Patrick Comerford
Today marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Stamford Raffles, who died on 5 July 1826 on his 45th birthday. Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles (1781-1826) is best remembered as the founder of modern Singapore. Tradition says he first landed in Singapore on 28 January 1819 at Raffles Landing. The site is at Boat Quay in the Civic District, in the Downtown Core of the Central Area, Singapore’s central business district.
Stamford Raffles was the British colonial governor of the Dutch East Indies in 1811-1816 and lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen in 1818-1824. He was involved in the capture of the island of Java from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars, although it was returned under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty in 1824. He also wrote The History of Java (1817), and the Rafflesia flowers are named after him.
Raffles played a major role in further establishing the British Empire’s reach in East and South-East Asia. He secured control over the strategically located Singapore from local rulers in 1819 to secure British access along the Strait of Singapore and in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
His ventures were initially not endorsed by the British government and led to tensions between the British and the Dutch. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 established their respective spheres of influence, with the Dutch relinquishing their claims to Singapore while Britain ceded Bencoolen to them. A port was subsequently established in Singapore, and maritime trade between Europe and Asia increased rapidly.
While Raffles is largely credited for the founding of contemporary Singapore, the early running of day-to-day operations was mostly done by William Farquhar, who served was the first Resident of Singapore from 1819 to 1823.
However, his historical role has become a subject of public debate, with critics characterising him as an imperialist. These perspectives argue that celebratory narratives of colonialism can overlook the history of the population that predated his arrival.
Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles was born on 5 July 1781 on board the ship Ann, off the coast of Port Morant in Jamaica, to Captain Benjamin Raffles (1739-1811) and Anne (née Lyde) Raffles (1755-1824). The young Raffles went to school at the Mansion House Academy, Hammersmith, where his subjects included Latin, Greek, French, arithmetic, book-keeping and geography.
At the age of 14, he started working as a clerk for the East India Company. In 1804, at the age of 23, Raffles married Olivia Mariamne Devenish, a widow 10 years his senior. He was sent to Penang Island in British Malaya in 1805, starting his long association with South-East Asia. The British invasion of Java took a total of 45 days, during which Raffles was appointed the lieutenant-governor of the Dutch East Indies by Lord Minto before hostilities formally ceased. As lieutenant-governor, Raffles restricted the local slave trade and tried to replace of the Dutch system of forced agricultural labour.
Raffles was devastated when his wife Olivia died on 26 November 1814. He left Java shorty before it was handed back to the Dutch after the Napoleonic Wars. He set sail for England in early 1816 to clear his name and on his way he visited Napoleon, who was in exile on St Helena, but found him unpleasant and unimpressive.
Back in London, Raffles was knighted in 1817 by the Prince Regent, the future George IV, and on 22 February he married his second wife, Sophia Hull, and they later set sail to Bencoolen, present-day Bengkulu in Indonesia.
Raffles arrived in Bencoolen on Sumatra on 19 March 1818, where he became the lieutenant-governor, and he set about reforms immediately, abolishing slavery.
At the time, Major-General William Farquhar was the British Resident of Malacca. Raffles sailed to Malacca in late 1818 to secure a British presence in the Riau area, especially Singapura, where he secure permission to set up a settlement. At this point in the history of Singapore, the name Lion City was used.
Raffles first landed in Singapore on 28 January 1819 at Raffles Landing. He established a post at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula on 29 January 1819, having ascertained there was no Dutch presence on the island of Singapore. Raffles and Farquhar found Temenggong Abdul Rahman with 400-500 residents in Singapore in Captain John Crawford recalled meeting ‘upwards of 100’ Chinese people there.
A formal treaty was signed with Hussein Shah who claimed to be the ‘lawful sovereign of the whole of territories extending from Lingga and Johor to Mount Muar’. Hussein Shah had been the crown Prince of Johor, but while he was away in Pahang to get married, his father died, and his younger brother was made sultan, supported by some court officials and the Dutch. Raffles decided on behalf of the British Crown to recognise Hussein Shah as the rightful ruler of Johor.
Raffles declared the foundation of what was to become modern Singapore on 6 February, with control of the island transferred to the East India Company with much pomp and ceremony. Farquhar was officially named the Resident of Singapore, and Raffles was named as ‘Agent to the Most Noble the Governor-General with the States of Rhio (Riau), Lingin (Lingga) and Johor’. A small military presence was established with the trading post and, after issuing orders to Farquhar and the remaining Europeans, Raffles left the next day, 7 February 1819.
Raffles returned to Singapore, on 31 May. By then, the initial 500 villagers had grown to become 5,000 merchants, soldiers, and administrators, packed onto the island. Back in Singapore, Raffles established schools and churches in the local languages, he allowed missionaries and local businesses to flourish, a European town was built to segregate the population, separated by a river, carriage roads were built, and cantonments were built for soldiers, before Raffles sailed for Bencoolen once again on 28 June.
