THE FIRST CONTEST FOR SINGAPORE 1819.1824 VERHANDELINGEN VAN HET KONINKLIJK INSTITUUT VOOR TAAL~ LAND· EN VOLKENKUNDE DEEL XXVII THE FIRST CONTEST FOR SINGAPORE 1819-1824 BY HARRY J. MARKS Department 0/ Bi8tory, Uni.,..,ity 0/ Connecticut Storr., Conneceicut, U.S.A. 'S·GRAVENHAGE - MARTINUS NIJHOFF - 1959 PREFACE For directing my attention to the problem of the British acquisition of Singapore as a problem worth investigating, as weIl as for subsequent encouragement, I am deeply indebted to Professor Dietrich Gerhard, now of Washington University, St. Louis. For various acts of kindness I owe thanks to my colleague, Professor Fred A. Cazel, Jr.; to Dr. J. Norman Parmer, now of the University of Maryland; and most recently to Professor C. Northcote Parkinson, of the University of Malaya. Since none of these scholars has seen the manuscript of this study, I can thank them warmly while relieving them of responsibility for its defects. To librarians and libraries I am indebted: to Miss Roberta K. Smith, Reference Librarian of the Wilbur L. Cross Library of the University of Connecticut, for procuring many volumes for me through inter­ library loan; to the libraries of Harvard, Vale, and Columbia univer­ sities and Trinity College (Hartford), for use of their facilities; to the Commonwealth Relations Office, London, for permission to have two volumes of Dutch Records microfilmed. I must thank Mrs. Betty G. Seaver for her personal interest in the manuscript, much of which, to its benefit, she typed. FinaIly, I must express appreciation to the administrative authorities of the University of Connecticut for a semester's sabbaticalleave which permitted a great deal of the research and writing to be completed. The use of variants in the spelling of place names, as they appeared in the sources, may annoy but I trust not confuse the reader, whose indulgence I bespeak. HARRY J. MARKS. Storrs, Connectieut. INTRODUCTION On the thirtieth day of January 1819, an official in the service of the East India Company signed an agreement with a Malay chief granting the Honorable Company the right to establish a commercial factory on the island of Singapore. This act kindled a controversy with the Nether­ lands which was only extinguished five years later by a comprehensive treaty. The first narrative of the episode to appear between the covers of a hook consisted of a paragraph in Peter Auber's An Analysis of the Con­ stitution of the East India Company . .. , (London, 1826),1 as follows: In the year 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles, then Lieutenant Govemor of Bencoolen,2 was deputed by the Governor General the Marquis of Hastings to proceed to the Straits of Malacca with the view of fixing upon some settlement in the Eastem Archipelago which should present a favourable position for counteracting the efforts which the Dutch were exerting to engross the whoie' of the trade of the Eastem Islands, to the total exclusion of the British trader. The result was the acquisition of the island of Singapore.s Con­ siderable differences arose out of this transaction. .. In order to adjust such differences and to remove all further causes of disa­ greement. in India, a negotiation was opened by Great Britain in 1823 and brought to a conclusion in 1824, when a treaty between His Britannic Majesty and the King of the Netherlands bearing the date of the 17th March in that year was concluded and signed; by which the British agreed to withdraw from the island of Suma- 1 Peter Auber, An Analysis of the Constitution of the East India Companyand of the Laws Passed by Parliament for the GoveTnment of their Affairs at Home and Abroad, to which is Prefixed a Brief History of the Company and of the Rise and Progress of the British Power in' India (London, 1826), pp. 381-382. 2 The variant spellings include Benkulen, Benkoelen, Bengkoelen, Bangkahulu, Bengkulen. 3 Variant spellings include Singapoer, Sincapoor, Sincapoora, Singapoora, Sin­ kapoor, Singhapoera, Sincapoera, Singapour, Singahpura, Sincapure, Sineapore. tra, ceding (with the consent of the East India Company) the settlement of Bencoolen and its dependencies to the Dutch in exchange for which the whole of the Dutch possessions on the continent of India, as weIl as the settlement of Malacca, were transferred to Great Britain, with the undisputed possession of Singapore. Peter Auber as Assistant Secretary to the Honorable Court of Directors could know the contemporary sources, and his reputation for reliability was good. Vet the errors in this brief statement foreshadow the inaccu­ racies of later accounts. In indisputable fact, Raffles received his authori­ zation from Hastings not in 1819 but in the autumn of 1818. The negotiations were begun in 1820, not 1823, and were then dropped. They were resumed in 1823 not upon British but Netherlands initiative. In the light of British predominance in the trade of the Indies, including Java, Auber's accusation of Dutch efforts toward engrossment exhibits national