The letters of Sir Stamford Raffles to Nathaniel Wallich, 1819–1824. (with notes), . Bastin
J.S. Bastin’s 1981 edition of twenty-four letters from Sir Stamford Raffles to Nathaniel Wallich (1819–1824) provides the most intimate surviving record of Raffles’ final years in Singapore and west Sumatra, drawn from two archival collections now held at the Calcutta Botanic Garden and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague. The correspondence, which begins with a brief note from Penang in March 1819 and ends with a devastated account of the fire on the ship Fame in March 1824, reveals Raffles’ personal reactions to administrative opposition, his deepening friendship with Wallich after the death of Dr. William Jack, and the practical details of Singapore’s founding institutions.
Summary
The introductory sections reconstruct Wallich’s career from his 1807 arrival in Bengal as a Danish surgeon to his appointment as Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden in 1817, and then narrate how the two men first met at the Garden in November 1818 when Raffles was in Calcutta seeking permission for a free port at the Strait of Malacca (pp. 1–8). Raffles had engaged the twenty-three-year-old Scottish surgeon William Jack to replace the recently deceased Dr. Arnold, and Jack’s extensive correspondence with Wallich explains why so few letters from Raffles himself survive for the 1819–22 period; only three are extant from those years (p. 5). The friendship deepened markedly after Jack’s death in September 1822 and during Wallich’s six-week visit to Singapore in October–November 1822, when the two men met frequently and Wallich submitted his proposal for a Botanic Garden on the island (pp. 5–7).
The letters themselves span the full arc of Raffles’ Singapore administration: the land sales on the south bank of the river (over 50,000 dollars raised in one hour in January 1823), the bitter conflict with Resident Farquhar and merchants Quieros and Bernard, the appointment of Crawfurd as successor, the founding of the Singapore Institution, and the establishment of a local magistracy (pp. 13–28). Raffles writes with characteristic warmth and frankness, offering Wallich the grant of “Daimebroog Hill,” requesting spotted deer for the garden, asking for foetuses of tiger, lion, whale and rhinoceros for Sir Everard Home, and urging his friend to consider a trip to Europe for his health (pp. 15–26). The final letter, dated 28 March 1824 from Bencoolen, reports the total loss of his drawings, collections, papers and Jack’s papers in the fire on the Fame (p. 34).
The appendix reproduces Wallich’s two letters of November 1822 proposing and then accepting the site for the Singapore Botanic Garden, including his description of the island’s botanical resources and his plan for approximately 48 acres of land on the eastern side of Singapore Hill (pp. 35–39).
Key Findings
- The letters are divided between two archives because Wallich brought a number of them to London in 1828 for Lady Raffles’ Memoir, and they subsequently passed through the collection of John Sterry before reaching the Royal Library, The Hague, in 1916 (p. 1).
- Raffles’ official letter of 15 November 1822 (Letter No. 7) grants the Botanic Garden a monthly sum of 60 dollars plus a one-time donation of 1,000 dollars, with the site to include the eastern side of Singapore Hill extending to the Fresh Water Stream or Bukit Salegi road (pp. 12–13).
- The January 1823 land auction on the south bank of the Singapore River raised not less than 50,000 dollars in the course of an hour, each lot having been put up at one dollar (p. 16).
- Raffles describes the opposition coalition of Farquhar, Quieros, Bernard, Palmer and others in detail, noting that Quieros falsely claimed his warehouse could not be rebuilt for less than 13,000 dollars when his original estimate had been 5,000 (pp. 17–18).
- The fire on the Fame destroyed between 2,000 and 3,000 drawings, all collections, descriptions, papers, and every document and memoir Raffles possessed, including those of the late Dr. Jack (p. 34).
- Wallich’s letter of 2 November 1822 identifies five distinct wild species of nutmeg in the immediate vicinity of the Cantonments alone and argues that teak, mahogany, bamboo, clove, pepper, gambier, cotton and coffee could all be successfully cultivated at Singapore (pp. 36–37).
Conclusion
Bastin’s edition, with its extensive biographical and archival notes, establishes these letters as the sole surviving evidence of Raffles’ personal and emotional response to the opposition he encountered in Singapore, filling a gap that neither Lady Raffles’ Memoir nor the official correspondence can address. The correspondence also documents the practical origins of the Singapore Botanic Garden and the Singapore Institution, and preserves Raffles’ characteristic blend of administrative detail, scientific enthusiasm, and affectionate personal warmth in a form unmediated by any later editor.
Context
- The Calcutta letters are preserved in Wallich’s thirty-three volumes of correspondence (1817–1846) in the Library of the Botanic Garden, Calcutta, originally from Kew and returned to India in 1887–88; the The Hague letters are recorded in the Royal Library’s annual report of 1916 (p. 1).
- The publication was transcribed from microfilm copies made by the Botanical Survey of India for the Calcutta letters, with the The Hague letters reproduced by permission of the Librarian (p. 1).