The Founding of Singapore in January 1819 was carried out by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles during a celebrated detour from the Raffles–Coombs Acheh Commission. Although Raffles had been charged jointly with Captain Coombs by the Bengal government to settle the Acheh succession dispute and to conclude a treaty with the recognised sultan, he set the entire Acheh journey aside when Major Farquhar’s letter of 19 January proposed that the two men jointly inspect the Karimon Islands as a possible site for a British station east of Penang.
Raffles’ enthusiasm for the scheme was so great that, instead of merely postponing the Acheh mission, he suddenly embarked from the Penang roads “without previous intimation either to that Government or to his colleague Captain Coombs”. He also carried off the artillery and military stores that Governor Bannerman had earmarked for the Acheh expedition, leaving only brief written notices behind. Van Thyssen, the Dutch governor of Malacca, noted shortly afterwards that officials there feared Raffles was preparing a fresh stroke against Netherlands possessions in the archipelago.
Within weeks Raffles had signed a preliminary arrangement with the temenggong of Johor and hoisted the British flag on the island. The settlement’s growth was extraordinarily rapid. According to a letter of Carnegy dated Penang, 2 July 1819, quoted by Van der Kemp, the new town had only 500 inhabitants when the British took possession at the end of January, but already counted 5,000 souls by mid-year, drawn chiefly from Malacca and Riouw. Carnegy extolled the harbour, where ships of war could ride safely in wartime, running out off Pulo Auro to reconnoitre and back within a week.
The founding of Singapore was, in Van der Kemp’s eyes, the “anti-Batavia” — Raffles’ grand counter-stroke to Dutch supremacy in the archipelago — and it was accomplished at the cost of overriding his colleague, his governor, and the Calcutta instructions. The Calcutta government later censured the irregular proceeding, observing that it was “contrary to the spirit of our instructions” and indicated “an undue bias” toward Raffles’ own schemes. Bannerman and Coombs meanwhile complained to Bengal of the “eigenmachtige wegzending van de Minto” and of the arbitrary interruption of the Acheh commission.
The episode had lasting consequences. Singapore rapidly eclipsed Malacca and Penang as the chief British emporium in the Straits, gave British India a decisive strategic foothold, and, after the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, became the cornerstone of British influence in the Malay world. The same convention that ceded Sumatra to the Netherlands secured Singapore to Britain, and the entire Treaty of Pedir (1819) was sacrificed, in Van der Kemp’s analysis, precisely so that Singapore might be retained without continental rivals.
See Also
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Major William Farquhar
- Captain Coombs
- Colonel John Alexander Bannerman
- Raffles’ detour to Karimon Islands
- Dispatch of the Minto to Pedir
- Raffles-Coombs Acheh Commission (1819)
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
- Penang
- Singapore
- Karimon Islands
Source
Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.