Raffles

by Victoria Glendinning

  Batavia itself was notoriously unhealthy with, historically, a staggeringly high death rate among Europeans. The shoreline was swampy. The rivers and the Dutch-built canals were foul with sewage. Walls of houses were coated in green slime up to several feet from the ground. Listed illnesses included recurrent fever (malaria), dysentery and diarrhoea, vomiting, hepatitis, rheumatism, venereal, and ‘other’.

  Daendels had done a lot towards cleaning up Batavia. but Raffles and his family still preferred to be in the fresh air thirty-five miles away at Buitenzorg, the large, shabby neo-classical country house built by a former Dutch governor. Raffles spent two days or so each week at the Residence at Ryswick, just outside Batavia, while conducting much of his business from Buitenzorg. The drive took four hours each way, his carriage drawn by four – and if he was in a hurry, six – local ponies, ‘the most beautiful creatures in the world,’ as he told William Brown Ramsay. Captain Taylor described the countryside around Buitenzorg as like ‘the most beautiful parts of Shropshire or Devonshire.’

  Raffles’ ‘family’ at Buitenzorg included Olivia, and from time to time his sisters. The family doctor, Sir Thomas Sevestre, three years younger than Raffles, was part of the household. Raffles’ half-dozen aides-de-camp, all a few years younger than he, shared his and Olivia’s domestic life and travelled with them. These young men were given additional appointments, which meant extra allowances. Captain Thomas Otho Travers, for example, was Assistant Secretary to Government in the Military Department, and Town Major of Batavia.

  Travers was devoted to Raffles. He was an emotional creature but his literary style was stilted. In his new diary for 1813, he wrote: ‘It is now nearly two years since I became intimate with Mr and Mrs Raffles, and during that time, as my intimacy increased in their family, I have had the satisfaction to experience a similar and kind attention towards me.’ At Buitenzorg he passed ‘the happiest days since I left my own country’. At Christmas 1812 they had ‘all kinds of gaiety…the utmost hilarity and good humour prevailed, and continued without interruption from Christmas Day till the 6th of January’ – when the party broke up and went back to Batavia to celebrate the Queen’s Birthday, ‘a very grand and superb fete’ with five hundred people to supper. Raffles did not only want fame and to do good. He wanted to showcase British prestige. It all cost money.

  Captain William Robison, Minto’s former ADC, was appointed Secretary to Government, but this did not work out. Robison, nearly as energetic as Raffles himself, was dissatisfied as Secretary, and resigned. The post was given to Charles Blagrave, whom Raffles had recruited for Java when he called in at Batavia en route for Malacca. This did not work out either. Raffles sacked Blagrave and replaced him with Charles Assey, a young man from Suffolk who proved reliable. Lieutenant-Governor Raffles was not altogether easy to work with. Overwhelmed, he found it hard to keep his small team of civil servants informed of what he required of them.

  Raffles was Lieutenant-Governor in Council, and the first three Council members, appointed by Lord Minto before he left, were Colonel Gillespie, Herman Warner Muntinghe and Jacob Willem Cranssen – the last two, Dutchmen friendly to the English, had held office in the previous Government. There were other Dutch families – Engelhards, Van Riemsdijks, Timmerson Thyssens – long-established merchants and former Government officials, who constituted a sort of gentry, supportive of Raffles and his administration.

  Two of the ceremonious diplomatic exchanges which Raffles had in Malacca with the rulers of the Archipelago had repercussions early in his administration. Both concerned territories beyond Java.

  He had mentioned, in his last mega-letter to Minto before the invasion, the kingdom of Banjarmasin on the south-east coast of Borneo, lately abandoned by the Dutch. The Rajah of Banjarmasin had sent an embassy to the Government of Penang inviting the British to take it over. Any decision, Raffles advised Minto, would be ‘premature’.

