or
orchard or garden would be left, to quote Raffles, ' free from
assessment, the cultivators free from personal taxes, and
the inland trade unrestricted and untaxed '. For purposes
of local organisation Raffles revived the old Hindu village-
system. To begin with, the lands were to be leased and the
rents assessed through the village headmen who were to
be ' held responsible for the proper management of such
portions of the country as may be placed under their superin-
tendence and authority '. But it would have been unwise
to leave the headmen unwatched and unsupported ; and
at a later stage Raffles assigned the ' immediate superinten-
dence of the lands ' to Government and appointed British
officials, whom he called ' Collectors ', for the purpose. ' It is
not enough / he wrote, ' that the Government lay down the
principles of a benevolent system. ... It is with the
Collectors that the application of those principles is en-
trusted, and to their temper, assiduity, judgment, and
integrity that the people have to look for the enjoyment of
the blessings which it is intended to bestow on them/
48 RAFFLES,
Such, in briefest outline, was Raffles' system. It was no
unique invention. Within the last twenty years, as it
happened, a closely similar system, known as the ryotwari
system, had been introduced in parts of Madras by Read and
Munro; and the function allotted to Raffles' ' Collectors ' in
Java was very much the same as those of the ' Collectors ' in
the Company's Indian Civil Service. Doubtless, in principle
at any rate, Raffles had discussed his plans in his intimate
talks with Lord Minto ; but, as he wrote to his chief at
Calcutta at the beginning of 1814, he had already completed
the scheme and drafted the last regulations when, in a copy
of a Report of a Parliamentary Committee, he discovered
what had been done in Madras. ' The principles of the
ryotwari settlement ', he wrote, ' had suggested themselves
without my knowing that they had been adopted elsewhere ;
and although I may not easily gain credit for the original
design, the promoters and supporters of that settlement
will, no doubt, find a strong argument in its favour from the
circumstance of its having been so early and so easily adopted
in a foreign and distant colony.' But, in any case, Raffles
was not destined to enjoy much credit for his revolution.
There is no reason to doubt that it would have proved a
complete success. Elsewhere the principles of freedom and
self-interest for the cultivator were to be vindicated beyond
question in India and, in recent years and with singular
clarity, in British West Africa. But in Java a final proof
of complete success was not forthcoming for the simple
reason that there was not time for it. Some of the old
scandals died hard. It was difficult, in two or three years'
time, to teach every native chief not to go behind the new
scheme and grasp again at his old privileges. It was
impossible to prevent the headmen who rented out knd
from exacting the feudal services which were so deeply
rooted in the traditions of Javanese life. It was impossible
to abolish all the customary local imposts on the transit of
trade in the interior. No social revolution has ever made
a perfectly dean cut with the past. Here and there, in some
shape or other, vestiges of the old abuses have always
RAFFLES 49
survived, at least for a time. But, if a complete, a perfect
execution of Raffles' scheme could only be attained on
paper, he could fairly boast of what was, in so short a space
of time, an astonishing measure of real achievement. Over
most of the island the new system was actually in operation.
Everywhere in form, and nearly everywhere in fact, the
exploiters of the old regime had submitted to the new. As
to the exploited, they had quickly realised, with wonder and
gratitude, the change that had come upon their life. The
new system, records Mr. Muntinghe, was ' received not only
with submission, but also with joy and acclamation among
a large number of the Javanese population village chiefs,
magistrates, and district chiefs included. The people were
satisfied and content '. And again : ' The British Govern-
ment have attached themselves to the whole population of
Java. They have taken under their protection the old
native institutions and revised their customs and the old
village administration of their choice, and set bounds to the
tyranny of princes and regents '. And Mr. Muntinghe is a
trustworthy witness. He might have been tempted to
glorify the reforms in which he himself had taken part ; but
he might equally have been tempted to minimise, as some
other Dutchmen did, the value of the work accomplished
during the British interregnum in Java.
But what of the financial aspect of the revolution ? That,
after all, was the crux. That was what Raffles' ultimate
piasters at India House would be chiefly concerned with.
And on that point, unhappily, it was difficult, at such a
distance, to convince men who disliked innovations, took
short views, demanded quick returns, and had from the first
discountenanced and only reluctantly acquiesced in the
experiment of trying to govern Java at all. Yet, even on the
financial issue and even after only two years, Raffles could
make a strong case. He could show that the revenue had
steadily risen till it exceeded a million and a half rupees and
that the debt to Bengal, incurred to give his Government a
start, had been steadily reduced. And he could show that
nearly half of the whole revenue was already produced by
C.9.K. C
50 RAFFLES,
the rents of land under the new system. But had not
Raffles, at the outset, raised still higher hopes ? He had
and they might have been fulfilled if his treasury had not
had to meet two heavy ' extraordinary ' calls. In the first
place, the previous Dutch Government, in desperate need
of money, had sold certain provinces to Chinese speculators.
The results had been they were bound to be disastrous
to the inhabitants. Ruthlessly exploited, unable at last to
tolerate their servile life, some thousands of them had already
left their homes to seek a better fate in some other part of
the island when the Dutch Government fell ; and one of
its successor's first troubles had been a little rebellion in
that area. Raffles, therefore, was clearly right in deciding
that this ill must be undone. He bought the provinces back.
And it was in them, unfettered by native feudalism, that he
made his first experiments in the ryotwari system. Secondly,
the Dutch Government, as has been seen, had been obliged
to issue paper-money, the value of which had quickly and
seriously deteriorated. Raffles was clearly right again
in thinking that no financial stability or advance was possible
until this handicap was removed. He bought the paper
up. But to meet these costs, and especially the latter, he
had no ready money ; and, further borrowing from Bengal
being expressly forbidden, he was driven to resort to a sale
of some of the public lands. It was a bold step to take on
his own initiative ; but, as a matter of ' exigent necessity '
Lord Minto approved of it. ' I consider your measure ', he
wrote, ' to have been an able expedient in a case of great
emergency/ Not so, the Directors. Raffles had parted,
without authority, with the Company's assets. Those assets
at least had been solid. As for the ultimate revenues iu
the hope of which they had been sacrificed and their proceeds
squandered, they might be nothing but the figments of an
impetuous young official's imagination. No : the Directors
regarded it as a blunder ; and, as they brooded over it
this minor detail in Raffles 1 great constructive work it
seemed to them a very bad blunder indeed.
A cloud of distrust, in fact, had begun to settle on the
RAFFLES 51
Directors' minds with regard to Raffles and all his work in
Java, and it was suddenly darkened in the course of 1814 by
a curious personal imbroglio. Colonel Gillespie, it has been
seen, did not sit comfortably in his chair at the Council table.
He differed from the Governor in his attitude to the Dutch.
He resented the diminution of the British garrison against
his advice, though Raffles was only obeying Lord Minto's
orders. He figured in more than one dispute between the
civil and the military authorities. ' It is quite unnecessary
that I should inform your Lordship ', Raffles wrote to
Lord Minto, ' that I have rather a strange character to deal
with ; he prides himself on his quixotism, but with all his
irregularities is a man of so high a stamp and caste that I
must esteem him/ Such being Raffles' attitude, it was not
difficult to bring about a reconciliation ; but it was arranged
by Lord Minto, to save Raffles from further annoyance, that
Gillespie should be honourably transferred to the Com-
mander-in-Chief's staff in Bengal. They parted as friends ;
and it was with astonishment, therefore, that Raffles
learned, some months later, that Gillespie had laid grave
charges against him before the Supreme Government at
Calcutta. Gillespie, he knew, had not taken kindly to the
sale of the public lands, though he had ultimately given his
qualified assent in Council. But he did not know for
Gillespie had said nothing about it that the quixotic
soldier had disapproved of his conduct in consenting to share
with a leading Dutch resident and former Governor in the
purchase of some land adjoining the latter's estate. This
act had, no doubt, been indiscreet ; but Raffles had done it
solely in the public interest in order to stimulate the sale ;
he had, in fact, forced up the bidding against his own pocket
and to his partner's dismay ! But Gillespie, it seems, had
construed it as a gross breach of the Governor's official
trust with a view to his personal profit. Had Lord Minto
been still in Bengal when Gillespie arrived, it is probable
that nothing more would have been heard of this ludicrous
scandal ; but in Lord Minto's successor, Lord Moira, soon
to be known to fame as the Marquess of Hastings, a soldier
52 RAFFLES
and one who knew not Raffles, Gillespie found an attentive
listener to his complaints. The new Governor-General was
soon convinced that the young civilian, so imprudently
entrusted with a task far too big for him, was certainly
incompetent and possibly dishonest. And presently an
egregious document was compiled by a department ctf his
Government arraigning Raffles' administration and coftduct
under seventeen heads, mixing up the personal and the
public issues, disparaging the land-system equally with the
land-sale. On the personal question, of course, the ultimate
result was certain. Raffles 1 honour was completely cleared.
But only after long delay ; and in the meantime the incident
had done its work. It had confirmed the Directors' sus-
picions. Lord Minto, it was evident, had made a bad choice
in Raffles. Lord Moira had quickly found him out. They
ought never to have trusted his youth and his enthusiasms.
The only thing now was to remove him and cut their losses
in Java as best they could.
VII
MEANTIME the diplomatists were engaged in cutting their
losses for them. As the war in Europe began to draw to an
end, Raffles had penned letter after letter in the hope of
persuading the British Government not to abandon its hold
on the Malayan Archipelago at the imminent settlement.
But when at last the peacemakers assembled at Vienna,-
the news that filtered through to him in his far-off island
confirmed the fears which had haunted Lord Minto and
himself at the outset of their great adventure. Napoleon's
escape from Elba, however, and the renewal of war seemed
to have plunged the whole international framework once
more into the melting-pot. ' The wonderful and extra-
ordinary change in the politics of Europe ', wrote Raffles
to his old friend, Ramsay, ' has, with all its horrors, shed
one consoling ray on this sacred Isle ; and Java may yet
be permanently English.' ' I entreat you ', he begged
William Marsden, ' to advocate the cause of Java, if there
is a possibility of its remaining under British protection/
But his main assault was directed at headquarters. He
drafted a full and able statement of his case and dispatched
it (August 5, 1815) to Lord Buckinghamshire, the President
of the Board of Control which, since Pitt's India Act of 1784,
had supervised on the Government's behalf the Company's
Indian administration. Once more he combatted the old
bad reputation which Java and its sister-isles had incurred
in Europe and showed that it was solely due to Dutch
misgovernment. Once more he asserted that not only
could the islands be made to pa jr their way, but already, in
Java, this happy possibility had been realised. If diplomacy
demanded some concession to the Dutch, ' for my own part,
I would make them a present of Batavia and its environs
53
54 RAFFLES
if they required it, to administer in their own way under a
political agent or commissioner. . . . Batavia might then
be to Java what Chinsurah is to Bengal '. No personal
consideration, he insisted, influenced his plea. He would
refuse, if it were offered, any further charge of the Java
government, extended, as he proposed it should be, over the
Archipelago. ' It will require a person of high rank, either
noble or military ' and then, for a moment, he betrays
his wounded feelings ' I have had too much experience
already of the injuries that accrue from the want of that
high rank '. But now as always it is the welfare of the
natives that weighs most with him. ' I will say nothing of
the Eastern Islands in general, but of Java and of its in-
habitants I can speak plainly and decisively ; they have felt
the advantage of British principles, they acknowledge the
benefit, and feel grateful for our interference. I have just
returned from a three months' tour throughout the Island,
and I can safely say that regret, apprehension, and dismay
precede the expected return of the Dutch ; that the native
population, feeling and profiting by the arrangements of
the British Government, are decidedly attached to it ; that
they will not, for they cannot, understand the wisdom of
that policy which, after the price of so much blood and
treasure, would transfer them to their former task-masters,
and deliver them up unconditionally to their vengeance.'
Some months later, Raffles submitted a concise memorial
to the Court of Directors, repeating his plea in briefer terms.
' The acknowledged tranquillity of the country, increase of
industry, improvement of revenue, and known attachment
of the Javanese to the existing system prove that it has
been equally beneficial to the interests of Government
and ... to the industry and happiness of the extensive
population of this island. 1 And finally he appealed to
public opinion in a pamphlet on the theme of Java 'as it
was, as it is, as it will be '. The prosperity of Java, he
declared in its closing pages, depended on the trade and the
welfare of the natives. Shall Britain, he asked, deliver it
again to monopoly and feudal bondage ? ' Shall she not
RAFFLES 55
rather embrace the moment, when the triumph of her arms
has opened the way to a new empire in these seas, to stretch
a protecting hand over the Eastern Archipelago and establish
the amelioration and prosperity of its inhabitants by placing
them under her own government and protection ? '
It was all no use, of course. The independence of the
Low Countries, and, to that end, their strength and stability
had always been an idtefixe of British foreign policy. It was
the revolutionary attack on Holland which had precipitated
Britain into the war with France. It was the French
annexation of the Netherlands and Holland that had
constituted the chief obstacle to any lasting peace. And to
free the Low Countries and erect them into a solid buffer-state
was a primary object of British diplomacy at Vienna. In
the summer of 1813 Castlereagh was already asserting that
the question of restoring the captured Dutch colonies was
linked up with that of the independence of Holland. There
were many Englishmen, no doubt, who thought, for various
reasons, that Britain sjiould keep all she had got ; but
Castlereagh was not one of them. A letter to the Prime
Minister in the spring of 1814 shows which way his mind
was moving. ' I still feel great doubts about the acquisition
in sovereignty of so many Dutch colonies [other than the
Cape]. I am sure our reputation on the Continent ... is of
more real moment to us than an acquisition thus made.
The British merchants ought to be satisfied if we secure them
a direct import. . . . More than this I think Holland ought
not to lose/ The upshot was a compromise. In the final
settlement Britain retained the Cape (for which an indemnity
was paid), the colonies now known as British Guiana, and
Ceylon; but she restored Surinam (now Dutch Guiana),
Cura$oa in the West Indies, and all her East Indian acquisi-
tions including Malacca.
So, in a moment, it seemed, Raffles 1 dream of a beneficent
British protectorate over the whole Malayan world from the
Malacca gate to the Moluccas had melted into nothing. By
Lord Castlereagh's ' direful sacrifices ', as he continued to
regard them to the end of his life, the frontier of British
56 RAFFLES
trade and settlement had been moved back to its old line.
The most advanced British outposts were again Bencoolen
and Penang outside the gates. Within them, the whole
Archipelago was again a Dutch preserve. And with the
dream, it seemed too, had gone what Raffles had already
done to give it concrete shape. The great revolution, the
first-fruits of British rule in Java, the promise of what it
might mean for the Malayan race it had all been blighted
overnight by a frost from Vienna. So, at any rate, Raffles
must have thought when first the black news came. But
such wholesale pessimism, as will appear, was not in the
end to be justified. The dream of a protectorate might
still in part, and in no mean part, come true. And as for
Java the whole of Raffles 1 work was not to be undone. The
Dutch, restored in triumph to Batavia, must have felt
tempted, if only for the sake of their national prestige, to
scrap it all, to try to blot out the memory of that alien
interregnum. But they were much too sensible to destroy
what they recognised to be good. They retained, for
instance, Raffles 1 partition of the island into districts. They
renewed the political agreements he had made with the
native princes. They upheld his new principle of systematic
taxation under official control. They kept in force, almost
unaltered, the detailed instructions he had drawn up for
the Residents. And, if some zealous patriots pretended to
ignore these wise appropriations and asserted that the whole
of the so-called ' English system ' had disappeared with
English rule, other Dutchmen were more honest.
Muntinghe's verdict, for example, was frank and final.
' The first, the most difficult, and certainly the most hazar-
dous steps towards the introduction of a system of political
government and regulated taxation had been taken when
the Commissioner-General took over the administration of
Netherlands India in 1816.'
But that, after all, was only the mechanical side, so to
speak, of Raffles' work. What he cared for far more deeply
was the object for which he had constructed the machine
the social liberation of the Javanese, And as regards all
, RAFFLES 57
that side of the work his pessimism was better justified.
The abolition of the slave trade could not be undone since
Holland had renounced her share in it in 1814 ; and slavery
itself, no longer fed by the trade, could not long resist the
spirit of a new age. But that was all or almost all that
survived of Raffles' revolution. The new-fangled ryotwari
system, on which the whole structure was based, would have
required in any case at least a generation to settle down
solidly on Javan soil. As it was, it quickly crumbled away
after Raffles 1 departure, and in 1830 the Dutch Government
established the famous ' culture system ' in its place. In
principle this system was supposed to operate to the economic
advantage of the natives. In practice it reproduced in an
exaggerated form the worst evils of the old regime. Cultiva-
tion became once more compulsory. Forced labour was
again exacted. The collection of taxes was again entrusted
to native tax-farmers. ' Under this system the highest
bidder became the actual master of the people ', wrote Mr.
Alleyne Ireland, after close personal study of the Far Eastern
Tropics, ' and he used his authority for the sole purpose of
extorting the largest contributions in money, kind, and
labour which could be secured without driving the cultivators
to exercise the only right they had that of emigration/
It was not till after 1848, when the control of Dutch colonial
administration was transferred from the Crown to the
Legislature, that the people of Java were once more and
finally delivered from bondage. Then, at last, public
opinion in Holland, which had long been restive, 'could
intervene effectively in the colonial field ; and with the
enactment of the Regeerings-Reglement in 1854 began a steady
process of systematic liberal reform throughout the Dutch
East Indies.
But, apart altogether from its sequel, Raffles' work in
Java had been by no means a mere waste of energy. At the
least he had set a great example, not only of selfless labour
in the public service there were precedents enough for
that but of something rarer in the annals of the British
Empire a century ago. He had been one of the first English-
C.S.R. H
58 RAFFLES,
men to put in practice the new doctrine of trusteeship. In
no European dependency other than India, nowhere in the
tropics except in the artificial, anomalous, and unfortunate
settlement of enfranchised slaves under Zachary Macaulay
at Sierra Leone, had a Goverribr made the welfare of the
natives, as Raffles had made it, the primary object of his
government. More than that, and no less practically
important, Raffles, far in advance of his time, had con-
ceived, applied, and gone far to prove the theory that there
is no inevitable and universal conflict between the legitimate
aspirations of the advanced and backward races of the
world, that the economic freedom and self-interest of the
native peoples are in fact, under normal conditions, the
means by which the needs of the European peoples for
the produce of the tropics can be most easily and most
effectually satisfied. And, finally, Raffles had done some-
thing immediate and concrete for the Javanese. He had
given them, if only for a year or two, a liberty, a security, a
hope and purpose, a taste of human rights, such as they had
never known. Was that a waste of energy ? Had he done
nothing ? Not many men in Raffles' day or in our own
could hope to do as much.
Some such reflections may have passed through Raffles'
mind and lightened, perhaps, a little, the gloom that gathered
round the end of his administration. ' I shall come home ',
he had written to Ramsay in happier days three years before,
' not laden with riches and spoils, but, I trust, with some
little honour and credit.' But even that was now to be
denied him. In May, 1815, the Court of Directors wrote to
inform him that he was to be relieved of his duties in Java.
They gave him no word of praise. They did not even credit
him with good intentions. They curtly regretted that his
administration had ' rendered the occupation of Java a
source of financial embarrassment to the British Govern- '
ment '. In the following October Lord Moira's final judg-
ment on the seventeen charges was at last delivered. It
exonerated Raffles of all |personal impropriety, but it con-
demned his work. ' He has not succeeded in administering
RAFFLES 59
the extensive and important duties of the government of
Java with that degree of efficiency which is indispensable to
secure the advantages held out by Mr. Raffles himself from
the possession of the colony. ' Slandered, censured, dismissed
Raffles was spared only one humiliation. When the time
came for the formal surrender to the Dutch, he was no longer
Lieutenant-General of Java. On March 12, 1816, he handed
over his office to his successor. A fortnight later he left his
' sacred isle ' . On August 19 the Dutch resumed possession.
