Britain And Holland In The Malay World

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29994, 1 December 1962, Page 3

Britain And Holland In The Malay World

\ Reviewed by

W.P.M.]

Anglo-Dutch Rivalry In The Malay World, 1780-1824. By Nicholas Tarling. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. The subject of this book is not so remote from our affairs as it might have appeared to be some years ago. It deals with the complex diplomatic negotiations, extending on and off over more than 40 years, which ended in an agreement, in effect, that the Indonesian Archipelago should be left as a Dutch sphere of influence and the Malay Peninsula become, at least potentially, a British sphere. Two centuries earlier the British East India Companyhad tacitlv agreed to concentrate on tlie Indian peninsula and the Dutch East India Company upon the Archipelago (and Ceylon). But the Dutch still had certain toeholds in India and the British had Bencoolen in Sumtra. Then in the later 18th century, with the development of the China trade, British interest in the Straits of Malacca revived, whilst the decline of the Dutch East India Company caused anxiety lest Dutch possessions in the East should fall under the influence, if not the control, of the French. The overthrow of the proFrench •■patriot" party in the Netherlands in 1787 appeared to remove this danger, but, as Dr. Tarling shows, negotiations for an Anglo-Dutch arrangement in the East failed, and this failure, he says, ‘‘helped to account for the success of the French revolutionary armies in overturning the Government in the United Provinces" in 1794-5. In the Revolutionary Wars Great Britain took Ceylon

and she kept it at the peace of Amiens. In the Napoleonic War (a world war if ever there was one) the logic of events drove her in 1811 to occupy Java and virtually all the Dutch out-stations also. These, however, she felt bound to return at the peace in order to strengthen the new kingdom of the Netherlands. which was essentially a British creation. But the British Government still felt the need of a station in or near the Straits of Malacca and had some hopes of securing trading rights in the Archipelago itself, thanks mainly to the bold initiative of Stamford Raffles, who had been Lieutenant-governor of Java (and a very able one at that) and now saw his energies confined to the narrow limits of the Lieutenantgovernorship of Bencoolen, she secured in 1819, by a piece of irregular treatymaking, the cession of Singapore and in 1824 the Dutch reluctantly recognised this acquisition. The story of the acquisition of Singapore has been told frequently enough. by Raffles’s many biographers. The diplomatic background has never, however, been so fully described, at any rate from the British point of view, as it is by Dr. Tarling. Diplomatic history is apt to be close reading and Dr. Tarling does not lighten the narrative by drawing character sketches of the negotiators. He takes a general knowledge of the period for granted and writes primarily for the specialist. But the book is a careful and scholarly piece of work; and at a time when old diplomatic issues in South East Asia are apt to be revived by the new nationalist governments it provides useful background material for the student of South East Asian affairs.