Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T13:45:34.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

I. British Assessments of the Dutch in Asia in the Age of Raffles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

P. J. Marshall
P. J. Marshall
Affiliation:
(Kings' College London)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The demarcation of phases of empire has a perennial fascination for historians of European expansion. One of the most elusive processes of change both to date and to define is what most scholars would recognise to be the shift from the colonial systems of ancien regime Europe to the empires of the nineteenth century. In outline, it seems that systems based on the close regulation of commercial capitalism through privileges devolved on more or less autonomous colonies and trading companies gave way to national empires under direct state authority and increasingly geared to the needs of industrial metropolitan economies. In the mid-eighteenth century the old order was generally intact; by the mid-nineteenth century it had largely been replaced. Greater precision about the timing and speed of change remains very difficult to attain, but within this wide parameter it seems reasonable to suppose that different empires moved at different speeds: the economically and politically sophisticated British are likely to have remodelled their system ahead of their competitors, probably forcing them towards modernity in the process.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 12 , Special Issue 1: The Ancien Regime in India and Indonesia , March 1988 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 ‘With the administration of Raffles comes the decisive break in the old system and the turning point in Dutch colonial history’, de Kat Angelino, A.D.A., Colonial Polity (2 vols.; The Hague 1931) 1,16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See for instance, Wright, H.R.C., East-Indian Economic Problems in the Age of Comwallis and Raffles (London 1961)Google Scholar; Ricklefs, M.C., A History of Modem Indonesia (Bloomington 1981) 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elphick, R. and Giliomee, H., The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1820 (Cape Town 1979).Google Scholar

3 Raffles, Thomas Stamford, History of Java (2 vols.; repr. Kuala Lumpur 1965) 1,232.Google Scholar

4 Lord Minto in India. Countess of Minto ed. (London 1880)311.

5 Percival, Robert, An Account of the Island of Ceylon (London 1803) 16–17.Google Scholar

6 The Private Correspondence of Lord Macartney. Davies, C.C. ed. (London 1950) 3.Google Scholar

7 Barrow, John, An account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, in the Years 1797 and 1798 (2 vols.;London 1801) 11,267.Google Scholar

8 Speech of 15 Feb. 1788, Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (8 vols.; London 1854–1889) VII, 26.

9 Campbell's, L.D. Preface to ‘The Embassy to Candy’, The Miscellaneous Works of Hugh Boyd (2 vols.; London 1800) II, 10–11.Google Scholar

10 Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. Raffles, Lady ed. (London 1835) 108–109.Google Scholar

11 Wunzburg, C.E., Raffles of the Eastern Seas (London 1954) 179.Google Scholar

12 Barrow, Travels, I 17.

13 Britannia Languens, or A Discourse of Trade in: Early English Tracts on Commerce. McCulloch, J.R. ed. (repr.; London 1954) 341.Google Scholar

14 Records of Fort St. George: Despatchesfrom England 1686–92 (Madras 1919) 54.

15 Salmon, Thomas, Modern History: or, the Present State of All Nations (3 vols.; London 1739) II, 247.Google Scholar

16 Carterel's Voyage Round the World.H.YfMhcd. (2 vols.; Cambridge 1965) 1,235–240.

17 [Price, J.,] Five Letters from a Free Merchant in Bengal to Warren Hastings (London 1778) 114.Google Scholar

18 Secret Committee to Hillsborough, 19 Aug. 1780, India Office Records, L/P&S/5,115–116.

19 SirTemple, William, Observations Upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (6th ed.; London 1693) 237–238,242–243.Google Scholar

20 Fort St. George Despatches from England 1686–92, 90,92–93.

21 Du Bois, J.P.J., Vies des Gouvemeurs Généraux (The Hague 1763)Google Scholar. In 1781 this was described as the best available account of the Dutch empire (G. Patterson to J. Robinson, 17 Jan. 1781,. India Office Records, 1/2/21).

