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INTRODUCTION T he discovery of Malay letters written in Jawi script with dates ranging from 1780 [1194 AH] to 1823 [1239 AH] at Inshriach House in Aviemore, Scotland, was an important find for both historians of the Malay Archipelago and scholars of Malay studies. These Malay manuscripts, now finally in the possession of the British Library,1 have brought to light many new and exciting historical facts about the course of events in the Malay Archipelago in the early 19th century, especially in the years 1810 and 1811, when most of these letters were written. The manuscripts of no fewer than 78 originals2 in all, together with some Javanese and Dutch manuscripts were thought to have been lost when the ship Fame, on which Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and his wife were returning to England from Bencoolen, caught fire and sank off West Sumatra in February 1824. The emergence of these original Malay letters has resolved the problem of piecing together certain factual details relevant to the history of the Malay-Indonesian region because a number of copies of the letters that Raffles wrote to the Malay and Indonesian rulers and chiefs in the archipelago are already held by the British Library together with some of the translations of the replies that Raffles received. When the then India Office Library acquired 48 volumes of Lord Minto’s papers in 1969 questions were raised as to the whereabouts of the original Malay letters which Raffles had sent to the GovernorGeneral to be translated by John Leyden in Calcutta. It is now clear that these letters addressed to the Governor-General must have been handed back to Raffles, probably at the request of Raffles himself, for while he was at Malacca John Leyden was working with Raffles with his own Malay scribes.3 The interchange of letters would have occurred because 1 1 The British Library successfully bought the collection from the descendant of the Drake family in 2006, the collection having hitherto been on permanent loan. 2 This excludes one manuscript, which is not a letter but a one-folio genealogy of the rajas of Siak (aturan raja-raja Siak), which this writer hopes to work on and publish in the immediate future. 3 See John Bastin, John Leyden and Thomas Stamford Raffles, printed for the Author, Eastbourne, 2003, pp. 59–60. Raffles was very interested in collecting and copying Malay manuscripts , including letters.4 Among these letters are the correspondence of the indigenous rulers with Lord Minto, letters of Malay rulers and chiefs, Malay agents and clerks working for Raffles, letters addressed to the governors of Penang, Philip Dundas and Andrew Bruce, and letters from them to the Malay rulers. There is also one letter to Sultan Ratu Muhammad Bahaudin from the Dutch Governor-General, Reynier de Klerk, dated 1780. There are also English translations of some of the Malay letters by John Leyden. All of these were collected by Raffles and taken to England when he left Java in 1816. He then left them with his books and other documents when he left England for Bencoolen in 1817. On his death, these letters were passed to his widow, Lady Sophia Raffles who, in turn, on her death bequeathed them to her niece, Jenny Rosdew Flint, wife of the Rev. William Charles Raffles Flint, who was the eldest surviving son of Captain William Flint, Singapore’s first Master Attendant,5 and Mary Ann (1789–1837),6 Raffles’ favourite sister.7 Although the English letters addressed to Raffles became generally known, the Malay letters remained unnoticed when Mrs M. Rosdew Drake, a descendant of Lady Raffles and successive owner of the letters, moved with her family from London to Scotland during World War II.8 The green velvet-covered document box containing the Malay letters was placed in the attic of Inshriach House, Aviemore, in Scotland.9 It was only after the death of Mrs. Drake in 1970 that her son, Mr. Jack Drake, invited Dr. John Bastin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, to examine the letters, and later placed them on permanent loan in the India Office Library. The letters were written on European-manufactured paper, but there was one Javanese manuscript and a Balinese one written on palmyra leaf. As mentioned earlier, most of the letters were written in 1810 and 2 4 Ibid., pp. 31–32. 5 Flint was with Raffles in Java and became Master Attendant on 24 April 1820, in place of...

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