VIII
THERE were other shadows darkening the close of Raffles'
career in Java.
Writing on board the Modeste on the eve of the British
landing, he had confessed to his old friend, Ramsay, that,
while his lack of self-confidence often made him desperately
miserable, this was ' one of those life-inspiring moments f in
which he was ' as happy as I think it possible for man to
be '. And indeed his first three years in Java were probably,
all things considered, the happiest years in Raffles' life.
There was one sharp blow at the outset. John Leyden, who,
needless to say, had accompanied the expedition, while
poring over documents in a chilly record-chamber in Batavia,
contracted a fever of which, with terrible rapidity, he died.
To Raffles it was not only the loss of a personal friend ; he
had counted on sharing with Leyden all the difficulties and
the triumphs of the great experiment in Java. But his
grief was soon muffled and deadened by the labours and
excitements of the days that followed. With his assumption
of the government he set himself once more to that intense,
unresting toil which, from boyhood up, he had shown himself
able, as few other men, to endure. Though his task was
now immensely greater than that of the official ' jack of all
trades ' at Penang, he was again almost single-handed.
Governors are usually assisted in the ordinary routine of
their administration by an experienced staff. Every project
is scrutinised by several eyes. The precedents are collected.
The ' pros ' and ' cons ' are stated in writing. The files
mount up. But Raffles had no expert assistance except
that of his Dutch members of Council, no files and precedents,
and, except for one or two secretaries and a few clerks, no
regular body of officials until he had improvised a civil
60
RAFFLES 61
service. ' I am here alone ', he wrote in 1812, ' without
any advice, in a new country, with a large population of
not less than six or seven millions of people, a great pro-
portion of foreign Europeans, and a standing army of not
less than seven thousand men.' Nor was his work confined
to the ordinary routine, though that itself must have com-
manded a large part of his daily labour. He was starting
to build a new structure of government in Java. He was
planning a revolution. It is not surprising, therefore, to
learn from the diary of Captain Travers, one of his aides-de-
camp, that ' he never allowed himself the least relaxation '
and that ' the only recreation he ever indulged in, and that
was absolutely necessary for the preservation of his health,
was an evening drive and occasionally a ride in the morning '.
He was ' often writing till a very late hour at night ' and at
work again at ten o'clock next day. Nor did he shirk the
social duties of Government House. Dinners, garden-
parties, receptions, balls the Governor, ' full of life and
spirits ', was the mainspring of them all. He ' never retired
early ' and ' never seemed fatigued ' ; he moved among his
guests, ' affable, animated, agreeable, and attentive to all ',
until, at last, the party broke up and the lights were put out
and sleep descended on Government House except where,
through the small hours, the Governor sat at his desk. And,
if Raffles never spared himself, he never asked too much of
others nor treated them with the brusque impatience of the
over-busy man. ' He was ever courteous and kind, easy of
access at all times, exacting but little from his staff, who were
most devotedly attached to him/ Few Governors, indeed,
can have won such intimate affection from those about them.
' We have now, dear sir, known you long ', ran the Memorial
which Raffles received from his staff after leaving Java ;
' and, though some of us have not had the happiness till of
late years, we all equally feel that it is impossible to know
you without acquiring that cordial and heartfelt attachment
which binds us to you, as it were, through life, and renders
us as interested in your happiness and prosperity as we can
be in our own.' Such were the feelings of all Raffles'
62 RAFFLES
personal associates, and they were shared, less intimately,
of course, as the circle widened, by the European community
as a whole. Dutch and British, they respected and admired
their young Governor ; and, at the end, though the Dutch
could scarcely regret the imminent departure of an alien
Government, they regretted, no less than the British, the
departure of Raffles.
And Raffles was as free and friendly in his relations with
the natives as with the European community. As at
Penang and Malacca, so in Java, he made the most of every
opportunity of personal intercourse with the people of the
country. They were frequently in his house. He talked
to them by the roadside and in their villages. When he
resided for some months at Samarang, ' the native chiefs
were constant guests at his table ' He carried on a lively
correspondence with the Emperor and some of the Regents
on scientific matters. And he instructed the Residents and
other European officials to follow his example in making
friends with the Javanese. ' These were strange novelties
in Java ', says Van De venter, with warm approval ; for
the Dutch official tradition had been to keep stiffly aloof
from the native population. But what the Dutch historian
calls his ' catholic humanity ' was not in Raffles a conscious
or acquired virtue. It was natural, instinctive. He had,
it seems, no touch of colour-prejudice. He liked the Malays,
it may be said again. He liked them quite as much as
Europeans. In his letters and dispatches from Java he
denounced, again and again, the popular belief at home
that they were a race of villainous cut-throats. ' Who that
has mixed with the East-insular tribes ', he asked in his
letter to Lord Buckinghamshire, ' who that has become in the
least acquainted with their ways of thinking, that will not
bear ample testimony that their character is as yet unknown
to Europe ? Even their piracies and deadly creeses which
have proved such fertile sources of abuse and calumny, have
nothing in them to affright ; nay, there is something even
to admire in them their piracies are but a proof of their
spirit and enterprise, and the regulation of good government
RAFFLES 63
is alone wanting to direct this spirit and this enterprise in
a course more consonant with our notions of civilization.
And now may I ask what was the state of Scotland two
hundred years ago ? ' To so whole-hearted a champion, to
his keen interest in their past history and their present
welfare, to his simple friendliness ad good manners, the
Malays, in Java aS elsewhere, must have responded. The
opinion of one member of their race, at any rate, is known.
Abdulla bin Abdulkadar, who was first employed by Raffles
at Malacca as a clerk and later as a secretary, left behind
him a long and discursive autobiography, of which not the
least interesting passages are those in which he records his
frank opinions, not all of them flattering, of the Englishmen
he had known. ' He was most courteous in his intercourse
with all men ', he says of Raffles. ' He always had a sweet
expression towards European as well as native gentlemen.
He was extremely affable and liberal, always commanding
one's best attention. He spoke in smiles. ... I also
perceived that he hated the habit of the Dutch ... of running
down the Malays. . . . But Mr. Raffles loved always to be
on good terms with the Malays, the poorest could speak
to him. . . . And if my experience be not at fault, there was
not his superior in this world in skill or largeness of heart/
Nor was it only with the human contents of Java that
Raffles made himself acquainted. He knew the island
its scenery, its mountains and jungles, its temples and monu-
ments as few have known it. To avoid the evil climate
of swamp-infested Batavia he made his headquarters at
Buitenzorg in a romantic upland valley a few miles inland ;
and from there he made long journeys, from time to time,
through the wild heart of the country. ' The rapidity with
which he travelled ', records one of his companions, ' ex-
ceeded anything ever known on the island before. The
average rate was more than twelve miles per hour.' ' In-
deed ', he adds, with feeling, ' several were sufferers from
the very long journeys he made, riding sometimes sixty and
seventy miles in one day, a fatigue which very few con-
stitutions are equal to in an Eastern climate.' On one
64 RAFFLES f
long-remembered day he made his way for fifty miles through
forest-country hitherto unexplored by any European. ' The
path was frequently undistinguishable. In some places it
lay over steep mountains and in others followed the course
of rivers or wound through the mazes of deep ravines.'
But, fast and far as he rode, he found time to notice and
record everything of interest he saw. ' I am collecting for
you ', he wrote to Marsden in 1812, - a variety of inscriptions
found in different parts of Java. . . . Drawings of all the
ruined temples and images are in hand/ Again, a year
later : ' The Juliana takes home a very compact collection
of quadrupeds, birds, and insects, prepared by Dr. Horsfield
for the Oriental Museum at the India House. A large
collection of dried plants is also sent '. In 1815, he reports :
' I have visited nearly all the remains of sculpture to be
found in the island : they are far more extensive than at
first I had any idea of. ... Many of the Hindu deities have
been found in small brass and copper casts ; of these I have
a collection containing nearly every deity in the Hindu
mythology '. Nor, of course, did he neglect his favourite
linguistic studies. In the spare moments of four years'
administration he made his own vocabulary of the languages
of Java, extending to more than seven thousand words.
And, all the while, he was trying to stimulate in the permanent
European community an interest as keen as his own in the
natural and cultural history of Java. One of the earliest
acts of his administration was his revival of the Batavian
Society of Arts and Sciences. ' With the celebrated Rude-
macher ', he told Marsden, ' the Society seems to have
lived and died ; at least it has been nearly in a torpid state
ever since.' So he boldly refashioned its constitution and
rules so as to encourage research, gradually conquered the
prejudices of those old members who ' shut the door against
everything new ', favoured it with more than one lengthy
and learned discourse from the president's chair, and left
it one of the most vigorous scientific bodies in the East.
It was well that Raffles was so busy that every moment
not occupied by his huge administrative task was filled with
t RAFFLES 65
travel or social duties or scientific pursuits for, at the
beginning of his fourth year in Java, the tide of his personal
fortunes suddenly changed. In November, 1814, his wife,
with the fearful suddenness of the tropics, fell ill and died.
It was a terrible blow. For nine years of exile she had been
his close companion more, his comrade. She had in-
terested herself in all he did. Like him, she had learned to
speak Malay. Like him, she was never idle. ' Indeed, she
never rested for a moment ', records the watchful Abdulla ;
' she was always busy, day after day.' At all those social
functions she had proved herself an admirable hostess ; she
had been as popular in colonial circles as her husband. Lord
Minto described her as ' the great lady, with dark eyes,
lively manner, accomplished and clever '. Dour John
Leyden fell so far in love with her as to compose a poem in
her honour. In fact, to quote again the quaint translation
of Abdulla's Malayan script, ' she was not an ordinary
woman, but was in every respect co-equal with her husband's
position and responsibilities. . . . Thus God has matched
them as king and counsellor or as a ring with its jewels ' 9
Inevitably, then, her sudden loss left Raffles ' a lone and
stricken man '. When, two years latter, as he sailed away
from Java, he read his staff's tribute of affection, he was
completely overcome, to the distress of those about him,
by the vivid memories it recalled of the happier days of
domestic life at Government House. Nor was his wife's
death the only blow. In quick succession the children she
had borne him also died. And about the same time came
news from England of another grievous loss. Lord Minto,
the friend who had discovered him and trusted him and
made his career, his only friend in high station in British
public life, had tragically died on his way from London to
the Scottish home he had dreamed of all his years in India.
On Lord Minto's sympathy and confidence Raffles had
leaned more, perhaps, then he knew. But he was not so
much of an egoist as to minimise Lord Minto's share in his
own success. ' Java, my Lord, is yours ', he wrote in one
of the last of his many letters to his chief ; ' and every act
C.S.R. i
66 RAFFLES
of mine in its administration has been considered as springing
from your parental direction/ Lord Minto's return to
England had left him feeling more than ever stranded and
alone in his distant island ; but it had had its compensation,
it had meant that Raffles was now sure of one staunch
champion in political circles at home one man who knew
Java, who believed in what.his own chosen delegate was
trying to do there, and whose opinions would command
respect. And now this mainstay not only of Raffles' own
credit and prospects but of the whole future of British rule
in the East Indies had been cut away. In a few months'
time it was only too clear, indeed, how much this last loss
meant. Hard on his personal bereavements came private
vexation and humiliation and public anxiety and disappoint-
ment on the one hand, Gillespie's calumnies ; Lord Moira's
disfavour ; ignorance, indifference, and distrust at India
House, culminating in his dismissal ; on the other hand, the
long discussion of the fate of Java and its ultimate surrender.
Thus, in the course of a few years, Raffles, with the prime of
life still ahead of him, had suffered a rise and fall of fortune
as great and swift as the peripeteia of an Attic tragedy. At
thirty he was a happy man, his youthful ambitions already
more than realised, a great career in prospect. At thirty-five
his domestic happiness and his imperial dreams alike were
shattered.
It was well, then, that Raffles was so busy. ' Activity
and the cares of responsibility ', he wrote in the summer of
. 1815, ' are now almost necessary for my existence.' He
worked, therefore, harder than before, if that indeed were
possible there were times when he went to bed at midnight
and rose at four until at last he began again to overtax
his strength. ' I am really too tired to write to you fully ',
he tells Ramsay ; ' my back aches from sheer hard writing
for the last two days/ Before long he was really ill, as
ill as he had been at Penang ; and this time, though he moved
to higher and healthier quarters, his recovery was slow.
He was finally advised that a complete change of climate
was the only remedy ; and he decided, therefore, that, since
RAFFLES 67
his services were no longer to be required in Java, he would
take leave and go to England. The thought of seeing his
home and friends was in itself a tonic : ' for here ', he wrote
to Ramsay, ' I am a lonely man, like one that has long since
been dead '. And a real cure began with the long peaceful
voyage its only unusual incident an interview with
Napoleon at St. Helena at which the unhappy exile revealed
how keen had been his interest in the East Indies and plied
Raffles with questions about Java faster than he could
answer them. So it was a fitter and a happier man, though
the East had indelibly marked him, that landed at Falmouth
in July, 1816. ' Although I am considerably recovered ',
he wrote again to Ramsay, ' I yet remain wretchedly thin
and sallow, with a jaundiced eye and a shapeless leg. Yet,
I thank God, my spirit is high and untamed, and the meeting
of friends will, I hope, soon restore me to my usual health.'
IX
RAFFLES' hopes were fully justified. To be at home again,
after eleven years' exile, among his family and friends,
proved as potent a restorative as the change of climate.
' He has lost nothing of himself but his colour and his flesh ',
wrote Dr. Thomas Raffles to his wife of their first meeting :
' my cousin has an unbounded flow of spirits ; I fear too
much for his strength.' Once on English soil, in fact,
Raffles had regained all his natural buoyancy ; his fits of
melancholy had gone ; his tongue was unloosed. ' I could
fill a volume with the account of our discussions on almost
every subject ', he wrote of a visit to his ' uncle John and
family.' But his greatest joy was his reunion with his
mother. He had never outgrown his boyhood's filial
devotion. When his father died in 1812, he had had at
least the consolation of knowing that, through him, the old
man's last years had been freed from poverty and debt.
And through all that time of overwork and worry in Java
he had written constantly to his mother. ' Such is the
dispensation of Providence that we should be separated for
a time. . . . My only comfort is that I know you can want
for nothing.' ' If you have any wants or wishes, tell them
to me that I may attend to them.' ' My friend and agent,
Mr. John Taylor, will take care you want for nothing.
Should any accident happen to me, your 400 a year is still
secure ; therefore you can never,, I hope, be again distressed
for money.' The miseries of those earlier years had bitten
deep into the boy's heart ; and of all the man's achievements
none gave him greater satisfaction than this restoration of
his mother's happiness and comfort.
Scarcely less keen was Raffles' delight in the new social
world in which he found himself. He had left London an
68
RAFFLES 69
insignificant and unknown youth. He had come back to
it, still relatively young, but an ex-Governor, with a house
in Berners Street and men-servants and a ' splendid
equipage ' and all the rest of it. High political circles and
the mandarins at India House might be a little cold towards
the new arrival, especially if they felt uneasy as to their past
treatment of him. But in the scientific world, where,
through his friends, Sir Joseph Banks and William Marsden,
the researches and collections he had made were now well-
known, he was warmly welcomed ; and it was to the oriental
savant rather than the ex-Governor of Java that Society in
general opened its doors. He became, indeed, one of the
lions of the season. He was so interesting, said the hostesses,
so novel, so romantic. The glamour of the East encompassed
him. He could tell you about the strangest things and
people. He had brought back, it was said, ' Eastern
curiosities and treasures to the amount of thirty tons weight
in upwards of two hundred immense packages '. Besides,
he was such a perfect guest so naif, so responsive, so
high-spirited, and so blessedly talkative. And Raffles, for
his part, wholly himself again, speaking in smiles, enjoyed
it all enormously. With some of Society's grandees he
made delightful and lasting friendships. With the Duchess
of Somerset he corresponded intimately for the rest of his
life. He was welcomed by Lord and Lady Harcourt at
Nuneham. The popular Princess Charlotte and her cultured
consort, one day to be King Leopold of Belgium and the
confidant of Queen Victoria, became warm friends. They
invited him frequently to Claremont and they gave him a
diamond ring to be ' worn in memory '. When the Queen
heard of the Javanese furniture which he had given the
Princess, she promptly arranged a meeting, and angled quite
unblushingly for a similar gift. She was rewarded with a
pair of tables and commanded the donor to dine with her
at Frogmore. But the climax was yet to come. During
this time in London Raffles had composed with his usual
speed a History of Java in two large octavo volumes not a
work of any literary distinction, but full of new and first-hand
70 RAFFLES,
information and admirably illustrated from the drawings
he had had made in Java and he had dedicated it to the
Prince Regent. The author was bidden to attend the next
levtc. When he presented himself, the company was called
to attention, the gentlemen of the household formed a circle
round him, and the Prince addressed him in a speech of
nearly twenty minutes' length, thanking him ' for the enter-
tainment and information he had derived from the perusal
of the greater part of the volumes ' and ' expressing the r iigh
sense he entertained of the eminent services he had rendered
to his country in the government of Java .' Finally, he
bade him kneel and knighted him. It is possible that Raffles
had expected something better. ' Why, Charlotte ', said
Prince Leopold in a " ludicrous " tone, ' they have made
him a " knight " '. And the gossips, at any rate, were
certain that Raffles would have been at least a baronet if the
Prince Regent had not been so notoriously jealous of his
daughter's friends.
It is infinitely regrettable that Raffles did not keep a
diary. We want his own impressions of this glittering
London life on the morrow of the Peace, and his impressions,
too for he must have had them of its dark background of
pauperism and unrest on the eve of Peterloo. One wonders
what this unsophisticated novus homo, who had never
known the great world of London, who had been far away
from England for eleven momentous years, who looked
about him now with an exile's fresh eyes, thought of the great
men of the day of Wellington, Castlereagh, Grey, Brougham,
Bentham, and the rest. We do not even know if he met
them, though with Canning at any rate he corresponded.
But there was one great man we know he met. Nowhere,
it is certain, can Raffles have been more warmly welcomed
than among that group of philanthropists known to fame
as the Clapham Sect. One of its senior members, Charles
Grant the elder, was well-informed as to Raffles' dealings
with the slave trade and slavery and his interest in the
welfare of the Javanese : for Charles Grant was a leading
member of the Court of Directors, its chairman or deputy-
RAFFLES 71
chairman for several years, and its chief representative in
the House of Commons. And, through him or another,
Raffles was introduced to Wilberforce, the high-priest of
the sect, then at the zenith of his European reputation as
the Great Emancipator. They were not unlike, those two
both zealots, both unconquerably youthful and quick-
minded and voluble, both serious, though Raffles, doubtless,
not quite so serious as Wilberforce, about the deeper things
of Ii4. And Raffles was not only an ardent abolitionist in
the /natter of slavery ; he was also interested in what was
second only to the slave-question in Wilberforce's mind
the propagation of Christianity in the East. ' On the
subject of missions ', wrote Raffles to Wilberforce from
shipboard on the point of leaving England, ' I have no
hesitation, in recommending attention to the Eastern islands*
Nothi^g.of the kind has yet found its way to Sumatra and
Borneo, two*of the largest islands in the world. . . . May
not the spread of the Gospel go hand in hand with the
abolition of the slave trade in those countries ? ' Another
great man of that day or, rather, of an earlier day whom
Raffles almost certainly met, was the aged Warren Hastings.
