Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles

Background

Raffles was born on July 6, 1781, off the coast of Port Morant, Jamaica, to Captain Benjamin Raffles and Anne Raffles on the 6th of July 1781. Raffles was born on board the ship Ann, of which his father was the master, on a voyage from Jamaica to England.

Education

Since Raffles' family was in financial trouble, he only attended a boarding school. Although his formal education was inadequate, he studied the sciences and several languages at his own leisure and conceived an interest in natural history that was to earn him a distinguished reputation.

Career

In 1795, at the age of 14, Raffles started working as a clerk in London for the British East India Company, the trading company that shaped many of Britain's overseas conquests. In 1805 he was sent to what is now Penang in the country of Malaysia, then called the Prince of Wales Island, starting his long association with Southeast Asia. He started with a post under the Honourable Philip Dundas, the Governor of Penang. Raffles shaped his career by an intensive exploration into the language, history, and culture of the Malayan peoples scattered over the islands of the archipelago. This unique study caught the attention of Lord Minto, governor-general of India. Minto gave considerable credit for the success to Raffles. Entrusted with an independent authority that aroused jealousy in Penang, Raffles established his headquarters in Malacca.

Rewarded for his extraordinary work by an appointment to Minto’s staff, Raffles sailed with him to Java. Shortly afterward Minto sailed for Calcutta, leaving Raffles at the age of 30 to rule not only Java but also an archipelagic empire of several million inhabitants. After four and a half years in Java, suffering from increasing ill health and shattered by the death of his wife, he was recalled. Left vulnerable to personal attack by the death of Minto, he sailed for England on March 25, 1816, thoroughly out of favor with the court of directors of the East India Company.

In a voyage to Calcutta, which all but ended in shipwreck, he employed his wide knowledge of Eastern affairs and his powers of persuasion to convince Lord Hastings, then governor-general of India, that immediate and forceful action was essential to safeguard British trade with the Far East. He sailed from Calcutta, bearing Hastings’ qualified authority to establish a fortified post eastward of the Straits of Malacca and so placed as to wedge open the gateway to the China seas. In the morning he landed on the shore of a sparsely populated island off the southern tip of Malaya and, risking imminent collision with the Dutch, established by treaty the port of Singapore.

Although he returned to his post at Bengkulu for three years, he went back to Singapore in October 1822, when he reorganized the various branches of the administration. His vast collections illustrating the natural history and Malayan lore won him acclaim as an Orientalist, and he assisted in founding the London Zoo, of which he was elected the first president.

Back in the East, Raffles planned and executed the taking of Singapore and supervised the setting up of the new community there. He returned home in 1824, his health seriously damaged and four of his five children died of tropical diseases.

Achievements

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  Thomas Stamford Raffles founded Singapore, also he was involved in the conquest of the Indonesian island of Java from Dutch and French military forces during the Napoleonic Wars and contributed to the expansion of the British Empire.
  
  While in Singapore, Raffles established schools and churches. He allowed missionaries and local businesses to flourish. A European town was built to segregate the population, separated by a river. He oversaw the building of roads and a military garrison constructed for the soldiers. He oversaw the development of a thriving commercial port for the British. He was knighted in 1816.
  
  Raffles’ importance in the history of science is as a facilitator rather than as a discoverer. He went on long trips of exploration wherever he was based, surveying the country, customs, and natural history. He wrote on the little-known tapir and dugong, and sent specimens of these and many other animals and plants to the Indian Museum in Calcutta and to Banks in 1818, 1820, and 1824.
  
  The collecting was organized at Raffles’ own expense, first informally and later by scientists he brought out, including Arnold, the American Thomas Horsfield, and two Frenchmen, Pierre-Medard Diard and Alfred Duvaucel. He was active in founding the Zoological Society of London and was its first president until his death.
  
  Also, he was highly regarded as a naturalist by scientists in England and abroad, including Wallich and Hardwick in India. The botanic gardens at Malacca and Bengkulu were planned and largely tended by Raffles himself; and he commissioned many drawings, some of which survive in the India Office library. Most of the specimens passed to the Zoological Society and then to the British Museum (Natural History).
  
