Raffles—Strong Man of the East

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 866, 9 January 1930, Page 6

Raffles—Strong Man of the East

MEMORY HONOURED UNVEILING OF BUST (Written for THE SUN) Cabled advice from Weltevreden, in Java, savs that a bust of Sir Stamford Raffles had been presented t.o the Royal Batavian Society for Arts and Sciences the other week, by the Malayan branch of the Royal Asiatic Society of Singapore. The British Consul-General, Sir Josiah Crosby, in appropriate language, suggested, that in these days the Dutch could appreciate Raffles just as much as the British could estimate the relative greatness of the Dutch Empire builder, Coen, who “chased the British from Java.” Surely the cableman must have been a little at sea there. As a matter of historic fact the British, after five years’ occupation of Java, under the capable administration of Sir Stamford Raffles, retired from Java. The country was voluntarily, much to his disgust, handed back to the Dutch. A short life of the great scientist, scholar and administrator is long overdue. Sir Stamford Raffles, governor of Java, and founder of Singapore, should be better known to youthful New Zealanders. What Rhodes was to South. Africa, Gordon to Egypt, and Grey to New Zealand, Raffles was to Malaya. As in the case of Sir George Grey, the success of Sir Stamford Raffles was largely due to a complete understanding of the native mind and an appreciation of the native tongue. Like Grey, too, he was hampered and restricted, often criticised unduly, by ill-informed politicians in the Homeland. That hurried, but none the less observant traveller, Lord Northcliffe, wrote in 1922, when visiting Singapore in his world whirl: “This place is pervaded with the shadow of Sir Stamford Raffles, the companion of Charles Lamb at the late East India Company’s offices, who foresaw the future of this place, though he was hardly ever here.” At Buitenzorg, the first hill station of the Dutch in Java, Lord Northcliffe was interested to note a memorial to the wife of Sir Stamford Raffles, and in the palace in Batavia, among the portraits of all the viceroys of the Dutch East Indies, a collection that went back as far as 1610, he saw that Sir Stamford, and Lord Minto, his patron, were included. Of the Dutch, Lord Northcliffe wrote: I think they may be a slower people than we are. What has interested me in Java has been watching the Dutch administration and comparing it with our own. We have been in Malaya for only 100 years—they have been here for 300. The officials look with envious eyes upon our work in Malaya —and they told me so. They rank Stamford Raffles very highly. I think they are firmer with the natives than we are, although, of course, the Javanese is a dove compared with the Indian hawk.” LORD NORTHCLIFFE’S TRIBUTE As for the man Raffles who has instilled into the Dutch such respect for his name. Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, to give him. his full name, was the only son of Benjamin Raffles, who, at the time of the birth of his famous son, was captain of a merchant vessel trading between London and the West Indies. Stamford Raffles, to use the name by which he was universally known in later years, was born on July 5, 1781, on the ship Ann, off the harbour of Port Morant in Jamaica. Stamford Raffles as a young man at the India Office, made such progress, that at the age of 30 he was appointed to the Penang Establishment as assistant-secretary at a salary of £ISOO. It was not long before he was appointed Agent for the Navy. Raffles’s extraordinary facility for languages led to him being selected as Malay translator to Lord Minto, the Governor-General of India, who soon recognised the peculiar gifts of this talented young man.

