Stamford Raffles' place in the history of Java<\/p>\n
By Onghokham<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): On Nov. 22, 1995, on the occasion of Indonesia's
\n50th independence anniversary, the British government presented
\nto Indonesia a collection of 1,500 drawings, watercolors and
\nsketches made by order of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and
\ncollected by him during his tenure as lieutenant governor of Java
\nduring the governorship of Lord Minto.<\/p>\n
Raffles' tenure lasted for five years, from 1811 to 1816. His
\ninterest in Java, however, dated much further back, as did his
\ninterests for the entire Malay world. Raffles' own two-volume
\nwork, the History of Java (1817), is still the definitive
\nJavanese history. He might have followed it up with a History of
\nSumatra, with material he collected while governor of Bengkulu,
\nbut, unfortunately, the ship containing the Sumatra material
\nsank.<\/p>\n
While in Bengkulu, Raffles lost three children, and good
\nfriends like Dr. Horsfield, to malaria fever. In Java, his first
\nwife, lady Olivia Raffles, might also have contracted the same
\nfever. A memorial to her still stands in the Bogor Botanic
\nGarden.<\/p>\n
Raffles was probably one of the most intelligent governors of
\nJava, if not the most intelligent European leader to come to this
\npart of the world. He was a typical Enlightenment intellectual:
\nextremely liberal, void of prejudice, a strong belief in science,
\nand a great curiosity in everything. His close friends included
\nJavanese such as Abdullah bin Abdulkadir Munsji, the renowned
\nwriter of the Sejarah Melayu, a Javanese Grandee Ronodipuro.<\/p>\n
The most prominent of Raffles' Indonesian friends was Sultan
\nNotokusumo I of Sumenep, Madura, who reputedly was one of the
\nbest scholars of Old Javanese and other old languages. The Sultan
\nof Sumenep was said to be a main source for the History of Java,
\nas must have been Ronodipuro. In any case, Sultan Notokusumo was
\nthe first, and for a long time to come, last native member of the
\nRoyal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences which was housed in
\nthe present-day National Museum, or Gedung Gajah, on Jl. Merdeka
\nBarat in Central Jakarta).<\/p>\n
The Sultan's grave, the Astana Tinggi, which is situated
\noutside Sumenep in Madura, looks similar to the Taj Mahal. It
\nbears that romantic British Oriental architectural style which
\nfound its fullest expression in Kuala Lumpur's railway station
\nand several other colonial office buildings of Malaysia's
\ncapital. On a modest scale, the Astana Tinggi of Sumenep is
\nprobably the only British colonial building in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Raffles' influence on the Madurese sultan is evident in the
\nprince's ideas, too. The prince abolished slavery in his palace
\nand principality in the 1810s. Slavery was not officially
\nabolished in the Netherlands Indies until 1863, probably an
\ninfluence of the outcome of the American civil war.<\/p>\n
The Raffles period, or English interregnum as Dutch
\nhistoriographers call the period from 1811 to 1816, fostered a
\nwhole group of brilliant scholars besides Raffles. They were
\nassembled by Raffles, or became close to him because of his
\nintellectual mind and interests. Among them were Dr. Horsfield,
\nJohn Leiden, a polyglot who, as an assistant to Lord Minto,
\nencouraged him to support Raffles, William Marsden, who wrote the
\nHistory of Sumatra, and another brilliant British official of the
\nEnglish East India Company, John Crawfurd, who was resident in
\nYogyakarta. John Crawfurd wrote about the east-Indian archipelago
\nand was probably the first one to see it as a unit. His works are
\nstill useful to scholars. There were others, including several
\nDutch officials of the former government, like Engelhardt and
\nMuntinghe, who did not object to serving the new colonial
\ngovernment.<\/p>\n
The English East India Company's policy was to retain Dutch
\npersonnel as long as they were loyal to the new colonial
\noverlords. European politics where the basis of the policy.<\/p>\n
The British conquest of Java, and its policies, had its roots
\nin the European situation of the time. In Raffles' time, the
\nemperor Napoleon made Holland a satellite and then an annexed
\npart of the French empire. The British were the only European
\npower, which opposed French revolutionary and Napoleonic
\ndomination of the European continent. Britain, a naval power,
\ncould not defeat Napoleon on land and hence its policy was to
\nconquer first the French colonies and then its allies, satellites
\nand annexations -- like Spain and Holland.<\/p>\n
The conquests of Java and other islands of the archipelago was
\npart of this scheme. In England, refugee stadtholder of the Dutch
\nRepublic, Prince William V, who was also ex-officio director of
\nthe Dutch East India Company, announced a proclamation in Kew
\nenjoining the Dutch in overseas colonies to put themselves under
\nBritish protection or serve them when taken over by the British.<\/p>\n
The East India Company used the proclamation to persuade Dutch
\ncolonists not to oppose British rule. It even justified their
\ncooperation with the British.<\/p>\n
Then, at the Congress of Vienna in 1814 (the end of the
\nNapoleonic wars), the former Dutch colonies such as Java, the
\nMoluccas and Malacca were given back to the Netherlands --
\nagainst Raffles' objections. His History of Java, published in
\n1817, was therefore as much a political piece as a scholarly one.
