Raffles

by Victoria Glendinning

  Raffles was uncertain about his future. It was all very well to be the Governor-General’s Agent in the run-up to the invasion of Java, but then what? He wanted Leyden to ascertain from Lord Minto ‘what part of the play I am to act hereafter.’ Leyden could assure his friend that ‘his Lordship was exceedingly well-disposed towards you, desirous of giving you every opportunity of distinguishing yourself, and rewarding you as highly as the imperious nature of the circumstances would permit … Indeed, Raffles, he has always talked of you to me, with a kindness very uncommon in a Governor-General.’ He reported the astonishing news that Lord Minto himself was coming to Malacca, and would accompany the fleet on the invasion of Java – and, crucially, that his Lordship was ‘still fluctuating between the two old plans’ of holding on to Java, or of making it independent, which was his instruction from London.

  Leyden eloquently rehearsed to Raffles their dream of an empire to the Eastward: the Malays ‘must be neither independent, nor yet very dependent, but we must have a general Malay league, in which all the Rajahs must be united…under the protection of the Governor of Java.’ (It was agreed that this must be Raffles.) Minto had a part to play: Raffles must write to ‘all the Rajahs of the Malays, however far, or wherever situated, to come in person, to meet the Good Maha Rajah of Bengal’ who would ‘reign in Malacca, and conquer Java, and drive out all the cruel Dutch, and treacherous French’ and bring peace and happiness to the region. ‘In short, make a great and mighty noise, for we will compel his Lordship to be a greater man than he would wish to be, if left alone.’

  Up to a point, Leyden’s vision coincided with Raffles’ official brief, which was to activate an intelligence network of native spies to discover the likely movements of the French, and the state and nature of the fortifications of Batavia and its environs. He was to open communication with the Javanese chiefs, and generally prepare the ground for the invasion. He duly made contact by letter with the rulers not only of Java but of the whole Archipelago, reporting back continuously to Minto. It was important for the rulers to treat only with persons of equal rank. The Governor-General was reckoned to be a sort of Rajah, and some of the glory should reflect upon Raffles as his emissary. As he said to Leyden, he did not want ‘to appear in the eyes of the natives as a mere Cat’s paw.’

  He made certain that his own eminence was understood by the quality of his letters, enveloped in the traditional yellow silk. Raffles had learned in Penang the Malay tradition of elaborate and decorated diplomatic letters between Eastern rulers, with the royal seal or chop of the sender attached. A chop was the impression on paper made by blackening a brass seal in the smoke of a candle. Religious letter-headings in Arabic calligraphy were followed by orotund salutations and hyperbolic compliments. The main matter was approached with elaborate circumlocutions.

  These letters were both diplomatic tools and works of art. The art-work could be done by hand locally; sometimes the letters were written on papers pre-stamped with gilded floral motifs and borders or spattered with gold and silver drops. Raffles appreciated the art of the Malay letter, and made a collection of those connected with the invasion of Java and, later, the founding of Singapore. He provided his calligraphers with papers ready-stamped with gold and silver motifs, but with an unusual layout: a space for the text on the left side of the paper surrounded by floral trellis with a gilded headpiece, and a cut-away right-hand lower corner. It is a measure of the significance accorded to his missives that Sultans and Rajahs paid the Agent of the Governor-General of India the compliment of replying in the same style – the text-block on the left, and the right-hand bottom corner cut away.

  Later, when he was in Singapore, a letter arrived from the King of Siam with the right-hand bottom corner cut away. His munshi Abdullah asked why, and according to his recollection Raffles said: ‘In his pride and arrogance and stupidity the King of Siam thinks that his own kingdom is the whole world and that other countries are merely the small piece of paper he has torn away.’ Since Raffles bought his letter papers with the right-hand corners already cut off, this was a whiff of the ‘British sense of humour’ which went over good Abdullah’s head. ‘When I heard Mr. Raffles’ words I was filled with utmost astonishment that he should understand such mysteries.’

