Authors: Marjorie Shaffer
“Now as to Mr. Raffles's physical features I noticed that he was of medium build, neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. He was broad of brow, a sign of his care and thoroughness; round-headed with a projecting forehead, showing his intelligence. He had light brown hair, indicative of bravery; large ears, the mark of a ready listener. He had thick eye-brows, his left eye watered slightly from a cast; his nose was straight and his cheeks slightly hollow. His lips were thin, denoting his skill in speech, his tongue gentle and his mouth wide; his neck tapering; his complexion not very clear, his chest was full and his waist slender. He walked with a slight stoop.
“As to his character, I noticed that he always looked thoughtful. He was very good at paying due respect to people in a friendly manner. He treated everyone with proper deference, giving to each his proper title when he spoke. Moreover, he was extremely tactful in ending a difficult conversation. He was solicitous of the feelings of others, and open-handed with the poor. He spoke in smiles.”
An avid collector of animals and plants, Raffles amassed a veritable museum of natural history wherever he went. In Malacca, he paid “good money” to Malaysians to search for “creatures of the sky, the land and the sea; of the uplands, the lowlands and the forest; things which fly or crawl; things which grow and germinate in the soil; all these could be turned into ready cash,” wrote Abdullah. “There were also people who brought Malay manuscripts and books, I do not remember how many hundreds of these texts there were. Almost, it seemed, the whole of Malay literature of the ages, the property of our forefathers, was sold and taken away from all over the country.”
In Sumatra, Raffles was equally avid to indulge in exploration, and there he could turn his full energies to his favorite pastime. He probably was the first Company man to travel to Sumatra's interior with the sole aim of enjoying himself, although he had hoped to visit some villages in the interior where the people were said to be antagonistic to the British. Raffles had previously explored Java in grand imperial style, and he wanted to do the same in Sumatra. Soon after arriving in Benkoolen he set off with Lady Raffles and a handful of native officers to the southern British residencies. Fifty porters carried their food and luggage.
A newspaper sponsored by the East India Company and published in London hailed their three-week excursion as a great “discovery” of an island of immense wealth “abounding in precious metals.”
The Asiatic Journal
earnestly reported: “Sumatra has hitherto been very little known.⦠The European establishments are entirely on the coast; Europeans had never penetrated into the interior. All attempts to do so, indeed, were reckoned desperate; no European would embark in them. The population of the interior were considered as savages, and the mountains impassable ⦠The Governor felt there was but one alternative, and that was to open the road by going himself. His enterprise was crowned with success.”
More than one million people lived in Sumatra, the Company newspaper estimated (an inaccurate figure, but one possibly supplied by Raffles himself), and dutifully noted that in the governor's opinion “with a little encouragement, far greater resources are to be found in Sumatra than the British could have derived from Java⦔ Raffles fervently wished to “save” Sumatra and waged a spirited but abortive campaign to prevent the island from falling into the hands of the Dutch. Who else would entertain the possibility of making Sumatra a British colony in order to save it from the Dutch? “Sumatra should undoubtedly be under the influence of one European power alone and this power is of course the English,” Raffles once declared. Despite the Company's disapproval of negotiating a treaty with the Sultan of Aceh, Raffles forged a treaty promising the independence of the Acehnese. The treaty was part of his plan for securing British control of the fastest ocean route to China from India, namely the Strait of Malacca. Aceh sat at one end of the strait, Singapore at the other end. In 1819, the same year that Singapore became a British free port, the sultan of Aceh signed a treaty that promised a “defensive alliance” between Britain and Aceh, allowed no foreign residents or treaties without the consent of the British, and permitted the Company to trade at all Acehnese ports.
A man of seemingly boundless energy, Raffles did explore Sumatra and wrote about his travels to the southern residencies in his extensive correspondence, which his wife published after his death. In these letters he doesn't appear as the Company man intent on extending the crown's influence. Instead, he is an intelligent traveler exploring and reporting on his surroundings.
