Delegation to Java: presentation of Sir Stamford Raffles’ bust to the Royal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences
This article, authored by C. Boden Kloss and F. N. Chasen and published in 1930, documents the presentation of a bronze bust of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles to the Royal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences in Batavia on 23 December 1929, an event that fulfilled a promise Raffles had made to that Society in 1816 but which had been frustrated by the political upheavals following the British evacuation of Java. The piece is framed as a commemorative record of the ceremony but carries within it a substantial historiographical essay by Professor B. Schrieke on Raffles’ administrative legacy in Java and its long-term influence on Dutch colonial policy.
Summary
The article recounts how the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, prompted by informal discussions during the Batavian Society’s 150th anniversary celebrations in 1928, decided to commission a copy of the original Chantry bust (made in 1817 and now held by the Zoological Society of London) and present it to the Batavian Society. The ceremony on 23 December 1929 comprised two parts: a wreath-laying at the grave of Raffles’ first wife, Olivia Mariamne Raffles, at Tanah Abang cemetery in the morning, and a formal presentation at a special meeting of the Society in the evening, attended by the Governor-General of the Netherlands Indies and a distinguished assembly of Dutch and British officials.
The substantive intellectual content of the article lies in the address delivered by Professor Dr. B. Schrieke, Director of the Department of Education and Conservator of the Ethnographical Collection in the Society’s Museum. Schrieke situates Raffles’ brief administration within the broader trajectory of Dutch colonial governance in Java, arguing that Raffles was the first to articulate the principle that Java should be governed for its own benefit rather than for the commercial advantage of the mother country. He traces the intellectual lineage from Dirk van Hogendorp’s radical critique of the Company system through Raffles’ implementation of landrent and free trade, to the eventual reversal under the culture system of the 1830s, and finally to the 19th-century rehabilitation of Raffles as a model of disinterested colonial administration. Schrieke also notes the paucity of published primary sources on the British occupation period and proposes joint publication efforts between the two Societies.
Mr. Welter’s acceptance speech, delivered in English, provides a more personal and admiring portrait of Raffles, emphasising his love for Java, his scientific productivity, and his role in reviving the Batavian Society from a state of near-extinction. The article thus functions simultaneously as a diplomatic record, a biographical tribute, and a piece of colonial historiography.
Key Findings
- The original bust was made by Chantry in 1817 and is the property of the Zoological Society of London, housed in Regent’s Park; the copy presented in 1929 was made in England that year (p. 289, p. 306 n.1).
- The Royal Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences was established in 1779, making it the oldest European learned institution in Asia; it had fallen into a “torpid state” after the death of its earlier patron Rademacher until Raffles revived it as President (pp. 289–290).
- The 114-year interval between Raffles’ 1816 promise and the 1929 presentation was caused by the restoration of Java to Dutch rule, after which Raffles was politically unpopular (p. 290).
- Schrieke identifies the system of landrent as having been introduced “within three times twenty-four hours” of Raffles’ arrival, with the Dutch advisor Muntinghe as the key instrument, and notes that Muntinghe was a strong advocate of Dirk van Hogendorp’s views (p. 302).
- Schrieke argues that Raffles’ administration was not a financial success—he too had to sell lands to meet expenses—and that his failure to retain Java was due to the anti-imperialist current in British public opinion of the 1820s, influenced by Political Economy, the Philosophical Radicals, and the financial crisis following the Napoleonic wars (pp. 302–303).
- Schrieke proposes that the two Societies undertake a joint publication of the unpublished documents of the British occupation period, including the complete set of the Java Government Gazette held by the Batavian Society, as a “monumentum aere perennius” for Raffles (p. 305).
Conclusion
The article’s definitive historical takeaway, articulated through Schrieke’s address, is that Raffles’ principal legacy in Java was not any single policy but the foundational principle that a colony ought to be governed for the benefit of its inhabitants rather than as an instrument of metropolitan commerce—a principle that, despite its immediate financial impracticability and subsequent reversal under the culture system, became the intellectual touchstone for progressive Dutch colonial reform from the mid-nineteenth century onward.
Context
- The article draws on the proceedings of the Batavian Society for 1816 (the valedictory address and Raffles’ reply), Coupland’s biography of Raffles, and Dirk van Hogendorp’s published works; Schrieke also references Sillem’s 1890 biography of Hogendorp and Westendorp Boerma’s 1927 study of Van den Bosch.
- The study contributes to the historiography of the British occupation of Java by foregrounding the continuity between Hogendorp’s theoretical programme and Raffles’ practical reforms, and by explicitly calling for archival collaboration between British and Dutch learned societies to fill the gap in published primary sources for the period 1811–1816.