\nIt blackened the Dutch and tried to persuade the English court of
\nthe importance of Java.<\/p>\n
Most dynamic<\/p>\n
The short five year interval under Raffles was probably one of
\nthe most dynamic periods in Java's cultural history. Raffles and
\nhis circle of scholarly friends were true products of the
\nEnlightenment. They were very curious about the world and the
\nuniverse, which they studied rationally rather than
\ntheologically, as had been done until then. In Europe, the study
\nof the world rather than heaven started during the Renaissance
\n(1453 to the fall of Byzantium) but found its full legitimation
\nin the second half of the 18th century. This resulted in a
\nrevival and the strengthening of the Batavian Society for Arts
\nand Sciences, the founding of the Botanic Garden of Bogor, and
\nthe discovery by the English of th ruins of ancient Hindu-
\nBuddhist temples like Borobudur, Prambanan and Candi Sewu in
\nJava. Raffles' interest in these pre-Islamic monuments could be
\nseen from the many sketches and drawings he ordered made of them,
\nwhich are now in the National Library of Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Raffles did not only give to Java, but took some of it back
\nhome with him. Raffle's and his friends' collections of art
\nobjects, ranging from wayang kulit (leather puppets) and gamelan
\ninstruments, are now spread among a country house, the India
\nOffice and the British Museum.<\/p>\n
These art pieces are very important to Java's cultural history
\nbecause their ages are certain. Javanese and Southeast Asian
\nmethods of dating art works mainly depends on styles, whether it
\nconcerns temples, kris, or even Chinese porcelain jars.<\/p>\n
Raffles gives us a picture of pre-colonial Java at around
\n1810. Colonialism in Java really did not start until the end of
\nthe Java War in 1830, with the reduction of the once mighty
\nMataram monarchy to the area of the four Central Javanese kratons
\n(royal compounds), and the start of the Cultivation System in
\n1830.<\/p>\n
Some 20 years ago a historian on the Raffles period in Java,
\nProf. John Bastin, told me of the existence in the cellars of the
\nIndia Office of this interesting collection of sketches and
\nwatercolors brought by Raffles from his governorship. Prof.
\nBastin has written a foreword to the excellent booklet by A.T.
\nGallop, Early Views of Indonesia. The few examples exhibited at
\nthe National Library, which is the present repository of the
\ncollection, and the few reproduced in A.T. Gallop's book, are
\nonly the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
Raffles was also the first European governor to impose a land
\ntax on Java instead of the Dutch system of forced deliveries of
\nexport products. Before imposing the land tax, a great deal of
\nresearch went into rural relationships and landownership. All of
\nthis is very valuable material for the historian. It was research
\nfor the colonial plantation system which would transform \"old,
\nmerry and warring\" Java into its present-day structure of a
\nfrozen ideological framework of adat (customary) law.<\/p>\n
Raffles is best remembered not for his History of Java, or his
\nservices to culture, but as the founder of Singapore in January,
\n1819, and the founder of what later became the Raffles College,
\nthe first European school in this part of the world.<\/p>\n
Raffles' founding of Singapore was seen by the Dutch as almost
\na hostile act, and indeed Raffles' tenure in Bengkulu between
\n1817 and 1824 left the Dutch feeling that the British were
\nencroaching on their Indies. This trauma probably caused the
\nDutch to expand their territory at a furious pace during the
\nsecond half of the 19th century, when the great European powers,
\nthe U.S. and Japan were grabbing colonies wherever possible.
\nHence, Raffles might have unwittingly helped shape the present
\nterritorial map of Indonesia.<\/p>",
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