Early references to the suitability of Singapore
This short note by C. E. Wurtzburg (1925) argues that Raffles may have been influenced by William Milburn’s Oriental Commerce (1813) when selecting Singapore as the site for a new trading post.
Summary
Wurtzburg observes that among the many accounts explaining Raffles’s choice of Singapore, none references Milburn’s two-volume work, which was based on practical experience from seven voyages to India and China and published in 1813 — only three years before Raffles was in England writing his History of Java. Given that Milburn was in the East India Company’s service and that the book contained chapters on Java, Malaya, Sumatra, and the Dutch East Indies, Wurtzburg considers it unlikely that Raffles did not read it, and even suggests the two may have known each other personally (p. 105).
The note then quotes a passage from page 320 of Volume 2, under the heading “Johore,” in which Milburn records that in 1703 Captain Hamilton visited Johore and was offered the island of Singapore by the King but declined to take possession of it, “notwithstanding its convenient situation for trade, and the surrounding country being well supplied with excellent timber and trees fit for masts” (p. 105). Wurtzburg presents this as evidence that the strategic value of Singapore was already documented in Company circles before Raffles’s expedition.