bias, though not devoid of a basis in facto More important than these details, the omission of the background of politics, economics, diplomacy, and personalities, completely excusable in Auber's concise paragraph, also invalidates more ample accounts. The story of the acquisition of Singapore by the British deserves better treatment. From our perspective it appears as a transitional episode com­ bining some of the traits of the colonial adventuring of earlier genera­ tions with harbingers of the imperialist rivalries of the future. The inadequacies of existing accounts would of themselves justify restudy of the acquisition of Singapore, but two additional considerations also encourage reconsideration. First, by shunning the temptation to write a general narrative of colonial competition in the Eastern Seas and by focusing attention strictly upon the issue of the acquisition of Singapore, one may hope to uncover the motivations behind decisions. In this sen se, the data illustrate the nature of historical causation, the interplay of chance and cultural determinism and the role of the individual. A second product of the restriction of attention to the one issue is the depiction, step by step, of the negotiation of a dispute; and since one of the parti­ cipants was George Canning, it is possible to contribute a fragment of detail to the understanding of that statesman in action. CHAPTER I BRITISH AND NETHERLANDS INTERESTS IN SOUTH-EAST ASlA A. The Return of the Former Dutch Colonies At the outbreak of the French Revolution, the Dutch had possessed an extensive colonial empire with possessions in both East and West Indies. When the Netherlands fell to France, the British seized these territories as a war measure to prevent the French from enjoying their fruits. Meanwhile, from his exile during the N apoleonic years, the Prince of Orange, who became the Stadhouder William VI upon the death of his father in 1806, had sought to assure his country's future status in various ways, eventually as a client of Britain's; and since Netheriands independenee coincided with one of the objectives of British policy, it had received Lord Castlereagh's support. Thanks to the Dutch uprising against French domination in November 1813, Holland did not owe her liberation wholly to the arms of the allies and was therefore able to emerge among the victorious nations as an independent state. Completing the metamorphosis, on 16 March 1815, the head of the House of Orange, having previously (2 December 1813) taken the title of Sovereign Prince, now assumed royal rank as King William J.1 On the disposition of the former Dutch colonies, the Peace of Paris, 30 May 1814, was silent.2 A special treaty determining the restoration of colonial possessions was concluded between Great Britain and the Netherlands on 13 August 1814. The former engaged to restore the colo­ nies, factories, and establishments held by Holland on 1 January 1803, after the Peace of Amiens (27 March 1802), and before the renewal 1 Gustaaf Johannes Renier, Great Britain and the Establishment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1813-1815 (The Hague, 1930). Among older general accounts, see Henri Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique, vol. VI (Brussels, 1926), pp. 231-245; and Petrus J. Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, vol. IV 2nd ed. (Leiden, n.d. [1915]), pp. 173-225. 2 Recueil des traités et conventions conc/us par Ie royaume des Pays-Bas, ed. E. G. Lagemans, 10 vols. (The Hague, 18.58-1890), I, 10. Artic1e 8 refers only to French and Spanish possessions. Verh. dl. XXVII 2 HARRY J. MARKS of hostilities (16 May 1803), with the exception of the Cape of Good Hope and three West Indian territories (Berbice, Demerara, and Esse­ quibo, now parts of British Guiana). In return, two million pounds sterling were to be made over to the Netherlands to be expended upon fortifications facing France. The eighth article of the treaty concerned the slave trade and obligated the King of the Netherlands to forbid his subjects "from taking any share whatever in such inhuman traffic." 3 The restoration of the bulk of the former Dutch colonial empire conformed to certain British objectives which were more influential than any hypothetieal immediate interests which a later age might envisage as ealling for the retention of these valuable territories.4 It is clear, from the disposition of the Cape and the three West Indian posts, that the British government laeked neither power nor right to retain its conquests. The Cape was se en as an indispensable station along the sea route to India, while economie, political, and strategie considerations led to the retention of the Dutch territories in Guiana. The retroeession of the bulk of the Duteh colonies resulted from the acknowledgement of certain moral issues, a desire to prevent other European powers from presenting claims, and, most significantly, from the implementation of the general British poliey toward the Netherlands.