Raffles
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few figures in the history of the British Empire cast as long a shadow as Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles — soldier, statesman, naturalist, and the founder of modern Singapore. Maurice Collis's Raffles presents a vivid and authoritative portrait of this remarkable man, chronicling his meteoric rise through the ranks of the East India Company, his turbulent governorship of Java, his clashes with colonial superiors, and his audacious establishment of a trading post on a swampy island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula that would become one of the world's great cities. Collis, celebrated for his elegant biographical prose and his intimate knowledge of Southeast Asian history, renders Raffles not merely as an agent of empire but as a man of genuine intellectual curiosity — a passionate collector of flora, fauna, and indigenous art who saw commerce and civilisation as inseparable. Written with novelistic momentum yet grounded in meticulous historical research, Raffles raises enduring questions about ambition, colonialism, and the complicated legacies left by those who reshape the world in their own image. Was Raffles a visionary humanitarian or the ultimate architect of imperial expansion? Collis leaves the reader to wrestle with that question long after the final page.
Author: Maurice Collis
Format: Paperback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few figures in the history of the British Empire cast as long a shadow as Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles — soldier, statesman, naturalist, and the founder of modern Singapore. Maurice Collis's Raffles presents a vivid and authoritative portrait of this remarkable man, chronicling his meteoric rise through the ranks of the East India Company, his turbulent governorship of Java, his clashes with colonial superiors, and his audacious establishment of a trading post on a swampy island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula that would become one of the world's great cities. Collis, celebrated for his elegant biographical prose and his intimate knowledge of Southeast Asian history, renders Raffles not merely as an agent of empire but as a man of genuine intellectual curiosity — a passionate collector of flora, fauna, and indigenous art who saw commerce and civilisation as inseparable. Written with novelistic momentum yet grounded in meticulous historical research, Raffles raises enduring questions about ambition, colonialism, and the complicated legacies left by those who reshape the world in their own image. Was Raffles a visionary humanitarian or the ultimate architect of imperial expansion? Collis leaves the reader to wrestle with that question long after the final page.