Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company (74 page)

Quite what this plan was is not clear, although suspicions would be aroused. After fifteen months alone in the Pelews, McCluer again took to the ocean, now in a six-oared longboat. He failed to reach Ternate in the north Moluccas, where he was presumably bent on more reconnaissance, but eventually fetched up in Macao. For the entire voyage of some
1600 miles he and his Pelewese crew had subsisted on coconuts and water. Not surprisingly McCluer was far from well. But evidently he had not tired of his islands for in Macao he sold the longboat for something more substantial and then sailed back.

In the following year, 1795, he turned up in Benkulen. This time he was accompanied by a large party of mainly female Pelewese, some of whom he put aboard a vessel bound for Bombay while with the rest he sailed for Calcutta. He was never heard of again. The assumption was that ‘his craft foundered in the Bay of Bengal’ (C. R. Low). ‘Should I fail in the attempt [to “enlighten” the Pelewese?],’ he had declared when bidding farewell to his original companions, ‘it is only the loss of an individual who attempted to do good to his fellow-creatures.’ As for the Pelewese damsels sent to Bombay, they ‘being without friends,’ according to Low, ‘were for many years maintained by Lieutenant Snook’ who had been part of the original expedition. To his ‘singular charity and for-getfulness of self’ the ladies owed their eventual return to the islands by way of Macao in 1798.

The year 1798 was also the fourth year of what, with Napoleon landing in Egypt, could now be called the Napoleonic Wars. As usual hostilities in the East had opened with the capture of the French settlements in India – now something of a formality; for Pondicherry it was the fourth surrender in as many decades. In the Indian Ocean the main threat still emanated from the French base in Mauritius; but before this could be attacked Holland, or rather the ‘Batavian Republic’, declared for its fellow republic in France, thus making all the Dutch possessions in the East potential French bases. As during the previous War of American Independence, this threat to British trade in the East could best be met by indulging in the long-cherished opportunity of gobbling up the Dutch settlements.

In dire financial straits exacerbated by a virtual cessation of trade during the previous war, the once glorious V.O.C. (Dutch East India Company) was on its last legs. Its possessions were poorly defended, its servants divided in their loyalties; for apart from the uncertainty engendered by the first moves towards its dissolution, there had been an appeal from William of Orange, the exiled Stadholder, that the V.O.C. surrender to the British rather than co-operate with the French. In quick succession, therefore, the Royal Navy assisted by the Bombay Marine secured Table Bay and the Cape, Trinconomalee and Sri Lanka, all the Dutch possessions in India, and the strategically vital port of Malacca
commanding the Straits of that name. Thence, acting on the information supplied by McCluer and giving a wide berth to the main concentration of Dutch forces on Java, Admiral Peter Rainier sailed for the Eastern Archipelago.

By the end of February 1796, his squadron was off Ambon and, according to Professor C. Northcote Parkinson, ‘ready to avenge the massacre which took place there in 1623’. But Fort Victoria, where so very long ago Gabriel Towerson and his colleagues had spent their last gruesome days, lay too close to the shore to offer any kind of resistance; the whole town surrendered after just two days. ‘Having thus cornered the bulk of the world’s supply of cloves’, Rainier headed for Banda and the nutmegs. Here the Dutch governor quietly capitulated in accordance with the Stadholder’s instructions and on the understanding that his salary would continue to be paid. The 85,000 pounds of nutmeg, 20,000 of mace, and 66,000 rix-dollars, when added to the cloves and spoils of Ambon, more than paid for the expedition and provided Rainier and his officers with the best prize pay-out of the war. Of McCluer’s targets there remained only Timor, which was taken in the following year, and then, something of an afterthought, Ternate, now the main depot for the clove crop of the north Moluccas. Here the Dutch fortifications proved a greater challenge and it was not until 1801 that Captain Hayes, also a Bombay marine surveyor who had extended McCluer’s surveys right down to Tasmania, successfully stormed Fort Orange.

