William Farquhar

Farquhar was born in Newhall, Aberdeenshire, near Aberdeen in 1774 as the youngest child of Robert Farquhar and Agnes Morrison, his father's second wife.[1] His brother, Arthur, two years his senior, rose to the rank of rear admiral in the Royal Navy, and received a knighthood for his distinguished services during the Napoleonic Wars.

Farquhar joined the East India Company as a cadet at the age of 17. Shortly after arriving in Madras on 19 June 1791, he was promoted to a low-rank commissioned officer of the Madras Engineers on 22 June 1791. Two years later, on 16 August 1793, he became a lieutenant in the Madras Engineers.

Farquhar was Chief Engineer in the expeditionary force which took Malacca from the Dutch on 18 August 1795. He spoke Malay and was popularly known as the Rajah of Malacca. He kept a Malaccan-French mistress, Antoinette "Nonio" Clement, with whom he had at least six children, one of which died while still an infant. Their eldest daughter Esther Farquhar married Capt. Francis James Bernard who became a prominent part of early Singapore. On 1 January 1803 he was promoted to the rank of full captain.

From 1802 he acted as Resident of Malacca, and was made a full major in Corps on 26 September 1812, before he was officially appointed Resident and Commandant of Malacca in December 1813; a position he held for several years, in charge of both civil and military offices, until the Dutch returned in September 1818. During his tenure here he assisted in missions around the region, including the British invasion of Java led by Governor-General Baron Minto and Sir Stamford Raffles in August 1812.

An engineer, his reputation was established by his long and successful term as Resident of Malacca, of which he was given charge when it passed into British hands from the Dutch. A task given him by the British Government was to demolish all the structures left by the former occupants; he blew up the fortifications with gunpowder but spared some of the other buildings, showing great intelligence.

With his long Malayan experience and an intimate knowledge of Riau-Lingga politics, Major Farquhar was given the task to help Sir Stamford Raffles find a settlement on Singapore island. He helped negotiate the provisional agreement of 30 January 1819 with the local chieftain Temenggong Abdul Rahman; and the more formal Singapore Treaty of 6 February 1819, which Raffles signed with the Temenggong and the Sultan Hussein Mohammed Shah, confirming the right for the British to set up a trading post. On the same day, Farquhar, accompanied by a few Malaccan Malays, had to climb up the hill, known as the Bukit Larangan. He drew up the first gun and set up the post to hoist the Union Jack flag on top of the hill, marking the birth of Singapore as a British settlement.

Raffles appointed Farquhar as Singapore's First Resident to develop the colony according to a specific plan Raffles had drawn up. Raffles left Singapore on the following day and Farquhar was left to manage the colony when Raffles left, an absence eventually lasting four years. He was appointed the first British Resident and Commandant of Singapore, 1819–23.

Farquhar took a more laissez-faire approach, which suited the local traders who had followed him there. In his new post, he quickly set about clearing the plain on the northeast bank of the Singapore River. Word of this new trading post soon spread and Singapore became a thriving cosmopolitan town. Communication with Raffles in Bencoolen and the East India Company in Calcutta were so poor that for more than three years Singapore developed on her own with Farquhar at the helm.

On 9 May 1821, Farquhar was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Despite his many positive achievements in the formative period of Singapore's development, he adopted measures in his administration that conflicted with Raffles' instructions, notably in allowing the erection of houses and go-downs on the Padang and on the nearby banks of the Singapore River. His justification was that in the rapidly expanding settlement 'nothing is heard in the shape of complaint but the want of more ground to build on'.

However, when Raffles returned in October 1822, he was furious to discover his plans had been neglected and that moreover local vices, such as the trading of opium and slave-trading, were being tolerated. He then dismissed Farquhar, who first refused to leave and later sued Raffles for tyrannical behaviour.

On 11 March 1824, Sayid Yasin, a Muslim merchant from the established Malay community in Singapore, stabbed Farquhar as he walked in his gardens. Sayid was prevented from completing his task only by the timely arrival of Farquhar's servants, who killed the assailant immediately. The stabbing was not fatal.

The European settlers assumed immediately that Sayid must have been acting in the name of the Temenggong Abdul Rahman, but that was not true. Sayid and Farquhar then had a semi-private dispute; when Sayid was proven unable to pay his debts, Farquhar sent him to gaol. That fate was humiliating to Sayid and so he sought revenge.

Raffles argued that an attack on an official should be met with an exemplary punishment and called for Sayid's corpse to be put in chains in an iron cage and exhibited publicly at Tanjong Malang for a fortnight. Sayid's grave at Tanjong Pagar, however, would soon become a shrine and remained a place of pilgrimage for many years, making many Europeans think that Raffles had endangered their lives by needlessly antagonising the Malays.[2]

After his arrival in London in 1824, Farquhar wrote to the Court of Directors of the East India Company, complained of his unjust removal from office by Raffles, and requested the reinstatement of his command of Singapore. He described Singapore as "a settlement formed at his own suggestion and matured under his personal management", and asked the Directors to "appreciate those feelings of interest excited in his mind in regard to a Settlement selected and founded by himself."

When the Directors referred this Memorial to Raffles, he dismissed Farquhar's claim as peremptorily as he had dismissed Farquhar from office in April 1823. Raffles replied: "On the credit assumed by Lieutenant-Colonel Farquhar for having suggested the establishment of Singapore, this is the first time I ever heard of the circumstance, and on reference to the public records I find nothing to support it. A regard to truth compels me to deny in broad terms that Colonel Farquhar ever suggested, or, to my knowledge, knew or stated anything with regard to the formation of a Settlement at Singapore, until I communicated to him the authority with which I was invested, to form a Settlement there."

In Farquhar's brief rejoinder to Raffles' reply, in April 1825, he omitted reference to Singapore and to his claim, and the Court of Directors finally ruled against him in November 1825, refusing his request to be reinstated.

Raffles commented in a letter to his sister: "It was my wish poor Man that he should be let off as easily as possible, but he seems to have failed in all he attempted, and if he has not been so severely handled as he might have been he has me to thank for it -- for certainly he stands on no better footing than he did before he made his Appeal."