THE POMPEII OF THE EAST - Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World - page 11

Figure 1.7. Portrait of Sir Stamford Raffles, by George Francis Joseph (1817). The landscape background
suggests the fertile “Eden” of the East Indies that was Raffles's political dominion, while the rich assort-
ment of papers and Asian artifacts represents his scholarly investment in the History of Java , published the
year of the portrait. The Hindu character of Raffles's art collection is deliberate: Raffles's History goes to
great pains to elevate Java's “native” Hindu traditions, more congenial to English colonizers, above the
more recent introduction of Islamic culture. (© National Portrait Gallery, London.)
The governor presided over this extensive menagerie and research factory as its prose syn-
thesizer, a kind of mythmaker-in-chief of Javanese history. After entertaining his European
colleagues over dinner, Raffles would repair to his study, where pen, ink, and paper lay ready
for him, with two large candles lit. After pacing up and down for a time, he would lie on the
table with his eyes closed as if asleep, then spring up and write furiously past midnight. In
the morning, he read over what he had written, saving three sheets out of ten and tearing up
the rest.
The result of this frenzy of scholarly activity has been called the first “classic of South East
Asian historiography.” 30 The two volumes of Raffles's History of Java (1817) aim at a compre-
hensive account of Javan culture in the Western enlightenment style, organized under rubrics
of geology and geography, agriculture and manufacturing, language and customs, history and
government. For all its apparatus of scholarly objectivity, however, the History of Java pro-
motes a specific political agenda at every turn. Interwoven with botanical descriptions and
historical accounts are vivid threads of travelogue propaganda, anti-Dutch polemic, and re-
formist colonial policy, all designed to promote the cause of continued British administration
of the Javan archipelago, including Sumbawa.
To his East India Company superiors, Raffles paints a lyrical picture of the Java region as
an Eden of agricultural possibility, ripe for European development:
Nothing can be conceived more beautiful to the eye, or more gratifying to the imagination,
than the prospect of the rich variety of hill and dale, of rich plantations and fruit trees or
forests, of natural streams and artificial currents … it is difficult to say whether the admirer
of landscape, or the cultivator of the ground, will be most gratified by the view. The whole
country, as seen from mountains of considerable elevation, appears a rich, diversified, and
well-watered garden. 31