So after 170 years the Company was back in the spice business. Unfortunately the trade now counted for little in the global economy. An intriguing French adventurer, once a missionary in Vietnam, latterly an administrator in Mauritius, who went by the gloriously apt name of Pierre Poivre, had already spirited away seedlings of the clove and nutmeg. They were now yielding good crops in Madagascar and Réunion whence their seedlings would in turn be carried to Zanzibar. The Honourable Company installed its own Governor in Ambon and also exported seedlings which led to further spice plantations at Benkulen and Penang. Meanwhile the ubiquitous British country traders were encouraged to uplift the produce of the Moluccas and carry it to Canton where it made a useful contribution to the Anglo-Chinese balance of payments.

This happy state of affairs lasted only five years. By the Peace of Amiens in 1802 all the Dutch possessions in the East Indies – though not Sri Lanka or the Cape which became Crown colonies – were returned to
Holland. Reluctantly Governor Farquhar, whose authorization of the attack on Ternate had just been condemned as ‘a splendid but most injudicious conquest’, hauled down the flag in Ambon and sailed west. But only as far as the Sulu Sea. Here, keeping a wary eye on the notorious Sulu pirates as he threaded the scatter of islands between the Philippines and Borneo, Farquhar quietly slipped over the coral bar and into the azure waters of Balambangan harbour. Strange cattle, the progeny of those abandoned by the 1773 settlement, scavenged along the shoreline; exuberant vegetation festooned the old palisades. Thanks to the always assertive policies of Richard Wellesley, the current Governor-General of India (who was also Lord Mornington and the brother of Arthur Wellesley), Dalrymple’s dream was to live again.

If anything Robert Farquhar was even more sanguine about Balambangan’s prospects than Dalrymple. With seedlings brought from Ambon, spice groves were planted. Chinese settlers were shipped in. Dalrymple’s treaties with the Sultan of Sulu and with the neighbouring chiefs of Borneo were re-examined and his concessions reclaimed. As a free port at the fulcrum of the Eastern trade routes, Balambangan was projected as the most lucrative entrepôt in global trade and ‘the foundation of one of the richest empires of the Eastern world’. And so it might have been. But a gloriously arbitrary destiny seems to preside over human geography. Less than a year later Farquhar was transferred to Penang and in 1805, with his initiative countermanded by the Court of Directors, Wellesley ordered the withdrawal of the settlement. Once again Balambangan disappeared off the map.

Farquhar’s extravagant claims for Balambangan echoed not only those of Dalrymple but also those advanced by Francis Light for his foundation at Pulo Penang. Renamed Prince of Wales Island with the British settlement known as Georgetown and its inevitable stronghold as Fort Cornwallis, Penang’s future nevertheless hung in the balance for nearly twenty years. For to doubts about whether it would ever be other than a financial millstone like Benkulen were added serious political complications with the Sultan of Kedah. The Sultan’s understanding of the terms under which he had ceded Penang in 1786 included a commitment by the Company to assist him against his enemies, and in particular against the King of Siam who claimed tributary rights over Kedah. Light agreed and argued the case vigorously. But the Company, with nothing but dismal
memories of Siam and its sovereigns, positively refused to give any such commitment, thus rendering the whole cession of dubious legality.

Meanwhile, thanks to a waiving of all customs duties, the place did prosper, although not sensationally so. Trade between Bengal and the Malay states tended to concentrate in Georgetown and, like all the Company’s settlements, it steadily attracted a lively population; by 1804 it numbered some 12,000. To feed them, an adjacent chunk of the Malay peninsula had been purchased by the Company in 1800 and renamed Province Wellesley. But what did greatly enhance the island’s prospects were the naval hostilities with France. Penang, with its sheltered harbour between the island and Province Wellesley, became a useful base at which to station warships on convoy duty with the China fleet and and an excellent marshalling port for operations further east. Rainier sailed from here to requisition the Moluccas in 1795 and two years later Penang became the assembly point for a massive task force designated for Manila. Unlike Draper’s invasion during the Seven Years War, this one never sailed; the fourth and final war with Tipu Sultan of Mysore required the presence of the troops in India. But among those who got as far as Penang was Colonel Arthur Wellesley, the later Duke of Wellington. He took the occasion to pen a lengthy report on the place which, while criticizing its military defences, made no doubt that it was ‘of infinite advantage to the Company’ and ‘a most desirable place to retain’.

