Raffles

by Victoria Glendinning

  Raffles had to do some research and make some enquiries among his Malay acquaintances; and as he reminded Dundas, he was particularly busy because the Secretary to Government, Henry Shepherd Pearson, was away on sick leave. As Raffles put it to Leyden, ‘Pearson, heartily sick of his office, has obtained permission to proceed to Bombay at the first opportunity and remain 6 months on leave – this, of course, is to my advantage although I don’t expect to derive much pecuniary benefit, as I can only be Acting Sec.’ He reported to the Governor in Council the poor record-keeping he discovered, and undertook to bring everything up to date, for which he was commended.

  He consulted Leyden too for help in answering Marsden’s letter: ‘Were you aware that the Malays ever used a Cycle, in conformity to that of the Indians and Chinese in general? On this, I made such rapid discoveries that I expected to have been enabled to send you their whole Chronology – but it was like the mountains in labour and produced little or nothing.’ It was not until July 1806 that he wrote a long letter to Dundas, to be sent on, if approved, to Mr Marsden, addressing all Marsden’s points and adding observations of his own. ‘Should you deem the replies to Mr Marsden’s queries in any way satisfactory, and worthy of communication, I hope you will, at the same time, state them as coming from a young man, who never made Oriental literature his study, and is but lately arrived in the place which furnishes the means of his observations.’ This was the start of an epistolary friendship between Marsden and Raffles, and in the end the two would be friends.

  Thomas Raffles, Acting Secretary to Government in Penang, was proving indispensable. (The William Clubley whose house had been up for sale was appointed his Assistant Secretary.) The minutiae of administration were not Governor Dundas’ forte. Raffles’ ten years in India House, and his period in the Secretary’s Department, had not been lost time. He had absorbed the Company style and the Company’s protocols. He knew their official jargon and their codes. He knew the conventions for denoting approval and disapproval (‘unwarranted’, ‘unworthy’), he knew how to frame a letter, a memo, a narrative, a despatch, an Order in Council, a General Order and a Proclamation. He understood meetings, minutes and reports.

  From August 1806 General Orders were being signed by ‘T. Raffles, Acting Secretary to Government’. A Governor’s official correspondence was conducted in the third person and signed by the Secretary of the moment. Raffles, privy to the sessions of the Governor and his three-man Council drafted, and more often composed, outgoing documents, despatches and letters. Like effective senior civil servants at any period, he armed himself with the documentation and information required at each juncture, contributed opinions and advice, and had some influence over outcomes.

  The way he combined his workload with his private studies impressed a young man in the Company’s military service, Lieutenant Thomas Otho Travers, who met Raffles when he was posted with his regiment to Prince of Wales Island in 1806. He was a Protestant Irishman from Cork, four years younger than Raffles. When Sophia Raffles was compiling her Memoir, Travers obliged her with his memories of her husband from those early days in Penang. Given the circumstances, what he wrote could not but be an encomium. Travers, soon to be one of Raffles’ intimates, was always one of his most ardent supporters:

  At that time, which was soon after his arrival, he had acquired a perfect knowledge of the Malay language… The details of the Government proceedings, as far as related to local arrangements and regulations, together with the compilation of almost every public document, devolved on Mr Raffles, who possessed great quickness and facility in conducting and arranging the forms of a new Government, as well as in drawing up and keeping the records. The public despatches were also entrusted to him; and in fact he had the entire weight and trouble attendant on the formation of a new Government. This, however, did not prevent his attending closely to improve himself in the Eastern languages; and whilst his mornings were employed in his public office, where at first he had but little assistance, his evenings were devoted to Eastern literature.

  Travers, acknowledging difficulties among the ‘different characters’ in the Penang Government, wrote that Mr Raffles was ‘respected and consulted by every member of it,’ which may be a tad optimistic. He noted too how Raffles was acquiring ‘a general knowledge of the history, Government, and local interests of the neighbouring states, and in this he was greatly aided in doing by conversing freely with the natives, who were constantly visiting Penang at this period, many of whom were found to be sensible, intelligent men, and greatly pleased to find a person holding Mr Raffles’ situation able and anxious to converse with them in their own language.’