The meeting, at any rate, was arranged, and the time and
place fixed. ' Nothing will afford him more pleasure ',
wrote Raffles to the Bishop of Salisbury who had conveyed
to him the invitation to an interview, ' than the honour of
being personally known to Mr. Hastings and the opportunity
of evincing his respect and veneration for a character so truly
great '. So we know at least what Raffles thought of
Hastings. But what did Hastings think of Raffles ? Did
his eyes light up at the younger man's vision of a wider
British Empire in the East ? No record has survived. The
venerable figure emerges, for a moment, from the shadows
that had closed about him since the Trial, and then is gone
again. Less than a year after Raffles' return to the East
Warren Hastings was dead.
In the spring of 1817, with his sister and his cousin Thomas,
Raffles visited the Continent for the first time in his life.
For six weeks he travelled through France and Switzerland
72 RAFFLES
and down the Rhine to Belgium. Of all he saw nothing
impressed him more than the agricultural prosperity of
France and the new system of peasant-proprietorship.
' When I see every man cultivating his own field ', he wrote
to the Duchess of Somerset, with Java, no doubt, in his
mind, ' I cannot but think him happier far than when he is
cultivating the field of another.' In the kingdom of the
Netherlands, in which Belgium and Holland had been
united, artificially, and, as it soon proved, unsuccpss^olly,
by the Congress of Vienna, the old enemy of the Dutch ;vvas
received ' with very great attention '. He talked with the
ministers and dined with the King. ' They were vei;
communicative ', he reports to Marsden, ' regarding their
Eastern colonies ; but I regret to say that, notwithstanding
the King himself and his leading minister seem// mean
well, they have too great a hankering after Qfit r ull d
immediate profit, for any liberal system to Inrive under
them. They seem to be miserably poor, and the new
Government in Java have commenced by the issue of
a paper currency. . , . The King complained of the coffee
culture having been neglected and expressed anxiety that
he should soon have consignments ; and while he admitted
all the advantages likely to arise from [free ?] cultivation
and assured me that the system introduced under my
administration should be continued, [he] maintained that
it was essential to confine the trade and to make such
regulations as would secure it and its profits exclusively to
the mother-country/ Nothing, in fact, had come of Castle-
reagh's idea that British trade might be compensated for
the retrocession of Java by securing the right of ' direct
import ' from the Dutch. The pre-war monopoly had been
re-established together with the pre-war methods. Poor
Raffles ! The old wounds must have smarted as he listened
to the King. But he did not altogether despair of Java.
' I had an opportunity ', he goes on, ' of expressing my
sentiments to him very freely ; and, as he took them
in good part, I am in hopes they may have had some
weight.'
RAFFLES 73
In July Raffles was back in London, and in October,
fifteen months since his return to England, he took ship for
the East again. If his new post was scarcely equal to the
old, it was the most important, save only the Governorship
of Penang, in the Company's field in Further India. Four
years earlier, in view of the uncertain British tenure of Java,
Lord Minto had designated the Residency at Fort Marl-
borough otherwise Bencoolen, the headquarters of the
Corfp^y's operations along the west coast of Sumatra
as ' an honourable retreat ' for Raffles. In this arrangement
I ord Moira had acquiesced ; and during the storm raised
oy Colonel Gillespie the post had been kept open. It was
not till early in 1817 that by the Directors' formal decision
Raffles' character was finally and fully cleared ; but then,
it seenis, they were anxious to make some small amends ;
and, Vfere he left, they conferred on him the higher title
of ' Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen ', 'as a peculiar
mark of the favourable sentiments which the Court enter-
tained of his merits and services '. So, his health restored,
his prestige re-established, still only thirty-six, with the best
part of a normal lifetime still ahead, Raffles went East
once more. And in one other very vital respect he was a
different man from the childless widower, dejected, en-
feebled, discredited, who had sailed from Batavia two years
ago. The crowning blessing of those healing months in
England had been his discovery of another life-companion.
At the beginning of the year he had married Sophia Hull,
the daughter of an Irish landowner ; and she now accom-
panied her husband to Bencoolen. ' Lady Raffles ', he wrote
to Marsden on arrival, ' presented me with a beautiful little
girl, when to the southward of the Cape. ... At the
suggestion of the Radin [a Javanese chief whom Raffles had
brought with him to England], my daughter has received
the name of Trnjong Segara (the Lily of the Sea) in addition
to those of Charlotte Sophia '.
C.8.R.
X
THE first Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen found his
realm in ruins. Neglected by the Company during -the \var
and then smitten by a series of earthquakes, the little
maritime settlement lay almost derelict. ' This is, without
exception, the most wretched place I ever beheld ', wrote
Raffles ; ' I cannot convey to you an adequate idea of the
state of ruin and dilapidation which surrounds me. . . . The
roads are impassable ; the highways in the town overrun
with rank grass ; the Government-house a den of ravenous
dogs and polecats. The natives say that Benctfolen is now
a tana mati (dead land) . I think I could never have conceived
anything half so bad/ Was Raffles, then, disheartened at
the outset ? Not in the least. The desolate scene had
instantly excited all his passion for reconstruction and
reform. ' We will try and make it better ', he continues, and
the whole passage is very characteristic. ' If I am well
supported from home, the west coast may yet be turned to
account. You must, however, be prepared for the abolition
of slavery ; the emancipation of the country people from
the forced cultivation of pepper ; the discontinuance of the
gaming and cock-fighting farms ; and a thousand other
practices equally disgraceful and repugnant to the British
character and government. A complete and thorough
reform is indispensable.'
A thousand other practices ? With those he specified, at
any rate, he was as good as his word. The former agents
of the East India Company had taken two black leaves
out of their rivals' book. The Company owned over 200
African slaves in Bencoolen who were employed in such
tasks as loading and unloading its ships. No one had looked
after them. The adults were dissolute, the children
74
RAFFLES 75
wretched. Raffles promptly enfranchised them, and his
wife set an example of caring for the children. At the
same time the native chiefs were approached, both in the
neighbourhood of Bencoolen and farther afield, with a view
to the suppression of all trade in slaves throughout Sumatra.
It was in this cause, too, that Raffles made, a few years
later, one of his boldest and most characteristic moves.
The island of Piilo Nias, off the Sumatran coast to the north
of Bencoolen, was one of the chief centres of the trade,
frequented by ' dealers in human flesh ' of a type so merciless
that they were accustomed to keep their captives ' pinioned
hand and foot ' throughout their voyages. Every year
some 1,500 victims were thus shipped from Nias. Clearly
this evil could only be dealt with on the spot, and in 1820
Raffles dispatched Commissioners to Pulo Nias, who found
the chiefs not merely wlUing to assist in stopping the trade
but anxious for British protection. Raffles accordingly
assumed the sovereignty of the island on the Company's
behalf. He could plead that the Dutch had never been
there ; that, on the contrary, some slight connexion had.
long been maintained between the island and the British
posts on the Sumatran coast. But the Directors had long
ago hardened their hearts against Raffles' unauthorised
adventures, and they fulminated accordingly. ' They were
inclined ', they told him, ' to visit him with some severe
mark of their displeasure for the steps he had taken ' even f
it was hinted, to recall him.
The second scandal, in Raffles 1 view, Was the compulsion
laid on the local peasantry through the agency of their
chiefs to cultivate pepper-vines and sell their produce to
the Company at a low fixed price. The results had been as
poor as in Java. The cultivators had been resentful and
indolent. The chiefs' influence over them, in this matter
at any rate, had been ineffective. The Company had ob-
tained only a few tons of pepper a year. And consequently
the expenditure on the settlement had far exceeded the
revenue. Raffles did not hesitate, therefore, to abolish
the whole system. One of his first acts was to assemble the
76 RAFFLES
local chiefs and make a treaty with them, authorising him,
on the one hand, ' to administer the country according to
equity, justice, and good feeling ' and declaring, on the other
hand, that the labourer must be allowed ' to cultivate pepper
or not at pleasure ' and to sell his produce as he pleased.
Finally, Raffles closed the cock-fighting and gambling
' farms ', from which the local Government had hitherto
drawn most of its inadequate revenue, for the sweeping
reason that they were ' destructive of every principle of
good government and social order and the morals of the
people ' an opinion, as it happens, which later British
administrators in the Far East have not all maintained, at
any rate as regards gambling, on the ground that, since no
legal prohibition can eradicate a habit so deeply rooted in
the Malayan character, it is better that Government should
recognise and control it than leave it to flourish in secret.
On these matters, then, each of some importance and each
affecting the Company's property or revenue, Raffles had
acted swiftly and drastically, and, once more, without
specific authority from home. But he had no doubt
whatever that he had done right. He was bound, he
believed, to make ' such radical changes ... as will enable
the people to distinguish the political influence of the British
Government from the commercial speculations of the
Company and their agents '. ' I am aware ', he adds, ' that
the task is difficult, if not invidious ' ; and indeed, although,
as he said, the honour of the Company as well as the nation
was at stake, it is not surprising and certainly Raffles
cannot have been surprised that the Directors were taken
aback. ' Is Bencoolen ', they asked themselves, ' to be Java
over again ' ? And they promptly censured Raffles for
deklifcg so precipitately with the Company's property.
Happily they left it at that.
But the Directors were soon to discover that Raffles'
-energies and imprudences could not be limited to the
narrow bounds of the Bencoolen district. He wanted to
know, all Sumatra and everything in it ; and in a few months 9
time he was oft on a long and arduous expedition through
.RAFFLES 77
the interior of the island. He crossed the barrier, supposed
by the natives to be impassable, of the great Chain Moun-
tains which, like the Western Ghats of India, rise steeply
from the coastal belt. He visited Pasumah and Padang
and the deserted capital of the ancient kingdom of
Menangkabu, once the centre of a Malayan Empire of the
Islands, and the famed Mount Ophir, and the old gold
mines. He was warned of dangers and difficulties ; but
nothing could stop him, or Lady Raffles either, who shared
his hardships, said her husband, ' like a perfect heroine '.
They could usually make their way on horseback ; but once
at least they walked as much as thirty miles in the day by
the roughest tracks, and once they were carried down the
rapids of a river on a raft. Often their only resting-place
was under an improvised shelter or in a wretched native-hut.
They were often soaked to the skin by rain, or ' bitterly
cold ', or caught in a terrific thunderstorm among the
mountains. Sometimes they ran short of provisions and
had to breakfast on ' a little unsavoury rice '. But they
were compensated for all their discomforts and fatigues
by the grandeur of ' one of the finest countries I ever beheld ' ,
its mountains and lakes, its noble forests, its brilliant
vegetation. It was in the course of one of these expeditions
that Raffles and his doctor and naturalist, Joseph Arnold,
discovered the gigantic flower, a yard in width from one
extremity of its spotted brick-red petals to the other, known
to the natives as ' the devil's betel-box ' and to botany as
Rafflesia-A rnoldi.
It need hardly be said that neither scenery nor archaeology
nor natural science was Raffles' main object of interest in
these lands. His life's dream had faded for a momen
Java was surrendered, but it had never been L
And now he was trying to reconstruct it on
flimsy substructure of Bencoolen. Everywhee Hefoent he
did what he could to spread the influence
the British Government. Might not Sumat
ask himself), so vast an island and so
anyone supposed, take Java's place in the i
78 RAFFLES,
Might not its historic traditions provide just such another
basis for a kind of British Protectorate as he had suggested
to Lord Minto on the eve of the conquest of Java ? ' At
no very distant date ', he wrote in a diary of his tour in
1818, ' the sovereignty of Menangkabu was acknowledged
over the whole of Sumatra, and its influence extended to
many of the neighbouring islands ; the respect still paid to
its princes of all ranks amounts almost to veneration. By
upholding their authority a central government may easily
be established ; and the numerous petty states, now dis-
united and barbarous, may again be connected under one
system of government. The rivers which fall into the
Eastern Archipelago may again become the highroads to
and from the central capital ; and Sumatra, under British
influence, again rise into great political importance/ Excit-
ing, characteristic speculations. And, characteristically,
Raffles was not content to speculate. He took a first step
towards making his new vision a reality. He concluded ' a
conditional treaty of friendship and alliance ' with the
Sultan of Menangkabu. But diplomacy so sudden and so
entirely unauthorised was not likely to succeed. Raffles
had violated, indeed, the letter of the law which permitted
no such treaties to be made except by the Governor-General
in Council ; and the assent of the Bengal Government, on
which the treaty was ' conditional ', was never given. So
one more project was snuffed out, one more -pathway to the
goal had proved a blind alley. And, though it is easy at a
distance to understand and even to justify it, the cautious
and pacific policy of the higher authorities must have put a
heavy strain on Raffles' patience, since he knew, better than
anyone else, that, unless some bold move were made and
quickly made, British trade and British influence would be
barred out completely and for ever from the Malayan
Archipelago.
The Dutch had had a lesson in the war they were not
likely to forget. How greedily the British had seized on
their dominion and how fast their power and prestige had
taken root ! The old rivalry had thus been quickened by
RAFFLES 79
a new alarm : and once the Dutch were reinstated, they
very naturally determined not merely to restore their
monopoly and to exclude the British more strictly than
ever from their main preserves, but swiftly and steadily
to extend their hold on all the islands so as to leave no
opening whatever for British enterprise. Commissioners
were dispatched, Raffles reported, ' to every port in the
Archipelago where it is probable we might attempt to form
settlements or where the independence of the native chiefs
affords anything like a free port to our shipping '. The
Dutch hold on the districts of Lampong and Palembang
in south-east Sumatra, just across the mountains from
Bencoolen, was stiffened ; and the west and south coasts
of Borneo were brought into ' effective occupation '. Before
long, it was evident, there would be scarcely a port through-
out those seas with which British ships could trade without
defying the Dutch regulations at the cost of an ' international
incident ' and scarcely a native trader who would not be
obliged to obtain a licence from Batavia and hoist the Dutch
colours at his masthead. ' The question is not now ', wrote
Raffles, within a month of his arrival at Bencoolen, ' whether
we are to give back to the Dutch the possessions they actually
possessed in 1803 according to the late Convention, but
whether the British Government and British merchants
will be content to be excluded from the trade altogether. 1
Beati possidentes. With the restoration of all their old
settlements the Dutch had recovered the strategic command
of the Malayan area. And it was perfectly legitimate for
them, it was in accord with the time-honoured principles of
international commercial rivalry, to attempt the complete
exclusion of the British from that area. It was equally
legitimate, on the other hand, for the British to resist
exclusion, to retain and strengthen such foothold as they
had, and even, if opportunity allowed, to extend it. But if
that were indeed to be the British policy, there was clearly
no time to be lost ; and Raffles, foreseeing the inevitable
results of the Treaty, had already, before leaving England,
submitted a memorandum to Canning, who had succeeded
8o RAFFLES
Lord Buckinghamshire as President of the Board of Control
in 1816, explaining what immediate steps were needed if
such a policy were to be adopted with any prospect of
success. First, the agreements as to free trade concluded
with native rulers during the British occupation should be
upheld as still in force, and the Dutch Government jnformed
to that effect. Secondly, since Bencoolen and Penang
were both stranded on the outskirts of the Archipelago,
a new strategic point should at once be occupied as a centre
for negotiations with such chiefs as were still free from
Dutch control, as a resort for all native trade that was still
similarly free, and as an entrepdt for British merchandise.
The occupation of some such central point would also be
useful for suppressing piracy and the slave trade and for
exercising a ' wholesome restraint ' over ' the conduct of
our own countrymen trading in the Archipelago f . ' Our
duty to other nations and to the cause of justice, no less than
a regard for our national character, requires that the peaceable
natives of the islands should not be kept at the mercy of
every mercantile adventurer of our own nation. The
inducements and facilities to rapine are too numerous in
that quarter to be overlooked.' Finally, the possession of
such a centre would make it easier to keep communication
open with the Farther East and to develop new lines of trade
with Borneo, the Philippines, and Japan. As to where the
central point should be and obviously much, if not every-
thing, depended on the choice Raffles recommended the
island of Banka, off the south-east coast of Sumatra, about
midway between Java and the Straits of Malacca. He had
himself secured the cession of Banka to the British, with
the very object now in view, at the outset of his Javan
administration ; but it had been handed over to the Dutch
by the Treaty of 1814. Might they not be persuaded to
sell it back again ? Next to Banka, Raffles suggested the
island of Bintang, off the southernmost point of the Malay
Peninsula. The Dutch had once possessed a ' factory *
there, at Rhio t but on its destruction in 1795, they had left
the island in the independent control of the Sultan of
RAFFLES 81
Linga. As a third choice a convenient site could be found
on the west coast of Borneo. In this memorandum Raffles
takes it for granted that Canning would not doubt the
commercial advantages of such an establishment. It was
obvious, as he wrote to a friend a little later, that it ' would
soon maintain a successful rivalry with the Dutch who would
be obliged either to adopt a liberal system of free trade or
compelled to see the trade collected under the British flag '.
But on the question of the cost of upkeep a matter which
Raffles knew well enough would not be overlooked at the
Treasury or at India House Raffles is more explicit. The
cost of the new settlement, he argues, would be trifling.
1 As the object of the British Government is not extension
of territory ', a few soldiers, to protect the station itself
would suffice. ' Indeed, it would be desirable to demon-
strate ' by the soldiers being so few ' to the native States
as well as to the Dutch that the object of such an establish-
ment is not dominion.' But the first and last necessity was
speed. And not only because of the Dutch. Russia was
expanding in the north. France, deprived of Mauritius and
of the right to occupy ports in India, would be looking
for a ' convenient stepping-stone to Siam and Cochin China '.
And American trade was increasing in the East of the
Archipelago. Meantime, ' the impression of British gene-
rosity in surrendering the Dutch colonies at all is rapidly
subsiding, as is also among the native chiefs the impression
of our power ; and it is clear that, with respect to taking
possession of a vacant port or making a treaty for privileges
with an independent chief, the prize is to the swiftest '.
In force of argument this memorandum was one of
Raffles' ablest public documents. But, in 1817, Canning
and his colleagues were far more concerned with maintaining
the stability of the new Europe and the friendliest relations
with the new kingdom of the Netherlands than with the
expansion of British trade in those far eastern waters in
open rivalry, as it must be, with the Dutch. And when, a
year later, Raffles reached Bencoolen, it seemed as if the prize
was already lost. The Dutch were not to be caught napping
C.S.K. L .
82 RAFFLES,
this time, at least. They were on the point of re-occupying
Rhio, and there was no question of their selling Banka.
But Raffles was not going to be robbed again of his dream
without a struggle. In the very letter in which he informed
Marsden of his arrival at Bencoolen, ' I am already at issue
with the Dutch Government ', he says, ' about their
boundaries in the Lampoon [Lampong] country. They insist
on packing us up close to Billimbing on the west coast.
I demand an anchorage in Simangka Bay and lay claim
to Simangka itself .' High language ; but what could he
actually do ? The Dutch were in possession ; and, without
going to war with them, how could Raffles enforce his
1 demands ' and his ' claims ' ? He thought he could do it
by means of the first of the two measures of policy he had
recommended to Canning by upholding the rights of trade
conceded to the British during the war by the native rulers
in the disputed areas. He was wrong. His case might
or might not be defensible in law or in equity. The chiefs,
certainly, had regarded the arrangements as permanent.
But at the Pepce the British had withdrawn. The Dutch
had resumed, more or less effectively, their general control.
