by John Keay
Meanwhile, thanks to a waiving of all customs duties, the place did prosper, although not sensationally so. Trade between Bengal and the Malay states tended to concentrate in Georgetown and, like all the Company’s settlements, it steadily attracted a lively population; by 1804 it numbered some 12,000. To feed them, an adjacent chunk of the Malay peninsula had been purchased by the Company in 1800 and renamed Province Wellesley. But what did greatly enhance the island’s prospects were the naval hostilities with France. Penang, with its sheltered harbour between the island and Province Wellesley, became a useful base at which to station warships on convoy duty with the China fleet and and an excellent marshalling port for operations further east. Rainier sailed from here to requisition the Moluccas in 1795 and two years later Penang became the assembly point for a massive task force designated for Manila. Unlike Draper’s invasion during the Seven Years War, this one never sailed; the fourth and final war with Tipu Sultan of Mysore required the presence of the troops in India. But among those who got as far as Penang was Colonel Arthur Wellesley, the later Duke of Wellington. He took the occasion to pen a lengthy report on the place which, while criticizing its military defences, made no doubt that it was ‘of infinite advantage to the Company’ and ‘a most desirable place to retain’.
As Governor-General, his brother Richard concurred and, when French naval activity in the Bay of Bengal again pointed up the need for a monsoon haven that was nearer than Bombay, even the Admiralty smiled on Penang. In 1805, in return for a commitment from the Navy to convert Penang into a base and dockyard, the Company agreed to upgrade its establishment there and to improve its fortification. Thus did the infant settlement achieve overnight a precocious status as the Company’s fourth Presidency with a civil establishment on a par with that of Bombay or Madras. And thus did it acquire the services as Assistant Secretary in this top-heavy administration of one Tom Raffles, lately a clerk in India House.
Penang’s elevation, however premature, was not of course the bold new thrust that historians of British India have sometimes assumed. South-east Asia had been home for the Company’s first Presidency and for much of its 200 years either Bantam, Batavia, or Benkulen had enjoyed a similar status under a governor or lieutenant-governor. On the other hand it had been comparatively rare for a Company servant to end up in south-cast Asia with absolutely no experience of India and, as in Raffles’s case, no apparent ambitions to join one of the Indian establishments. Small, energetic, and of obscure origins, Raffles directed his considerable ability and his near-suicidal ambition towards less trammelled pastures. Fame he craved more than fortune; Napoleon intrigued him more than Hastings.
As early as 1808 Raffles became convinced that Penang would never realize the role envisaged for it nor serve his own purposes as a springboard to glory. As a commercial entrepôt it was too far from Burma’s teak forests, and as a strategic base on the China route it could never compare with the old Portuguese, Dutch and now British strongpoint at Malacca. Yet Malacca, which should have been handed back to the Dutch in 1802 but was still in British hands when war broke out again in 1804, was being systematically dismantled. The Company’s reasoning was that one day it would indeed be handed back and, since it was so strategically placed not only on the China route but also at the gateway to the archipelago, the best policy was to render it down. Hence its population and its trade were being encouraged to relocate in Penang.
Raffles thought this madness. With the help of William Farquhar, a Malay specialist and the British representative at Malacca (and no relation apparently to Robert Farquhar, recently of the Moluccas), he made a detailed study of the archipelago’s internal trade, noticing in particular the crucial role of those Bugis traders from Sulawesi (Celebes) and Borneo. The result was a masterly analysis of a little understood subject which demonstrated that Penang’s future, far from depending on the destruction of Malacca, actually hinged on Malacca remaining a going concern and remaining in British hands. Unbeknown to Farquhar he then forwarded his thoughts to Lord Minto, the new Governor-General. Minto reversed the Government’s policy over Malacca and duly noted the name of Thomas Raffles.