  Raffles was occupied all day long in Malacca. The people among whom the British came to live were often baffled by their continuous activity, for they did not, like normal people, remain at rest until something came up that had to be done. They finished one apparently self-imposed task and immediately turned to another. The munshi Abdullah, first employed by Raffles in Malacca, was in 1811 only fourteen years old. He was astonished by the constant activity not only of Raffles but of Olivia. She ‘never wasted a moment in idleness’. Malay women married to important men became lazy: ‘They just lie down and doze, then dress and arrange their coiffure, or sit and order their slaves about.’ But Mrs Raffles was always ‘doing one thing after another, after tidying the house she would sew and after sewing she would write letters. May I be blinded if my eye ever saw her retire or compose herself for rest in the middle of the day. She was up and about all the time. Allah alone knows.’

  Abdullah was fluent in Arabic, Tamil and Malay; his father had taught Malay to William Marsden. Raffles employed him, along with his friends and relations, as letter-writer, copyist, interpreter and translator, working on literary and historical texts in the Raffles house. ‘It was Mr Raffles’ nature to study with great enjoyment the history of countries and their ancient customs, and to make enquiries and ask questions about unusual things.’

  Abdullah, in the memoir he dictated in the early 1840s, composed a pen-portrait of Raffles: ‘He had thick eyebrows, 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 [ie not very light]; his chest was full and his waist slender. He walked with a slight stoop.’ As to his character, ‘He was 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.’ He was ‘tactful at ending a difficult conversation’ and he ‘spoke in smiles’.

  ‘When he had no work to do other than reading and writing he liked to retire to a quiet place. When he was occupied in studies or conversation he was unwilling to meet anyone who came to the house until he had finished. I saw that he kept rigidly to his timetable of work, not mixing one thing with another. I noticed also a habit of his in the evening after he had taken tea with his friends. There was an inkstand and a place for pen and paper on his large writing-table, and two lighted candles.’ He would walk up and down the room for a while, and then lie flat on his back on the table, close his eyes, and suddenly jump up and start writing. Then he lay down on the table again. ‘This was his behaviour every night up to eleven or twelve o’clock when he went to bed.’

  First thing in the morning Raffles read over what he had written the night before, walking up and down the room. ‘Out of ten pages he would take perhaps three or four and give them to a writer to copy out. The rest he would tear up and throw away.’ These nocturnal writings were his reports to Lord Minto. Between February 1811 and June, when the invasion force sailed, he sent Minto hundreds of thousands of words on the peoples of the Archipelago, their alliances, customs and characteristics. He sent on, too, the English translation of his ‘Proclamation to the People of Java’, dated 14 March 1811, disseminated in Dutch on the island by his agents. The proclamation highlighted the ‘blessings of English Government’ and the brutality of the French: ‘Are you not at this day subjected to the grossest military oppression and tyranny?… The English are at hand…Your future misery or happiness, as well as that of your families, is in your hands. The English character is not unknown to you – it is for you to decide.’ If the Dutch inhabitants remained quiet, they could ‘rely on the protection of the English.’ If they were to ‘
make resistance to the British troops, remember that you forfeit that protection.’

  He reported opening communications with the Sultan of Mataram in Yogyakarta on Central Java, and with the Sultan of Palembang in Sumatra, ‘one of the most important of the Malay states.’ Palembang was rich in minerals, and had the monopoly on the products of offshore Banca, an island ‘which may be considered as an immense tin mine,’ as Raffles told Minto. But the Sultan of Palembang was prevaricating, bound by treaties to the Dutch, who retained a settlement in Palembang. He was under pressure from Marshal Daendels in Batavia, and suspected that Britain would lose the war with France and so lose her possessions to the Eastward. Raffles got nowhere with him. He also had little success in appealing to those chieftains whose younger relatives engaged in piracy, the scourge of the Eastern seas. Consequently, he wrote, ‘the maintenance of a marine establishment similar to that of the Dutch will probably be found absolutely necessary.’

