Stamford Raffles

Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles (July 6, 1781 – July 5, 1826) was the founder of the city of Singapore (now the Republic of Singapore), and is one of the most famous Britons who expanded the British Empire.

Biography

Raffles was born on the ship Ann off the coast of Jamaica. Little is known of Raffles' parents. His father, Captain Benjamin Raffles, was involved in the slave trade in the Caribbean, and suddenly died when Raffles was fourteen, leaving his family in debt. The younger Raffles immediately started working as a clerk in London for the British East India Company, the quasi-government 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 Prince of Wales Island, starting a long association with southeast Asia.

Raffles was appointed the Lieutenant Governor of Java in 1811, and promoted to Governor of Sumatra shortly thereafter, during the period in which Britain took administrative control of the Dutch colonies while the Netherlands were preoccupied with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. During his governorship, Raffles introduced partial self-government, stopped the slave trade, lead an expedition to rediscover and restore Borobudur and other ancient monuments, and replaced the Dutch forced agriculture system with a Land tenure system of land management. He taught himself Malay, and research of historical Malay documents inspired his search for Borobudur. Among other minor reforms, he changed the Dutch colonies to the British system of driving on the left.

In 1815, he left again for England after the island of Java was returned to control of the Netherlands following the Napoleonic Wars. In 1817, Raffles wrote and published a book entitled History of Java, describing the history of the island from ancient times. In 1817 he was knighted by the prince regent. He came back to the island of Sumatra in 1818, and on 29 January, 1819, he established a free-trade post at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula — a site that became Singapore. This was an audacious move, against the British policy of not offending the Dutch in a zone conceded to be a Dutch sphere of influence. In six weeks, several hundred traders appeared to take advantage of the no-tax policy, and Raffles gained retrospective approval from London.

Raffles declared the foundation of what was to become modern Singapore on 6 February of that year, securing transfer of control of the island to the East India Company. He was also responsible for the Raffles Plan of Singapore. By the time he left the country in 1823, the city was on its way to become the largest port in the world. It continues to thrive as a low tax trading hub.

Raffles was also a founder (in 1825) and first president (elected April 1826) of the Zoological Society of London and the London Zoo.

He died in London, England, a day before his forty-fifth birthday, on July 5, 1826, of apoplexy. Because of his anti-slavery stance, he was refused burial inside his local parish church (St. Mary's, Hendon) by the vicar, whose family had made its money in the slave trade. When the church was extended in the 1920s his tomb was incorporated into the body of the building.

Coat of Arms

The Blazon of his Armorial Ensigns reads:

"Or a double headed Eagle displayed Gules charged on the breast with an Eastern Crown on the first, on a Chief Vert pendednt from a chain two oval Medallions in Pale the one bearing Arabic characters and the other a dagger in fess the blade wavy the point towards the dexter in relief Or, the said medallions and chain being a representation of a personal deocration called the Order of the Golden Sword conferred upon by him by the Chief or King of Atcheen in Sumatra as a mark of the high regard of the said King and in testimony of the good understanding which had been happily established between that Prince and the British Government; and for a crest out of an Eastern Crown Or a Gryphon's Head Purpure gorged with a collar gemel Gold."

The Coat of Arms has become part of the school crest of Raffles Institution, and subsequently Raffles Junior College (Auspicium Melioris Aevi, the school motto, in Latin means "Hope for a Better Age"). It can also be found as part of a stained-glass window in the St. Andrew's Cathedral.

Legacy

In Singapore and in other parts of the world, his name lives on in numerous entities, including:

Biology

Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research
Rafflesia (a genus of parasitic flowering plants)
Megalaima rafflesi (Red-crowned Barbet)
Dinopium rafflesii (Olive-backed Woodpecker)
Chaetodon rafflesi (Latticed Butterflyfish)
Nepenthes rafflesiana (a species of pitcher plant)

Buildings

Business

Education

Sports and Recreation

Transport

External links

Biography at the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research

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