  Sophia Raffles in her Memoir wrote that it was Minto, not Raffles, who appointed Alexander Hare as Commissioner and Resident at Banjarmasin soon after the invasion, but who knows on what advice: Raffles had brought his wild friend Hare, whom he had met in Malacca, along with him to Java. Hare was authorised to make a contract with the Rajah on the Company’s behalf for a coastal strip. Then Hare acquired, for free, a further 1,400 square miles for himself personally. Raffles as Lieutenant-Governor sanctioned this, even though he had specifically decreed that ‘the acceptance of gifts by a Resident will involve immediate dismissal.’ Raffles also furnished Hare with a so-called ‘working population’ from Java, which included a consignment of women, allegedly ‘of loose morals’, some of them hijacked by force from their villages. Hare had a gruesome sexual appetite. These unsavoury measures became known to historians as the ‘Banjarmasin Enormity’.

  When Raffles in 1813 revived the dormant Batavian Society of Arts and Science, in his address to the Society he praised Alexander Hare, saying that under his administration Banjarmasin had been ‘reduced to order and regulation’. Not so. Banjarmasin was reduced to squalor, poverty, disorder and unprofitability. In The History of Java, Raffles wrote about the island of Borneo, but did not even mention Banjarmasin.

  In conniving with Hare, Raffles betrayed his values. He was often inconsistent – most people are, but most people are not subjected to scrutiny. What Raffles and Hare had in common was flaring vitality and the same sort of poor-respectable London background. Raffles was sexually disciplined. He aspired to win the approval of the Establishment. There can be a mutual attraction between such a man and a promiscuous, unscrupulous, rule-breaker such as Hare, each responding to suppressed possibilities, paths not taken.

  Equally serious in its aftermath was the Palembang affair. Palembang, an ancient jungle kingdom, was a major commercial centre, sixty miles up from the delta of the Musi river off the south-east coast of Sumatra. It had been a dependency of Batavia. In September 1811, shortly after the invasion of Java, the Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin ordered the massacre of the Dutch garrison in Palembang. The men were taken out in a boat down the river to the sea and murdered or drowned. Their women were abused and raped.

  Raffles, knowing nothing of this, sent on 3 November a three-man mission (which included Alexander Hare) to Palembang to receive the surrender of the Dutch as part of the capitulation of Java and its dependencies. The Sultan would not treat with the mission, on the grounds that he had broken with the Dutch well before the British invasion, and that Palembang was therefore not a Dutch (or French) dependency, but autonomous.

  The massacre, as Raffles understood it, had been perpetrated to conceal a continued Dutch presence. Outraged, at the end of April 1812 he sent Colonel Gillespie with troops and a small fleet to dethrone the murderous Sultan, sign a treaty with his brother Najmuddin, and take possession, in addition, of the adjacent islands of Billiton and tin-rich Banca, which he coveted for commercial and strategic reasons.

  When Gillespie and his troops arrived by river at the battlements of Palembang, at night and in a thunderstorm, they found that the inhabitants of the place had gone on the rampage and fired and ransacked the palace. Sultan Badaruddin had fled. Gillespie hoisted the British flag on the bastion, and placed the Sultan’s brother Najmuddin on the vacant throne under a ritual yellow canopy in a solemn ceremony.

  Raffles wrote to Lord Minto just two days before the departure of Gillespie for Palembang, telling him he was ‘aware that I have taken too much responsibility on myself,’ but the expedition had to be despatched at once, or wait another whole year because of the winds. This became his pattern. He reported diligently to the Governor-General, but generally after the event.

  Raffles appointed Robison, promoted from Captain to Major, as British Resident in Palembang. It was a job suited, perhaps, to his energies, but Robison went too far. Sultan Najmuddin, installed by Gillespie, seemed to Robison ineffective, and what is more he had no money. Part of Robison’s job was to make contact with the deposed Sultan Badaruddin, who had all the treasur
e with him in his jungle exile. Thinking Badaruddin a better bet, Robison re-installed him on the throne on his own authority, taking off him 200,000 Spanish dollars on behalf of the British Government. He brought the cash back to Batavia with a bunch of Palembang princes as diplomatic back-up.

  Raffles and Gillespie were appalled by Robison’s highhandedness. Raffles decided to annul the treaty Robison had made with Badaruddin, and sent a ship commanded by Captain George Elliot with 400 men to evict Badaruddin once more, in favour of the brother. The accompanying officials took back to Palembang the Spanish dollars, with instructions, according to Travers, to return some to the twice-deposed Sultan, and the remainder to ‘the Sultan created by us.’ Robison, in retaliation, was to allege that Raffles had kept back half of the money in Batavia.