  In parallel with the expensive upgrading of Penang went the downgrading of Malacca, down the coast. It held a strategic position towards the south of the Strait, and had been a useful stopping-off point for Company ships, and for the warehousing and exchanges of cargos. But it exploited no local products to trade from its hinterland and imported most of its food from Madras.

  The wars with France determined Company policy. The British had taken Malacca over from the Dutch in 1795 as part of a campaign, endorsed by William V of Orange in exile in England, to stop South-East Asian trading bases from falling into the hands of the French after the French conquered the Netherlands. The Dutch were not expelled; when the British flag was raised alongside the Dutch one, the formulation was that Malacca had been taken into the ‘custody and protection’ of King George III on behalf of William of Orange. Dutch governance continued, with a British military presence and under British supervision. While restoration to the Dutch at some future time was envisaged, it was decreed that any resistance against the English, right now, would be forcibly suppressed. The arrangement did not work. The Dutch Governor, Abraham Couperus, was soon instructed to leave – after seventeen years, and with a Malay-Portuguese nonya and seven children who had never been out of Malacca.

  Economically, Malacca stagnated. Captain William Farquhar of the Madras Engineers, the Commandant of the settlement, was not allocated money to dredge the mouth of the river, obstructed by a mud-flat at low tide. East Indiamen had to anchor inconveniently far offshore and so, increasingly, often just sailed on by. Farquhar had reported gloomily to Madras in 1799 on the shocking state of Malacca’s defences and the shortage of money and manpower. The reaction of the Madras Government was to recommend to the Supreme Government in Bengal that the fortifications in Malacca should be demolished altogether, in order to render the place useless as a war port, and therefore of no interest to the French. Bengal referred this idea to the Court of Directors in London, who jumped at it, advising that Malacca’s defences be ‘completely destroyed and demolished’, and British personnel transferred to Penang.

  Because of the cumbersome nature of decision-making, nothing happened immediately. When Philip Dundas arrived in Penang as Governor in 1805 and reviewed the Malacca situation, he questioned the policy of withdrawal on the grounds that it would facilitate incursions from ‘Americans and other neutral flags’ and damage British trade. He wrote to Captain Farquhar, Commandant at Malacca, for his expert local opinion.

  Farquhar’s reply was unambiguous. Local native trade used Malacca regularly, plying round the Archipelago. The British presence was a check to the piracy that threatened all shipping in the Strait, and no French ships could pass Malacca without being spotted from the watchtower on the Hill. To destroy the Fort would just leave an opening for an opportunistic power to move in and build another. It would be more expensive to destroy the Fort and remove the materials than it would be to improve it. No one from Malacca would want to relocate to Penang; Malacca was multinational, and many Chinese, Indian and Portuguese mixed-race families had been there ‘since time immemorial’. The fertile territory if properly funded could become self-supporting. As for himself, he declined Governor Dundas’s invitation to join him in the new Penang.

  Governor Dundas was impressed, and in March 1806 referred the matter back to the Court of Directors,
sending them Farquhar’s report. Meanwhile the viability of Malacca was systematically eroded by the cutting back of jobs and wages, including Farquhar’s. Not for another whole year, until April 1807, did the final decision come from India House. All the fortifications and public buildings in Malacca were to be destroyed, and the building materials thus released shipped to Penang.

  Penang had once had a reputation as a health-giving place, ‘the Montpelier of India’ as William Hickey put it. It seemed no longer to be the case. Mrs Dundas, who had been such a thorn in Olivia’s scant flesh, sailed to Calcutta in an attempt to recover her health and died there a few days after she arrived. Governor Dundas himself was ill too. More work was devolving on Raffles. In March 1807 he was promoted from Acting Secretary to full Secretary to Government, as well as being Malay Translator. He did not intend to be exploited. Later he put in for, and received, permission to draw the difference in salary between Secretary and Acting Secretary for the months when Pearson was away and he was doing the Secretary’s job. The sick Dundas left Prince of Wales Island on a ship of the Royal Navy on 1 April 1807, with a doctor in attendance. ‘A short sea voyage’ was the standard treatment for those brought low by infections, fevers and the humid heat.