After many days of strenuous hiking over mountains and through riverbeds, he wrote to the Duchess of Somerset, one of his favorite correspondents, “our view opened up on one of the finest countries I have ever beheld ⦠We found ourselves in an immense amphitheatre, surrounded by mountains ten and twelve thousand feet high, the soil on which we stood rich beyond description and vegetation luxuriant and brilliant in every direction.” Although Raffles is enthusiastic, he does not hide the difficulties of the journey. “After breakfasting at Lebu Tappu ⦠we proceeded to a place called Pulo Lebar, where it was arranged we were to sleep.⦠During the night we were awakened by the approach of a party of elephants ⦠fortunately they kept at some distance â¦
“I must not omit to tell you, that in passing through the forest we were, much to our inconvenience, greatly annoyed by leeches; they got into our boots and shoes, which became filled with blood; at night too, they fell off the leaves that sheltered us from the weather, and on awaking in the morning we found ourselves bleeding profuselyâthese were a species of intruders we were not prepared for.” Despite such “inconveniences,” the intrepid couple didn't abandon their journey, but maintained a bruising schedule of daily hikes.
The Raffles party left Pulo Lebar and walked some twelve hours to reach their next destination, one of the most arduous days of their journey. “Neither on this nor on the preceding day was there a vestige of population or cultivation; nature was throughout allowed to reign undisturbed; and from the traces of elephants in every direction, they alone of the animal kingdome seemed to have explored the recesses of the forest,” Raffles related.
“We got on, however, very well; and though we were all occasionally much fatigued, we did not complain. Lady Raffles was a perfect heroine. The only misfortune at this stage was a heavy fall of rain during the night, which penetrated our leafy dwelling in every direction, and soaked every one of the party to the skin. We were now two days' march beyond the reach of supplies; many of our Coolies had dropped off; some were fairly exhausted, and we began to wish our journey at an end. We, however, contrived to make a good dinner on the remaining fowl, and having plenty of rice and claret, did not complain of our fare.”
The World's Largest Flower
It was at Pulo Lebar that Raffles and Dr. Joseph Arnold, a surgeon and naturalist who accompanied the couple, stumbled on a botanical marvelâthe world's largest flower. “The most important discovery throughout our journey was made at this place; this was a gigantic flower, of which I can hardly attempt to give any thing like a just description,” Raffles wrote. “It is perhaps the largest and most magnificent flower in the world, and is so distinct from every other flower, that I know not to what I can compare itâits dimensions will astonish youâit measured across from the extremity of the petals rather more than a yard, the nectarium was nine inches wide, and as deep; estimated to contain a gallon and half of water, and the weight of the whole flower fifteen pounds.”
Indeed, Raffles had seen a flower that is now dangerously close to extinction. It must have been extraordinary for him to come across this organic oddity, which weighs some twenty to twenty-four pounds and measures thirty-six to forty-two inches in diameter. Resembling a giant piece of pop art placed in the forest by a madcap artist, the ungainly, showy flower cannot survive without a host plant to provide it with water and nutrients, making it a parasite. Raffles was lucky to have found it, since there are only eight days during the entire year when the bud unfurls and the flower reaches its full gargantuan size. After that brief period, it shrivels like a dying alien pod. This flower,
Rafflesia
, is named in honor of its European discoverer, although that credit really belongs to Louis Auguste Deschamps, a French surgeon and naturalist, who discovered the flower in Java in 1797.
“There is nothing more striking in the Malayan forests than the grandeur of the vegetation: the magnitude of the flowers, creepers, and trees, contrasts strikingly with the stunted and, I had almost said, pigmy vegetation of England,” Raffles informed the Duchess. “Compared with our forest-trees, your largest oak is a mere dwarf.”