The Archipelago, in fact, with the exception of Bencoolen
and its neighbourhood, had been recognised, to use the
modern diplomatic phrase, as being a Dutch ' sphere of
influence '. And it was vain for Raffles to hope, with the
resources at his command, to keep native chiefs within that
sphere true to their old engagements, even if they wished it,
against the will of the Dutch. It was indeed small kindness
to them to attempt it.
In these circumstances a man of cooler blood might have
resigned himself to the fait accompli. But Raffles was on
fire. The legal and moral rights of his case seemed to
him indisputable. They had, he declared, ' no reference to
the undisputed possessions of the Dutch in which we desire '
no interference. All that they can in justice, nay, in
liberality, demand under the recent convention, let them
have '. But the Dutch were not content with that. They
were pushing beyond their ' undisputed ' bounds and every-
RAFFLES 83
where pressing the British back from ' independent ' soil and
from contact with ' independent ' chiefs. An objective
critic, in these calmer days, might well suggest that the
Dutch probably held much the same opinion of the British.
But Raffles, of course, clinging to his dream and all it
meant for the future, angrily resenting not only the Dutch
monopoly of trade but, as he conceived it, their tyrannical
and cramping treatment of the natives, and haunted all
the time by the bitter, jealous thought that the Dutch
were masters again and doing as they pleased, so close to
the southward, in his Java Raffles, in such a mood, was
blind to any case but his own, though, even in such a mood,
he was careful to discriminate between the policy of the
Government at Batavia and the ' wishes and feelings of the
enlightened authorities ' with whom he had had those pleasant
talks in Brussels. As to the Dutch in Batavia, they were
inflamed with ' the spirit of aggrandizement ' : they were
out to ' establish an absolute supremacy '. And full of
that ' honest indignation which every Briton must feel ',
Raffles determined to force the issue at close quarters. He
dispatched Captain Salmond, with a small escort, to Palem-
bang, to vindicate the Sultan's war-time treaty with the
British, and to protect him, as their friend and ally, from
Dutch encroachments. The result was comical. The Dutch
had already occupied Palembang in -force, and the Com-
missioner in charge was no other than Mr. Muntinghe who
had served so loyally on Raffles' Council in Java. He
knew, therefore, with whom he had to deal ; he knew
something of Raffles' great ambitions and whither they
led ; and he was a Dutch patriot. So he promptly arrested
the Captain and his escort and returned them in a Dutch
warship to Bencoolen. ' I have nothing to send my friend
but tears ', wrote the unfortunate Sultan to Raffles.
And what could Raffles do now ? There was only one
course left. He drew up a solemn, official Protest (August 15,
1818) against the iniquities of the Batavian Government
and published it to the world I It did not mince matters ;
and the Dutch were naturally furious. ' They say ', wrote
84 RAFFLES C
Raffles, and some later Dutch historians have said much the
same, ' I anTa Spirit that will never allow the East to be
quiet and that this second Elba in which I am placed is not
half secure enough/ And Brussels was as angry as Batavia.
Counter-protests began quickly to accumulate at the British
Foreign Office. Every point of Raffles' conduct that could
bear an anti-Dutch construction and there were many
of them was enumerated by the Netherlands Government.
Their good friends in London, it was plain, must be quite
unaware of what was happening. It was certainly an
awkward situation for British ministers. Were they to
disavow Raffles and apologise ? Or should they attempt a
mild and conciliatory defence of him ? After all, he had
a case of a kind. The status of the Sultan of Palembang
at any rate permitted of discussion. It had not been
defined in the Treaty ; and the Dutch authorities on the
spot at the time had at least hinted at a compromise or a
reference to Europe. As to the island of Pulo Nias, again,
of which Raffles, it now appeared, had robbed the Dutch,
it might have been gently argued that it had never been
in Dutch occupation, that it lay within the British ' sphere '
on the west coast of Sumatra, that the native chiefs had
asked for British protection, and that the main reason for
taking it over had been to promote what the Dutch Govern-
ment, like all the leading governments in Europe, had
publicly admitted to be a great cause the abolition of the
slave trade. But Canning at the Board of Control and his
colleagues at the Foreign Office made no fight at all. They
were almost as angry with Raffles as their friends in Brussels.
Canning, indeed, pressed for his immediate recall and
certainly, in the light of that public Protest, it is easy to
understand his feelings. But it was ultimately decided by
the Cabinet to await the judgment of the Supreme Govern-
ment at Calcutta. Meantime Raffles was sternly censured
both by Canning and by the Court.
Raffles had never curbed himself out of regard for the
known opinions of his superiors. He had always done what
he thought right and had learned to take lightly rather too
RAFFLES 85
lightly, perhaps, any subsequent manifestations of official
displeasure. But this time the reproof went home. Or
rather the rebuff. It was not that he felt guilty, but that
he saw his life-dream once more dispersing into the air.
Neither at the Foreign Office, nor at India House, it now
seemed clear, would he obtain any support whatever in
resisting the exclusions and encroachments of the Dutch,
however substantial, however disastrous to British interests
in the East. Was Sumatra, then, to be another Java ? He
had never, indeed, regarded his post at Bencoolen as giving
him anything like the same scope and chance as his post
at Batavia. He might again ' do all the good he could '
while he was there : but even in sanguine moments, when he
climbed the mountain crests and looked down on the eastward
valleys and all their luxuriant life, when the future seemed
so full of promises, when he jotted down in his diary his
project of a Pan-Sumatran Protectorate, he knew well enough
that the key to the future, the hope of his dream's fulfilment,
lay somewhere outside Sumatra, somewhere nearer the
strategic centre of the Archipelago. And now his masters
in London had shown themselves at once indifferent to the
protection of British interests in Sumatra and hostile to any
idea of a new settlement beyond it. The repudiation of
Raffles' policy could not have been more explicit if Canning
had torn up his memorandum and thrown the pieces in his
face. What, then, could he do ? What, indeed, had he
done ? Would he return to England, when the time came,
with no more lasting achievement on record in Sumatra
than in Java, with nothing added to his credit, with a
notable reputation as a collector of oriental curiosities but,
as to greater matters, known to the world as nothing but a
visionary imperialist who was always at odds with the
authorities and whose grandiose schemes never got beyond
the reams of paper they were written on ?
At this dark moment light came from an unexpected
quarter. A few months before he published his Protest
and provoked the storm, Raffles had sent a full report of
the situation as he saw it to the Supreme Government. ' We
86 RAFFLES,
are left with only one spot/ he had written, ' upon which we
can raise the British flag as a mart for commerce between the
Mauritius and China, and that spot Prince of Wales 1 Island,
to which port but a very small portion of the trade of the
Archipelago can be brought.' And, after detailing the Dutch
restrictions and aggressions, he had expressed a hope that
his ' line of conduct ' would meet with approval. It could
not be a very confident hope, in view of what had happened
at the close of Raffles' career in Java. But the Marquess of
Hastings was not a little-minded man ; he was quite pre-
pared to revise Lord Moira's opinions ; and when he read
Raffles' report, confirmed as it was, no doubt, by similar
reports from elsewhere, he found himself in cordial agreement
with it. Indeed, he was soon using language about the
Dutch at least as vehement as Raffles' ' boundless
aggrandizement and rapacity ', ' monopolizing the commerce
of the Eastern Archipelago ', ' excluding the English from
those advantages which they have long enjoyed ' . . . And
to Raffles himself he wrote in very gratifying terms. ' It was
painful to me that I had, in the course of my public duty,
to express an opinion unfavourable to certain of your
measures in Java. The disapprobation, as you would
perceive, affected their prudence alone ; on the other hand,
no person can have felt more strongly than I did your anxious
and unwearied exertions for ameliorating the condition of
the native inhabitants under your sway. ... I request you
to consider yourself at liberty to carry into execution your
wish of visiting Bengal whensoever your convenience and the
state of affairs in the Island may afford an eligible oppor-
tunity '. Clearly, then, Lord Hastings was not going to
support the case for Raffles' dismissal. On the contrary,
he fully shared his lieutenant's desire to resist the Dutch
advance ; and, that being so, he needed him as Lord Minto
had needed him in 1811. Thus, in October, 1818, Raffles
was once more crossing the Bay of Bengal and again in a
small frail sailing-ship. It lost a mast in mid-passage and
a drunken pilot stranded it on a sandbank at the mouth of
the Hoogly, where Raffles had to wait for a boat to fetch
RAFFLES 87
t **
him to Calcutta. But these omens were not unpfopitious.
Once more, as in 1811, Raffles' visit to Bengal marked the
opening of a new stage in his career. He was on the threshold,
though he could not know it, of his greatest and most durable
achievement.
XI
' I HAVE just returned from spending a week with Lord
Hastings ', wrote Raffles, a month after his arrival in
Bengal, ' and am in high favour.' He could not, however,
he confessed, nersuade the Governor-General ' to enter
warmly ' into his views with regard to Sumatra. Towards
Sumatra, in fact, Lord Hastings was positively cold. He
altogether refused to take up the quarrel over Palembang
and Samalanka Bay and the rest, despite the ' moral turpi-
tude ' of the Dutch conduct. Nor was this attitude un-
reasonable. For the British position on the west coast of
Sumatra was of little value except as an approach to the
Archipelago. And since the Dutch were in possession of the
Straits of Sunda, no advance by that route could be effected
without an open conflict. Might it not, then, be better to
explore the other approach by the Straits of Malacca ?
Might not the ruler of Achin, a turbulent little state at the
northern end of Sumatra, which so far had had no relations
with the Dutch, be brought under British influence ? Might
it not even be possible to recover Malacca itself from the
Dutch in exchange for Bencoolen ? These were sound ideas ;
and Raffles, who, as we know, had been interested in the
Malacca route long before he went to Sumatra, could not
but approve of them, even if they should lead to the abandon-
ment of all the work he had begun at Bencoolen. Lord
Hastings, moreover and this was the major point agreed
with Raffles and not with the authorities in London as to
the desirability of planting a British post inside the Archi-
pelago provided that this could be achieved without too
serious friction with the Dutch. Suppose the British limited
their field of choice to that part of the East Indies which lay
north of the equator and left all the rest to their rivals ?
88
RAFFLES
By the Malacca route British shipping could proceed to
China without crossing the Equator, and, somewhere on the
way, a good port for a station might be found at Rhio,
perhaps (which, it will be remembered, Raffles had recom-
mended to Canning), or possibly on the coast of the district
of Johore at the eastern extremity of the Malay Peninsula. . . .
These were the lines on which Lord Hastings' mind was
moving. Let Raffles' letters chronicle the outcome.
' You will be happy to hear,' he writes to Marsden on
October 16, 1818, ' that I haVe made my peace with the
Marquess of Hastings. ... I am now struggling hard to
interest the Supreme Government in the Eastern Islands. . . .
Pending the reference to Europe, I fear that nothing decisive
will be done. Lord Hastings is, I know, inclined to recom-
mend our exchanging Bencoolen for Malacca and to make the
equator the limit.' November i : ' I have now to inform
you that it is determined to keep the command of the Straits
of Malacca, by forming establishments at Achin and Rhio,
and that I leave Calcutta in a fortnight as the agent to effect
this important object. Achin I conceive to be completely
within our power, but the Dutch may be beforehand with us
at Rhio : they . . . have been bad politicians if they have so
long left Rhio open to us.' December 12, from off the mouth
of the Hoogly : ' We are now on our way to the eastward,
but I much fear the Dutch have hardly left us an inch of
ground to stand upon. My attention is principally turned
to Johore, and you must not be surprised if my next letter
to you is dated from the site of the ancient city of Singapura.'
January 16, 1819, from Pehang, where it was learned that
the Dutch had occupied Rhio : ' Me void d Pule Penang.
God only knows where next you may hear from me. ... At
Achin the difficulties I shall have to surmount in the per-
formance of my duty are great . . . but I shall persevere
steadily in what I conceive to be my duty. I think I may
rely on the Marquess : his last words were " Sir Stamford,
you may depend upon me " '. January 31 : ' Here I am
at Singapore, true to my word, and in the enjoyment of all
the pleasure which a footing on such classic ground must
c..m. M
90 RAFFLES
inspire. The lines of the old city and of its defences are still
to be traced, and within its ramparts the British Union waves
unmolested/
Thus, with lightning speed, in little more than a month
from the time of his departure from Calcutta, Raffles had
achieved his darling purpose. He had planted a British
post in the heart of the East Indies. And, for once, he had
obeyed, with one exception, the orders of his superiors.
His formal instructions from Lord Hastings had been as
follows. The negotiations at Achin were first to be con-
cluded ; ' but the most material point to attain ' was ' the
establishment of a station beyond Malacca, such as may
command the southern entrance of those Straits/ The
' most likely ' means to achieve this object ' without involv-
ing us in any discussion with the Netherlandish Power ' was
' the establishment, if practicable, with the consent of the
Native Government, of a British Post ' at Rhio. ' It is
expressly to be understood, and it will be incumbent on you
always to keep in mind, that the object in fixing upon a
Post of this nature is not the extension of any territorial
influence but strictly limited to the occupation of an advan-
tageous position for the protection of our commerce/ And
lastly : ' These Instructions are framed under an impression
that the Dutch have not formed any establishment at Rhio.
In the event of their doing so at the period of your arrival,
you will, of course, abstain from all negotiations and collision/
To forestall the possibility of a prior occupation of Rhio by
the Dutch, a further set of Instructions directed Raffles,
after careful investigation of a country so little known, ' to
open a negotiation with the Chief of Johore and carry into
effect at that place an arrangement similar to the one at
present contemplated at Rhio '.
When he planted the British flag at Singapore, Raffles
had strictly obeyed these orders save in one respect. He
had not gone, as he was bidden, first to Achin ; but for this
omission he had had a fair excuse. On arrival at Penang,
he had found its Governor, Colonel Bannerman, quite
vehemently opposed to the whole object of his mission.
RAFFLES 91
Bannerman, it seems, was terrified of the Dutch. He shrank
from the bare idea of precipitating a quarrel with them. And
he was determined not to share in the disfavour with which,
he knew, his more impetuous colleague of Bencoolen was
regarded at India House and the Foreign Office. He was
also, it is clear, a little jealous. And since Achin was within
the province of the Penang Government, he could, without
seeming to interfere unduly, beg Raffles not to stir up a
hornet's nest at that particular point until he had informed
the Governor-General of the local Government's opinion
and awaited further orders. To this 'earnest entreaty 1
Raffles yielded, not too regretfully, perhaps, for he was
itching for the South. And since it had been arranged that
the proposed post beyond the Straits should come within the
province of the Government of Bencoolen, there at least
Colonel Bannerman could not obstruct him. He could
make difficulties about furnishing the military assistance
which Raffles was entitled to demand, and, in the end,
indeed, give him less than he asked for, so that Raffles was
obliged to write to Bencoolen for the dispatch of troops from
there : but he could do no more ; and, anxiously and resent-
fully, he watched Raffles sail off to the South.
In all that followed Raffles did what he had been told to
do. Rhio being preoccupied, he investigated the rival
claims of the Carimon islands and Johore as a suitable site
and, having decided on the latter, he established his post,
' with the consent of the Native Government ', at Singapore,
an island about 200 square miles in area, separated by a
narrow strip of water from the mainland. Exactly what
was the Native Government might, indeed, be a matter of
dispute. There was no doubt at all that the lawful ruler
of Singapore was the Sultan of Johore. But who was the
lawful Sultan ? The elder son of the last Sultan and his
natural heir had been absent from Johore at the time of his
father's death in 1810 ; and since the Malay law required
that the Sultan's body should be buried by his successor,
the native Viceroy of Rhio had set up the younger son as
Sultan against his will, and, when the elder brother returned
92 RAFFLES
and the younger desired to retire in his favour, he had refused
to permit the exchange. The Viceroy, a masterful man, was
clearly bent on keeping Johore in his pocket. The elder
brother, however, had maintained his claim ; and since the
two hereditary chiefs, whose consent was required for a
legal succession to the Sultanate, had supported him from
the first, he had a stronger case than most Pretenders. After
all, he was the elder son ; his absence at his father's death
had been only an unfortunate accident ; and his brother had
admitted his right to the throne. For Raffles the oppor-
tunity was obvious. On the morning after his arrival he
interviewed the Tumung'gung or Resident Governor at
Singapore, who was one of the two aforesaid hereditary
chiefs, learned from him that the Dutch had made no claim
at all in that neighbourhood, and, a few days later, concluded
with him a preliminary treaty permitting the establishment
of a British ' factory '. Meantime he summoned home from
Rhio the elder son, whom he had decided to recognise as
Sultan ; and he sent also Major Farquhar to Rhio to sound
the Viceroy. It was unfortunate, perhaps, that, on an
earlier occasion, this Major Farquhar, when negotiating
with the Viceroy for commercial privileges, had recognised
his puppet as ' King of Johore ' ; but the Viceroy, it seems,
was not anxious to make enemies of the British, though,
with the Dutch hanging over him, he could scarcely make
friends with them. Wisely, from his point of view, he
determined to be neutral ; but he made it plain to Farquhar
that his engagements with the Dutch were limited to Rhio.
The way was thus smoothed for the completion of Raffles'
plans. The new Sultan arrived at Singapore on February i,
and on February 6 Raffles signed a treaty with him and the
Tumung'gung, under which the British were to be free to
erect ' factories ' in any part of the Sultan's realm, while
no land therein was to be alienated to, nor treaty concluded
with, any other foreign Power. Further, the Sultan's safety
was to be guaranteed as long as he resided near a British
station ; annual payments of 5,000 and 3,000 Spanish
dollars respectively were to be made to him and to the
RAFFLES 93
Tumung'gung ; and the latter was also to receive half the
duties levied on shipping. It was a not ungenerous bargain ;
and the Malay potentates, we may well believe, were more
willing to do what they were asked than native chiefs have
sometimes been in similar dealings with European intruders.
At the worst it must have been in their eyes a choice of
evils. If the British did not settle at Singapore, sooner or
later the Dutch would. And, since Raffles came to Java
at any rate, it was rumoured throughout the Archipelago
that it was better to deal, if you had the choice, with the
British. But the Sultan and his colleagues had to face an
awkward question. The Dutch would certainly be angry.
And would the British, who had come with very few ships
and very few soldiers in them, be able to protect them ?
Would they even stay ? The great surrender to the Dutch
after the war was a recent event. It had deeply impressed
the native mind. Fear must have seemed to many of the
Malays its only intelligible motive. Might not Raffles,
for all his confident bearing, be afraid to stay at Singapore ?
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Sultan and the
Tumung'gung attempted to safeguard their future by writing
to the Dutch authorities to explain that the British had
forced them to do what they had done ; and when Raffles
heard of their letter and they protested that they had only
written it for fear of Dutch vengeance, there is no reason to
doubt that they told the truth. Raffles, on his part, since
he understood the Malays, was all conciliation and urbanity ;
but his friends were prevailed on to sign an uncompromising
affidavit. ' I here call God and his holy Prophet to witness
that the English established themselves at Singapore with
my free will and consent ; and that from the arrival of the
Honourable Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles no troops or
effects were landed or anything executed but with the free
accord of the Sultan of Johore and myself.'
