Sir Robert Harry Inglis (1786–1855), second baronet of that name, was a British politician, East India Company director, and intimate friend and confidant of Raffles. He appears in P. H. Van der Kemp (1900) as the London correspondent to whom Raffles addressed some of his most candid private letters concerning the Acheh commission of 1819 and the subsequent founding of Singapore.
Friendship with Raffles
Inglis was a director of the East India Company, and Raffles’s letters to him during the Acheh mission represent an unusual channel of private communication by which the lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen sought to influence opinion in London. Van der Kemp cites a letter from Raffles to Inglis dated Singapore, 12 June 1819, in which Raffles wrote that “we remained there (in Acheh) nearly seven weeks, during the early portion of which we were directly opposed in our politics, but at length after a paper war which actually occupies above a thousand pages of the Company’s largest sized paper, he came round to my opinion”. The “paper war” here referred to — the great written controversy between Raffles and Bannerman over the conduct of the Acheh mission — is described elsewhere in Van der Kemp’s article and was Raffles’s own preferred expression for that protracted correspondence.
Raffles’s Reports on the Acheh Commission
Inglis also received from Raffles a letter dated 12 January 1819 — that is, written aboard ship at the moment when Raffles was on his way from Penang to the Karimon Islands and to the act that would found Singapore. In that letter Raffles declared that he had “never had a more disagreeable duty, and consequently was highly satisfied to bring our mission to so desirable a conclusion. It was an object of great importance to take the right side of the question and had our government been once committed on the other, and troops introduced, we should soon have been so deeply involved that a worse than Candyan war might have been apprehended. In a country like Acheen by military operations we had everything to lose and nothing to gain.” Van der Kemp adds that “history can only pay tribute to the depth of such foresight”, though he goes on to observe that Raffles’s self-congratulation was pure exaggeration: in fact nothing had been gained by the Acheh treaty of 1819 and the commission might just as well have stayed at home.
Raffles’s letters to Inglis thus provide Van der Kemp with two of his most vivid personal documents for the Acheh episode. The first records the inky “paper war” between Raffles and Bannerman, and the second shows Raffles in January 1819 already contemplating the abandonment of a military solution in Acheh and the substitution of a diplomatic arrangement — the very arrangement embodied in the Treaty of Pedir of 22 April 1819.
Historical Significance
Inglis’s importance for the Acheh question lies chiefly in the fact that he preserved and ultimately made available the private correspondence in which Raffles spoke more freely than he did in his official dispatches. Without the Inglis letters, Van der Kemp’s portrait of Raffles’s state of mind during the Karimon detour and during the closing of the treaty at Pedir would have been far less complete. Inglis himself, as an East India Company director, was also in a position to bring such private communications to bear upon the deliberations of the Court of Directors, although Van der Kemp does not pursue that aspect of his role.
See Also
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Raffles-Coombs Acheh Commission (1819)
- Acheh treaty of 1819
- Founding of Singapore
- Colonel John Alexander Bannerman
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.
Sir Robert Harry Inglis (1786–1855), second baronet of that name, was a British politician, East India Company director, and intimate friend and confidant of Raffles. He appears in P. H. Van der Kemp (1900) as the London correspondent to whom Raffles addressed some of his most candid private letters concerning the Acheh commission of 1819 and the subsequent founding of Singapore.
Friendship with Raffles
Inglis was a director of the East India Company, and Raffles’s letters to him during the Acheh mission represent an unusual channel of private communication by which the lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen sought to influence opinion in London. Van der Kemp cites a letter from Raffles to Inglis dated Singapore, 12 June 1819, in which Raffles wrote that “we remained there (in Acheh) nearly seven weeks, during the early portion of which we were directly opposed in our politics, but at length after a paper war which actually occupies above a thousand pages of the Company’s largest sized paper, he came round to my opinion”. The “paper war” here referred to — the great written controversy between Raffles and Bannerman over the conduct of the Acheh mission — is described elsewhere in Van der Kemp’s article and was Raffles’s own preferred expression for that protracted correspondence.
Raffles’s Reports on the Acheh Commission
Inglis also received from Raffles a letter dated 12 January 1819 — that is, written aboard ship at the moment when Raffles was on his way from Penang to the Karimon Islands and to the act that would found Singapore. In that letter Raffles declared that he had “never had a more disagreeable duty, and consequently was highly satisfied to bring our mission to so desirable a conclusion. It was an object of great importance to take the right side of the question and had our government been once committed on the other, and troops introduced, we should soon have been so deeply involved that a worse than Candyan war might have been apprehended. In a country like Acheen by military operations we had everything to lose and nothing to gain.” Van der Kemp adds that “history can only pay tribute to the depth of such foresight”, though he goes on to observe that Raffles’s self-congratulation was pure exaggeration: in fact nothing had been gained by the Acheh treaty of 1819 and the commission might just as well have stayed at home.
Raffles’s letters to Inglis thus provide Van der Kemp with two of his most vivid personal documents for the Acheh episode. The first records the inky “paper war” between Raffles and Bannerman, and the second shows Raffles in January 1819 already contemplating the abandonment of a military solution in Acheh and the substitution of a diplomatic arrangement — the very arrangement embodied in the Treaty of Pedir of 22 April 1819.
Historical Significance
Inglis’s importance for the Acheh question lies chiefly in the fact that he preserved and ultimately made available the private correspondence in which Raffles spoke more freely than he did in his official dispatches. Without the Inglis letters, Van der Kemp’s portrait of Raffles’s state of mind during the Karimon detour and during the closing of the treaty at Pedir would have been far less complete. Inglis himself, as an East India Company director, was also in a position to bring such private communications to bear upon the deliberations of the Court of Directors, although Van der Kemp does not pursue that aspect of his role.
See Also
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Raffles-Coombs Acheh Commission (1819)
- Acheh treaty of 1819
- Founding of Singapore
- Colonel John Alexander Bannerman
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.