  Robison was officially reprimanded, and his high-handed actions investigated. ‘The rumour of the day ran much to the prejudice of Major Robison,’ wrote Captain Travers, ‘and attributed motives to his conduct which, I trust, will hereafter prove to have never existed.’ These motives consisted of Robison having accepted a bribe from Badaruddin. The investigating commission had to report that Colonel Gillespie too had received gifts from the Sultan whom he had installed.

  Java had never been completely conquered by any European power. The ancient empire of Mataram in Central Java had been paramount on the island, first as a Hindu then as an Islamic polity after the Muslim takeover of the island in the fifteenth century. In the mid-eighteenth century Mataram was divided between the Sultanates of Surakarta (also known as Solo, and where the Sultan was called the Susuhunan), and Yogyakarta. Before Lord Minto left the Island, Captain (as he then was) Robison paid a diplomatic visit to the two courts to assure them that their treaties with the Dutch would be respected. Raffles feared that his own plans might be compromised by Robison’s injudicious promises, and in November 1811 he replaced the Dutch Resident at Yogyakarta with John Crawfurd.

  On 25 April 1812 the Gazette reported: ‘We understand Mrs Raffles has been requested by the officers of the station to fix a night, upon which to honour them with her presence, at a Ball and Supper, previous to her departure…’ For while Gillespie was away in Palembang, Raffles removed himself and his family to Samarang on the coast east of Batavia, well-placed for visiting the kingdoms of Surakarta and Yogyakarta, due south over the mountains. Samarang was a congenial little port with around five hundred European and Eurasian inhabitants. The English established a race-course at nearby Salatiga (never attended by Raffles). Raffles stayed with Nicholas Engelhard, former Governor of Yogyakarta.

  On 14 May all ‘the beauty and fashion of Samarang’ attended a ball and supper, enlivened by ‘the bewitching power of Bacchus’. Captain George Elliot and the Modeste chanced to put in at Samarang, and the ship’s officers gave an ‘entertainment’ for the English and the ‘principal Dutch fashionables’. Captain Elliot was the one who wrote that Raffles was ‘neither born and bred a gentleman’ – to which he added ‘he had a low set of people about him [in Java], all of some talent, but unfit for advisers, particularly as to gentlemanly conduct.’ He probably meant the gang of young ADCs around Raffles and Olivia, and their convivial, noisy parties.

  The purpose of this journey was for Raffles to pay formal visits to the Susuhunan of Surakarta and the Sultan of Yogyakarta, and to counteract any impression of indulgence that Robison had conveyed. He went first to Surakarta, where the Susuhunan agreed to give up the profits from his birds’ nests (for soup, much in demand in China and very lucrative) and his teak forests in exchange for a fixed payment. He presented Raffles with a valuable kris – the wavy-bladed dagger of the Malays. So far so good.

  Colonel Colin Mackenzie accompanied Raffles to Surakarta. He was in the area anyway, engaged on an intractable commission from Raffles – to survey the island of Java from every possible aspect: geographical, social and economic, historical and cultural. It was a mighty task even for Mackenzie, a conscientious and able man, six feet two inches tall, from the Outer Hebrides. Raffles made in Surakarta a new friend – an American physician and naturalist from Pennsylvania, Dr Thomas Horsfield. He had been in Java for more than a decade, retained by the Dutch, and then the French, to research the useful and medicinal plants of the island; these researches expanded into every branch of natural history.

  Horsfield and Raffles met at the Susuhunan’s official reception where, as Horsfield recorded, Raffles ‘came up to me and with an affability and suavity of manner peculiar to himself offered me his acquaintance without the formality of an introduction.’ ‘Suavity’ was a term often used of Raffles. It meant, then, sweetness of manner. Raffles went round to Horsfield’s house, and ‘devoted several hours to patient examination of the objects of natural history, drawings, maps and illustrations which had been collected and prepared during my excursions through the central and eastern territories of Java.’ Raffles signed Horsfield up with the Company, agreeing a salary, and authorising him to enquire into ‘all divisions of natural history without limitations or restrictions.’ It was to prove a fruitful relationship.

