60 Facts About John Crawfurd

John Crawfurd was a Scottish physician, colonial administrator, diplomat, and author who served as the second and last Resident of Singapore.

John Crawfurd was born on Islay, in Argyll, Scotland, the son of Samuel Crawfurd, a physician, and Margaret Campbell; and was educated at the school in Bowmore.

John Crawfurd followed his father's footsteps in the study of medicine and completed his medical course at the University of Edinburgh in 1803, at the age of 20.

John Crawfurd saw service in the campaigns of Baron Lake.

John Crawfurd was sent in 1808 to Penang, where he applied himself to the study of the Malay language and culture.

In 1811, John Crawfurd accompanied Raffles on Lord Minto's Java Invasion, which overcame the Dutch.

Raffles was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Java by Minto during the 45-day operation, and John Crawfurd was appointed the post of Resident Governor at the Court of Yogyakarta in November 1811.

John Crawfurd was sent on diplomatic missions to Bali and the Celebes.

John Crawfurd, with his experience of India and the zamindari, was a supporter of the "village system" of revenue collection.

John Crawfurd opposed Raffles's attempts to introduce individual settlement into Java.

Java was returned to the Dutch in 1816, and John Crawfurd went back to England that year, shortly becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society, and turning to writing.

John Crawfurd travelled with notes from Horace Hayman Wilson on Buddhism, as it was understood at the time.

The John Crawfurd Adam proceeded on what would be the first official visit to Siam since the resurgence of Siam following the 1767 Fall of Ayutthaya.

On 8 December 1821, near Papra Strait John Crawfurd finds fishermen "in a state of perpetual distrust and insecurity" due to territorial disputes between hostile Burmans and Siamese.

John Crawfurd moved on to Saigon, but Minh Mang refused to see him.

John Crawfurd was appointed British Resident of Singapore in March 1823.

John Crawfurd was under orders to reduce the expenditure on the existing factory there, but instead responded to local commercial representations, and spent money on reclamation work on the river.

John Crawfurd concluded the final agreement between the East India Company, and Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor with the Temenggong, on the status of Singapore on 2 August 1824.

John Crawfurd had input into the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 dealing with spheres of influence in the East Indies.

John Crawfurd edited and contributed to the Singapore Chronicle of Francis James Bernard, the first local newspaper that initially appeared dated 1 January 1824.

John Crawfurd was sent on another envoy mission to Burma in 1826, by Hastings's successor Lord Amherst, in the aftermath of the First Anglo-Burmese War.

John Crawfurd collected significant fossils, north of Magwe on the left bank of the river, in seven chests.

John Crawfurd tried parliamentary politics, without success; he agitated for free trade; and he was a publicist for and against colonisation schemes, in line with his views.

John Crawfurd represented the interests of British traders based in Singapore and Calcutta.

John Crawfurd made several unsuccessful attempts to enter the British Parliament in the 1830s.

John Crawfurd joined the Parliamentary Candidate Society, founded by Thomas Erskine Perry, to promote "fit and proper" Members of Parliament.

John Crawfurd joined the Radical Club, a breakaway from the National Political Union founded in 1833 by William Wallis.

John Crawfurd unsuccessfully contested, as an advanced radical, Glasgow in 1832, Paisley in 1834, Stirling Burghs in 1835, and Preston in 1837.

On 31 January 1834 John Crawfurd supported Thomas Perronet Thompson in a meeting agitating against the Corn Laws.

In Preston in the 1837 general election John Crawfurd had the Liberal nomination in a three-cornered fight for two seats, as Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood was regarded as a waverer by the Conservatives who ran Robert Townley Parker against him; but he polled third.

John Crawfurd supported John Temple Leader's candidacy at Westminster against Sir Francis Burdett, being deputy chairman on his election committee.

John Crawfurd spoke with George Grote at a meeting for Leader at the Belgrave Hotel.

John Crawfurd had had experience in Java of the export possibilities for cotton textiles.

John Crawfurd then gave evidence in March 1830 to a parliamentary committee, on the East India Company's monopoly of trade with China.

In reviewing Edward Gibbon Wakefield's New British Province of South Australia, and subsequent writing in the Westminster Review, John Crawfurd gave an opinion against systematic colonisation.

John Crawfurd considered that abundant land and individual enterprise were the necessary elements.

In 1843 John Crawfurd gave evidence to the Colonial Office on Port Essington, on the north coast of Australia, to the effect that its climate made it unsuitable for settlement.

John Crawfurd returned to the topic in a debate in 1858 on settlements on the Victoria River, as had been suggested by Sir George Everest.

John Crawfurd generally opposed Sir Roderick Murchison's promotion of European colonisation of Australia, as far as it applied to the north coast.

John Crawfurd involved Joseph Hume, and he obtained newspaper coverage for his cause, including in The Examiner where the precedents from America were cited.

John Crawfurd wrote pamphlets himself, in which he advocated an end to the East India Company monopoly, and European colonisation.

John Crawfurd's lobbying continued with the free trade issues mentioned above.

In 1855 John Crawfurd went with a delegation to the Board of Control of the East India Company, with representations on behalf of the Straits dollar as an independent currency.

John Crawfurd lobbied in both Houses of Parliament, with George Keppel, 6th Earl of Albemarle acting to bring a petition to the Lords, and William Ewart Gladstone putting the case in the Commons.

John Crawfurd was elected President of the Ethnological Society in 1861.

John Crawfurd died at his home in Elvaston Place, South Kensington, London on 11 May 1868 at the age of 85.

In retirement after the Burmese mission, John Crawfurd wrote books and papers on Eastern subjects.

John Crawfurd was a critic of much of what the European nations had done in the area of Asia he covered.

John Crawfurd's suggestion met no favour at the time, but scholars from around 1950 onwards came to agree.

John Crawfurd held strong views on what he saw as the backwardness of the economy of India of his time.

John Crawfurd attributed it to the weakness of Indian financial institutions, compared to Europe.

John Crawfurd's opinions were in an anonymous pamphlet A Sketch of the Commercial Resources and Monetary and Mercantile System of British India now attributed to him.

Crawfurd held polygenist views, based on multiple origins of human groups; and these earned him, according to Sir John Bowring, the nickname "the inventor of forty Adams".

John Crawfurd expressed these views to the Ethnological Society of London, a traditional stronghold of monogenism where he had come in 1861 to hold office as President.

John Crawfurd believed in different races as separate creations by God in specific regional zones, with separate origins for languages, and possibly as different species.

John Crawfurd wrote in 1861 in the Transactions of the ESL a paper On the Conditions Which Favour, Retard, and Obstruct the Early Civilization of Man, in which he argued for deficiencies in the science and technology of Asia.

John Crawfurd dedicated considerable effort to a critique of Darwin's theories of human evolution; as a proponent of polygenism, who believed that human races did not share common ancestors, John Crawfurd was an early and prominent critic of Darwin's ideas.

Ellingson points to a 1781 work of William Falconer, On the Influence of Climate, with an attack on Rousseau, as a possible source of John Crawfurd's thinking; while pointing out some differences.

John Crawfurd's attitudes were not based on human skin colour; and he was an opponent of slavery, having written an article "Sugar without Slavery" with Thomas Perronet Thompson in 1833 in the Westminster Review.

The writer Oswald John Frederick Crawfurd, born in 1834, was their son.