  Daendels was a harsh man who overstretched his reformist brief. He half bankrupted Java with grandiose projects during his short tenure, and destabilised the economy of the island by issuing large amounts of paper money. Everyone hated him. The British were however to benefit from some of his projects. His field hospitals were excellent, and he constructed – at the cost of thousands of lives – a military road across the island with the result that, as Captain Taylor was to put it, ‘you can travel from Batavia to Surabaya in your carriage as well as from Exeter to York.’

  Raffles sent Minto detailed reports on the military and naval strength assembled by Daendels, and on the roads, waterways, ports and harbours of Java. He should perhaps have given more prominence in these reports to Lieutenant-Colonel (previously Captain) William Farquhar, but then he was relying equally on another mature and distinguished military engineer and surveyor, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mackenzie. Lieutenant-Colonel Farquhar was not part of the invasion force, as Mackenzie was. Farquhar complained later that Raffles ‘obtained from me all the information I was able to collect respecting the state of the island of Java…which formed a rather voluminous report, regularly signed by me, and transmitted to Lord Minto, together with a general map of the island, through Sir Stamford Raffles.’

  Farquhar felt sidelined, even though Minto recognised his contributions and corresponded directly with him as well as with Raffles, who when relaying Farquhar’s information on the military logistics of the French and Dutch did not claim the intelligence as his own, and when quoting from Farquhar’s memos he mentioned him by name. But Farquhar was nettled by what he saw as Raffles’ assumption of superior status, and a feeling that his brains were being picked for Raffles’ personal advantage.

  Of course Raffles was picking everyone’s brains. That was his job right now. He was a social animal with lively sympathies and good manners, and in normal dealings with his fellow-humans his sensitivities were pitch-perfect. But when carried away by his own imperatives he tended to forget – as a child does – everything but the absorbing matter in hand, and left his associates standing. What Raffles’ letters to Minto chiefly demonstrate is how much more he believed was at stake than just the invasion of Java. He was presenting the conquest invasion as a step towards extending British influence throughout the Archipelago and beyond.

  Raffles in Malacca received a letter dated 27 April 1811, delivered by an envoy, from the Sultan of Acheen, complaining about the seizure of one of his ships in Penang, where he was suspected of being in the pay of Daendels and the French. For this very reason Raffles was critical of Penang’s action, which might drive the Anglophile Sultan into the arms of the French; and he supported his right to the throne of Acheen against the pretender Syed Hussein in Penang. In his letter, the Sultan conferred upon Raffles the title of ‘Sri Paduka Orangkaya Berpedang Emas’ – ‘His Excellency the Nobleman with the Golden Sword’ – the Order of the Golden Sword. This was neither an ancient nor a significant decoration. It took the form of three oval medallions linked by a gold chain, two bearing Arabic characters and one engraved with a wavy-bladed kris.

  In one of the memos he wrote to Minto before they left for Java, Raffles enclosed the Sultan’s letter and, while not referring to the Order of the Golden Sword, observed that ‘some marks of attention’ would be ‘agreeable’ to the Sultan. It might, he thought, be a good idea to instal a Resident and a couple of hundred sepoys at the Sultan’s court. Raffles was alert to Acheen’s positional value to an Eastern Empire, and delighted, privately, in his Order of the Golden Sword.

  The secretaries read his letter to Minto with the enclosure conferring the Order, and the news spread through Calcutta and Penang. Raffles came in for a bit of mockery behind his back. One who mocked was John Palmer, senior partner of Palmer & Co, Calcutta’s most prominent agency house. The half-dozen Indian agency houses were universal providers; Palmer & Co, through sub-contractors, was provisioning the fleet for the expedition to Java. Since there were no banks or family solicitors for the thousand-odd Europeans in Calcutta, agency tycoons filled the gap. Palmer, from his office in Old Fort Street, extended credits and loans, managed savings and investments, advised on retirement plans and personal embarrassments, set up trusts, let property, fixed the chartering of vessels. He had valuable connections in the Indian commercial community and among Indian rulers. He was socially intimate with his clients, and hospitable on a lavish scale in his mansion on the Loll Bazaar. He knew everyone, and he knew their secrets. He took an interest in the succession of Acheen, and was an ally of W.E.Phillips in Penang. In his communications with Penang about what he saw as Raffles’ ludicrous or damaging machinations, he referred to him sardonically as ‘our Knight’ or ‘Sir Knight’ or ‘the Golden Sword’.

