Tim Hannigan
Monsoon Books 2012
368pp
ISBN 978-981-4358-85-9
As a boy growing up in the post -Second World war in London, I force-fed a diet history who told me that the great Britain was great because it had a bygone empire. I was taught that as an island nation, we fought the likes of the Spanish Armada, Napoleon and Hitler, and our maritime power has allowed us to civilize nations far we have exported and imported Bibles resources such as the cotton. With our strict Protestant work ethic, our coal and our pure inventiveness, we operated steam and created the industrial revolution which was to be a boon to mankind.
This is very simplistic and rather romantic young minds. Our heroes were adventurers and explorers such as Walter Raleigh who gave us tobacco, potatoes and gold that he had hacked off Spanish buccaneers. In 2002 he was part of a BBC poll of the 100 greatest Britons.
But Sir Stamford Raffles was not. Until reading new published biography Tim Hannigan, I continued to share the idea that Raffles was a great man; Discover Borobudur, founder of Singapore, and having a hotel named after him seemed to be enough credit. Remember, I'm not sure that the rafflesia that also bears his name was intended as a compliment :. The largest flower in the world emanates a stench similar to that of a decomposing corpse
Hannigan gives well-documented reasons - see the closing bibliography -. In suggesting that the flower could be the most appropriate recognition
Hannigan's is perhaps just the second * 1 some 20 biographies that is not hagiography extolling " holy virtues "of the representative of the East India Company.
Unlike most other biographers Raffles, Hannigan has lived and worked in Java, Indonesia talks and wrote about the history and culture of this fascinating island for traditional English media here, and Asian geographic magazine. His research, both here and in the reading room of the British Library in London, were meticulous, and included a "source ... that the Raffles worshipers had always ignored: the other side of the story. An account existed for years where Raffles ran Java, located in the verses allusive high Javanese, written by a local aristocrat. "
This refers to the sacking of the royal city of Yogyakarta 20 June 1811 in order to replace the Sultan with a more compliant with British rule. When it was over," only 23 members British party were killed, and a modest 76 were wounded. All along the walls meanwhile, fell in ditches, abandoned in the streets and crammed in big steaming piles in the broken bridges were thousands of Javanese dead. "
How Raffles came to be lieutenant governor of Java is a tale of patronage and selfish ambition and collusion.
The suggestion that Raffles came from a poor family . patently false His father was the slave ship's master on which it was born What he left school at 14 was not unusual (as did grandfather hotel a century later). However schooling was a privilege for a minority in the early 19th century. Thanks to the "patronage" of his mother's brother, he became a clerk with the East India Company, the de facto ruler of India, on a generous salary 70 £ per year. (Charles Dickens, who was born a year after Raffles sail for Batavia, from the age of twelve worked a ten-hour day in a factory to earn just over £ 15 per year. * 2)
during his ten years as a clerk of the Company, and on it, Raffles was a prodigious self-taught, with a curiosity and drive that attracted the admiration and resentment.
In April 1805 Raffles and his wife recently conducted Olivia set sail on a five-month trip to Penang where he was to be the Assistant Secretary of the newly appointed Governor of Penang. Why he got the job at a salary of £ 1500 - an incredible increase in his annual salary while probable £ 100 - has never been satisfactorily explained. Slanderers of the time said it was related to the "dark past" of Olivia, a relationship with the Secretary General, William Ramsey, but she never wavered in her support of her husband.
Once in Penang, Raffles impressed Lord Minto, the Governor General of India, enough to give the task of gathering information on Java, a project that the Company had talked for a dozen years . Raffles later claimed that it was he who initiated (the bad) the Company's adventures here because he "was worthy of the consideration of His Lordship, beyond the Moluccas."
Hannigan puts highlight other dramatis personae of the British inter-regnum, few of them have been treated kindly by history. Some, like Major General Rollo Gillespie, the military commander, was praised in his lifetime, but there is little evidence of Colonel Colin Mackenzie, who interviewed Prambanan or John Leyden, an orientalist who seduced Raffles with his scholarship and poetry. others, Hannigan treats less sympathy.
However, one thing is clear. All were subordinated to self-aggrandizement Raffles subsequently improved and polished by Sophia, his second wife. for over a century, Singaporeans and we Brits were under . their charm Hannigan has done us a great service with sound - haunting ERM-biography. It is packed with a wealth of background on the previous history of Java, life in the sultanates with their intrigues, and Majapahit kingdoms Mataram, on how religions arrived with poorly educated traders, and Javanese mysticism always topical, with notes where appropriate.
I can not praise the work of Hannigan quite strongly, but cautioned :. A book with such wealth to anyone with an interest smidgeon Raffles and Indonesia would greatly benefit from an index
Source:
* 1 Sir Stamford Raffles - A Hero Manufacturer? Nadia Wright.
(http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/mai/files/2012/07/nadiawright.pdf)
It suggests that this was the first other India HF Pearson: A Biography Sir Stamford Raffles (Singapore pub universities Eastern Press, 1957.).
2 Ibid