Introduction
In 1808, young colonial secretary Stamford Raffles went down the Malaysian coast from Penang to the formerly Dutch colony of Malacca as a rest cure. There, Raffles and his wife Olivia made the acquaintance of Abdullah Abdul Kadir, a local teacher of Malay, who left us his pen-portrait of them.
HE seemed to me to be always in thought. He paid people a great deal of respect, and had a pleasant face; and he used polite forms of address, calling people ‘Sir,’ and ‘Mister.’ He treated people very kindly, and he was open-handed to the poor; but he knew very well how to put people to silence. Whenever he spoke he always smiled. And he always liked to live in a quiet place, and had no other employment but writing and reading books.*
And I always heard him saying, “I hate the way these Dutchmen behave who live at Malacca, for they all despise the Malays, and cannot associate with them.”* That was just what Mr Raffles liked, to be always familiar with the Malays; even the poor people could converse with him. He wanted to know their customs, and the names of the mountains in Malacca, and all the people’s occupations, and what products were exported, and also what the Malacca people thought as to which rule was better, Dutch or English.*
As Abdullah goes on to show, Raffles was also an amateur naturalist, who amassed a large collection of plants and animals native to the region as part of his scholarship. A great deal of it was lost at sea as he came back to England from Java in 1814. His pets included a bear, which he once treated with champagne when it was ill. In 1826 he founded the Zoological Society of London, together with Sir Joseph Banks (who accompanied James Cook to Botany Bay on HMS Endeavour), Sir Humphry Davy and others.
Writing to William Wilberforce in September 1819, Raffles admitted that he was sometimes too harsh on the Dutch, and that at his headquarters as Governor of Bencoolen (now Bengkulu City in Sumatra, Indonesia) the older generation of Europeans still tended towards prejudice, though it was ‘already wearing off’. Certainly, the Dutch did not reverse his anti-slavery legislation when they regained possession of Java in 1814.
The Malacca people had not been able to sample self-rule since the arrival of the Portuguese in 1511, or since conquest by the Raja of Temasek in 1377 depending on one’s point of view. The Dutch came in 1641. Raffles was however very interested in the history of Malay society and laws prior to the advent of Islam, and looked to it for inspiration when drawing up his own legislation.
Précis
Abdullah Abdul Kadir remembered Stamford Raffles during his time in Malacca as a kindly and respectful man, who valued privacy and quiet to pursue his scholarly hobbies, but who was nonetheless firm when necessary. He also remembered Raffles’s irritation at European prejudice towards Malay people, and recalled how he was eager to meet them and learn their language. (58 / 60 words)
Abdullah Abdul Kadir remembered Stamford Raffles during his time in Malacca as a kindly and respectful man, who valued privacy and quiet to pursue his scholarly hobbies, but who was nonetheless firm when necessary. He also remembered Raffles’s irritation at European prejudice towards Malay people, and recalled how he was eager to meet them and learn their language.
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Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, besides, despite, may, or, otherwise, unless, whereas.
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Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
What did Abdullah like about the way Raffles spoke to people?
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Raffles was respectful. He smiled whenever he spoke. He knew how to silence people.