The Duke of Puddle Dock: Travels in the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles

Raffles cigarettes, Raffles Business Class, the Raffles Hotel are all named after Thomas Stamford Raffles, one of the most important Englishmen in Southeast Asia of his time, but now largely forgotten. How many British know that Britain ruled Java for 5 years? How many Indonesians know why they drive on the left? Nigel Barley, the English anthropologist, and Indonesian specialist, has written an extremely readable account of Raffles' life and achievements, interspersed with fascinating parallels from Indonesia's first President Sukarno's life story. Both came from poor families, both were intelligent, both liked books and both visited the same places. Raffles had only two years of proper schooling. Raffles was born in 1781 on a ship in Jamaica, joined the English East India Company at the age of 14, as the lowest form of clerk, and worked in London until he was sent to Penang in Malaya in 1803. By the time the six month sea voyage was over, he had taught himself Malay. As Assistant Secretary to the Governor of Penang, he did all the important jobs and in his spare time researched local history and customs. Raffles liked the people and respected them. In 1808 the Company transferred him to Malacca, further down south, to gather intelligence about Java. England was at war with Napoleon and worried that the French fleet would use the Dutch colony of Java. The English blockaded Java. The French, who were in nominal control, quickly surrendered to the British army. The victory was hardly noticed back in Europe. At the age of 30 Raffles found himself the sole ruler of Java, whose civilisation he found enchanting. He was the Lieutenant-Governor and set about changing everything. The first thing he did was abolish torture, which was part of the Dutch judicial process. The Dutch believed in monoplies. Raffles believed in free trade. He revised the customs regulations entirely. Java's finances were in chaos. The Dutch had little interest in the welfare of the people, but Raffles ruled like a benevolent dictator. He abolished the importation of slaves and reduced the local rulers' powers. Living in the National Palace in Bogor, he created the Botanical Gardens. Later he discovered the World's largest flower, which was named Rafflesia arnoldii after him. The island was surveyed for a new land tax. As a result Borobudor, the largest Buddhist temple in the World, was "discovered" outside Yogyakarta. He even bothered to work out the traffic regulations and followed the English rule of driving on the left. The Dutch drive on the right but they were not concerned with such matters. With the defeat of Napoleon Raffles and Java were unimportant and he was fired. He was not even allowed to supervise the transfer of power back to Holland. Exhausted he returned to England with 30 tons of luggage, many pieces of which are now in British museums, such as the Raffles Collection of the British Museum. Interested in everything and a true scholar he wrote the monumenta

In Singapore, Raffles is something of a patron saint. A shopping center carries his name, a subway station, a school, a hotel, and even the business class of Singapore Airlines has been branded "Raffles Class."It comes as a bit of a surprise, then, that the city of Singapore features prominently in only one short chapter in Nigel Barley's "In the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles," which is the title of the English edition I have read. Penguin Books has probably realized that the title "The Duke of Puddle Dock" (a moniker evoking Raffles's humble background and high ambitions) is a bit unfortunate when it comes to marketing this hybrid between a travel book and a biography.By far the largest part of the book deals with Indonesia. Barley interweaves accounts of his travels with biographical pieces about Raffles and Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia after the country became independent after World War II. Barley quotes extensively from the primary biographical material he used for the book. Both the "woven" structure and the long quotes make it difficult for the reader to really become engrossed in the life of Raffles. Perhaps Barley wanted to create some distance between the modern reader and his 18th century subject. In this case, however, the distance becomes such a gap that it is easy for the reader to lose interest in the book itself.The Raffles who emerges from this book is most of all a man longing for recognition; a paternalistic officer of the British East India Company, good natured, benevolent, optimistic, learned, not very good at handling opposition, but very open-minded about what he sees in the Far East. Humanistic and dedicated to accumulating knowledge, he is not even thwarted by the loss of three of his four children or of all his treasures. When the ship on which he wanted to return to England sank off the coast of Sumatra, he lost his entire natural history collection: "One hundred and twenty-two cases of 'curiosities' were destroyed as well as all Raffles's papers. It was enough to break most men. But, as always, his greatest comfort was the love shown by his former subjects. The morning after their return to Bengkulu he began to redraw the maps he had been working on for years and sent locals into the forests to begin collecting specimens anew." (255) When Raffles finally returned to England and died at the age of 45, he left almost nothing. "Raffles had been unusual in spending freely on science and learning and had never stinted on creature comforts and hospitality, signs not of love of luxury but rather largeness of spirit." (264)Barley is an entertaining writer with a fine sense of humor. Had he devoted more space to the historical background of the late 18th century and England's emerging imperialism in South East Asia, I would have enjoyed the book even more. One thing to remember from this book, though, is definitely Barley's description of the Durian, a local fruit beloved by Singaporeans for its taste and prestigi

In this modern day journey in the footseteps of Stamford Raffles, Britain's premier imperialist in southeast Asia, Nigel Barley injects his customary humor into both history and travelogue. Barley's hilarious books on anthropology are recalled in his wry humorous history of Raffles (founder of Singapore and namesake of the still-standing hotel there that served as the principal watering hole of England's expats) and even more humorous record of Barley's travels in his footsteps.