Abdullah and Siami
John Bastin’s 2008 addendum to Ian Proudfoot’s 2007 article on Abdullah and Siami reconstructs the career of Siami, a Siamese-born Malay writer who served as the longest-serving member of Raffles’s Malay literary household from 1805 until his dismissal from government service in 1830. Writing from a position of deep archival familiarity with Raffles’s circle, Bastin argues that the scant biographical record of Siami—previously treated by Proudfoot as a minor figure whose bitterness toward British justice stemmed from a single lost customs post—demands substantial revision in light of Siami’s extraordinary proximity to Raffles across two decades and multiple postings.
Summary
Bastin’s central intervention is to reposition Siami from the margins of Raffles historiography to a figure of considerable significance. Rather than a low-ranking customs official who lost his job in a routine retrenchment, Siami was Raffles’s first Malay language instructor in Pinang, a close associate of the orientalist John Leyden, a member of Raffles’s household in London, and almost certainly present during the foundational negotiations that established the British post at Singapore in early 1819. Bastin traces this career through a combination of Travers’s private journal, Leyden’s correspondence, and Singapore National Archives correspondence, building a continuous narrative that spans Pinang, Melaka, Java, England, Bengkulu, Calcutta, and Singapore.
A secondary but important argument concerns the timing of Siami’s first meeting with Abdullah. Proudfoot had suggested they met in Singapore, but Bastin demonstrates that Siami was working alongside Leyden in Melaka in 1811, where Leyden was collaborating closely with Raffles and his Malay writers, making a meeting at that point far more probable. Bastin also advances the claim, against Che-Ross’s attribution, that Siami was the likely author of the Syair describing Raffles’s 1818 journey into the Sumatran highlands, on the grounds that the poem’s perspective is consistent with that of a household member who heard the account secondhand rather than a participant.
The article closes by contextualizing Siami’s 1830 satirical pamphlets not as the outburst of a minor functionary but as the bitter response of a man who had served Raffles personally for over a decade, held a government position for eleven years in Singapore, and was dismissed through no fault of his own when the Master Attendant’s office was relocated to Pinang.
Key Findings
- Siami was engaged by Raffles in Pinang in 1805 as a youth and was almost certainly Raffles’s first live Malay language instructor, preceding the ‘several natives’ employed when Raffles became Malay Translator in 1806 (p. 2).
- Raffles formally transferred Siami to Dr. John Leyden in October 1805 to assist with linguistic research; Siami accompanied Leyden to India and later to Melaka in 1810, assisting in the translation of the Malay Annals and the compilation of Leyden’s Comparative Vocabulary (600 copies, Serampore, 1810) (pp. 2–3).
- After Leyden’s death at Batavia on 28 August 1811, Siami rejoined Raffles and sailed with him from Java on 25 March 1816, living in Raffles’s household at 23 Berners Street, London, during 1816–17 (pp. 3–4).
- Raffles’s letter of 26 June 1819 to Farquhar records Siami’s assignment to Lieutenant Crossley in Singapore at a salary of 30 Spanish dollars per month; his salary was later improved to 40 Spanish dollars in the Master Attendant’s establishment (p. 5).
- Siami is listed as ‘Chinese & Siamese Writer & Interpreter’ on 29 August 1823 and as an instructor in Siamese at the Singapore Institution in 1824; he was dismissed around 1829–30 when the Master Attendant’s office was amalgamated into the Straits Settlements at Pinang (pp. 5–6).
- Bastin argues Siami was present in Singapore during Raffles’s negotiations with Temenggong Abdul Rahman and Sultan Husain Mahomed between 28 January and 6 February 1819, and that he met Abdullah in Melaka in 1811, not in Singapore as Proudfoot had suggested (pp. 3–5).
Conclusion
Bastin’s definitive takeaway is that Siami’s 1830 poems of protest must be reinterpreted in light of his long and distinguished service: a man who had been Raffles’s personal Malay writer for over a decade, who had accompanied him to London and back, and who had been formally appointed to a government post by Raffles himself, had every reason to feel a deep personal betrayal when bureaucratic retrenchment ended his career. His bitterness was not that of a minor clerk but of a long-serving insider cast aside by the very system he had helped build.
Context
- Primary archival sources include the Journal of Thomas Otho Travers (1815–1821, in the author’s private possession), the National Library of Scotland MS 971 (Leyden papers), and Singapore National Archives L10 (Letters to Bencoolen, 1819–1820) (p. 6).
- The article’s historiographical contribution lies in correcting Proudfoot’s 2007 account and in recovering Siami from obscurity as a figure who, had he written an autobiographical account, would have covered virtually the entire period of Raffles’s career in the East (p. 2).