Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles (6 July 1781 – 5 July 1826) was a British statesman, best known for his founding of the city of Singapore (now the city-state of the Republic of Singapore). He is often described as the “Father of Singapore”. He was also heavily involved in the conquest of the Indonesian island of Java from Dutch and French military forces during the Napoleonic Wars and contributed to the expansion of the British Empire. He was also an amateur writer and wrote a book entitled History of Java (1817).

Raffles was born on the ship Ann off the coast of Port Morant, Jamaica, to Captain Benjamin Raffles (d. June 1797) and Anne Raffles (née Lyde). His father was a Yorkshireman who had a burgeoning family and little luck in the West Indies trade during the American Revolution, sending the family into debt. The little money the family had went into schooling Raffles. He attended a boarding school. In 1795, at the age of 14, Raffles started working as a clerk in London for the British East India Company, the trading company that shaped many of Britain’s overseas conquests. In 1805 he was sent to what is now Penang in the country of Malaysia, then called the Prince of Wales Island, starting his long association with Southeast Asia. He started with a post under the Honourable Philip Dundas, the Governor of Penang.

As he was gazetted assistant secretary to the new Governor of Penang in 1805, he married Olivia Mariamne Fancourt, a widow who was formerly married to Jacob Cassivelaun Fancourt, an assistant surgeon in Madras who had died in 1800. It was also at this time that he made acquaintance with Thomas Otho Travers, who would accompany him for the next twenty years.

His knowledge of the Malay language as well as his wit and ability, gained him favour with Lord Minto, Governor-General of India, and he was sent to Malacca. Then, in 1811, after the invasion and annexation of the Kingdom of Holland by France during Napoleon’s war, Raffles had no choice but to leave the country. He mounted a military expedition against the Dutch and French in Java, Indonesia. The war was swiftly conducted by Admiral Robert Stopford, General Wetherhall, and Colonel Gillespie, who led a well-organized army against an army of mostly French conscripts with little proper leadership. The previous Dutch governor, Herman Willem Daendels, had built a well-defended fortification at Meester Cornelis (now Jatinegara), and at the time, the governor, Jan Willem Janssens (who, coincidentally, surrendered to the British at the Cape Colony), mounted a brave but ultimately futile defence at the fortress. The British, led by Colonel Gillespie, stormed the fort and captured it within three hours. Janssens attempted to escape inland but was captured. The British invasion of Java took a total of forty-five days, during which Raffles was appointed the Lieutenant-Governor by Lord Minto before hostilities formally ceased. He took his residence at Buitenzorg and despite having a small subset of Britons as his senior staff, he kept many of the Dutch civil servants in the governmental structure. He also negotiated peace and mounted some small military expeditions against local princes to subjugate them to British rule, as well as a takeover of Bangka Island to set up a permanent British presence in the area in the case of the return of Java to Dutch rule after the end of the War of the Sixth Coalition in Europe.