Two years later Ambon, Banda and the rest of the Spice Islands were again captured by the Navy. On a hint that he might be in the running for the Governorship of Ambon, Raffles hastened to Calcutta. Minto had to disappoint him; but in the broadest of hints the Governor-General directed his roving gaze towards Java, the seat of Dutch empire in the East. An expedition against Batavia, the capital, had been planned in 1801 but aborted in order to concentrate on expelling Napoleon from Egypt. Now Egypt was safe, even Mauritius was about to capitulate, and only Java remained as a possible base for Franco-Dutch operations in the East. Minto’s mere mention of the place was ‘enough to encourage me’, wrote Raffles, ‘and from this moment all my views, all my plans, and all my mind were devoted to create such an interest towards Java as should lead to its annexation to our Eastern Empire’.
The actual invasion took place in 1811. Raffles had prepared the ground, chosen the invasion route, and thoroughly mastered the political situation. He was rewarded with the governorship of what he now called ‘this other India’. Populous, rich in produce and history, and the greatest commercial asset in the archipelago, Java was ‘the Bengal of the East Indies’. Its possession by the Company afforded quite simply ‘the most splendid prospect which any administration has beheld since our first acquisition of India itself’.
All of which was true. But it rather overlooked the fact that neither the Court of Directors nor the Board of Control had the slightest interest in annexing Java. The idea was simply to pre-empt its use by the French and, if absolutely necessary, to retain the place until a European peace permitted its return to a friendly Holland. In undertaking a complete reorganization of the country’s fiscal, agrarian and commercial structure, Raffles often disobeyed orders and wilfully ignored the inevitable. Had his reforms even produced a surplus – which they did not – there is no evidence to suggest that either the Company or the Crown, to each of whom he appealed in turn, would have changed its mind about retention.
The inevitable came courtesy of Arthur Wellesley’s triumph at Waterloo. Java and Malacca were handed back and Raffles’s hopes were dashed. By way of consolation he was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Benkulen, the Sumatra factory which had evidently changed little since Collet’s day. It was, declared Raffles, ‘the most wretched place I ever beheld’. But ‘they say that I am a spirit that will never allow the East to be quiet’, he wrote, ‘and that this second Elba in which I am placed is not secure enough’. So it proved.
First he tried to extend the Company’s territories in Sumatra with, among others, a claim to the island’s southernmost tip which would have given command of the Sunda Straits (between Sumatra and Java). When this move was disowned, he turned again to the Malacca Straits. Although the Dutch had been allowed to resume Malacca itself, it was not intended that they should use it to preclude British shipping from the archipelago nor to interfere with the vital China trade. Yet so predatory was Raffles’s conduct that the Dutch were speedily provoked into taking exactly the sort of action which could be so construed. As one by one the islands and harbours of the Straits were persuaded to sign exclusive treaties with the Dutch, Raffles’s arguments for a British counter-move gained weight. To match the Dutch at treaty-making William Farquhar was sent to the west coast of Borneo and among the islands at the entrance to the Straits. ‘Mynheer’ had beaten him to both. There remained only Raffles’s most drastic solution – to seize, occupy, and promote a new British settlement, then argue about the rights of the matter later.
In the long search for an eastern entrepôt it is as if the Company had all along been steadily narrowing its focus. From places as far apart as Pulo Condore, Tourane, Balambangan and Penang, the search had become concentrated on the Malacca Strait. Now, as Raffles and Farquhar sailed down it with the orders, troops, and bricks necessary for the final solution, the fo
cus narrowed still further to the island clusters at the very tip of the Malay peninsula.
According to reports reaching Penang, the Rhio group had just been snapped up by the Dutch. They also held the Lingga archipelago while the Carimons, though favoured by Farquhar, were quickly rejected by Raffles. That left in effect only one place, an island hard against the shore of Johore, covered like all the rest with dense jungle, inhabited by a few Malay fishermen, and of no current commercial consequence whatsoever. It was called Singhapura. On 28 January 1819 Raffles’s little fleet anchored at the mouth of the Singapore river. Next day he went ashore with Farquhar and one sepoy. The local chief welcomed them into his rattan house and served them with rambutans and other fruit. When, in return for a substantial allowance, he agreed to authorize a British factory, the troops were immediately disembarked. But the arrangement was subject to the approval of the ruler of Johore and, as Raffles fully appreciated, that depended on who actually was the rightful ruler of Johore. Since the Dutch supported the de facto ruler, Raffles hunted out his elder brother. Though cordially disliked by the British party, he was immediately acknowledged as Sultan. On the following day he presided with Raffles at a ceremonial signing complete with red carpet laid across the sand, guard of honour, and numerous artillery salutes.
