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Review of Syed Hussein Alatas’s Thomas Stamford Raffles: Schemer or Reformer? (Singapore: NUS Press, 2020)
By Lance Wu
Located along the north bank of the Singapore River, a cross-armed polymarble statue of Thomas Stamford Raffles commands attention. On his pedestal reads an inscription: “with genius and perception changed the destiny of Singapore from an obscure fishing village to a great seaport and modern metropolis.” Although Singapore’s success and development has been linked to Raffles’ founding of modern Singapore in 1819, Raffles’ actual role in the Singapore story has come under greater scrutiny in recent years.
There are certain ‘facts’ that recur in state narratives about Raffles: Sir Stamford Raffles landed on Singapore shores in 1819. He struck an agreement (known now as the 1819 Singapore Treaty) with Temenggong Tengku Abdul Rahman and his brother, Tengku Hussein Shah of Johor, to establish Singapore as a trading post for the British East India Company to rival the Dutch’s strategic positions in modern-day Indonesia. However, the narrative conveniently blurs after that flashpoint of history. From then onward, Singapore progressed from a supposedly ‘obscure fishing village’ populated by the ‘sea peoples’ (orang laut) to a crown colony of the British Empire. It suffered through the privations of WWII, merged with Malaysia, and then struck out on its own towards state independence. However, how much of this development, even if taken at face value, is indebted to Raffles? More significantly, what impact does portraying Raffles as a humanist ‘reformer’ in state narratives have upon our understandings of history?
The late Syed Hussein Alatas, who was head of the Department of Malay Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS) from 1967-1987, critically examined these issues throughout his scholarly career. His seminal work The Myth of the Lazy Native (Routledge, 1977) debunked the damaging myths and stereotypes of native peoples that were perpetuated by colonial European powers in Southeast Asia. Instrumental in setting a decolonizing agenda in the world of Malay scholarship, Alatas was a pioneer in postcolonial studies, alongside scholars such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Edward Said. Thomas Stamford Raffles: Schemer or Reformer, originally published in 1971, was recently reprinted by NUS Press in 2020. It makes a timely reappearance amidst increasing conversation about race, identity, and historical memory in Singaporean society.
The brand-new cover art evokes a crude denouncement of Raffles and his legacy. The image is of a glossy pink, headless figurine of Raffles in his iconic cross-armed pose, with knives and scissors sticking out from his back. This eye-catching image suggests that the conventional narrative and air of respectability surrounding Raffles will come under critical examination in this book, perhaps culminating in a beheading of established colonial and colonial-influenced narratives.
Alatas’s book does not disappoint in this regard. It is historiographically interesting, critically evaluating primary evidence by actively seeking out loopholes and (mis)interpretations in these sources. By questioning how history is presented, Alatas is able to analyze how the presentation of history influences official narratives and knowledge of the past and present. Alatas leverages on the availability and diversity of primary evidence, such as letters written by Raffles to his European and native associates in Southeast Asia and reports by the British and Dutch East India companies to make his points. In this way, he diverges from better-known biographies of Raffles, such as that by historian Emily Hahn, whose account ignores the more unsavory aspects of Raffles’ life and plays down his staunchly imperialist political philosophy. Alatas is rightly suspicious of the (un)reliability of these histories:
It is paradoxical that historians can sometimes adopt the most unhistorical approaches. Biographies of Raffles have frequently been guilty of this. They have failed to view the thought and action of a maker of history in the light of changing circumstances.
In his own research, Alatas finds Raffles to be a hallmark imperialist with a strong conviction that “society must run its course to civilization” through western “acquisition of power.” This remark was made by Raffles when writing to British statesman Thomas Murdoch in 1820. Raffles viewed progress strictly through an Eurocentric and imperialist lens. He was hardly a beacon of humanism and reform. Instead, his dominant motive was to advance British interests. Furthermore, Raffles harbored deep suspicions about the Chinese and condemned the Arabs for converting the Malays to Islam. These animosities, aimed at the very people he purportedly tried to civilize, were characteristic of the man during his stint in Southeast Asia. Alatas thus concludes that Raffles’ “likes and dislikes towards different ethnic groups were motivated by the degree and nature each of them affected English interests.”
Alatas also critically examines the way historians treated the translation of a controversial phrase, “buang habiskan sekali-kali,” which appeared in the description of the events leading up to the Massacre of Palembang, in which over 80 Dutch and Javanese soldiers and civilians died. The Dutch accused Raffles of instigating the massacre and pointed to a series of correspondence between Raffles and Badruddin, Sultan of Palembang, where this phrase appeared. However, the phrase was imprecisely translated by historian Richard Windstedt as “evict and make an end to them (the Dutch)” or “expel and finish them off entirely,” and this translation was then utilized by historian C. E. Wurtzburg in a 1949 paper, “Raffles and the Massacre of Palembang,” to defend Raffles’ innocence. As Wurtzburg relied solely on Windstedt’s translation, the exact course of events was misinterpreted. Alatas shows that in traditional Malay, the phrase translated as “to make an end of” is more accurately translated as “to kill,” proving the importance of returning to source texts to draw one’s conclusions.
Through such critical interventions, Alatas is able to critique the distorted colonial lens used to judge local ethnic communities. It is noteworthy that Thomas Stamford Raffles: Schemer or Reformer was first published in 1971, when Singapore had been independent for barely six years. Although the book did not spark a huge debate when it was first published, Alatas’s work remains an important post-colonial reading of Southeast Asian history, opening up avenues for questioning the official version of Raffles. The 2020 edition of the book features an introduction by the late author’s son, Syed Farid Alatas, a professor of Sociology at NUS. Syed Farid Alatas’s introductory essay seeks to advance his father’s work by denouncing not only the physical but also the non-physical violence of colonialism:
But colonialism was always violent, often in a physical way, but always in a non-physical sense. […] colonisation was founded not only on political-economic imperialism but also on epistemicide.
It is in response to this “epistemicide,” or destruction of native modes of knowledge, that Syed Hussein Alatas aims to reclaim native agency through critical discussion of colonial knowledge. His scholarship stands out as an influential model for other challenges to colonial narratives. Recent attempts include the play Merdeka / 獨立 /சுதந்திரம் by Alfian Sa’at and Neo Hai Bin (Wild Rice, 2019) and the essay collection it inspired, Raffles Renounced: Towards a Merdeka History (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2021). A key aspect of these works is their emphasis on the role of local actors in History, which Alatas also stresses throughout this book under review.
The iconographic status of Raffles has historically underpinned the story of Singapore’s development from ‘sleepy fishing village’ to modernity and economic prosperity. It was not without logic that Albert Winsemius, United Nations Economic Advisor to Singapore from 1961-1984, proposed putting Raffles on a (literal) pedestal in order to attract Western, particularly British, investment to the young nation. That said, the recent bicentennial celebrations in Singapore showed that a greater diversity of views on Raffles is emerging. Once a pioneer of postcolonial studies in Singapore in the 1970s, Thomas Stamford Raffles: Schemer or Reformer today serves as a standard-bearer for works that expand discourse on Singapore’s history. Its intervention into established colonial narratives is vital to present-day efforts to gain a broader, more critical understanding of Singapore history and society.
Lance Wu is currently a full-time undergraduate studying History and Political Science at the National University of Singapore. His interests lie mainly in colonial and postcolonial histories of Singapore and Southeast Asia, as well as their socio-cultural histories. When not dabbling in History, he tries to find a good book or sitcom to keep occupied.
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