For the Malays who love their colonialists..
What did Raffles and John Crawfurd (the Second Resident of Singapura) think of the Malays?
Raffles:
“He held that Malays were a rude, uncivilised and degraded race, much in decline from a high point of civilisation that they had once attained.
No development in thought and science was thus expected of them except for the most rudimentary aspects of knowledge. He found them to be generally indolent.
Although he later acknowledged them as being advanced in civilisation, albeit at varying degrees, and of varied characteristics, he maintained the view that Malays were no match to the British at that time,but were to be compared only with “some of the borderers in North Britain, not many centuries ago.”
John Crawfurd:
The second Resident of Singapura was a little kinder. He referred to the Malays as imbeciles, ignorant and not deserving of notice.
“Crawfurd thus contended that ‘the traditions of the Malays themselves are altogether undeserving of notice’, given that, on their level of civilisation:
Their imbecility of reason and their ignorance as to matters of fact are equally beyond the comprehension of any one accustomed only to European society.
And we still look up to the colonialists?
References:
Aljunied, Syed Muhd Khairudin, Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied, and Barbara Watson Andaya. Rethinking Raffles: A Study of Stamford Raffles’ Discourse on Religions Amongst Malays. Marshall Cavendish International, 2005.
Crawfurd, J. 1814. History and languages of the Indian islands. Edinburgh Review 23(45): 151–89.
quoted in:
Müller, Martin. Manufacturing Malayness: British debates on the Malay nation, civilisation, race and language in the early nineteenth century. Indonesia and the Malay World, 2014, Vol.42(123), p.170-196
Source: Almakhazin SG
