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AHC/WI: The Honourable Stamford Raffles

Tom Colton

domesticated humans?!
Location
Singapore
Pronouns
he/him/his
Mostly out of nationalistic fervor (and Bicentennial Discourse, etc.), I'd like to posit this scenario involving everyone's favourite founder imperialist swindler crook statesman East India Company employee, (Sir) Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, also known for being the first President of the Zoological Society of London.

stamford-raffles.jpg

This guy.

Born abroad a triangular trade ship (although the National Library has taken pains to refute it being a slave ship) in 1781 to its captain, Benjamin Raffles, and his wife Ann Lyde, Raffles' pre-Singapore career mostly involved administrative roles in British holdings of Southeast Asia, starting with an assistant secretary position in Penang in 1805, followed 6 years later by his management of the British invasion of Java to remove it from the Napoleonic sphere of influence following the French conquest of the Netherlands.

By all accounts, he seems to have done a pretty good job administrating its occupation, although he had to leave for Britain in 1816 to defend himself after the EIC abruptly removed him from his post (he visited Napoleon on the way there but didn't like him much.) While lulling in England, he picked up a knighthood and also published his History of Java, returning to Southeast Asia as Governor of Bencoolen, a post which he held from 1818 to 1824. He also installed a puppet sultan in Johor and set up a trading post on an island of some fame at the end of the Malayan Peninsula, but we've all heard that story. With regards to slavery, he was firmly against the institution as we recognise it, but also owned slaves at some point and introduced debt bondage into Bencoolen.

After the 1824 Anglo-Dutch Treaty which divided the Malay world into British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, he left for Britain for the last time. Unfortunately, one of his ships, the Fame, caught fire, and while nobody died all of his papers and drawings were destroyed, and he returned to London in poor health and in debt, forestalling any ambitions to run for Parliament. He had just about enough time to found the ZSL before dying from apoplexy one day before his 45th birthday.

So what if the Fame didn't catch fire and Raffles' health hadn't declined (no causal link is explicitly said, but it's as good a PoD as any), and he did indeed stand for Parliament, maybe either in Gloucestershire where he resided or one of the London boroughs (which he moved to)? I don't know enough about British politics in the era to know if he'd do so as a Whig or a Tory - which is more likely? How far could he have gotten in politics given the climate of the 1820s-1840s? What sort of effects would there be in Singaporean historiography if he'd lived long enough to become A Figure in British politics?
 
Well the big issues of the day were Electoral Reform, Slavery and Catholic Emancipation- we can assume from what you've said that Raffles would be in favour of abolition, and having had a look he seems to have favoured religious toleration so might have been neutral to moderately pro-Emancipation. In addition both Gloucestershire and the London Boroughs look to have had something of a Whig favour.

He still might not get in in 1826, but if so the massive Whig gains in the run up to the Great Reform Act could mean he's able to rise pretty swiftly.
 
having had a look he seems to have favoured religious toleration so might have been neutral to moderately pro-Emancipation.
Do you mean he favoured religious toleration in his EIC holdings? Because it wasn't an uncommon view to see that as a good way of making money out there but be opposed to pluralism at home. Or indeed there were many who would have been happy in principle to tolerate Hindus and Muslims in England (if they had existed in significant numbers) but specifically were opposed to Catholics having civil rights.
 
Do you mean he favoured religious toleration in his EIC holdings? Because it wasn't an uncommon view to see that as a good way of making money out there but be opposed to pluralism at home. Or indeed there were many who would have been happy in principle to tolerate Hindus and Muslims in England (if they had existed in significant numbers) but specifically were opposed to Catholics having civil rights.

I do mean that but I can't find any comment made about Catholics by him.
 
Do you mean he favoured religious toleration in his EIC holdings? Because it wasn't an uncommon view to see that as a good way of making money out there but be opposed to pluralism at home. Or indeed there were many who would have been happy in principle to tolerate Hindus and Muslims in England (if they had existed in significant numbers) but specifically were opposed to Catholics having civil rights.

As you say, it's easier to be tolerant when your relationship is purely transactional; the Hindus and Muslims and so forth of Asia were less of an existential Other then the Catholics were.
 
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As you say, it's easier to be tolerant when your relationship is purely transactional; the Hindus and Muslims and so forth of Asia were less of an existential Other the the Catholics were.
From what I can gather of his character, he probably would be able to put aside his personal distaste for “(Catholic) superstition” (if we accept the axioms of the linked argument above) if it’d help to advance his political career.
 
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