That letter to the Dutch had not been by any means a
piece of pointless double-dealing such as is sometimes
assumed to be attractive for its own sake to the oriental
mind. It showed a foresight that was nearly justified in
94 RAFFLES
the event. Colonel Bannerman had been right at least in
expecting trouble from the Dutch. When they heard that
the Englishman they feared more than anyone in the East
had broken from his Elba and found an unguarded spot
inside the fence they /had striven so hard to make impene-
trable round their preserve, they were furious. Raffles was
nothing but a pirate and a poacher. He did not observe
the conventional ' rules of the game ' ; he had not dealt
with the legal authority concerned ; he had discovered a
wretched pretender and forced him to usurp his brother's
throne. Such an attitude was not, of course, in the least
unnatural ; it was almost, indeed, inevitable. Reverse
the roles, and the British attitude would probably have been
the same. Nor could time soften its bitterness. Only some
thirty years ago, Van Deventer could still write of ' that
outrageous injustice which bears the name of Singapore '.
One can imagine, then, how fierce was the resentment in
1819. Protests, of course, were instantly launched at
London and Calcutta. Nor, at first, did it seem likely that
the Dutch would be content with words. The Governor of
Malacca, it was rumoured, had declared his desire to sail
at once and in force for Singapore.
It is significant that Raffles was almost the only English-
man in high place who was not shaken in some degree by
the impact of this tropical storm. It reached Penang first
and there it did most damage. Lieutenant-Governor
Bannerman bowed, almost to his knees, before it. He
forwarded the Dutch protest to Lord Hastings with a
covering letter of cordial sympathy ; and he wrote to his
Dutch fellow-Governor at Malacca, entreating him to take
no action against Singapore until the will of the Bengal
Government was ascertained. ' I am the more induced to
make this appeal to you ', he added, pathetically enough,
' as Sir Stamford Raffles is not under the control of this '
Government '. But his love of peace and quiet was to be
still further tested. Raffles had been obliged to leave his
new settlement under explicit orders from Calcutta to proceed
forthwith to Achin ; and Major Farquhar, whom he had
RAFFLES 95
appointed Resident, alarmed by the rumour of an imminent
Dutch attack, naturally appealed to Penang for aid. Colonel
Bannerman's reply was startling. He refused to send any
reinforcements until he had obtained the opinion of the
Supreme Government a matter, of course, of several weeks.
He told Farquhar that he was not surprised to hear of the
danger he was in, since he had himself warned him that the
expedition was contrary to the orders of the Supreme
Government and bound to provoke the hostility of the
Dutch. But the danger could easily be evaded. The Dutch
would regard resistance on his part as ' adding violence to
injustice '. He must consider, therefore, how far he would
be ' justified in shedding blood ' in an attempt to retain his
position. In his (Colonel Bannerman's) opinion, he could
not so be justified by pleading that his honour as a soldier
compelled him to resist. The cruiser Nearchus and the
brig Ganges would afford him ample means for removing his
party from Singapore if he should decide in favour of retreat.
On the same day (March 16) Bannerman wrote to Lord
Hastings, explaining that such small force as he could send
would merely encourage Major Farquhar to offer a hopeless
resistance to ' the overpowering armament of the Batavian
Government ' and that an instant and voluntary withdrawal
would be much less humiliating than a forcible ejection.
Nor could he forbear from commenting on ' the very extra-
ordinary conduct of the Lieutenant-Go vernor of Bencoolen '.
He had posted a detachment at Singapore, ' under very
equivocal circumstances ', and then - set off for Achin, and
left Major Farquhar to shift for himself. In fact, he acted
(as a friend of mine emphatically observed) like a man who
sets a house on fire and then runs away '.
Leaving Penang thus stricken, the storm rolled on to
Calcutta. Would Lord Hastings also bow to it ? Insistent
warnings from home to avoid the slightest friction with the
Dutch had soon begun to sap the confidence with which he
had dispatched Raffles on his southward voyage That
sanguine adventurer, indeed, had not long sailed before
Lord Hastings suddenly repented his decision and sent a
96 RAFFLES
letter hurrying after him but happily not fast enough to
overtake his rapid flight in which he was instructed to
abandon his mission altogether ! On February 20 he wrote
again, saying that, if the post had not already been secured,
Raffles should abstain from any further efforts. But he
had scarcely penned this second fainthearted letter when a
long report arrived from Raffles, announcing the establish-
ment of a post at Singapore, explaining the details of the
settlement with the native authorities, and detailing the
great advantage of the site for the purpose which he and
Lord Hastings had had so warmly at heart. From every
line of its forty pages breathed the doubt-dispelling person-
ality of its writer. Lord Hastings recovered his equilibrium.
Plainly Raffles had got hold of something worth keeping.
And were we to be always truckling to the Dutch ? And
would they, as a matter of fact, be so foolhardy as to force
the issue at Singapore to open fighting to a war with
Britain ? Lord Hastings was fairly certain they would not.
If only the immediate crisis could be got over without
bloodshed, the Dutch would probably in the end submit,
though naturally with very ill grace, to the fait accompli.
The main point, therefore, was to gain time ; and with that
object, when the protest arrived, Lord Hastings drafted a
dexterous reply. He had not yet received, he said, a suffi-
cient explanation of Raffles 1 conduct. ' A strict attention
to our instructions would have induced him to avoid the
possibility of collision with the Netherland authorities on
any point, and so sincere is our desire to bar the way to any
altercations with your Government that the occupation
of Singapore has been to us a matter of unfeigned regret.
In fact, after being acquainted with the extent of the
pretensions advanced on the part of your nation, and before
we knew of the existence of a factory at Singapore, we had
issued instructions to Sir T. S. Raffles directing him, if
our orders should arrive in time, to desist from any attempt
to form a British establishment in the Eastern Archipelago/
But the position was not quite the same now that the
establishment had already been formed. It could not be
RAFFLES 97
abandoned ' on your demand without subscribing to the
rights which you claim, and of which we are not satisfied,
thereby awkwardly forestalling the judgment which was
to have taken place at home '.
A little later Colonel Bannerman's report of his corre-
spondence with Major Farquhar reached Calcutta ; and to
this Lord Hastings' reply was neither diplomatic nor equi-
vocal. It was, in fact, a stinging rebuke. ' We think your
Government entirely wrong ', it ran, ' in determining so
broadly against the propriety of the step taken by Sir
Stamford Raffles. . . . We fear you will have difficulty in
excusing yourselves, should the Dutch be tempted to violence
against that post. The jealousy of it, should misfortune
occur and be' fraceable to neglect originating in such a
feeUng, will nc( no tolerance with this Government, who
must be satisfied (which is not now the case) that persever-
ance in maintaining the post would be an infraction of equity
before they can ponsent to abandon it. 1 So Bannerman was
obliged to bow again. He dispatched 200 men to Singapore.
Thus, in the end, after those few weeks of vacillation,
Lord Hastings faithfully kept his parting promise to Raffles.
But the fate of Singapore was not yet settled, The storm
had not yet abated. It was soon beating on the roofs of the
Foreign Office and India House. And their occupants
were almost as much upset as Colonel Bannerman. That
incorrigible Raffles ! Despite their repeated warnings to
Lord Hastings, he had somehow contrived to slip off and
singe the Dutchman's beard in the heart of his jealously
guarded preserves ! Why had they not recalled the in-
subordinate firebrand long ago ? Why, indeed, had they
ever allowed him to go East again ? They let loose their
vexation a not unnatural vexation in the circumstances
in more than one stiff communication to Lord Hastings ; but
their sentiments are best summarised in the dispatch of
August 14, 1819, from the Secret Committee, the inner
cabinet of the Company's administration. ' With respect
to the written instructions furnished to Sir Thomas by the
Governor-General in Council, they have unquestionably
C.S.R. N
RAFFLES
been contravened both in letter and in spirit : in the letter,
by his proceeding to the eastward before visiting Achin . . .
and in spirit, by risking a collision with the Dutch in the
Straits of Malacca/ To make matters worse, ' an amicable
discussion with the Netherlands Government ' was about
to be proposed. ' If the discussion is to be interrupted by
the intelligence of fresh feuds and violence in the Eastern
Seas, it seems quite hopeless to begin the work of amicable
adjustment. ... If the Dutch should forcibly expel our
garrison at Singapore, we must either submit in silence or
demand reparation at the hazard of a war which may
involve all Europe '. Without troubling, it would seem, to
look at a map, they questioned whether, under the Charter,
an agent of the Company had any right ' to make conquests
to the southward of the Line ', and ' Sir Thomas Stamford
Raffles cannot presume to suppose that he has been em-
powered by His Majesty's Government to make such
acquisitions on behalf of the Crown '. He has disobeyed his
instructions ; he has failed to make out the title of the
chief with whom he has dealt ; he has chosen, in fact, ' to
presume that the discussions will go on more favourably to
this country if, instead of the tedious process of investigating
the title of the Dutch Government to all that they claim,
His Majesty's Ministers shall have only to maintain Sir
Thomas Stamford Raffles in possessions which he has thought
proper to occupy '. And Lord Hastings was reminded that
Raffles' previous record had ' rendered doubtful the ex-
pediency of employing him at all in any negotiation or
undertaking in the Eastern Seas '. But to all this denuncia-
tion there was a saving clause. The Secret Committee were
not prepared to take action as regards either Singapore or
Raffles over the hfead of the Governor-General. They would
await Lord Hastings' explanations. Nor was official opinion
in London as unanimous as the dispatch might seem to
suggest. In Charles Grant, Raffles had always had a friend
a powerful friend, though usually in a minority where he
was concerned at the Court of Directors ; and, in the
course of the following year, he wrote privately to Raffles
RAFFLES 99
telling him that there was an active body of opinion at India
House in favour of ' the further development of the Eastern
trade '. ' The acquisition of Singapore/ he confidently
declared, ' grows in importance '. He had himself recently
given an opinion, before a House of Lords' Committee, ' of
the value, in a moral, political, and commercial view, of a
British establishment in the locality of Singapore. . . . From
all these circumstances and others, I augur well as to the
retention and encouragement of the station your rapidity
has preoccupied '. Still more important, Lord Hastings
was sticking to his guns. Further reports increased his
belief in the possibilities of Singapore, and further delay
confirmed his conviction that the Dutch would never fight.
Nor would he allow the authorities at home to make too
much of the Batavian Government's legal claims. ' It
was obvious ', he wrote, ' we could not but expect that
in the event of securing a station which would baffle the
injurious policy of our neighbours, they would not fail to
impugn our right to take possession of such a spot by
advancing some prior title to it.'
Meanwhile, Singapore was winning its own victory. If
the whole field had been open and Raffles had had time to
.prospect it all at leisure without fear of being forestalled,
he could not have found a better site for a British commercial
centre and a link with the Farther East. It was, it still is,
the perfect site. Lying at the southern end of the Malay
Peninsula, it commands the shortest route between Europe
and China. In Raffles' day, when shipping had to make the
great circuit round Africa, there was little to choose, in
point of distance, between the route through the Straits of
Malacca and that through the Straits of Sunda, provided a
straight course were taken without a break from the Cape
of Good Hope. But for all ships that called in those days
at Ceylon or any Indian port, Singapore was far better than
Salamanka Bay : it meant a saving of at least 1,000 miles.
And, of course, when the Suez Canal was cut, the whole
stream of European shipping was bound to take the shorter
ioo RAFFLES
route. Singapore possesses, moreover, not only a sheltered
roadstead but a fine natural harbour between its own coast
and the adjacent islands. Almost automatically, therefore,
its position at once began to tell. In January when Raffles
landed, it was little more than a derelict native village
its ancient fame a half -forgotten story with a handful of
inhabitants and practically no trade. But the native traders
quickly discovered the advantages of a post so central and
so free from Dutch restrictions. And with trade came
people. ' Already ', wrote Raffles in June, ' a population
of above 5,000 souls has collected under our flag/ In 1824
that number had at least been doubled, and 35,000 tons of
shipping used the port. In 1835, the population was 30,000
and the tonnage 200,000. Such quick and concrete results
could not fail to impress the authorities in London. They
could never, indeed, have guessed at the full magnitude
of the future that awaited Singapore, but they were soon
persuaded that the infant settlement was at any rate well
worth keeping. They examined the Dutch claims now
through different spectacles and found them less substantial.
Their opinion of the new Sultan's title and of Raffles'
dealings with him were similarly revised. And, meantime,
the Dutch did nothing at all. The storm had blown itself
out. Presently it even proved possible to resume ' the work
of amicable adjustment ' ; and in 1824 a final and friendly
bargain was struck between the British and Netherlands
Governments. Britain retained Singapore, but surrendered
Bencoolen and all her claims in Sumatra. The Dutch gave
up Malacca. The position, in fact, was stabilised on some-
thing akin to its old basis. The Dutch remained the insular
Power, free to expand and tighten their control over the
Archipelago as a whole. The British fell back on continental
Malaya and the command of the Malacca gate. But there
was this cardinal difference now in the situation of the
British. They were inside the gate. And there were no
more barriers to be passed. Northwards from Singapore
the China Sea lay open.
XII
' THIS will probably be my last attempt ', Raffles had
written to Marsden soon after he landed at Singapore. ' If
I am deserted now, I must fain return to Bencoolen and
become philosopher/ And thenceforward the fate of
Singapore was always the first thought in his mind. To
Singapore he had hurried back after concluding his business
at Achin, and it was only the necessity for his return to the
headquarters of his Government that compelled him reluc-
tantly to leave it in June, 1819, in Major Farquhar's charge*
Singapore, he knew, was the crown of his work in the East ;
and his letters home during those months glow with happy
pride. ' Singapore ', he says, ' is everything we could
desire. . . . With this station alone I would undertake to
counteract all the plans of Mynheer ; it breaks the spell ;
and they are no longer the exclusive sovereigns of the Eastern
Seas. 1 ' It is a child of my o\vn. But for my Malay studies
I should hardly have known that such a place existed ; not
only the European but the Indian world was also ignorant
of it.' ' What Malta is in the West, that may Singapore
become in the East.' ' It bids fair to be the next port to
Calcutta ; all we want now is the certainty of permanent
possession. 1
And since with every week that passed this certainty
became more assured, Raffles returned to Bencoolen a
happier man than he had left it nine months earlier. His
work in Sumatra might seem, indeed, even less important
and less likely to endure than it had seemed before, but he
resumed it now with all the zest with which he had begun it.
His first concern was the promotion of agriculture. ' Agri-
culture ', he declared, ' is everywhere the only solid basis
of national prosperity ' ; and he founded an Agricultural
101
102 RAFFLES
Society, with himself as president, to discuss ' all questions
which relate to the produce of the soil and the people who
cultivate it '. Meanwhile, in place of the enforced native
cultivation of pepper only, he encouraged the free native
cultivation of various spices ; and he did all he could to help
European plantations worked by paid native or Chinese
labour. Such zeal soon proved contagious. All round
Bencoolen agriculture suddenly began to prosper and expand.
Forests were cut back, swamps drained, the soil cleaned and
sown with grain. The native cultivators, catching the new
spirit and encouraged by the concession of an individual
title to their lands, vied with each other to produce the
biggest crop. A beginning was also made with the cultiva-
tion of the sugar-cane. Sugar, declared Raffles with typical
certitude, could be exported from Bencoolen at one sixth
of the cost incurred in the West Indies ; and he hailed with
delight the arrival of an experienced planter from Jamaica.
But all these efforts were still hampered by the arm-chair
economists of India House. When the planters presented
a petition for the removal of the duties levied in England on
their products, Raffles vigorously backed it. But it was
useless to ask the Directors to foster British enterprise in
this fertile and thinly-peopled island, useless to talk of
Sumatra as a more remunerative field for capital than the
Cape, useless to plead his. notorious case for ' liberal trade ',
useless even to explain that the duties complained of
operated in favour of the Dutch. The Court did nothing.
And the planters could only console themselves by recording
their gratitude to the Governor. A memorial, drafted by
a committee of them, declared that ' the great variety of
beneficial changes that has taken place since the commence-
ment of your important administration . . . has excited the
wonder and admiration of everyone ; and, had circumstances
permitted them to have been received with due appreciation
by the higher powers, there is no doubt they would have
led to results in the commercial world as great as they would
have been unexpected/ Raffles, indeed, had made himself
thoroughly popular with the British community. ' All
RAFFLES 103
classes seem persuaded ', he writes, ' that I want to make the
country, and there is nothing which I wish or suggest which
they are not anxious to do.' Very smooth, therefore, was
the path of his administration, and before long, he could
claim that the new regime was a success. Bencoolen, he
reported in 1820, was now ' thriving, the remedy applied
has been efficient, a turn has been taken, and a few
years' perseverance will make this a new and prosperous
country/ ' Great it can never be ', he adds a significant
confession.
In much of this agricultural work and in his superinten-
dence of the social system, Raffles, of course, was in close
personal contact with the natives. As in Java, so now, he
carefully explained all his new ideas and regulations to the
chiefs ; and again as in Java, he was constantly entertaining
natives in his house, making thereby once more a notable
break with precedent, since the previous Residents and,
following their lead, the little European community in
general, had abstained, like the Dutch in Java, from all
social intercourse with the darker race. And his acquain-
tance with this new sample, so to speak, of that scattered
Malayan folk confirmed his old convictions. ' There is no
radical defect in the character of the common people ', he
told the Directors as he had told them more than once before.
1 They are alive to the same incentives, have the same
feelings, and . . . would as rapidly advance in civilisation
as their fellow men, once relieved from the oppression and
disabilities under which they labour.' The abolition of
forced cultivation and sale had already gone far to remove
that oppression. But Raffles soon realised that Sumatra
was not ripe for such a measure of social advancers he had
attempted in Java. He decided, therefore, not to interfere
with native feudalism, but to control its tyrannical pro-
pensities by setting himself at its head. ' I have assumed ',
he wrote in 1820, ' a new character among them, that of
Lord Paramount ; the chiefs are my barons bold, and the
people their vassals. Under this constitution and by the
establishment of a right of property in the soil, I am enabled
104 RAFFLES
to do wonders ; and, if time is only given to persevere in
the same course for a few years, I think I shall be able to
lay the foundation of a new order of things.' But to
remove the natives' disabilities that was a far harder task,
only to be achieved in long, slow years and with infinite
patience. But at least he could make a start with education,
secular and spiritual. Free schools on the Lancastrian
system were opened for native children. A Bible Society
was founded. And an appeal was made for. missionaries to
take advantage of this new foothold in the eastern world.
1 I am far from opposing missionaries ', he writes to Wilber-
force, * and the more that come out, the better ; but let
them be enlightened men, and placed in connexion with the
schools, and under due control. 1 And he begs the Emanci-
pator to assist him in founding a college ' for the education
of the higher orders of the natives '. */ Can you not take us
under your parental wing, or could you not make the
Eastern Islands a branch of the African Institution under
some other description ? ' 'I promise glorious results ', he
tells his cousin ; and in 1819 he reports : ' We have already
one young man and a small printing-press, but we require
active zeal. . . . Let them make haste. Years roll on very
fast.' Presently two more missionaries arrive. ' They are
scholars and gentlemen ', notes Raffles, ' and their wives
are well calculated to aid their endeavours.' But he fears
f they are hardly prepared for the difficulties and privations
of missionary life in such a barbarous country as this '.
Raffles, indeed, with all his sanguine zeal and all his talk of
great results, did not deceive himself. He knew well enough
that in this field he could only make a beginning. ' We
should look a good way forward ', he writes. ' The short
time that I may remain in India will only serve to set the
machine in motion.' But with the children, at any rate,
he could record a quick and real success. ' The native school
has fully answered my expectations. ... I am now extend-
ing the plan so as to include a school of industry in which
the children will be instructed in the useful arts.' An
industrial school for natives in Sumatra in 1820 ! Once
RAFFLES 105
more the impetuous pioneer is travelling far beyond the
horizon of his times.
