Singapore Swing by John Malathronas Read Free Book Online Page B

was astonished at the audacity of the manoeuvre but took note of the commercial reaction in India. He wrote a cagey letter, on one hand praising Raffles’ initiative and confirming the engagement with the ‘legitimate’ heir to the throne, but at the same time regretting the measure itself since it might incur a collision with the Dutch. He also wrote a flaming missive to Bannerman ordering him to send troops immediately.
    Raffles returned to Singapore on 31 May 1819. In less than four months, the fishing village had become a small town of 5,000 people who had moved to this tax haven. Raffles and his friend, William Farquhar, who had been left behind to oversee the settlement’s development, roughly delineated the various neighbourhoods of the city: to this day they remain the same. The secure north side of the river was to be the government and European settlement – this is where today we find the City Hall, the Victoria Theatre, the Padang and the Christian churches. Further north, where Sultan Hussein and his court resided, would emerge as the Muslim area, still very much alive today. The south side of the river would be left to the Chinese whose junks could find shelter inside the river mouth in the North and South Boat Quays; since the cargo was being unloaded there, the commercial area was established in what nowadays is termed the Central Business District (CBD). The only hill in view would be the army headquarters, Fort Canning, in use until World War Two. The locals still had the memory of Forbidden Hill and were afraid to climb it, until Farquhar fired off a huge cannon from the top and announced that he had dispersed the ghosts. The dispersal was terminal: as I approach the river by Coleman Bridge and look at the bottom of the hill, I notice that the spring where the Raja’s harem used to bathe has metamorphosed into the River Valley Swimming Pool. Nice touch.
    Raffles wasn’t to return to the colony he established until three years later. When he disembarked at Singapore on 10 October 1822, the population had risen to 10,000 souls and the value of its trade was greater than Penang and Malacca put together. But the more the colony flourished, the more Raffles was being chastised by life: he received an official rebuke from the company and the court as the legal status of Singapore was still the subject of Anglo-Dutch negotiations; he fell out with Farquhar and sacked him; his supporter in Calcutta, Hastings, retired under a cloud, accused of malversation; and his royal friend and ally, Princess Charlotte, died during childbirth. Closer to home and to the heart, Raffles’ employers extracted their revenge by proxy: his three children succumbed to the treacherous climate of Bencoolen and Raffles himself started having a series of strong headaches we now suspect to have been the beginnings of a brain tumour.
    I am suspicious of the claim, quoted in some travel guides as ‘fact’, that biographers have been coy and that it was really tertiary syphilis, considering that his wife never showed any symptoms.
    Raffles left Singapore for the third and final time on 9 June 1823 at the age of 42. Three years had transformed ‘ a haunt of pirates to the abode of enterprise, security and opulence ’. He only had three years more to live, three years he was to spend in the company’s displeasure and, it seems, those of the gods, too. When the couple finally left Bencoolen on 2 February 1824, a devastating fire broke out on their ship. Raffles lost all his possessions: his manuscripts and memoirs, his valuables, his maps, his natural history drawings – all gone.
    When Raffles eventually reached Plymouth, he heard some good news at last: the status of Singapore had been settled with the Treaty of London between Great Britain and Holland. The Equator divided their spheres of influence: Bencoolen was surrendered to the Dutch, but Singapore and Penang remained British while