On a subsequent trip into the interior of Sumatra, no less exhausting than the first, Lord and Lady Raffles journeyed to Minangkabau, the gold-producing region. It was also one of the sites of an ancient Hindu-Buddhist civilization. Raffles enthusiastically reported that not only had he found the ruins of an ancient city, but the land was surprisingly fertile and the people most hospitable. He had earlier discovered the fantastic Buddhist Borobudur Temple complex in Java. The natives in Sumatra only had one request, Raffles related, namely that the Dutch should be kept out of Padang on the west coast of the island. One can imagine that Raffles was overjoyed when he heard that request. He was only too happy to “enter into a conditional treaty of friendship and alliance with the Sultan of Menangkabu, as the lord-paramount of all the Malay countries, subject of course to the approval of Lord Hastings [Warren Hastings, the powerful governor-general of Bengal and one of the architects of British India].”
During the years he spent in Indonesia and Malaysia, Raffles was obsessed with the Dutch, whom he feared would win control of trade throughout the entire Indonesian archipelago and the Strait of Malacca, shutting out “enlightened” British trade. “The Dutch possess the only passes through which ships must sail into this Archipelago, the Straits of Sunda and of Malacca,” Raffles complained, “and the British have not now an inch of ground to stand upon between the Cape of Good Hope and China; nor a single friendly port at which they can water or obtain refreshment.â¦
“At present the authority of the [Company-led] Government of Prince of Wales' Island [Penang] extends no further south than Malacca, and the Dutch would willingly confine that of [Company-led] Bencoolen to the almost inaccessible and rocky shores of the west coast of Sumatra.”
Raffles's hatred of the Dutch, whom he characterized in the florid prose of the early nineteenth century as “preposterously wicked,” fueled his desire to find a place where free trade would flourish under the British.
“In many respects,” Raffles wrote to Lord Minto in 1811, “the commercial policy adopted by the Dutch, with regard to the Eastern Islands, and the Malay states in general, was not only contrary to all principles of natural justice, and unworthy of any enlightened and civilized nation, but characterized by a degree of absurdity for which it is scarcely worth taking the trouble of being so preposterously wicked.” He described the infamous death penalty for anyone caught buying nutmeg, mace, cloves, or cinnamon, from anyone other than the Dutch as “outrageously disproportioned to the offense.” He was also appalled by Dutch efforts to “destroy and eradicate from a vast range of extensive countries, the most advantageous produce of the land, in order to favour their own petty traffic, and their burning a large proportion of the residue, in order to keep up their monopoly price in Europe on a small proportion of this produce⦔ (Raffles was referring to the Dutch practice of deliberately burning the spices in order to maintain low supplies and high prices.) He concluded that such practices “must be viewed by all liberal-minded and intelligent men, with sentiments of equal contempt and detestation.” Raffles vitriol toward the Dutch served as the springboard for the crowning accomplishment of his careerâthe establishment of Singapore.
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The British settlements of Penang and Benkoolen were too remote to serve as way stations between India and China. Consequently, wrote Sophia, Raffles's second wife, in her adoring biography of her husband, Raffles “conceived it of primary importance to obtain a post which should have a commanding geographical position at the southern entrance of the Strait of Malacca, which should be in the track of the China and country traders, which should be capable of affording their protection, and of supplying their wants ⦠which might give the means of supporting and defending the commercial intercourse of the Malay states, and which, by its contiguity to the seat of the Dutch power, might afford an opportunity to watch the march of its policy and when necessary, to counteract its influence.”
Singapore, sitting at the southern entrance to the Strait of Malacca, offered Raffles such an ideal situation, and he lost little time in putting his ideas into action. On February 29, 1819, he hoisted the British flag there after signing a treaty with a local chieftain and a sultan of Johore on the Malay Peninsula, who was not supported by the Dutch. Even though the Dutch vigorously protested, and the Company also initially objected, Raffles blithely went ahead with this inspired act of imperial land grab. Once again, he relied on his own agenda to extend the influence of Company and Crown, arguing that it wasn't territory “⦠but trade; and a fulcrum whence we may extend our influence politically as circumstances may hereafter require.” Incidentally, he also hoped that sailors who went to the new port would have no need “to proceed to the more distant, unhealthy, and expensive port of Batavia.” He got his wishâSingapore did indeed supplant Batavia, as we know, becoming one of the world's great trading ports.