And during all this period at Bencoolen, as in Java, Raffles
was devoting himself to his favourite hobbies. When, soon
after the discovery of Rafflesia- Arnold* , Dr. Arnold died,
he found another enthusiastic botanist in Dr. Jack ; and
he brought back with him from Bengal two French zoolo-
gists, ' one of them step-son to the celebrated Cuvier '. So
the pursuit and collection of specimens went on apace.
Government House became a museum of natural history.
Strange animals and birds and plants were deposited in and
out of doors, and several draughtsmen were constantly
engaged in making studies of them. ' Two young tigers and
a bear ', writes Lady Raffles, ' were for some time in the
children's apartments, under the charge of their attendant,
without being confined|ln cages, and it was rather a curious
scene to see the children, the bear, the tigers, a blue mountain
bird and a favourite cat all playing together, the parrot's
beak being the only object of awe to all the party. 1 At
another time Raffles speaks of a pet elephant four feet high
and of ' one of the most beautiful men of the woods ', dressed
in ' a surtout of fine white linen He has not the slightest
rudiment of a tail, always walks erect, and will, I am sure,
soon become a great favourite in Park Lane. 1 It is clear,
indeed, from all the letters of this time that Raffles had at
last recaptured the felicity of his first years in Java. Lady
Raffles calls it ' one of the most happy periods in Sir Stam-
ford's life '. And of all his delights the chief was in his
family. His letters home are lyrical about the children
and their virtues. ' My dear little Charlotte is, of all
creatures, the most angelic I ever beheld.' ' Leopold has
the spirit of a lion and is absolutely beautiful.' They both
manage to talk two or three languages and are a source of
'great satisfaction to us'. Stamford Marsden, too, the
second son, is ' doing wonderfully 'well and will not fall far
short o! the others '.
Such was the happy picture in 1820. And then the
tragedy of Java was repeated. In 1821 the pitiless fates
C.8.R. O
1 06 RAFFLES
struck hard again. In the course of a few weeks all those
three children died. The surviving daughter, Ella, still an
infant, might well have shared their grave if she had not
been hastily sent off to England. Raffles and his wife were
both seriously ill. And, as if these blows were not enough,
Raffles lost in quick succession some of his most intimate
companions at Bencoolen, including Dr. Jack. ' Our hearts
are nearly broken ', wrote Raffles to his cousin, ' and our
spirits sunk, I fear not to rise again at least in this country.
. . . These events and the injury my constitution has suffered
have brought us to the determination of leaving India at
all events early in 1824 and I have written home for a
successor accordingly/ ' It has pleased God to blight our
hopes ', he writes to the Duchess of Somerset. ' All our
thoughts and all our wishes are now turned homewards '.
It is not to be wondered at. In Races' happier moments,
when the work at his hand absorbed him and when he talked
of ' glorious results ', he had known that Bencoolen could
never be ' great '. And now that illness and death were
at his door, the atmosphere of decay and despair hung heavy
over that rugged, steamy coast. Was it, after all, as the
natives said, ' a dead land ' ? Was it any use to spend
oneself in trying to give it life again ? Raffles, indeed, shut
up in a darkened room, often too weak to write, may be
pardoned for believing that he might now be granted his
release. But in all his misery he had one consolation. If
the spring in him seemed broken, if the time had clearly
come for his retirement, at least he would not go home
empty-handed. Amid all the ups and downs of his career,
the disputes and disappointments, the thwarted hopes and
wasted labours, he had done something something that
was great and would endure. Throughout these years at
Bencoolen, however much his mind was occupied Math his
official duties and his private hobbies, he had never forgotten
Singapore. His letters rarely fail to mention it. ' Singapore,
I am happy to say, continues to rise most rapidly in import-
ance and resources. It is already one of the first ports in
the East/ * You will be pleased to hear that Singapore
RAFFLES 107
has again become a great and flourishing city. The popula-
tion is already more than three times that of Bencoolen.'
1 Singapore continues to thrive beyond all calculation. . . .
The exports and imports, even by native boats alone, exceed
four millions of dollars in the year/ ' My settlement . . .
promises to become the emporium and the pride of the East.'
He saw in it too the final victory in his personal conflict
with the Dutch. He knew that they still complained of
him, that they were asking for his recall, that British
ministers were inclined to lend a ready ear to their ' un-
scrupulous and enormous assertions ', but it all mattered
little now. ' The great blow has been struck, and though
I may personally suffer in the scuffle, the nation must be
benefited/ ' I no rpore trouble my head about the Dutch/
In Singapore, then, if nowhere else, Raffles could find
comfort ; and in 182-2 he determined to revisit it himself
before he left the East for ever. The effect was immediate.
' We landed yesterday ', he wrote on October n, ' and I have
once more established my headquarters in the centre of my
Malayan friends. The coldest and most disinterested could
not quit Bencoolen and land at Singapore without surprise
and emotion. What, then, must have been my feelings,
after the loss of almost everything that was dear to me on
that ill-fated coast, after all the risks and dangers to which
this my almost only child had been exposed, to find it grown
and advanced beyond all measure. ... I already feel
differently. I feel a new life and vigour about me ; and if
it please God to grant me health, the next six months will,
I hope, make some amends for the gloom of the last sixteen.
Rob me not of this my political child, and you may yet
see me at home in all my wonted spirits/
XIII
IT was not only its inherent magnetism that had drawn
Raffles back to Singapore. He was seriously at odds with
the Resident he had left in charge. And this was the more
regrettable since Colonel Farquhar, unlike Colonel Gillespie,
was by no means out of sympathy with Raffles' ambitions.
He fully shared in his enthusiasm over Singapore. His
reports of its progress might have come from his chief's
exuberant pen. ' Nothing can possibly exceed the rising
trade and general prosperity of this infant colony ', he had
written in 1820. ' One of the principal Chinese merchants
here told me, in the course of conversation, that he would
be very glad to give five hundred thousand dollars for the
revenues of Singapore five years hence. Merchants of all
descriptions are collecting here so fast that nothing is heard
in the shape of complaint but the want of more ground to
build on. The swampy ground on the opposite side of the
river is now almost covered with Chinese houses, and the
Bugguese village is become an extensive town.' But this
very enthusiasm had its awkward aspect, since Raffles had
never regarded Farquhar as the right man for the permanent
charge of Singapore. His appointment had been only
temporary, and by now a new scheme had been devised
under which Singapore was to be transferred from the
control of the Government of Bencoolen to that of the
Government of India, and Mr. John Crawfurd, who had
established his reputation as an Orientalist by the publication
in 1820 of his History of the Indian Archipelago, was to take
Farquhar's place as Resident. But Farquhar wanted to
stay. Raffles threw out hints, explained the new arrange-
ment, asked for the date of his departure, and at last, -as
the months went by and nothihg happened, notified Farquhar
1 08
RAFFLES 109
of the termination of his appointment and his decision to
come to Singapore himself and temporarily take over its
control. Farquhar thereupon repudiated his authority.
' I must have acted as I did towards Colonel Farquhar ',
Raffles wrote afterwards, ' for whom I ever had and still
do retain a warm personal affection/ But he was sorely tried.
For he discovered on arrival that Farquhar had directly
disobeyed his original instructions on two important points.
He had licensed cock-fighting and gambling houses, and he
had disposed of some of* the best lands, which Raffles had
reserved for public purposes, for the profit of private indi-
viduals. Worse still, though on this point Raffles had given
him no orders, since, as he said, ' he never could have
supposed that a British officer could have tolerated such a
practice in a settlement circumstanced like Singapore and
formed after the promulgation of the Act of Parliament
declaring it a felony ', Farquhar had, to say the least,
permitted the intrusion of the slave trade into his virgin
settlement.
Raffles, therefore, had much to undo as well as to do ;
and his nine-months' stay at Singapore was for him one
more stretch of intense and, when health permitted, delight-
ful activity. It was Java over again, with a far cleaner
sheet and far more certainty of permanence. The undoing
was quickly effected. The slave trade was prohibited
utterly and for all time. All slaves, moreover, imported
or otherwise, acquired since the establishment of the settle-
ment, were given the right to claim their freedom ; and it
was forbidden to consider or treat as a slave hereafter anyone
permanently resident within the British jurisdiction. Cock-
fighting and gambling houses were similarly declared illegal,
though this more controversial reform was not to prove so
durable. As to the alienation of the land Raffles was
determined that, whatever the cost and the labour, he would
not adlow the growth of his great Eastern city to be distorted
at the outset. The lost sites, therefore, were bought back,
the buildings removed, and new plans made for controlling
the swift development of the town and its environs. ' Houses
no RAFFLES
and warehouses ', writes Raffles in January, 1823, ' are
springing up in every direction, and the inland forests are
fast giving way before the industrious cultivator. I am
now engaged in marking out the towns and roads. ... I
hope that, though Singapore may be the first capital esta-
blished in the nineteenth century, it will not disgrace the
brightest period of it/
Meanwhile a government for this new community had to
be devised, and clearly on a new model. For the population
of Singapore was already assuming the motley character
it bears to-day European merchants, Chinese traders,
shopkeepers, and coolies, sea-faring Arabs, Malays of all
sorts from all the Archipelago, superimposed on the original
natives of the soil. For controlling the complex life of such
a community no native government, it was obvious, could
suffice ; and, while Raffles was careful to consult his old
friends, the Sultan of Johore and the Tumung'gung, and to
leave the country districts mainly in their hands, it was
obviously beyond their power to govern Singapore. At the
same time, Raffles, once more in advance of his age, was
unwilling to vest the whole function of government in an
official bureaucracy. The European merchants were already
an influential body in Singapore nine separate business
firms had established themselves there by 1823 and since
their interest in the welfare of the settlement was obviously
great, Raffles determined to make use of them for public
service. ' I am satisfied ', he said, ' that nothing has tended
more to the discomfort and constant j airings, which have
hitherto occured in our recent settlements, than the policy
which has dictated the exclusion of the European merchants
from all share, much less credit, in the domestic regulation
of the settlement of which they are frequently its most
important members/ He therefore appointed twelve of
the leading British merchants to act as magistrates. Two of
them were to sit once a week with the Resident as a major
court of civil and criminal justice, and two others, in rotation,
were to deal with minor cases twice a week. Trial by jury
was instituted a European or mixed jury for civil cases.
RAFFLES in
a purely European or purely native jury for criminal cases in
accordance with the race of the parties involved. The
system of law was to develop from British foundations in
accordance with the special needs of the community. The
courts were to ' apply the general principles of British law
to all, equally and alike, without distinction of tribe or
nation, under such modifications only as local circumstances
and peculiarities, and a due consideration for the weaknesses
and prejudices of the native population may from time to
time suggest.' The merchant-magistrates, moreover, were
to take a share in legislation. They were to constitute
something akin to a Legislative Council under the Crown
Colony system of government. Local laws and regulations
would be enacted by and with their advice ; and they were
also to have the power of initiating regulations and, if the
Resident should not act on them, of requesting him to refer
them for consideration to the Governor-General in Council.
Further, native captains or headmen were to be appointed,
with their own assistants, under the magistrates' control to
exercise authority over the different classes of the native
population. As to finance, finally, in a community growing
so fast in numbers and in wealth, there could for once be
little difficulty. ' I have established a revenue,' wrote
Raffles, ' without any tax whatever on the trade.' He was
able, therefore, to fulfil the primary condition on which, in
his view, the future prosperity of Singapore depended. At
the head of his report to the Government of India, he wrote :
' I have declared that the port of Singapore is a free port
and the trade thereof open to ships and vessels of every
nation, free of duty, equally and alike to all.'
Amid all his work there was one achievement in which
Raffles took a special interest. Never, in any of his fields of
government, had he forgotten education ; and schools for
Malay children were soon springing up at Singapore under
missionary control. But he had long desired to do something
also for higher education and research, to create a permanent
centre for the study of the languages and life of all this
Eastern world in which he moved. In 1819, soon after his
ii2 RAFFLES ,
discovery of Singapore, he had drafted an eloquent minute
proposing that such an institution should be established in
the new settlement ; he had written to Wilberforce about
it, as has been seen, from Bencoolen ; and the idea had
grown in his mind till it seemed an essential feature of his
new capital of the East. The city on the straits should
radiate out its learning as it gathered in its wealth. It was
not the least noble of Raffles' visions, and now he could give
it, or begin to give it, shape and substance. Abdulla, who
had followed his old master to Singapore where he made a
living as a Malay teacher, writer, and interpreter for the
British and Chinese merchants, describes how Raffles
invited ' the Sultan, the Tumung'gung, and all the leading
men of the Europeans ' to a meeting and expounded to them
1 an undertaking of the greatest utility to this and to future
generations/ He proposed, he told them, to erect an
Institute in which all the main branches of knowledge
should be taught, but especially, at the outset, the Malayan
and Chinese languages and literature. Everyone, it seems,
was properly impressed ; and the proceedings closed with
a subscription of over 17,000 dollars for the beginning of the
work. ' When this had been settled and the money collected,
which was reckoned up by Mr. Raffles himself, it only
remained to select a site for the Institute. Consequently,
on a certain evening, he went on foot with Colonel Farquhar,
conversing as they proceeded, till they arrived at Bras Bussa
creek, where they halted to look around. There used to
be here a sandhill covered with scrub. They then returned
home but, on the morrow, men were sent to fell the trees
and to level the site ; and in five days more there came
bricks, lime, and artificers, with the whole material for house
building/ In about a month's time all was ready for laying
the foundation-stone. ' So they laid the stone below the
door, and as they raised it erect, a salute of twelve guns was
fired on the hill ; and hereupon Mr. Raffles named the
building " Institution/' ' ' I trust in God ', wrote Raffles
home, ' that this Institution may be the means of civilising
and bettering the condition of millions/
RAFFLES 113
The foundation of the Singapore Institute forms a fitting
climax to those nine creative months at Singapore. It was
Raffles' study of the Malay language on his first voyage out
from home that had enabled him to win so quick and firm
a footing in his official world. It was his knowledge of the
Malays and their life that had led him to Lord Minto and to
Java. It was his researches into Malayan history that had
inspired the thought of a British post at Singapore. And it
was the hope of spreading education and enlightenment
throughout the Malayan world that had formed the brightest
thread in his imperial ideal. ' Thus ', he had written in the
minute referred to above, ' will our stations become not only
the centres of commerce and its luxuries but of refinement
and the liberal arts. If commerce brings wealth to our
shores, it is the spirit of literature and philanthropy that
teaches us how to emply it for the noblest purposes. It is
this that has made Britain go forth among the nations,
strong in her native might, to dispense blessings to all around
her. If the time shall come when her Empire shall have
passed away, those monuments of her virtue will endure
when her triumphs have become an empty name. Let it
still be the boast of Britain to write her name in characters
of light/
There was now no necessity for Raffles to prolong his
stay at Singapore. In all essentials he had well and truly
laid, or re-laid, its foundations. Crawfurd was now ready to
take over the post of Resident, and he had ' promised most
solemnly to adhere to and uphold all my arrangements '.
And if Raffles found it hard to leave the care of his child
to another, even to one so loyal as Crawfurd, his health was
telling him it was unmistakeable that he was lingering
in the East at his peril. More than half of that busy time at
Singapore he suffered from paralysing headaches. Writing
of a new bungalow he had built himself on Singapore Hill,
f The tombs of the Malay kings ', he says, ' are close at hand ;
and I have settled that, if it is my fate to die here, I shall
take my place amongst them/ And there was a grim note
C.SJL P
ii4 RAFFLES
in this humour ; for the doctors had warned him that only
an instant flight to Europe would save his life. Yet he
clung on till a few weeks after the foundation of the Institute.
'Then on a certain day', records Abdulla, 'Mr. Raffles
said to me, ' Tuan, I intend to sail in three days hence, so
collect all my Malay books.' And when I heard this, my
heart palpitated and my spirit was gone. So I asked him
where he was going, when he told me he was going to Europe ;
and when I heard this, I could bear it no longer ; I felt as
if I had lost father and mother such was my condition that
my eyes were bathed in tears. When he perceived this, his.
face became flushed, and, wiping his tears with his handker-
chief, he told me not to be disheartened, for if he lived he
intended to return to Singapore.' And then follows a list
of the collection which Abdulla was instructed to pack up.
It is immense. It might almost be the catalogue of a king's
treasure in some ancient epic of the East. There were
three presses filled with Malay books, wrapped in wax cloth
and packed in hair trunks, three hundred bound books, not
counting the unbound ones and scrolls and pamphlets.
There were two trunks filled with letters, Javanese, Bali and
Bujis books, and various images, paintings with their frames,
musical instruments, inscriptions and lontar leaves. There
were Javanese instruments with their equipments in a
great box. There were many thousands of animals whose
carcases had been taken out but stuffed like life, and two
or three trunks full of birds in thousands and all stuffed.
There were several hundred bottles, of different sizes, filled
with snakes and scorpions and worms of different kinds and
gin to prevent corruption. And there were two boxes filled
with coral of a thousand kinds, also shells, mussels, and
bivalves. ' On all these articles stated above he placed a
value greater than gold ; and he was constantly coming in
to see that nothing was hurt or broken. 1
On June 4, 1823, Abdulla, a not unworthy representative
of the people Raffles loved, parted with his master for the
last time on board his ship. ' And then I descended to my
RAFFLES 115
sampan ; and when I had been off some distance, I turned
round and saw Mr. Raffles looking out of the window, when
I again saluted him. He raised his hand to me. This was
just as the sails were being hoisted. And the vessel sailed.
. . . Now, from the day of Mr. Raffles' sailing I have had no
pleasure, but only grief.'
XIV
THE homeward journey opened with a touch of comedy.
Four years earlier, on the same voyage from Singapore to
Bencoolen, Raffles' ship had run short of water, and, on his
putting into Rhio, the Dutch Resident had denounced him
as a spy and refused to supply his need. If they had not
shortly met out at sea an American vessel, whose captain, in
rough weather and at some risk, succeeded in transshipping
some barrels of water, Raffles and his wife and shipmates
might have suffered agonies of thirst. And now again he
was to taste the hatred he had certainly done something to
deserve. Unfortunately the merchant-ship in which he
sailed had to call at Batavia. None knew better than
Raffles that the ancient enemy would not be pleased to see
him at what had once been his own headquarters, and he
determined not to land. But since his wife was far advanced
towards childbirth, he wrote to the Governor-General,
Baron von der Capellen, explaining that only the necessity
of landing goods had brought his ship to the port, and
suggesting that it would be a great relief to Lady Raffles
if she might rest on shore during the two or three days the
ship would be detained. The Baron's reply expressed his
amazement at Raffles coming to Batavia after all that had
happened since 1816. He stiffly refused to have any further
communication with him. In view, however, of Madame
Raffles' indisposition he could not oppose his remaining at
Batavia for a few days. In a polished but very sarcastic
rejoinder Raffles protested that he had never intended to
land himself. And so the incident dosed. A few days later
they were off again for Bencoolen where Raffles, after winding
up his administration, desired to obtain the first possible
ship for England.
116
RAFFLES 117
But the East had not yet finished with her faithful servant.
