A statue of Sir Thomas Raffles stands at the spot where he first landed in 1819.

Photo Paul Douglass

Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, a British East India Company administrator and son of a slave trader, founded modern Singapore in 1819.

But, despite his incalculable contribution to the company’s fortunes in the Far East over many years of service and to the future prosperity of the city he founded, the East India Company sued Sir Raffles near the end of his life.

His company demanded reimbursement for, among other things, "his precipitate and unauthorized emancipation of the Company’s slaves."

In the view of the East India Company, Raffles had been a disobedient agent in Singapore even though time had proven his liberal colonial policies right. Nevertheless, Company governors found it impossible to forgive Raffles entirely for having taken matters into his own hands.

In a bitter irony, Sir Raffle’s widow was ordered by the Court of Directors of the East India Company to repay the Company £10,000 ($15,000) for personal expenses incurred largely during his mission to found Singapore. The judgment nearly wiped out his estate.

Historian Maurice Collis concludes, "Altogether, one is obliged to say that the Court’s treatment of Sophia [Raffles’ widow] was a piece of meanness hardly to be paralleled in history."

Born at sea in 1781 on board a ship off Jamaica skippered by his father, a slave trader, Raffles received little formal education but began a career as a clerk for the East India Company at an early age. At 23 he was appointed as assistant secretary to the colonial government at Penang in the Malaysian Archipelago. He taught himself several languages, including the Malay language, and his fluency and knowledge of local customs made him indispensable to the Company.

Raffles proved to be a hard working and effective administrator. Eventually, the British authorities noticed his talents as it sought to expand its colonial empire in the Far East and jostle the Dutch out of control of trade in the region. He was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen in Western Sumatra in 1811.

Raffles believed that a new British trading port was needed to the South of the Malay Peninsula to better position the company along lucrative Chinese trade routes. He made an exploratory visit to Singa Pura where he immediately knew he had found the place he’d been looking for. It not only lay on the main trade route amidst China, Europe and India but it also had plenty of wood, water and an excellent harbor suitable for big ships.

When Raffles and his party first arrived at the tiny tropical village at the mouth of the Singapore River on January 19, 1819, Singapore consisted of swamp and forests populated by tigers and 200 or so inhabitants.

At the time, the two sons of the previous sultan, the Sultan of Johor, were locked in a dispute over who would inherit their father’s throne. Acting without clear authority from his employer or his own government but eager to strike a deal, Raffles sided with the elder brother, promising him the backing of the British military, and proclaimed him sultan in a public ceremony. The two negotiated a deal whereby the sultan granted the British a lease allowing them to establish a trading post on the island in return for annual rent of 5,000 Spanish dollars (the most widely traded currency in the region).

The treaty signing marked the founding of modern Singapore.

Within three years, the small fishing village was transformed into a boomtown of 10,000 immigrants administered by the East India Company. One reason for Singapore's rapid growth was the fact that it was a tax-free port. Raffles instituted this practice as an incentive for merchants to use the harbor, and thereafter generations of resident traders were to view it as an almost sacred policy. This made Singapore a much more inviting place for traders to land than the Dutch ports in the Straits, where high taxes and harbor fees were imposed. In 1867, Singapore became a British crown colony.

On a return trip to London, Raffles was knighted in 1847 for his scholarly works on the East Indian peoples. He is remembered there as a founder of the London Zoo and served as its first president.

In Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles is remembered as founder of their city-state. But he is also honored for his humanism and enlightened spirit toward peoples, his strong opposition to slavery, ending the harsh colonial practices of the Dutch, his life-long support for education and for his habit of collecting historical and scientific information about the region.

Today, a white marble statue of Sir Stamford Raffles stands near the river’s edge in gleaming downtown Singapore at the spot where he first landed.