In 1820, Raffles appointed Thomas Otho Travers (1785-1844) as the Resident of Singapore, but Farquhar remained in charge. Travers was born and died in Cork, and his wife Mary Leslie was also Irish.
Meanwhile, personal tragedies began to accumulate on Raffles: His eldest son, Leopold Stamford (1819-1821), died during an epidemic on 4 July 1821; his youngest son, Stamford Marsden (1820-1822), died of dysentery on 3 January 1822; and his oldest daughter Charlotte (1818-1822) died 10 days later. A devastated Raffles grew restless and depressed, and decided to visit Singapore for one last time before retiring and heading home to England with his wife Sophia and their only surviving child, Ella.
Raffles was back again in Singapore in October 1822. By then, the colony was a bustling hub of trade and economic activity. But Raffles was disappointed that Farquhar continued to tolerate the slave trade. In response, Raffles drew up the Jackson Plan or Raffles Town Plan, and levelled of a small hill south of Singapore River to create Commercial Square, now Raffles Place.
He originally allocated a piece of land between Hill Street and North Bridge Road in his Town Plan of 1822 for an Anglican church. However, due to a lack of funds, it was another 12 years before work began on building the first church, which eventually became Saint Andrew’s Cathedral.
Raffles dismissed Farquhar in April 1823, and took direct control. John Crawfurd, who had followed Raffles for over 20 years, became the new Resident of Singapore. Raffles also called a meeting that led to the founding of Raffles Institution.
In the final few weeks of his last stay in Singapore, in 1823, Raffles drafted a series of administrative regulations that aimed to govern Singapore, he outlawed gambling, imposed heavy taxation on drunkenness and opium smoking, and banned slavery, a police force and magistracy were set up, and what had been a trading post became a proper city.
Now feeling that he had completed his task in establishing Singapore, Raffles finally boarded a ship for home on 9 June 1823. On the way back, during a final stop in Bencoolen, tragedy befell Raffles once more when his youngest daughter, Flora Nightingall, who was born on 19 September, died on 28 November.
Raffles finally arrived back in England on 22 August 1824, over a year after he left Singapore. His longest tenure in Singapore was only eight months, but ever since he has been regarded as the founder of Singapore.
Sir Stamford and Lady Raffles first convalesced in Cheltenham and then moved to Berners Street, London, at the end of November 1824, before moving to his country estate at Highwood in North London. By then he was seriously much too ill and he died of apoplexy or what we might today call a stroke at Highwood House in Mill Hill, north London, on his 45th birthday, 5 July 1826.
Because of his firm opposition to slavery, Raffles was refused burial inside Saint Mary’s Church, Hendon, by the vicar, the Revd Theodor Williams, whose family had made its fortune in Jamaica in the slave trade. The actual whereabouts of his body was unknown until 1914, when it was found in a vault. A life-size figure in white marble by Sir Francis Chantrey in 1832 sits in Westminster Abbey.
Raffles was survived by his second wife Sophia Hull and their daughter Ella. Ella died in 1840, aged 19. Sophia remained at Highwood House until her death in 1858, at the age of 72.
In Singapore, his legacy is commemorated by the Raffles’s Landing Site and the use of his name for many places and institutions, including Raffles City, Raffles Hospital, Raffles Hotel, Raffles College, currently National University of Singapore (NUS), and in the names of a number of primary and secondary schools.
There are three public statues of Raffles in Singapore, one made of white polymarble along the Singapore River, another made of bronze in front of the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall and a contemporary bronze sculpture at Fort Canning Park.
The black statue of Raffles that stands in the shadow of the clock tower of the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall in Empress Place, Singapore, was originally located in the middle of the Padang, facing the sea. It was placed there to mark the 50th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s accession, but it was moved as part of Singapore’s centenary celebrations in February 1919. The statue was moved again at the end of the Japanese occupation, but was placed back in its location after World War II.
However, tourists generally give more attention to a copy of the original statue, a white statue of polymarble made from a cast of the black statue. The copy stands by the Singapore River near Empress Place at the spot believed to be his original landing site. It was placed there in 1972 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of Singapore.
Writing about Raffles in the Guardian in 2012, Victoria Glendenning said: ‘He was an idealistic entrepreneur, a romantic imperialist, passionately anti-slavery, and more concerned with transforming the lives of the peasants than making immediate profits for the company. He made no fortune for himself. Volatile, inconsistent, energetic, resilient, he wanted fame, and he wanted to do good.’
Following Raffles on a boat journey on the Singapore River, passing Raffles Landing (Patrick Comerford)
