ABSTRACT
Stamford Raffles was a clerk of the English East India Company with a keen interest in Malay studies and natural history. He engineered the succession to the Johor Sultanate and established himself in Singapore in order to establish a trading base in Singapore conceived on geopolitical and commercial principles. He managed to conclude an agreement with the sultan on the 6 February 1819, which entitled the East India Company to use a defined area as a port and settlement.