The military nature of the occupation was important. The Dutch were to understand that any attempt to evict the British would be met with force. Raffles gambled on their opting for a diplomatic offensive which, however effective, would give his settlement the few months necessary to establish its utility. So it did. Within a matter of weeks over 2000 Malays and Chinese had decamped from Malacca to set up shop in Singapore. By the summer, when news of the acquisition reached London, the population already exceeded 5000 and included representatives of several of the main agency houses. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Raffles’s conduct, and whatever the legality of the cession, there could be no going back. ‘Our object is not territory but trade,’ wrote Raffles, ‘a great commercial emporium and fulcrum whence we may extend our influence politically as circumstances may hereafter require…One free port in these seas must eventually destroy the spell of Dutch monopoly; and what Malta is in the West, that may Singapore become in the East…’
The vision, the energy, and the effrontery, which made Singapore the success which Balambangan and Penang had never been, were Raffles’s. But it is not at all certain that the idea was his. Farquhar had certainly suggested Singapore; so had Captain Ross, the chief surveyor with the expedition. Raffles had supposedly adopted it as a result of his studies into Malay history. He declared Singhapura ‘classical ground’ since it had been a place of some consequence in the fourteenth-century Srivijayan empire; a historical pedigree lent dignity and substance to his creation.
The name is so impressively Sanskrit (Singha-Pura – Lion-City) that the wonder is that every passing Indophil had not noted the place. Yet the first mention of it seems to have been not by an etymologist or an empire builder but by the meticulous commander of the Company’s Seventh Voyage, Peter Floris, on his return from Patani to Masulipatnam. A century later that ever outspoken apostle of private trade, Captain Alexander Hamilton, he who fell foul of John Child, briefly commanded the Bombay Marine at Karwar, and had strong objections to eating Cantonese duck, also noticed it.
In anno 1703 I called at Johore on my way to China [writes the Captain] and he [the prince of Johore] treated me very kindly and made me a present of the island of Singapore; but I told him that it could be of no use to a private person, though a proper place for a Company to settle a colony on, lying in the centre of trade…’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Epilogue
In an exhaustive study of Trade in the Eastern Seas around the year 1800 Professor C. N. Parkinson neatly summarizes the peculiar changes which had overtaken the Company. Since it was still officially ‘The United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies’, ‘there would be nothing manifestly reckless’, writes Parkinson, ‘in concluding that India House sheltered a body of English merchants trading with India’.
Nevertheless, such a conclusion would be wrong: the men within were not merchants, and they were not trading with India. One might add, a little unkindly, that they were not always united, and that they were not all Englishmen.
Indeed they were not. With India itself awash with Campbells, MacLeods, MacPhersons and Mackenzies, and with both Malacca and the Moluccas under Farquhar rule, it was as if Hastings and Raffles were the only Englishmen around. What Lord Rosebery called ‘the Scoticisation of India’ was being directly attributed to Henry Dundas, soon to be ennobled as Viscount Melville of Melville and Baron Dunira of Dunira in the County of Perth. So much for the theory that the Board of Control left the Company’s patronage intact.
How was the East India Company controlled [continues Parkinson]? By the Government. What was its object? To collect taxes [i.e. revenue]. How was its object attained? By means of a large standing army. What were its employees? Soldiers, mostly; the rest, Civil Servants. Where did it trade to? China. What did it export from England? Courage. And what did it import from China? Tea.
For ‘courage’ one might substitute ‘men and guns’. Otherwise the summary may stand. For as of 1813 all that remained of the Company as a self-governing commercial enterprise was its partial monopoly of the China trade.