As Governor-General, his brother Richard concurred and, when French naval activity in the Bay of Bengal again pointed up the need for a monsoon haven that was nearer than Bombay, even the Admiralty smiled on Penang. In 1805, in return for a commitment from the Navy to convert Penang into a base and dockyard, the Company agreed to upgrade its establishment there and to improve its fortification. Thus did the infant settlement achieve overnight a precocious status as the Company’s fourth Presidency with a civil establishment on a par with that of Bombay or Madras. And thus did it acquire the services as Assistant Secretary in this top-heavy administration of one Tom Raffles, lately a clerk in India House.

Penang’s elevation, however premature, was not of course the bold new thrust that historians of British India have sometimes assumed. South-east Asia had been home for the Company’s first Presidency and for much of its 200 years either Bantam, Batavia, or Benkulen had enjoyed a similar status under a governor or lieutenant-governor. On the other hand it had been comparatively rare for a Company servant to end
up in south-cast Asia with absolutely no experience of India and, as in Raffles’s case, no apparent ambitions to join one of the Indian establishments. Small, energetic, and of obscure origins, Raffles directed his considerable ability and his near-suicidal ambition towards less trammelled pastures. Fame he craved more than fortune; Napoleon intrigued him more than Hastings.

As early as 1808 Raffles became convinced that Penang would never realize the role envisaged for it nor serve his own purposes as a springboard to glory. As a commercial entrepôt it was too far from Burma’s teak forests, and as a strategic base on the China route it could never compare with the old Portuguese, Dutch and now British strongpoint at Malacca. Yet Malacca, which should have been handed back to the Dutch in 1802 but was still in British hands when war broke out again in 1804, was being systematically dismantled. The Company’s reasoning was that one day it would indeed be handed back and, since it was so strategically placed not only on the China route but also at the gateway to the archipelago, the best policy was to render it down. Hence its population and its trade were being encouraged to relocate in Penang.

Raffles thought this madness. With the help of William Farquhar, a Malay specialist and the British representative at Malacca (and no relation apparently to Robert Farquhar, recently of the Moluccas), he made a detailed study of the archipelago’s internal trade, noticing in particular the crucial role of those Bugis traders from Sulawesi (Celebes) and Borneo. The result was a masterly analysis of a little understood subject which demonstrated that Penang’s future, far from depending on the destruction of Malacca, actually hinged on Malacca remaining a going concern and remaining in British hands. Unbeknown to Farquhar he then forwarded his thoughts to Lord Minto, the new Governor-General. Minto reversed the Government’s policy over Malacca and duly noted the name of Thomas Raffles.

Two years later Ambon, Banda and the rest of the Spice Islands were again captured by the Navy. On a hint that he might be in the running for the Governorship of Ambon, Raffles hastened to Calcutta. Minto had to disappoint him; but in the broadest of hints the Governor-General directed his roving gaze towards Java, the seat of Dutch empire in the East. An expedition against Batavia, the capital, had been planned in 1801 but aborted in order to concentrate on expelling Napoleon from Egypt. Now Egypt was safe, even Mauritius was about to capitulate, and only Java remained as a possible base for Franco-Dutch operations in the
East. Minto’s mere mention of the place was ‘enough to encourage me’, wrote Raffles, ‘and from this moment all my views, all my plans, and all my mind were devoted to create such an interest towards Java as should lead to its annexation to our Eastern Empire’.

The actual invasion took place in 1811. Raffles had prepared the ground, chosen the invasion route, and thoroughly mastered the political situation. He was rewarded with the governorship of what he now called ‘this other India’. Populous, rich in produce and history, and the greatest commercial asset in the archipelago, Java was ‘the Bengal of the East Indies’. Its possession by the Company afforded quite simply ‘the most splendid prospect which any administration has beheld since our first acquisition of India itself’.

All of which was true. But it rather overlooked the fact that neither the Court of Directors nor the Board of Control had the slightest interest in annexing Java. The idea was simply to pre-empt its use by the French and, if absolutely necessary, to retain the place until a European peace permitted its return to a friendly Holland. In undertaking a complete reorganization of the country’s fiscal, agrarian and commercial structure, Raffles often disobeyed orders and wilfully ignored the inevitable. Had his reforms even produced a surplus – which they did not – there is no evidence to suggest that either the Company or the Crown, to each of whom he appealed in turn, would have changed its mind about retention.