  From Surakarta, Raffles sent to Yogyakarta a mission which included W.H. Muntinghe and Colonel Colin Mackenzie to pave the way for a treaty. Sultan Hamengkubuwana II, untruthfully, expressed himself as agreeable to anything, so Raffles set off himself to Yogyakarta, accompanied by light cavalry and his personal staff. There was a stand-off when he was met outside the Sultan’s kraton, or palace, about whether he should ride in the first or second coach. He appropriated the first, leaving the second for the Sultan. He was making it clear that what was at issue was British supremacy.

  The crisis occurred when the Sultan paid a visit to the British Residency in Yogyakarta. There were two golden thrones on a raised dais. One – which Raffles appropriated – was purposefully positioned further forward than the other. The Sultan, who came attended by scores of armed guards, ordered that the thrones should be placed side by side. Raffles refused to allow this. The Sultan’s guards each unsheathed his kris, the Sultan unsheathed his. Raffles – who had never seen action or fired a shot in his life – drew his sword.

  Raffles broke the tension by sheathing his sword. Who knows what was going on in his mind – how to avoid a bloodbath, or just the blankness that shuts down thought in extreme situations. The effect, however, was not of submission, but of a calm assumption of having made his point. John Crawfurd, the Resident, uttered emollient words. The Sultan sat down. The bad moment passed. Raffles and the Sultan proceeded to communicate courteously enough and an agreement was signed (not that the Sultan intended to honour it).

  Raffles failed to make the return visit to the Sultan the next day, which etiquette demanded. He and his entourage simply left Yogyakarta. This was a calculated snub and offended the Sultan, who thenceforth began to intrigue against the British. The Dutch Residents at the Central Javanese courts had traditionally acted like ambassadors, not like colonial overseers. Raffles’ actions, designed to demonstrate that the British did not accept the autonomy of the Central Javanese courts, amply succeeded. They were also counterproductive, making armed confrontation highly likely.

  A Sultan of Yogyakarta had semi-divine status. He was a bathara or bitara, as Raffles had wished Minto to present himself in the Eastern Isles. The etiquette of dress, behaviour and precedence at the court were of a complexity which rendered the manners of England’s royal drawing rooms rustic in comparison. The interventions, expulsions and substitutions which Raffles made among the rulers in Java and elsewhere would seem breathtaking in their presumption, were it not that the succession, or the continuance of a reign, was frequently disputed, with no input from occupying powers at all. In Yogyakarta, shortly after Captain Robison’s earlier diplomatic visit, Hamengkubuwana II ousted from the throne the Crown Prince, reigning as Hamengkubuwana III, who had previously ousted him. Raffles had acknowledged the man he met as the rightful ruler, while protesting, through John Crawfurd, against his revenge killings.

  John Cr
awfurd was a sound appointment as Resident in Yogyakarta. He was from the Isle of Islay off the west coast of Scotland and was, like Colin Mackenzie, a Gaelic speaker. Raffles had known him as a medical officer in Penang, and brought him to Java along with his wife. Like Raffles, Crawfurd collected manuscripts and was interested in antiquities. Though the two were never close friends, Raffles valued him as an administrator, a fellow Orientalist, and a linguist; he was fluent in Malay and became so in Javanese. He was two years younger than Raffles but dour, and did not get on with Hamengkubawana II.

  After Raffles’ provocative visit, a secret correspondence sprang up between the courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta, plotting to resist the British. The Sultan of Yogyakarta strengthened the walls around his kraton.

  Raffles heard of this, and to him the conspiracy was treachery. He was not militaristic and would much rather unseat the Sultan of Yogyakarta by peaceful means – that is, by devious diplomacy. He wrote to Minto on 2 June 1812 that ‘the conduct and disposition of the Sultan is so unfavourable and unsafe that his removal becomes necessary… I hope we may be able to effect the change without bloodshed.’ But his own actions had made this virtually impossible.

  Colonel Gillespie, only back a week from Palembang, was mustering his troops at Samarang in early June 1812.