Months passed before a ship could be obtained, and since
disease still gripped Bencoolen, there was time enough to
strike a few more blows time to kill off three or four more
of Raffles' intimates, including the trusty Captain Salmond
who named as the executor of his will ' my only friend, Sir
Stamford Raffles ' ; time to set both husband and wife
dangerously ill again ; time even to kill their child a month
or two from birth. ' Would to God ' wrote Raffles, ' we
were ourselves fairly out of the place. 1 At last the Fame
arrived, and at dawn on February 2, 1824, they sailed. That
evening the ship caught fire. In a few minutes it' was in
flames. The sea being calm, the passengers and crew were
able to take to the boats and row for the shore some fifty
miles away. They reached Bencoolen, to the relief of its
anxious residents, about two o'clock next afternoon. The
shock and the exposure were bad enough in themselves for
Raffles and his wife in their feeble state. But there was
worse than that in it. More than one shipload of his col-
lected treasures had been sent home long before, but all the
most precious things had been kept to travel under his own
supervision. And all were lost all that Abdulla had packed
at Singapore and much more from Bencoolen, including
many volumes of notes and transcriptions and sketches
Raffles himself had made in Java and elsewhere and a large
scale map of Sumatra on which he had expended infinite
personal labour during all his years at Bencoolen, and, of
course, a multitude of unique zoological and botanical
specimens, and last, but not least in Raffles' eyes, Princess
Charlotte's ring. Imagine what this loss meant to him.
But the extraordinary man, seasoned by now to misfortunes,
refused, as he said, to repine. On reaching his house he slept
for fifteen hours, and then at once began to draw a new map
of Sumatra, while he set his old draughtsmen to work at
new scientific drawings and dispatched natives to the forests
to capture more animals. A few of the gaps had thus been
filled when, on April 10, Raffles embarked for home a second
time. And now the East could do no more. It could only
n8 RAFFLES
give him, as he left the Indian Ocean, a malignant farewell
a three-weeks' gale so terrible that one passenger who had
crossed those stormy waters off the Cape no less than nineteen
times declared it the worst he had ever known.
There was yet one more trial to be borne. ' God preserve
you, my dearest mother ', he had written once from Ben-
coolen, ' and grant that we may once more meet in happiness
to part no more. The hope that I may reach England in
time to keep up your spirits and give you a new lease of life
is ever present.' When he started at last for home, he knew
that she was failing ; but if the Fame had not caught fire,
he would probably have been in time to see her again. As
it was, he found the news of her death awaiting him at
St. Helena.
' Here we are, thank God, safe and sound ', wrote Raffles
from Plymouth on August 22, 1824. But, in truth, he was
far less sound now than when he landed, more or less an
invalid, in 1816. Though only forty-three, he was, as he
had described himself two years before, ' a little old man,
all yellow and shrivelled ' with his ' hair pretty well blanched '.
He was still constantly affected by headaches. ' The least
exertion of mind or body', records Lady Raffles, 'was
followed by days of pain and sickness/ But the ' little old
man ' was indomitable. ' As the spirit is good ', he declared,
' the body will yet mend.' And since he confessed that he
could not be happy and idle at the same time, he was no
sooner settled in London than he began to devise once more
a multitude of tasks. He set himself to unpack and arrange
the contents of the hundred and seventy three cases that
survived of the grand collection. He drafted a general
account of his services in the East for the Court of Directors
and a report on missionary work in Sumatra for the Bible
Society, and he undertook ' to give the public a memoir on
Singapore'. He completed his map of Sumatra and
another of Singapore and had them engraved. He designed
an elaborate treatise setting on record, while his memory
of the East was still fresh, 'whatever he thought would
RAFFLES 119
promote the general improvement of mankind '. He even
contemplated a seat in Parliament if he could obtain it
* without sacrifice in principle '. Bristol, Liverpool, and
Lancaster were mentioned as possible constituencies. One
last ambition was more appropriate. ' I confess ', he told
the Duchess of Somerset, ' I have a great desire to turn
farmer and have the vanity to think I could manage about
two hundred acres as well as my neighbours. With this,
I suppose, I should in time become a country magistrate, an
office above all others which I should delight in/ But it was
several months before this project, with its promise of peace
and health, could be realised ; and meanwhile Raffles -was
caught up in the whirl of London life. The founder of
Singapore was a bigger lion than the Governor of Java, and
Society clasped him again in its exhausting embrace.
' Seldom a day passes without an engagement to dinner ', he
tells his cousin in the spring of 1826, ' and for many weeks
I have not been able to command an hour's leisure ' But,
though he confessed his surprise at being ' able to carry on
the war ', he thoroughly enjoyed it. ' All is so new, varied,
and important in the metropolis of this great empire, after
so long an absence in the woods and wilds of the East, that,
like a bee, I wander from flower to flower, and drink in
delicious nutriment from the numerous intellectual and
moral sources that surround me '. He felt himself to be
beginning at last to satisfy his vast mental appetite. ' Were
I not a married man ', he jests, ' I should be half inclined to
study for a bachelor's degree, and to make up even at this
time of life for the sad omissions of my youth which I can
never too deeply deplore* Hurried into public life before
I was fifteen years of age, my education was sadly neglected,
and in returning to the civilised world I feel like a Hottentot.'
If London thus provided the starved exile with a feast
of social diversions and intellectual interests, Raffles gave
something in return. ' I am much interested at present ',
he writes to his cousin in March, 1825, ' in establishing a
grand Zoological collection in the metropolis, with a Society
for the introduction of living animals, bearing the same
120 RAFFLES
relations to Zoology as a science that the Horticultural
Society does to Botany. The prospectus is drawn out. . . .
We hope to have 2,000 subscribers at 2 each ; and it is
further expected that we may go far beyond the Jardin des
Plantes at Paris. Sir Humphry Davy and myself are the
projectors.' The scheme caught on. Among the first
subscribers were Peel, Stanley, Heber, and Acland. The
Government proved its sympathy by the gift of a fine site
in the new Regent's Park. In the following year, the
Zoological Society was formally established, with Raffles
as its first President. Thus, since Davy's share in the work
appears to have been quite secondary, Raffles had succeeded
in founding a second great institution, to become in time
one of London's most famous ' sights ', an indispensable
boon to students of animated nature, a joy to many millions
of children and their parents too. It seems altogether fitting
that Raffles, whose love of animals had shared his heart
throughout his life with his imperial dreams, should have
created the Zoo as well as Singapore.
In the meantime he had carried through his plan of
' turning farmer '. One of the first friends he had sought
out on his return to England had been Wilberforce ; and
Wilberforce, who, as it chanced, was also contemplating
retirement from London, suggested he should buy an estate
at High Wood near Mill Hill, immediately adjoining one
which he had j ust bought himself. To choose one's next-door
neighbour in the country is a sharp test of friendship ; and,
if the suggestion was a compliment from Wilberforce, Raffles
instantly reciprocated it. At Midsummer, 1825, he took
possession. ' The house is small but compact ', he wrote to
his cousin, ' and the grounds well laid out for appearance
and economy. The land, 112 acres, is in grass ; and, as I
have taken the growing crops, I must begin haymaking
while the sun shines. There is a very good fanning establish-
ment on a small scale.' A new life, a new field for his
inexhaustible creative energy, was thus opening to him ; and
it was high time he took to it. London, enjoy it as he might,
had begun, he confesses, to tire him. And a graver matter
RAFFLES 121
he had recently suffered from an alarming fainting-fit.
The doctors shook their heads. It looked like apoplexy,
but they hoped it wasn't. ' The last attack ', wrote Raffles,
' has so shaken my confidence and nerves that I have hardly
spirit at the present moment to enter upon public life. . . .
A few months in the country and on the farm may set me up
again.' And it did. The last day of the year found him
writing to Sir Robert Inglis with a view to obtaining a
magistracy. ' For some time ', he says, ' I resisted the
entreaties of my friends . . . but from the improvement in
my health and from a desire to be useful to the extent of
my ability, added to the consideration that it may afford
me the means of becoming practically acquainted with the
real state of our society, I no longer hesitate.'
It is a happy evening picture peace and content at last
after so much toil and so many sorrows ; the quiet green
fields of an English home after so many years of exile amid
the rioting colours, the steaming rains, the fierce glare and
drought of the tropics ; the hero of the story, a frail old man
before his time, reviving the boy's delight in gardening and
animals, devising with that astonishing zest which nothing,
it seems, could dull, a hundred plans for the development
of his estate. Nor was the final touch wanting without
which no public man's retirement can be really happy. He
must know, of course, that he has done his duty to his
country ; but he wants to know too unless he is superhuman
that his country thinks likewise. And of this Raffles
could now be well assured. In the earlier months of his
return it might have seemed for a moment as if his reputation
was in danger. The irrepressible Colonel Farquhar was no
sooner back in England than he presented at India House a
memorial stating that the settlement at Singapore had been
' formed at his suggestion and matured under his personal
management ', and complaining at length of Raffles' ' flagrant
injustice and tyranny '. The Directors showed the memorial
to Raffles and he drafted a careful and not immoderate
defence. Farquhar briefly replied, without reiterating
C.S.K. Q
122 RAFFLES f
his claim to have founded Singapore. And there the
matter had dropped. To Raffles personally, of course,
the incident had been in the highest degree vexatious ; and
among Farquhar's friends his claim to at least half the
credit for Singapore was kept alive long after he was dead.
But as to the general body of public opinion Raffles could
have no doubt at all. He knew now that his reputation
was secure. It was not only the plaudits of Society that
told him so, nor only the weightier esteem of great contem-
poraries like Wilberforce and Davy, but also the explicit
declarations of those very official superiors who had once
condemned him. Canning, now Foreign Secretary, was the
first to make the amende honorable. ' I cannot deny ', he
wrote to Raffles shortly after his return to England, ' that
your extreme activity in stirring difficult questions and the
freedom with which you committed your Government,
without their knowledge or authority, to measures which
might have brought a war upon them unprepared, did at
one time oblige me to speak my mind to you in instructions
of no very mild reprehension. But I was not the less anxious
to retain those points of your policy which appeared to me
really worth "preserving, and I have long forgotten every
particular of your conduct in the Eastern Seas except the
zeal and ability by which it was distinguished.' A few weeks
later the two men met in London. ' He received me most
cordially ', writes Raffles, ' and promised me the most
friendly support in all my plans. We parted under the
understanding of becoming better known to each other/
His masters at India House were not so quick to make it
up nor quite so warm-hearted over it. It was not till April
12, 1826, that the Court pronounced judgment in a document
which bears plain marks of divided counsels between Raffles'
friends and enemies. It admits that the success of the
expedition to Java was promoted by his plans and informa-
tion. It questions his sale of lands in Java, but allows that
his reform of the currency was wise and his revenue system
promising. It approves his internal reforms in Sumatra
but strongly disapproves his political measures, though it
RAFFLES 123
confesses that they were actuated by ' zealous solicitude for
British interests in the Eastern Seas and form part of a
series of measures which have terminated in the establish-
ment of Singapore/ It declares that l the country is chiefly
indebted ' to him ' for the advantages which the settlement
of Singapore has secured to it. The Court considers this
to be a very strong point in Sir Stamford Raffles' favour '.
Finally it delivers a general opinion in the following terms :
' The Government of Sir Stamford Raffles appears with
sufficient evidence to have conciliated the good feelings of
at least the great majority of the European and Native
population ; his exertions for the interests of literature and
science are highly honourable to him, and have been attended
with distinguished success ; and although his precipitate
and unauthorised emancipation of the Company's slaves and
his formation of a settlement at Pulo Nias, chiefly with a
view to the suppression of a slave traffic, are justly censured
by the Court, his motives in these proceedings and his
unwearied zeal for the abolition of slavery ought not to be
passed over without an expression of approbation '. A not
over-generous measure of praise, perhaps, rather meticulously
weighed, and with one or two flies in the ointment ; but
praise, none the less, in the main and on the greater points.
And could Raffles, who had shown himself so often and so
provocatively indifferent to the Directors' blame, expect
much more of them ?
A happy evening picture, then, on the whole ; but, before
sunset, it was clouded over. Raffles might well have hoped
that he had left money-troubles behind him for ever with
his boyhood. And indeed he had saved enough during his
career in the East to make his retirement quite as comfortable
as he wished. But unexpected losses early in 1826 had
given him a moment's anxiety. ' The pressure is, I hope ',
he wrote, ' only temporary, and I trust it will be all right
again and that I shall not be obliged to seek a tropical clime
again in search of filthy lucre.' But he .was not seriously
worried. For one thing he was expecting to hear before
long that the Company had granted him an annuity, not
124 RAFFLES
indeed a large one, but enough to set his mind at rest. What
he did hear was very different. On April 12 the very day
on which the Court of Directors passed their final judgment
on his services he suddenly received a demand for the
repayment by him to the Company of over 22,000. The
first item was a claim for the return of the salary Raffles
had drawn between the date of his appointment to Bencoolen
and his actual arrival there. The Court had occasionally
allowed its officials to be paid while absent from their posts,
and Raffles had made a formal request at the time for this
favour to be extended to him. Nothing more had been said
and six years had passed. The second item was a deduction
from Raffles' salary in Java on account of the difference in
value between paper-money and dollars. Of this also
nothing had hitherto been said. The third item was the
amount of commission paid to Raffles on exports from
Bencoolen, authorised by the Bengal Government, but subject
to the consent of the Court which had never, it now appeared,
been given. The fourth and last item was the sum ex-
pended by Raffles as extra-charges for his mission as
Agent of the Governor-General to Achin and Singapore,
similarly authorised at Calcutta and similarly never approved
in London. As to the first item, Raffles had always realised
that his request for favourable treatment might not be
conceded, and he had deposited Government securities in
Bengal which would more than cover the Company's claim
if it ever should be pressed. As to the other items, the law
was dearly on the Company's side. But Raffles had
believed, too fondly, that the Court, in recognition of his
services, would not have refused its sanction to the authority
of the Bengal Government. The presentation of the full
demand, therefore, without any warning, was a terrific, a
stunning blow. And it was quickly followed by another.
The Calcutta firm, which was charged with the business of
remitting his property to England failed, and Raffles lost
over 16,000. To judge from his letters Raffles faced these
sudden blows to his peace and fortunes with characteristic
courage. Within .three weeks of his receipt of the Company's
RAFFLES 125
demand he wrote to the Secretary apologising for his delay,
explaining that only the failure of the Calcutta firm had
prevented his immediate settlement of the claim, and asking
that his Government securities in Bengal, which had happily
escaped the crash, might be taken over for the payment of
the first two items. As to the others he pleaded for re-
consideration and delay, He could only meet them in full
at once by disposing of his main capital, which was invested
in India Stock and of the property he had set apart as a
provision for his family after his death. Further letters
were interchanged ; and it seemed as if Raffles was
entering on just such another sordid controversy as had
tainted the atmosphere of Warren Hastings' later years.
But Raffles did not live to sec it finished. After his death
the Company accepted 10,000 from his widow in final
satisfaction of its claims. A rather unpleasant story.
For all his outward calm, Raffles in those days can have
had little peace of mind ; and peace of mind was now
necessary for his health, more necessary than he probably
realised. No doubt he could still forget his worries for an
hour or two on his farm, in his hay-fields and his cow-sheds
he refused to think that he might soon have to sell it all
and he was keenly looking forward to the day when Wilber-
force would move into his house next door. They had
often jested together about their half-and-half ownership
of the hill and the little village on its top and its two inns :
1 Wilberforce has the Crown and I the Rising Sun '. And
now he was busy laying out Wilberforce's garden for him.
1 He took me in with him on one occasion ', his cousin
records, ' to show me what he was doing ; and I well re-
member the glee with which he said, taking me to a long
mound which he had raised- and planted with shrubs and
flowers, "There, I have raised this mound that the little
man may enjoy his daily walk, sheltered by it from the
north winds 'V ' My neighbour, Mr. Wilberforce, takes
possession to-morrow ', wrote Raffles on June 15, ' and will
previously spend the day with us '. This letter to his
cousin is the last of his published letters, and it is pleasant
126 RAFFLES
to note that his spirits are rising again, as they had always
risen, sooner or later, after each of the griefs and troubles
life had brought him. ' I have had a great deal to annoy
me ', he says, ' since I saw you last ; but it is a worldly
affair, and I trust will not materially affect our happiness. . . .
We suffer a little from the heat ; but, as we hope to make our
hay in the course of next week, I don't complain. High
Wood is now in its best dress. 1
Three weeks later, early in the morning of July 5, the eve
of his forty-fifth birthday, he was found lying, at the bottom
of a flight of stairs, dead of apoplexy.
XV
A TABLET on the wall of Hendon parish church informs
the infrequent visitor that Raffles' body is buried there.
Westminster Abbey contains a statue of him, and the Lion
House at the Zoo a bust. But Raffles' true memorial is
not in London, nor in England ; it is overseas, to eastward,
eight thousand miles away it is the city of Singapore.
Swifter and more gigantic than even its creator can have
hoped has been the growth of Singapore. Its population
to-day is nearly half a million souls. In 1924 the tonnage
of transmarine shipping, 'entered and cleared', was almost
twenty-two millions, and almost ten million tons of that
was British shipping. It has far outclassed Penang which
with Province Wellesley, Malacca, and Dindings, has long
been included in the colony of the Straits Settlements, of
which Singapore is the head and seat of government. It is
now not merely ' the next port to Calcutta ' as Raffles
expected it soon to be. The volume of its trade is larger
than that of all the Indian ports together. It is, in fact,
one of the twelve greatest ports of the world. Nor does
anybody, whatever his opinion in the recent controversy,
deny the importance of Singapore as a link in the chain of
British sea-power. Statesmen may make what use of it
they will ; but it is what Raffles saw it must be, what
geography had made it, the Malta of the East.
And inland, too, behind Singapore, the history of a
hundred years has been nothing but the coming-true of
Raffles' dream. Steadily, stage by stage, from the day of
his death, British trade and British influence began to
radiate from the coast through all the hinterland. Friendly
relations were established with the native chiefs. British
127
128 RAFFLES
residents were appointed at their courts. In course of time,
the whole of the Malay Peninsula, from the British coastal
colonies to the borders of Siam, became a British Protec-
torate. And the methods and results of this Protectorate
have been as efficient and as benignant as if Raffles himself
had controlled it. Slavery, serfdom, piracy, rapine all the
worst miseries and savageries of that ancient land have long
died out. The deadly crees has lost its edge. Peace, order,
justice are everywhere maintained. More than six hundred
schools have been established. Over a thousand miles of
railway have been built and between two and three thousand
miles of metalled roads. Tin-mines have been opened up
and rubber plantations introduced. The material develop-
ment of Malaya has been one of the economic wonders of the
world. But the feature of the Protectorate on which Raffles
would dwell, were he alive to-day, with the deepest pride is
the happiness of the people of his Malays. They have
not, it is true, quite lived up to his expectation of them.
Freedom has not meant a release of energies confined by
servitude. They have not beaten their pirates 1 weapons
into ploughshares. They are easy-going folk who will not
work more than they need to keep themselves in simple
comfort and, on such rich soil, that is not much. They
gladly leave the large-scale development of its resources to
the hordes of industrious Chinese coolies who have poured
into the country in numbers almost equal to their own.
But they are happy. More prosperous than they have ever
been, quite as prosperous as they wish to be, safe at last
from the old haunting fears, the old perpetual insecurity, of
arbitrary despotism and war within and war from without,
leading their tranquil, simple, gentle-mannered lives, they
are unquestionably happy. No other native people under
alien tutelage is, everything considered, quite so happy.
Nowhere, indeed, has the inevitable contact between the
races of Europe and the races of the Tropics been more
beneficial to all concerned.
Singapore, then, the Queen of British Malaya, is Raffles'
true memorial. He has been forgotten at times in London ;
RAFFLES 129
he has never been forgotten there. Raffles Quay, Raffles
Place, Raffles Museum, Raffles Hotel everywhere the city
cries out his name. And on the border of Raffles Plain, in
front of him the azure roadstead with its crowd of ships
from all the world, behind him the green peninsula with
its millions of contented villagers, stands Raffles' statue,
watching for all time over his political child. There, if
anywhere on earth, his spirit lingers, at peace, his dream
fulfilled.