  A life-size figure in white marble by Sir Francis Chantrey depicts Raffles in a seated position. His name was also obtained by numerous biological species, landmarks, businesses, and educational facilities in Singapore. For example, Chaetodon rafflesii, latticed butterflyfish, Dinopium rafflesii, olive-backed woodpecker, Megalaima rafflesi, red-crowned barbet, Nepenthes rafflesiana, a species of pitcher plant, Protanilla rafflesi Taylor, 1990 – a species of ant, Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, Rafflesia, a genus of parasitic flowering plants, known for having the largest flowers in the world, Theridion rafflesi Simon, 1899 – spider from Sumatra, Raffles gave the scientific name to Macaca fascicularis, also known as the crab-eating macaque were named in honor. He also gave the scientific name of the lesser mouse-deer (Tragulus kanchil). The standard author abbreviation Raffles is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
  
  There are the following landmarks, such as Raffles City, Raffles Hospital, Raffles Hotel are named in his honor as well, as businesses Raffles Holdings, Raffles Medical Group, Yantai Raffles Shipyard. A number of educational organizations, such as Raffles College (currently National University of Singapore), Raffles Girls' Primary School, Raffles Girls' School (Secondary), Raffles Institution (Secondary) are named in his honor. There is the Raffles Cup, which is a Thoroughbred horse race held annually in the first week of November at Kranji Racecourse in Singapore. Also, there are the Raffles Institution Lane, Raffles Lighthouse, Raffles Place, Raffles Place MRT Station, Stamford Road, Raffles Class (the former name for Singapore Airlines Business Class). Two statues in Singapore, one made of white marble along the Singapore River while another made of bronze in front of the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles 1816
  • Sir Stamford Raffles and Some of His Friends and Contemporaries:A Memoir of the Founder of Singapore 1830
  • Statement of the Services of Sir Stamford Raffles 1824
  • Raffles' Ark Redrawn: Natural History Drawings from the Collection of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles 1826
  • The History of Java 1817
  • Malay Annals 1814
  • The Mission to Siam, and Hué, the Capital of Cochin China 1821
  • A discourse delivered to the literary and scientific society at Java, on the 10th of September, 1815 1816
  • Antiquarian, Architectural, and Landscape Illustrations of the History of Java 1844

Views

Because of his anti-slavery position, Raffles was refused burial inside the local parish church by the vicar, whose family had made its money in Jamaica in the slave trade.

Membership

Raffles was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He was a member and active president of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences. He was also a member of the Zoological Society of London and was its first president until his death.

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  Royal Society , United Kingdom

Personality

Raffles was an amateur natural scientist, archeologist, Oriental philologist. On the trip out, Raffles studied the Malay language intensively, and his proficiency in this then little-known language was remarked upon by those who came in contact with him.

Quotes from others about the person

• Minto described him as “a very clever, able, active and judicious man.”
  
  Charles E. Wurtzburg (1954) wrote: "It would be difficult to imagine that, had there been no Raffles, there would have been any Singapore."

Interests

• archeology, Oriental philology

Connections

From 1805 to 1814 Thomas Stamford Raffles was married Olivia Mariamne Devenish, a widow who was formerly married to Jacob Cassivelaun Fancourt, an assistant surgeon in Madras who had died in 1800. Sophia Hull became the second wife of Sir Stamford Raffles. She bore him five children, but the only one to live beyond childhood was a daughter, who died fifteen years after her father's death, and before she was twenty.

Father:

Benjamin Raffles

Mother:

Anne Raffles

Son:

Stamford Marsden Raffles

1820–1822

Son:

Leopold Stamford Raffles

1819–1821

Daughter:

Charlotte Sophia Tunjung Segara

1818–1822

Daughter:

Ella Sophia Raffles

1821–1840

Daughter:

Flora Raffles

1823–1823

late wife:

Olivia Mariamne Devenish

She died in 1814, a memorial monument was erected to her memory in the botanical garden of Buitenzorg (Bogor).

Wife:

Sophia Hull

died 1826

Collegue :

Thomas Otho Travers

25 September 1785 – 9 July 1844, soldier, a friend of (and later aide-de-camp to) Stamford Raffles, and author of The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813-1820, published more than a century after his death.

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 11
  1975
• In the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles
  2010
• Raffles: And the Golden Opportunity
  2013
• Letters & Books of Sir Stamford Raffles and Lady Raffles: The Tang Holdings Collections
  2010
• Singapore and Its Founding by Sir Stamford Raffles (1899)
  2016
• The Golden Sword: Stamford Raffles and the East
  1999
• Raffles and the British Invasion of Java
  2012
• The Family of Sir Stamford Raffles
  2015
• One Hundred Years of Singapore: Being Some Account of the Capital of the Straits Settlements From its Foundation by Sir Stamford Raffles on the 6th February 1819 Volume 2
  2019
• Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles: A comprehensive bibliography
  1997
• Raffles and Religion: A Study on Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles Discourse on Religion Amongst the Malays
  2004
• Rethinking Raffles: A Study of Stamford Raffles' Discourse on Religions Amongst Malays
  2005
• Sir Stamford Raffles: Builders Of Greater Britain
  1897
• Raffles of the Eastern Isles
  1954