  Governor Dundas died on board a week later, aged forty-four. The ship turned around and brought his body back to Penang, where he was buried with full honours in the Protestant cemetery where Captain Light’s tomb also was.

  The announcement that Henry Shepherd Pearson by reason of seniority was appointed Acting Governor was signed by ‘T. Raffles, Secretary to Government’. Since Mr Pearson was barely able for the task of governorship, Secretary Raffles had even more on his plate, one of the first tasks being to take the necessary steps towards implementing the Company’s decision about the destruction of Malacca.

  Travers, in Sophia Raffles’ Memoir, recorded Raffles’ sociability as well as his industry. ‘Being of a cheerful lively disposition, and very fond of society, it was surprising how he was able to entertain so hospitably as he did, and yet labour as much so he was known to do…’ Raffles and Olivia became more than socially acceptable. They were at the forefront of life on Prince of Wales Island. For the ritual celebration of the King’s Birthday on 6 June 1807, ‘an elegant dinner was given by Mr Raffles’ reported the Gazette, followed by ‘a splendid ball and supper’ at Admiralty House. The following month the marriage of a Miss Oliphant was solemnised by Mr Pearson, the Acting Governor, ‘in the house of Thomas Raffles Esq.’ Not until October was a new Governor, Colonel Norman Macalister, appointed. He had come out to Penang at the same time as Raffles, and there was a long-running row about whether he, or Pearson, should succeed Dundas. The Court of Directors in London finally decided for Macalister, whom Raffles also backed. The disgruntled Pearson reverted to the role of Warehousekeeper and Paymaster. Penang was not a harmonious community.

  The State of Massachusetts had abolished slavery back in 1783. It was not until January 1807, after twenty years’ campaigning spear-headed by William Wilberforce, and eleven rejected Bills, that the British Government under Pitt’s successor, Lord Grenville, passed an Act of Parliament abolishing the British slave trade. That was not the same as abolishing slavery, which could not be achieved overnight in Britain’s overseas possessions; and there were to be complex systems of compensation for slave-owners and those dependent on slave labour, especially in the sugar plantations of the West Indies. Even the banning of the trade took time to put into practice. In 1810 a British ship on the Thames was found to be carrying a cargo of padlocks, handcuffs, shackles and chains.

  The Slave Trade Act was however a massive step forward, and the Penang Government was prepared to take it on to the next stage. The Prince of Wales Island Gazette carried an article at the beginning of December 1807 stating that no slaves were now being imported into the settlement, and orders would soon be forthcoming for ‘total abolition of slavery in this island… Although the system of slavery must, in a few years, have died a natural death, we think Government entitled to praise on having accelerated its dissolution; and their equity in making compensation to the sufferers…we hope to make part of the general system.’ (The sufferers to be compensated in this case were the slaves, not the slave-owners.)

  The article was unsigned, but the trenchancy of its tone makes it likely that it was written by Secretary Raffles, for whom the abolition of slavery was to be a crusade. He himself was ill and exhausted. According to Sophia’s Memoir, ‘the attack was so severe, that for some time little hopes of his life were entertained.’ In convalescence, having applied for a medical certificate from the Chief Surgeon – a sick-note – he was authorised to ‘proceed to sea immediately.’ In November 1807 he and Olivia sailed up the coast to Malacca, and to another turning point for Raffles.

  Chapter 3

  Rising on the Thermals

  Malacca and Calcutta 1807–1810

  ‘Far off, on the shallow sea, phantom ships hover and are gone, and on an indefinite horizon a blurred ocean blends with a blurred sky,’ wrote the lone, middle-aged English traveller Isabella Bird, visiting Malacca in the 1870s. The ancient town lies on a long bay, clustering round the mouth of a winding river, deep enough at high tide for boats and ferries to come up as far as the bridge and unload cargos from the ships straight into the open ground floors of the godowns, or warehouses.