22 Raynal, Abbé, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies. transl. Justamond, J. (5 vols.; London 1777).Google Scholar

23 A View of the Present State of Dutch Settlements in the East Indies (London 1780); see also Schutte, GJ., De Ncdcrlandse Patriottcnen de Koloniën (Groningen 1974) 28–29.Google Scholar

24 Stavorinus, J.S., Voyages to the East Indies. transl. Willcocke, S.H. (3 vols.; London 1798).Google Scholar

25 Harris, John, Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca (2 vols.; London 1744) I, 940.Google Scholar

26 Postlethwayt, Malachy, Britain's Commercial Interests Explained and Improved (2 vols.; London 1757) 11, 242.Google Scholar

27 The Present State of Holland (London 1765) 123.Google Scholar

28 W. Grenviile to H. Dundas, 28 Aug. 1781, H.M.C.Dropmore MSS I, 286.

29 Records of Cape Colony III, 1799–1801. Theal, G.M. ed. (London 1898) 88.Google Scholar

30 F. North, ‘Observations’ (Nov. 1798), British Library, Add. MS. 13864, f.. 212.

31 Mcmoir of Raffles,92.

32 Ibidem, 81.

33 The Douglas Papers. S.G. Perera ed. (Colombo 1933) 20.

34 Memoir of Raffles, 35.

35 Lord Minto in India,219,317.

36 Ibidem, 266.

37 Memoir of Raffles, 87.

38 Records of Cape Colony II, 1796–99 (London 1898) 7.

39 Wurtzburg,.Raffles 171–172.

40 Furnival, J.S., Colonial Policy and Practice (Cambridge 1848) 220Google Scholar; Bastin, J.S., The Native Policy of Sir Stamford Raffles (Oxford 1957) 10.Google Scholar

41 Wright, East Indian Economic Problems, 67.

42 India Office Library, MS. Eur.E. 104,36–103.

43 India Office Library, MS. Eur.F.148/4,161–162.

44 Cited in Wright, H.R.C., ‘The Moluccan Spice Monopoly 1770–1824’, Journal of the Malayan Branchofthe Royal Asiatic Society 21 (1958) 65.Google Scholar

45 Wright, H.R.C., ‘Raffles and the Slave Trade at Batavia in 1812’, Historical Journal 3 (1960) 185–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Freund, W.H., ‘The Cape under the Transitional Government 1795–1814’ in: Elphick, R. and Giliomee, H. eds., The Shaping of South African Society (Cape Town 1979) 224.Google Scholar

47 Copy of the De Meuron Report in British Library, Add. MS 13864, f. 12; see also De Silva, C.R., Ceylon Under the British Occupation 1795–1833 (2 vols.; Colombo 1953–1962) I.Google Scholar

48 The Hero. A Poetic Epistle respectfully addressed to Marquis Comwallis (Cambridge 1794) 15.Google Scholar

49 Minuteofll Feb. 1793, PP. 1810, v. 107.

50 Seeley, J.R., The Expansion of England. Gross, J. ed. (Chicago 1971) 106.Google Scholar

51 Records of Fort St. George: Despatchesfrom England 1684–6 (Madras 1916) 166.Google Scholar

52 John Dryden, Amboyna (1673) Act II, Scene i.

53 Temple, Observations Upon the United provinces, 188.

54 Duffy, M., The English Satirical Print 1660–1832: The Englishman and the Foreigner (Cambridge 1986) 30Google Scholar. Dr Hamish Scott kindly drew my attention to this work.

55 Ibidem, 31.

56 Pocock, J.G.A., The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton 1975).Google Scholar

57 Ms in Sheffield City Library, Bk 10.36 (I owe this reference to Prof. D.C. Bryant).

58 Barrow, Travels II, 29.

59 India Office Library, MS. Eur.F. 148/3, f. 108.

60 Percival, Account of Ceylon, 29.

61 Morgan, E.S., American Slavery American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York 1975) 16–17.Google Scholar

62 An Impartial Vindication of the English East India Company (1688) 118–119.

63 Raynal, Philosophical and Political History i, 472.

64 Letters of 28 Feb. 1798 and 10 May 1801, E. Ingram, Two Views of British India (Bath 1970) 41,328.