It was largely on Raffles’s advice that Lord Minto consented to the expedition that captured Java. This decision was made in the face of almost insurmountable difficulties. Even the naval commander-in-chief was against it. Lord Minto alone stood firm and, as Raffles later wrote: “and placed his entire reliance upon the opinion I had given him on the subject.” Java was captured with almost surprising ease. As a reward for his services Raffles was appointed Governor, a position he held from October, 1811, until March, 1816, a period of nearly five years. Afterward he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor at Bencoolen, where he initiated the same series of reforms in the establishment that characterised his regime in Java. Dr. Leyden, the scientist, and Raffles’s inseparable friend, was to have been his private secretary in Java, but he had hardly set foot in the country before “he fell a sacrifice to his zeal and devotion.” He rests near the grave of Raffles’s wife, the intelligent Olivia, whose memorial Lord Northcliffe mentioned seeing at Buitenzorg. Yet this did not prevent him from collecting valuable scientific data, which he subsequently published in his “History of Java,” founding the Literary Society of Batavia and establishing the Benevolent Society at the same city. The latter had as its object the abolition of slavery and improvement in the condition of the islanders, to whom the new Governor believed the Dutch had been unnecessarily harsh. I might also mention that Sir Stamford Raffles also established the Zoological Society, of which, on his return to London, he became first president. But the > importance of his political work in Java cannot be over emphasised. The Dutch, for instance, after their return made no attempt to repeal his law forbidding slavery. He did much to gain the confidence of the native princelings. A knowledge of their language was of the greatest value. The Congress of Vienna, in 1814, provided for the restoration to their original owners of conquests taken directly irom France, and a subsequent convention bound Britain to hand over to Holland all the Eastern possessions she had taken from her. Raffles, -who protested in vain against the return of Java, wrote: "... 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 the Government.” But his eloquent and impassioned plea for the retention of Java fell on deaf ears. Again, he demanded: “Shall Britain UQt 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 ini habitants, by placing them under her I own government and protection?” Though he left Java “with a heavy | heart” and with the hope that his i work there would not be ignored, his ! departure from the colony was a ] hitter blow. The last two years of | his administration there had been ! rendered more difficult by a series of charges -which his former friend, I General Gillespie, had made against him. Arraigned and suspected by those who should have supported him, records his biographer, Mr. D. C. Boulger. Raffles never swerved from his course or faltered in his work. His subsequent appointment to ifencoolen is sufficient evidence that his name was cleared beyond doubt.

MEETING WITH NAPOLEON The only event of interest on the return voyage to England was an interview between Sir Stamford Raffles and Napoleon, who had been less than 12 months on the Island of St. Helena. The great Englishman has left no record of his conversation with Napoleon, but the Emperor, according to a witness, asked question after question, in his usual manner, as to affairs in the East... Napoleon was thoroughly conversant with the history of the Java expedition. With that meanness that characterised so many of our dealings with the fallen leader at St. Helena, this witness records: “During the whole of our interview, as Napoleon remained uncovered, common politeness obliged us to keep our hats in our hands; and at no time was it found necessary to give him any title, either of general or Emperor.” Of subsequent work in the

East, both scientific and political, it is impossible to deal. The establishment of Singapore was due entirely to the long rivalry between the British and the Dutch. As Raffles wrote in one of his letters: “The Dutch had hardly left us an inch of ground to stand upon.” Here again he had to encounter even greater opposition from Calcutta and Condon. The founding of Singapore more than corj roborates the saying of General Gordon, that England was never made by her politicians but by her adventurers. This, however, is another chapter in the scintillating career of Sir Stamford Raffles.

The "Gentleman's Magazine” for July, 1826, records his death, which took place early that month: "He had passed the preceding day in the bosom of his family, and excepting for a bilious attack under which he had laboured for some days, there was nothing in his appearance to create the least apprehension. He retired to rest as usual in the evening. On the following morning at live o’clock. Lady Raffles (his second wife), found him lying at the bottom of a flight of stairs in a state of complete insensibility.” Sir Stamford Raffles, the greatest Britisher the East has ever known, never regained consciousness. On the day prior to his 45th birthday, the gallant spirit left a body prematurely aged by tropical exposure, hard work under the most tryin'g of conditions, and rendered perhaps a little bitter by harping and ungenerous criticism.

Yet his name will live in British history, not among the warriors, but among the great benefactors of mankind. There was little to censure in the life of Sir Stamford Raffles, and even as the Dutch now so generously acknowledge, much to applaud. ERIC RAMSDEN. Sydney.