ABSTRACT
Francis Stirling was a naval officer who at the time of this correspondence was serving in Malaysia. These dispatches from Stirling were received by the Admiralty regarding the murder in Malay of the senior British administrator James Birch and subsequent actions of the Perak Expeditionary Force, published in a supplement to the prominent London Gazette newspaper. Birch had held the post of ‘Resident’ which was the lead imperial administrative position in which he was an ‘advisor’ to the local Sultan. This was an arrangement introduced by the Pangkor Treaty power-sharing arrangement of 1874 between Great Britain and the sultan of Perak. Stirling continued in his naval career after this engagement but drowned aged forty on a voyage from Britain to Bermuda after being caught in a storm in the infamously treacherous waters around that Caribbean island. This dispatch refers to ordering jungle clearances for tactical reasons which, although now legally proscribed, was not especially contentious at the time.