  St Paul’s Hill – ‘the Hill’ – rises from the water’s edge, topped by the old Portuguese church, already roofless and in ruins well before Raffles arrived. The Portuguese were in Malacca from 1511. St Francis Xavier preached in that church in the 1540s, and was buried there. The Dutch held Malacca from 1641 until the unsuccessful condominium with the British after 1795. There were still a few hundred Dutch in the town in the early 1800s, and a Chinese and Malay majority, much intermarried, with a strong Portuguese strain in the gene pool.

  In the late eighteenth century, as M.C. Ricklefs has written, ‘In the midst of corruption, inefficiency and financial crisis, the first Dutch Empire was gently going to sleep.’ That had certainly been true of Malacca, and it had not woken up under the British either. Because there was not a lot going on in the way of international trade, Malacca was relaxed – ‘very still, hot, tropical, sleepy and dreamy’ as Isabella Bird found it.

  Raffles went there because Malacca was considered a place to go to recover your health, and it was picturesque. But the local mosquitoes were ‘insupportable’, the day-time variety inflicting an even worse torment than the nocturnal kind, according to Miss Bird. Their taste for European blood seemed to diminish over time. Lord Minto, in India, was advised to put some young fellow fresh out from England next to him at dinner, to divert the mosquitoes’ attention.

  Captain William Farquhar, Commandant at Malacca, who spoke fluent Malay, was a popular, respected and familiar figure. He was called ‘the Rajah of Malacca’ and had a Portuguese-Malay nonya, with whom he had six children. A young Malacca-born scholartranslator, a munshi, Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, wrote that it was ‘Mr Farquhar’s nature to be patient and tolerant of other people’s faults, and he treated both rich and poor alike… Whenever he travelled about in his carriage or on horseback the rich and the poor, and the children too, saluted him and he at once returned the compliment. He was ever generous to all the servants of Allah. Truly all these qualities I have related were as cords tying the hearts of the people to him.’

  When Raffles and Olivia arrived in November 1807, the destruction of the Portuguese Fort, begun in August, was far advanced. Farquhar had been right when he said the fortifications would be less costly to repair than to demolish. They were built of ironstone, set in strong cement. Some of the walls were sixty feet high and fifteen feet thick. To break these down required explosives. Abdullah reported how when Farquhar lit the fuse ‘the gunpowder exploded with a noise like thunder, and pieces of the Fort as large as elephants, and even some as large as houses, were thrown into the air and cascaded into the sea.’ Apart from the walls,
there were nine bastions with living space and stables underneath, four gates, and three drawbridges. All this destruction, even though it created employment, made the town uneasy, and coolies employed on the work were afraid of the ghosts and devils who lived in the stones.

  Farquhar’s Residence was the seventeenth-century Dutch Stadhuis, or Government House, which, like the flat-faced Dutch church, and the massive, ornamented southern gate (all still there today), he decided just could not be demolished. The Stadhuis and the church were essential for administrative and community purposes, and the gate was spared because the adjoining guardrooms were still in use. The Stadhuis and the church had been within the walls of the Fort. Now they were surrounded by rubble, freestanding at right angles to one another, flanked by the river bank, the shore, and the Hill.

  Raffles was meeting William Farquhar for the first time, and Farquhar had seniority in all ways. From Kincardineshire in Scotland, he was thirty-seven years old, and had joined the Company as a cadet in Madras at seventeen. Raffles was twenty-six, with only two years experience in the East. Farquhar had already held the command of Malacca for twelve years, and had seen action at the capture of Pondicherry in 1793. Farquhar was seasoned as Raffles was not. He was intelligent, competent, confident. Talking with him, Raffles learned a lot.

  Raffles would have stayed longer in Malacca, but heard that a vessel was shortly to leave Penang for England, and that the official despatches and reports required by India House had to be on board. In desperation, Governor Macalister sent word that ‘we shall not be able to make up any despatches for the Court without your assistance. This is truly hard upon you, under the present circumstances of your delicate state of health, but I trust you will believe that nothing else would induce me to press so hard on you at this time. And with the exception of Mr Phillips, the rest of the board can give but little assistance in making out the general letter: none, however, so little as myself.’