C.S.R.
AUTHORITIES
PRIMARY AUTHORITIES
(i) India Office Documents, (a) The official dispatches dealing
with the general field of Raffles' career will be found in the following
series of documents, covering the period 1805 to 1823 : Secret and
Political Letters from Bengal to the Court of Directors, Military Letters
from Bengal, Dispatches from the Court to Bengal, Dispatches from
the Secret Committee, Political Dispatches to Bengal, Letters from the
Board of Control to the Court (1784-1858), Letters from the Court
to the Board (1784-1858), the Board's Correspondence with the Secret
Committee (1816 onwards). Minutes of the Board, Minutes of the
Secret Committee, (b) For Raffles' administration and his own
dispatches, see also Factory Records, Java, vols. 10, 11-14, I 5~4 2
etc. ; Sumatra, vols. 28-42, 50-51. There are valuable documents
in the Raffles Collection in the India Office Library, e.g. Raffles'
memorandum in 1810 on the proposed conquest of Java (The
Dutch policy in Java is ' a more cold-blooded, illiberal, and un-
generous policy than has ever been exhibited towards any country
unless we except the conduct of the European nations towards the
slave-coast of Africa ') ; a copy of the Bengal Government's reply
to Van der Capellen re Singapore ; and a copy of Raffles' paper ' On the
Malayu Nation , etc . ' (see p. 1 4 above) . There is also a volume of copies
of Raffles' private letters to Lord Minto from Penang and Malacca
(Nov. 1810 to May 1811) and one of copies of letters to and from
Lord Minto in 1813 to 1814. The Mackenzie Collection, of which
a catalogue is given in European Manuscripts in the India Office
Library (C. O. Blagden, Oxford, 1916) vol. i., contains the Minutes
of the Java Committee of which Mackenzie was chairman (see p. 46
above), and Raffles' report to Lord Minto on the condition of Java
in 1 8x2. Raffles' Malay vocabularies and other odd documents are
also in the Library, (c) There are references to Raffles' corre-
spondence on the restoration of Java to the Dutch in the Minutes of
the Board (1815-1846, vol. 6), Dec. 29, 1815, Feb. 27, and May 8, 1816. <
(d) For the controversy between Raffles and the Dutch in Sumatra
and over Singapore, see Letters from the Board to the Court (1818-1822,
vol. 5), Jan. 21, 1819 ; March 25, 1819. In the latter the Board
complains of the inconvenience of keeping at Bencoolen an official
* who has in so many instances overstepped the limits of his duty '.
130
RAFFLES 131
Letters from the Court to the Board (1817-1821, vol 6), Jan. 23, 1819.
See also Secret Dispatches (Board's Records), 1817-1827, vol. 4,
which contains draft letters from the Board submitted to the Secret
Committee for dispatch to Lord Hastings. In the letter of Oct. 13,
1818, the Board supports Raffles' case as regards Dutch aggression
in general but not as regards Palembang. In the letter of Jan. 27,
1819, the Board tells Hastings that Raffles must not conclude treaties,
but the Dutch authorities must be requested to deal directly with the
Government of Bengal, and cites the Charter Act of 1793. (It must
be ' clearly understood that it is to your Lordship in Council and not
to the subordinate functionary at Fort Maryborough that the care of
British interests in the Eastern seas is committed ') . Cf . Minutes of
the Secret Committee. Oct. 30, 1818; Jan. 27, 1819. Lord Hasting's
dispatches will be found in Bengal Secret Letters, 1817-1820, Nov. 25,
1818, rejecting Raffles' poliqy re the interior of Sumatra and Samanka
Bay. Jan. 14, 1819, reporting Raffles' mission to Achin and Rhio
with the object of securing the Malacca route. May 14, describing
the occupation of Singapore, ' a valuable post which it is desirable to
retain ', and proposing to remain in possession while inviting the
Java Government to an ' amicable investigation ' of its claims.
June 12, repudiating the ' peremptory decision of the question ' by
the Penang Government. July 17, protesting against allowing the
Dutch by too much forbearance completely to exclude British trade,
and complaining that the Bengal Government is handicapped by
' orders of restriction and prohibition ' from home* (e) Further
minor evidence will be found in Home Miscellaneous Records , vols. 542
(which contains Farquhar's Memorial, with his correspondence with
Raffles as an appendix), 673, and 738 ; in Personal Records, vols. 7, 9,
10, 16-19 ; and in Memos., vols. 6, 7, 10, 16-18.
(2) Foreign Office Documents. The official correspondence re
Raffles and the Dutch will be found in the Public Record Office.
For the dispatches between Lord Castlereagh (Foreign Secretary)
and Lord Clancarty (British Ambassador at Brussels), see F.O. 37,
vols. 107 and in, especially Castlereagh 's dispatches of Aug. 13, 1819,
and Aug. 17, 1820, and Clancarty 's of Aug. 20 and Dec. 3, 1819.
For the correspondence between Castlereagh and Baron Fagel
(Netherlands Ambassador in London), see F.O. 37, vols. 108 and 115,
especially Fagel's Note of Feb. 2, 1819, and Castlereagh 's reply of
Feb. 12, and the draft resume of the discussions between the repre-
sentatives of the two Governments (Aug. 4, 1820). Castlereagh's
policy is apparently to prevent a breakdown of the ' amicable
discussion ' (see p. 98 above) by insisting that Raffles' actions in
Sumatra have been ' entirely disavowed ' (he ' being merely a
commercial agent and not having been authorised to act politically
in any manner whatsoever ') and by arguing that this disavowal
132 RAFFLES
is a proof of British friendliness. As to Singapore, on the other hand,
he pleads for delay until Lord Hastings has reported.
(3) Two important letters from Lord Hastings to Lord Bathurst
(March 23 and April n, 1819) are given in the Report on the Bathurst
MSS. (Historical MSS. Commission, 1923), pp. 468-9. In the
second, Hastings makes the strong point that, at the time of their
cession of Malacca to the British, the Dutch declared they had no
claims over Johore.
(4) The text of Raffles' Singapore Treaties with the Sultan and
Tumung'gung is given in Aitchison's Treaties, Engagements and
Sanads (Calcutta, 1876), vol. ii. pp. 496 and 500. Farquhar's
Commercial Treaty with the King of Johore, Aug. 19, 1818, p. 494.
Raffles' Treaty with the King of Achin, April 22, 1819, p. 515.
(5) Lady Raffles' Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir
T. S. Raffles (London, 1830) is necessarily invaluable, especially for
the last ten years of his life. It is discursive, ill-arranged, and
disappointingly lacking in personal detail (Raffles' first wife is only
mentioned in a footnote of 20 words, p. 234) ; but it happily pre-
serves a great number of Raffles' private letters, together with some
of his scientific discourses and also extracts from Capt. Travers'
journal. A lengthy Appendix contains some of his scientific corre-
spondence, a catalogue of the zoological specimens he collected in
Sumatra, a copy of his prospectus for the Zoological Society, and
copies of his Minutes ' On the administration of the Eastern Islands '
(1819), 'On the establishment of a Malay College at Singapore '
(1819) and of the Local Laws and Regulations for Singapore (1823).
(6) Raffles' History of Java (2 vols. London, 1817) contains some
rather brief but valuable references to the period of his own ad-
ministration.
(7) Substance of a Minute recorded by the Hon. T. S. Raffles on
Feb. xi, 1814, on the introduction of an improved system of internal
management and the establishment of a land rental on the Island of
Java (privately printed, London, 1814). See p. 42 above. With the
Minute are given the Proclamation of Oct. 15, 1813, defining the
principles of the new system ; Revenue Statistics for 1805-6, 1808,
and 1814; Revenue Instructions, Feb. ix, 1814. Raffles' Protest
(see p. 83 above) was printed in the Annual Register for 1819, p. 2x6.
The only other published writings by Raffles are his paper On the
Malayu Nation, etc., in Asiatic* Researches, vol. xii, pp. 102-158
(Calcutta, 18x6), and short introductions to G. Finlayson's The
Mission to Siam, etc. (London, 1826) and to John Ley den's Trans-
lations of Malay Annals (London, 1821).
(8) Lord Minto's private letters re Java, etc., will be found in
Lord Minto in India (ed. by the Countess of Minto, London, 1880).
(9) Translations from the Hahayit Abdulla (London, 1874) contains
RAFFLES 133
a large part of Abdulla's autobiography, translated by J. T. Thomson,
who received the MS. from Abdulla himself.
(10) Dr. Thomas Raffles' Letters during a Tour, etc. (London. 1819)*
gives a detailed account of the continental tour in 1817. Dr. Raffles'
unpublished reminiscences of his cousin are frequently quoted in
Mr. Boulger's biography (see below) : they are always interesting,
but not always perfectly trustworthy (e.g. the chronology of Raffles'
meeting with Lord Amherst, Boulger, p. 256).
11 i) The Trade to China and the Indian Archipelago (London.
1819) is a pamphlet of 60 pages by C. Assey. Secretary to the Java
Government during part of Raffles' administration : it reflects
Raffles' general views and argues for a British post within the
Archipelago.
(12) The chief contemporary diaries and memoirs make no mention
of Raffles, probably because he was so little in England. Crabb
Robinson (Diary, London, 1869, vol. ii. p. 143) tells one story of him
which reveals his private generosity under curious circumstances.
A full obituary notice of Raffles' career was published in the Gentle-
man's Magazine, July to December, 1826, p. 78.
SECONDARY AUTHORITIES
(1) There is a good, well-constructed, short biography of Raffles
by H. E. Egerton (London. 1900, 290 pp.) and a longer and more
detailed one by D. C. Boulger (London, 1897, 43 PP*) &<*& arc
based on the documents. The latter, besides extracts from Dr.
Raffles' reminiscences, prints the text of Raffles' memorandum to
Canning (see p. 79 above) from the Nicholas Vansittart Papers in
the British Museum. Both these biographies, to which the author
of this essay is greatly indebted, are unfortunately out of print.
There is also a short popular account of Raffles' life by J. A. B. Cook,
a Singapore resident (London, 1918). A very valuable account of
Raffles' administration in Java is given by the late Dutch historian.
M. L. Van Deventer, in his Dacndels-Rafflcs. translated from the
Indische Gids by C. C. Batten (London, 1894)-
(2) The methods of the Dutch East India Company are described
in outline by many writers on colonial questions, e.g. P. Leroy-
Beaulieu, De la Colonisation chez Us Peuples Modernes (6th ed.
Paris. 1908). A. G. Keller. Colonization (Boston, etc.. 1908). H. C.
Morris. History of Colonization (New York. 1908). C. Lannoy and
H. Van der Linden. Histoire de ^expansion coloniale des peuples
Europeens (Paris. 1911). A fuller account of the Company's system
is given by Klerk de Reus, a German missionary in Sumatra, in his
Geschicktliche Ueberblick der Administrative, Rechtlichen, und
Finanziellen Entmcktlung der Niederlandisch-Ostendischtn Compagnie
134 RAFFLES
(Batavia and The Hague, 1894), a volume of the proceedings of the
' Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen ' (see
p. 64 above), and by C. Day, The Policy and Administration of the
Dutch in Java (New York and London, 1904). The more compre-
hensive Dutch works by Van der Chijs (1857) an( * Van Rees (1868)
have not been translated. An authoritative study of modern Java
is included in Alleyne Ireland's The Far Eastern Tropics (London,
1905). See also W. B. Worsfold, A Visit to Java, with an account of
the founding of Singapore (London, 1893).
(3) ! W. Fortescue describes the military operations in Java with
his usual ability in his History of the British Army, vol. vii. p. 608.
(4) For the development of British Malaya, Sir F. Swetenham's
British Malaya (4th ed. London, 1920), L. A. Mills, British Malaya,
1824-1867 (a scholarly work, published by the Malayan Branch,
Royal Asiatic Society, Singapore, 1925), and One hundred years of
Singapore t ed. by W. Makepeace and others (London, 1921), may be
recommended.
INDEX
Abdulla bin Abdulkadar, 63, 65, 112,
114-15-
Achin, 88-91.
Amboyna, 16.
Anderson, Dr., 6.
Arnold, Joseph, 77.
Auchmuty, Sir Samuel, 30, 35.
Banda Islands, 31.
Banka Island, 26, 80, 82.
Banks, Sir Joseph, 69.
Bannerman, Col., 90-2, 94-5, 97.
Batavia, 32, 35, 43, 53-4.
Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences,
64.
Bencoolen, 17, 34, 56, 73, 88-9; sur-
tender of, 100 ; Raffles at, 101-7.
Billimbing, 82.
Bintang Island, 80.
Borneo, 26, 28, 71, 79, 80.
Bourbon, Island of, 10, 24, 25.
Bras Bussa Creek, 1x2.
British Guiana, 55.
Buckinghamshire, Lord, 53, 62, 80.
Buitenzorg, 63.
Calcutta, 89.
Canning, George, 70, 79-8 1, 84, 122.
Cape of Good Hope, 19, 55, 99.
Cape Town, 16.
Carimon Islands, 91.
Caroline, Queen, 69.
Castlereagh, Lord, 55, 72.
Celebes Island, 26.
Ceylon, i6,.i9, 55.
Charlotte, Princess, 69, 70.
Chinsura, 16, 54.
Clapham Sect, 70-1.
Cochin China, 81.
Cornells, 35, 40.
Cranssen, Mr., 40.
Crawford, John, 108, 113.
Curacoa, 55.
Cuvier, 105.
Daendels, Marshal, 19, 33~4, 35, 4i.
Davy, Sir Humphry, 120, 122.
Dundas, Robert, 13, 37-
Dutch Guiana, 55.
Fancourt, Olivia (afterw. Mrs. Raffles),
9, 65.
Farquhar, Maj. f 92, 94-5* 97, 101, 108-9,
112, 121-2.
George IV (Prince Regent), 70.
Gilkspie, Col., 35, 40, 42, 51. 66. 73, 108.
Grant, Charles, 70-1, 98.
Greigh, Capt, 29.
Harcourt, Lord and Lady, 69.
Hastings, Marquess of (formerly Lord
Moira), 51-2, 58, 66, 73, 86, 88-90,
9479-
Hastings, Warren, 71.
Horsfeld, Dr., 64.
Hull, Sophia (afterw. Lady Raffles),
q.v.
Inglis, Sir Robert, 121.
Ireland, Alleyne, 57.
Jack, Dr., 105, 106.
Janssens, Gen., 34-6, 39, 40.
Japan, 26, 80.
Java, 19, 24-0 ; under the Dutch, 31-4 ;
English conquest of, 30-8; under
Raffles, 39-^9.
Java, Emperor of, 41.
Johore, 89-91.
Johore, Sultan of, 90-3, no, 112.
Jokjokarta, 41.
Karimata Straits, 28.
Lampong, 79, 82.
Leopold, of Belgium, 69, 70.
Leyden, John, 23-4, 60, 65.
Linga, Sultan of, 81.
Macalister, Gov., 13.
Macaulay, Zachary, 58.
Mackenzie, Col. Colin, 46.
Malacca, 14, 17, 19, 55, 88-9; surrender
of, 100.
Malacca Report, 20-2, 24.
Malacca Straits, 17, 88, 89, 99.
Malayan Islands, 19.
Marsden, William, 28, 53, 64, 69, 72, 73,
82, 89, 101.
Mataram, Sultan of, 41-2.
Mauritius, 19, 24, 25, 81.
Menangkabu, 77, 78.
Minto, Lord, 19, 23-7, 30, 34-8, 73;
his death, 6$.
Moira, Lord, Marquess of Hastings, q.v.
Moluccas, the (Spice Islands), 16, 19,
25-
Munro, Thomas, 48.
Muntinghe, Mr. r 40, 49, 56, 83.
Napoleon Bonaparte, 18-19, 40, 53, 67.
Nightingall, Gen., 42.
Ophir, Mount, 77-
Padang, 77.
Patembang, 79, 83, 88.
i 3 6
INDEX
Palembang, Sultan of, 83, 84.
Pasumah, 77.
Pearson, Mr., 13.
Penang, 8, 10-15, :;, 20-2, 56, 89, 90.
Philippines, the, 80.
Prince of Wales' Island, 8, 96.
Pulo Kias Island, 75, 84.
Raffles, Mrs. (Olivia Fancourt), 9, 65.
Raffles, Lady (Sophia Hull), 73, 77, 105.
Baffles, Charlotte Sophia Tunjong
Segara jdau.), 73 105 ; death of, 106.
Raffles, Ella (dau.), 106.
Raffles, John (uncle), 68.
Raffles, Leopold (son), 105 ; death, 106.
Raffles, Stamford Marsden (son), 105;
death of, 106.
Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford: birth
(6 July 1781), 5; his father, 5, 6, 68;
his family, 5, 6, 8; his school, 6; at
India House, 6-8 ; his ambitions, 7 ;
Assistant-Secretary to the Penang
Government, 9; in Malaya, 10-15;
Secretary to the Gov.-Gen., 17-18;
at Calcutta, 25 ; and Java, 25 ; report
on Malacca, 20-2, 24 ; Agent-Gen, at
Malacca, 25-6; in Bengal, 29, 87, 88;
and conquest of Java, 30-8 ; Lt.-Gov.
of Java, 38-67; leaves Java, 58-9;
stan Memorial to, 6 1, 65 ; his accessi-
bility, 62-3 ; his travels in the country,
63-4 ; his scientific pursuits, 64-5, 77,
105 ; death of his first wife, 65 ; his
return to England, 67; in England
and on the continent, 68-73 ; History
of Java, 00-70; knighted, 70; and
slavery, 70-1, 74-5, 109; and mis-
sions, 71, 104 ; marriage to Sophia
Hull, 73 ; birth of his eldest daughter,
73 ; appointed Lt.-Gov. of Bencoolen,
73; at Bencoolen, 74-87; 101-7; and
Achin, 88-91 ; and Singapore, 90-101.
106-15; and agriculture, 101-4; and
education, 104-5, 111-12; death of
his children, 106; his death (5 July
1826), 126; his memorials, 127-9.
Raffles, Dr. Thomas (cousin), 68, 71,
106, 125.
Raffles Hotel, 129.
Raffles Museum, 229.
Raffles Place, 129.
Raffles Quay, 129.
Rmffltsia-Anoldi, 77, 105.
Ramsay, Mr., 9, 13, 53, 58, 60, 66, 67.
Rhio, 80, 82, 89, 90, 92.
Rndemacher, 64.
Salamanka Bay, 88, 99.
Salisbury, Bp. of, 71.
Salmond, Capt., 83, 117.
Samarang, 43, 62.
Siam, 81.
Sierra Leone, 58.
Simangka, 82.
Simangka Bay, 82.
Singapore, 89; occupation of, 90-9;
Raffles and, 90-101, 106-15 ; its
natural advantages, 99-100; Raffles'
last stay at, 107-15; Raffles* true
memorial, 127-9.
Singapore Institute, 112-13.
Solo, 41.
Somerset, Duchess of, 69, 72, 106, 119.
Sourabaya, 43.
Spice Islands, see Moluccas.
Suez Canal, 99.
Sumatra, 17, 7*, 77-8, 85, 88 ; surrender
of, 100.
Sunda Straits, 17, 88, 99.
Surinam, 55.
Swettenham, Sir Frank, 10.
Taylor, John, 68.
Travers, Capt., 61.
Van Deventer, 33, 62, 92.
Von der Capellen, Baron, 116.
Wellesley, Province, 9, 17.
Wilberforce, William, 71, 104, 112, 120,
122, 125.
Zoological Society, the, 121-2.