  Raffles in Malacca pursued private passions. When his interest in acquiring works of Malay history and literature became known, people brought manuscripts and books to his house. Some he borrowed and had copied, but bought most for cash. ‘I do not remember,’ wrote Abdullah, ‘how many of these texts there were. Almost, it seemed, the whole of Malay literature of the ages, the property of our forefathers, was sold and which he kept in his own hand, taken away from all over the country.’ In retrospect, Abdullah thought this was a tragedy. ‘Because these things had money value they were sold and it did not occur to people at the time that this might be unwise, leaving them not a single book to read in their own language. This would not have mattered if the books had been printed, but these were all written in longhand and now copies of them are no longer available.’

  Another private activity was the building of a collection of natural history specimens – plants, insects, shells, fishes, birds and animals – employing ‘a certain Chinese from Macao who was very expert at drawing life-like pictures of fruits and flowers’. He preserved the bodies of reptiles in spirit. He kept a pair of orang-utan, dressing the male in trousers, coat and hat; it had free range, and his other birds and animals were kept in cages and pens. His collections were a contribution to knowledge and designed to further the prestige of the Company (as well as of himself). But there was a streak of unthinking extravagance in him. One of Abdullah’s observations stands out: ‘It was Mr Raffles’ way to care little for money. If there was anything he wished to buy or any work he wanted undertaken, whatever the cost or fee might be, he paid for it… I know not how much money was paid out daily from his safe to buy things or to pay those who worked for him.’

  The female orang-utan died. Her mate mourned her, and died himself within a week. ‘If animals can love one another as man and wife, how much more should we human beings do likewise,’ wrote Abdullah. He made no overt connection between the union of the apes and that of Raffles and Olivia, but their relationship impressed him, and his memories of Olivia are a corrective to the image of an invalidish and rather stagey woman which emerges elsewhere. During the first months in Malacca she would have received the news that her daughter Harriet had died of tuberculosis on 16 October 1810. Her husband William Soper-Dempster took her south fro
m Skibo Castle to his home town of Ashburton in Devonshire in the vain hope that the softer climate would prolong her life.

  According to Abdullah, Mrs Raffles ‘shared her husband’s charm, his modesty and prudence in everything that she did. She spoke in a friendly and courteous manner alike to the rich and the poor. She enjoyed making a thorough study of Malay, and used to ask how the Malays say this and that. All the points that she noted she wrote down on paper. And I observed too that whenever Mr Raffles wanted to do something, for instance to make a purchase, he always asked his wife first and if she agreed he acted.’ Married couples were not like that in Abdullah’s culture. ‘For Allah had joined together the pair of them making them of one mind, like a ruler and his minister, like a ring and the jewel set in it, like sugar in milk.’ He composed a pantun, a Malay form of rhyming quatrains, comparing them to a pair of goldfish in a bowl swimming together, sharing every thought and move.

  Lord Minto wrote to the Secret Committee at India House on 22 January 1811, impressing upon them his conviction, contrary to their instructions, that a colonial administration should be established in Java. He was perfectly aware that there was no possibility of his receiving a reply before the invasion. He expressed to his wife his confidence in ‘Mr Raffles, a very clever, able, active and judicious man, perfectly versed in the Malay language and manners, and conversant with the interests and affairs of the Eastern states.’ Even though he believed it to be nothing more than his duty to ‘friskify’ off to Java, he confessed that ‘I never engaged in any affair with greater interest or with more pleasure.’