Article

The Baptist mission press at Bencoolen

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The Baptist mission press at Bencoolen

C.E. Wurtzburg’s 1950 article documents the brief but consequential output of the Baptist Mission Press at Bencoolen, established under the direct patronage of Sir Stamford Raffles during his second tenure as Lieutenant Governor of Fort Marlborough (1818–1824). The piece reconstructs the press’s small catalogue of publications—primarily the two volumes of Malayan Miscellanies and the Proceedings of the Agricultural Society of Sumatra—and situates them within Raffles’s broader programme of administrative and intellectual development for the settlement.

Summary

The press originated from Raffles’s 1818 correspondence with the Serampore missionaries, to whom he had been introduced by Leyden in 1810. When Raffles departed Calcutta for Singapore in 1818, he took with him Nathaniel Ward, a young Baptist missionary trained as a printer who carried a press equipped with English and Malay types. Raffles himself served as Superintendent, and the press’s stated purpose was the production of educational material for Malay children rather than religious conversion, though one volume of Malay hymns was printed (p. 136).

The press’s most significant output consisted of three volumes published between 1820 and 1822. Malayan Miscellanies Vol. I (1820) was explicitly designated the first book produced by the press and contained a heterogeneous collection of botanical descriptions by William Jack, geographical accounts, a translation of the Annals of Achin, and proceedings of the Native School Institution. The Proceedings of the Agricultural Society of Sumatra Vol. I (1821) reflected Raffles’s conviction that “agriculture is the only sure and solid foundation of national prosperity,” and included detailed district reports on population, spice cultivation, and salubrity (pp. 137, 141). Malayan Miscellanies Vol. II (1822) continued the pattern with travel narratives, botanical work, genealogical accounts, and legal translations (p. 140).

The press’s output was abruptly curtailed by two converging forces. A devastating epidemic in 1822 killed Dr. Jack, the Rev. Charles Winter, and numerous others, while Raffles and his wife Sophia narrowly survived; Raffles subsequently redirected his remaining energy toward consolidating Singapore. The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 transferred Bencoolen to the Dutch, after which Padang supplanted the settlement and the press was closed (p. 139). Raffles’s planned Malay Gospels and Javanese New Testament were never published, and no third volume of Miscellanies or second volume of Proceedings appeared.

Key Findings

  • The press produced four known volumes: Malayan Miscellanies Vol. I (1820), Proceedings of the Agricultural Society of Sumatra Vol. I (1821), Malayan Miscellanies Vol. II (1822), and William Robinson’s An Attempt to Elucidate the Principles of Malayan Orthography (1823), the last printed on locally produced paper (pp. 136–138).
  • Robinson’s 1823 orthography work comprised 64 pages of introduction, 214 pages of text, and 20 pages of notes; a single surviving copy was preserved at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, after being salvaged from the bombed headquarters of the Baptist Missionary Society in London (p. 138).
  • The 1822 epidemic killed Robert Hull, Captain Auber, three of Sophia Raffles’s children, Dr. Jack, the Rev. Charles Winter, and the wife of W. Robinson, among others (p. 137).
  • Raffles’s letter of 26 February 1822 confirms that Malay Gospels in an “improved Malay version suited to this coast” were in press and a Javanese New Testament was “ready for the Press,” but neither was published (p. 137).
  • The Proceedings Vol. I included six appendices covering district population statistics, spice cultivation (1819–20), general salubrity, out-station regulations (May 1820), and debtor and slave regulations (November 1822) (pp. 141–142).
  • Only the second volume of Malayan Miscellanies is held in Raffles Library; Wurtzburg accessed all three volumes through the India Office Library, where they were original copies sent from Bencoolen to the E.I. Company Library (p. 137).

Conclusion

Wurtzburg’s article establishes that the Bencoolen Mission Press, though short-lived and modest in output, produced a body of work of genuine scholarly value—particularly in botany, geography, and Malay linguistics—that was largely lost to subsequent generations due to the scarcity of surviving copies and the settlement’s rapid decline after the 1824 cession to the Dutch.

Context

  • Wurtzburg’s account draws on the India Office Library holdings (originals dispatched from Fort Marlborough to the E.I. Company Library) and on the Rev. E.A. Payne’s 1945 work South-East from Serampore for information on Robinson’s orthography treatise (pp. 137–138).
  • The article contributes to the historiography of Raffles’s Bencoolen administration by documenting the intellectual infrastructure he built there, complementing Lady Raffles’s Memoir and Moor’s Notices of the East Indian Archipelago, both of which reprint or reference material from the press’s output.

References