In 1800 Dundas had proposed that ships built in India and operated by country traders should be admitted to the London-India trade. This looked more like a direct attack on the Company’s monopoly than an extension of the 1793 concession (allowing some cargo space to country traders in Indiamen operating this sector). Led by the Company’s shipping interest – an immensely powerful group of ships’ captains and agents who had acquired hereditary rights in the construction, supply and command of the Company’s fleet – the directors had successfully stalled. But in 1813 the Company’s charter again came up for renewal and this time the monopoly of the London-India trade was finally broken.
The challenge came not from the country traders but from that other prong of the free trade lobby, Britain’s manufacturing industries. Giving the Company’s monopoly a stern drubbing in the process, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations had first urged the logic of free trade back in the 1770s. But it was not until the turn of the century that British manufacturers, and in particular the cotton kings of Lancashire, were sufficiently confident of their products’ quality and price structure to adopt the cause of deregulation. Until then their attacks on the Company had focused on restricting the quantity and quality of Indian piece goods entering Britain and so posing an ‘unfair’ competition for the domestic product. Now, thanks to greater mechanization and better supply arrangements for raw cotton, the Manchester Chamber of Commerce welcomed competition as eagerly as the country traders.
Throughout the new industrial heartlands of England and Scotland petitions were drawn up and Members of Parliament were lobbied. Since the Company was signally failing to sell British manufactured goods in the largest markets known to man, it was only common sense to let others try. Other ports, went the argument, must be free to compete for the trade with London and other shippers free to compete with the Company. British jobs depended on it; and so, more decisively, did votes. Once the movement had gathered momentum there was no stopping it. However eloquent the Company’s defence of its loyal Indian artisans, there was no political mileage in protecting Bengali weavers from being overwhelmed by a continuous roll of mass-produced, duty-free prints. Against the need for full employment in Manchester, Midnapur stood not a chance. After all, what was the use of subject territories if they did not afford a market for the imperial manufacturer? Especially when their only other promised return, revenue, was being so readily absorbed in maintenance costs.
The Company’s directors, bitterly divided amongst themselves and in the process of negotiating a new £2.5 million loan from the Government, were in no position to resist. Nor could they have r
esisted. Whereas once they were answerable only to the General Court of Proprietors, now they were subject to the control and direction of an elected government whose political priorities were paramount. After 213 years that cherished monopoly of Eastern trade, so resented by the interlopers and so hotly defended by the Company’s servants, must finally end. But two exceptions of great importance were made. By mutual consent China, now far and away the largest market, and tea, now far and away the most profitable commodity, were reserved to the Company. Although this residual commerce was destined to stay with the Company for only twenty years, the part it played in transforming Indian revenues into British wealth was a crucial factor in the development of empire.
‘India does entirely depend upon the profits of the China trade, declared the Company’s auditor in 1830. By then it was not simply a question of individuals remitting home their savings and of the Company recovering the wherewithal to meet its home charges (i.e. dividends, salaries, the purchase of military stores, etc). For now duties on tea – which had steadily increased almost to their pre-Commutation Act levels – were providing the British Exchequer with over £3 million per year, almost one-tenth of its total revenue receipts from the whole of England. At £30 million a year, tea imports represented the largest single item in the country’s trading account.
The Company had faced no greater commercial challenge than the China market and it was therefore fitting that in its dotage it should enjoy the tea trade to the full. More to the point, it was generally felt that the xenophobic nature of the Chinese and the delicate character of commercial dealings in Canton argued against the admission of new competitors. It was hard enough to exercise an effective control over the existing country traders. In spite of its dependence on them, twice during the 1780s the Company had tried to remove these often unruly colleagues from their Canton factory only to find them reappearing under foreign colours. Thus Meares’s associate, Daniel Beale, resurfaced as Consul for the King of Prussia while his partner, Henry Cox, returned under Swedish colours. Like the interlopers of old, country traders were none too particular about national loyalties. Instead of Anglo-Ostenders, Canton now swarmed with Anglo-Poles, Anglo-Portuguese, Anglo-Genoese, and even Anglo-Sardinians. Joining this cosmopolitan set in 1827 James Matheson, successor to the Cox and Beale partnership, boasted Danish nationality.
