Founding of Singapore (1819): Stamford Raffles and the Treaty

The founding of Singapore in 1819 was the moment a small Malay settlement at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula became a British trading post. On 6 February 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles of the East India Company signed a treaty with the Malay rulers of Johor that allowed the Company to build a station on the island. Under its first Resident, William Farquhar, and as a port free of customs duties, Singapore grew within a few years into one of the busiest harbours in Asia.

Background

Singapore’s site had a long history. In the fourteenth century a port known as Temasek, and later Singapura (“lion city” in Sanskrit), traded across the region, and archaeologists have found extensive remains on Fort Canning Hill. After its decline the island fell within the realm of the sultans of Johor, successors of the Malacca Sultanate, and by 1819 it was home to a small community under the Temenggong, a senior Johor official.

In the early nineteenth century Britain and the Netherlands competed for trade in maritime Southeast Asia. During the Napoleonic Wars Britain had occupied Dutch territories, and Raffles himself governed Java from 1811 to 1816. When peace returned, Britain handed Java and Malacca back to the Dutch, leaving the vital Strait of Malacca under Dutch influence. British merchants feared being shut out of the trade routes between India and China.

The Company already had a station at Penang, founded in 1786, but it lay too far north to control traffic through the southern end of the Strait. Raffles believed Britain needed a port that could compete directly with the Dutch at Riau and Batavia.

Raffles, now Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen (Bengkulu) in Sumatra, persuaded the Governor-General of India, Lord Hastings, to authorise a search for a new British station at the southern end of the Strait.

Landing and the treaty

Raffles’s small fleet anchored off the mouth of the Singapore River on 28 January 1819, and he landed the next day. On 30 January he signed a preliminary agreement with Temenggong Abdul Rahman permitting a British post.

There was a complication: the Johor-Riau sultanate was split by a succession dispute. After Sultan Mahmud Shah III died in 1812, the Bugis and Dutch had recognised his younger son, Abdul Rahman, as sultan. Raffles instead recognised the elder son, Tengku Hussein (Tengku Long), who was brought to Singapore and installed as Sultan Hussein Shah.

On 6 February 1819 Raffles signed the formal treaty with Sultan Hussein and the Temenggong. The Company received the right to build a factory (trading station) and was to pay the sultan 5,000 Spanish dollars a year and the Temenggong 3,000. Raffles left the next day, leaving Farquhar in charge with a small garrison of Indian sepoys and very little money. In its first months the British post was very small, and much of the land along the river still had to be cleared, drained and laid out before merchants could settle.

A free port grows

Raffles declared Singapore a free port, with no duties on imports or exports. Merchants and migrants arrived quickly from Malacca, Riau, Java, China, India and elsewhere. Farquhar, with very limited funds, encouraged settlement, and the population grew rapidly. The first census in 1824 counted 10,683 people, compared with an estimated 1,000 at the time of the landing.

Raffles returned in October 1822 and stayed until June 1823. He drew up a town plan, later known as the Jackson Plan after the engineer Philip Jackson, which allocated separate districts to European, Chinese, Malay, Bugis, Arab and Indian communities, and set out regulations for the new town. He also clashed with Farquhar over gambling, slavery, land allocation and Farquhar’s management, and dismissed him in 1823. Farquhar was replaced by John Crawfurd.

Why Singapore succeeded

Several factors explain the settlement’s rapid rise. Its location was excellent: ships sailing between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea passed close by, and the Singapore River offered a sheltered anchorage for small trading vessels. Chinese junks arriving on the north-east monsoon and Bugis traders from the eastern islands of the archipelago found it a convenient meeting point.

The free-port policy was equally important. At a time when Dutch ports levied duties and restricted trade, Singapore charged nothing on goods passing through it, and it quickly drew trade away from older harbours such as Riau. Revenue was raised instead by licensing so-called farms for opium, spirits and gambling, an arrangement that funded the administration for decades but also had harmful social effects.

Finally, the settlement attracted large numbers of migrants. Chinese merchants and labourers came in particular from southern China and from older communities in Malacca and Penang, and by the late 1820s the Chinese had become the largest community. Indian traders, soldiers and labourers, Arab merchants and people from across the Malay world added to a diverse population. The value of Singapore’s trade in its first years soon rivalled that of Penang, the Company’s older station in the Strait.

Diplomatic settlement

The Dutch protested strongly that Singapore lay within their sphere. The issue was settled by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty signed in London on 17 March 1824. Britain gave up Bencoolen and its claims in Sumatra, the Dutch handed over Malacca and withdrew objections to Singapore, and the two powers divided their spheres along the Strait.

On 2 August 1824 Crawfurd concluded a further treaty with the sultan and the Temenggong, who ceded the entire island and nearby islets to the East India Company in return for cash payments and pensions. In 1826 Singapore was joined with Penang and Malacca to form the Straits Settlements, which became a British Crown colony in 1867.

Key people

• Stamford Raffles (1781–1826): Company official and naturalist, the driving force behind the founding. He spent only a few months in Singapore in total over three visits, and died in England in 1826.
• William Farquhar (1774–1839): first Resident and Commandant (1819–1823), who managed the settlement’s crucial early years.
• Sultan Hussein Shah: the Johor prince recognised by the British, whose claim gave legal cover to the treaty.
• Temenggong Abdul Rahman: the Malay chief who held effective authority on the island in 1819.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Raffles founded Singapore on an empty island. Fact: there was an existing Malay and Orang Laut population and a much older history going back at least to the fourteenth century.
• Myth: Raffles built the town himself. Fact: Farquhar ran the settlement for most of its first four years, and Raffles was absent most of the time.
• Myth: the 1819 treaty made Singapore British territory. Fact: it only allowed a trading post; full cession came with the 1824 treaty.

Timeline

• 1819, 29 January: Raffles lands at the mouth of the Singapore River.
• 1819, 30 January: Preliminary agreement with the Temenggong.
• 1819, 6 February: Treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah and the Temenggong.
• 1822, October – 1823, June: Raffles’s last stay; town plan drawn up and Farquhar dismissed.
• 1824, January: First census records 10,683 inhabitants.
• 1824, 17 March: Anglo-Dutch Treaty signed in London.
• 1824, 2 August: Treaty cedes the island to the East India Company.
• 1826: Formation of the Straits Settlements.

Why it matters

The 1819 settlement turned Singapore into a hub of free trade linking India, China and Southeast Asia. Its multicultural population and commercial role shaped the city through the fall of Singapore in 1942 and into independence in 1965, and remain central to its identity today.