of the Netherlands over Ceylon, Malacca, and other
stations on the highway to the Insulinde. When the Netherlands were
annexed to the French Empire by Napoleon in 1810 the British seized the
excuse thus provided to occupy Java, Thomas Stamford Raffles, the
brilliant young Englishman who was then the agent of the British East
India Company at Malacca, in the Malay States, being sent to Java as
lieutenant-governor. Urgent as were his appeals that Java should be
retained by Britain as a jewel in her crown of empire, the readjustment
of the territories of the great European powers which was effected at
the Congress of Vienna, in 1816, after the fall of Napoleon, resulted
in the restoration to the Dutch of those islands of the Insulinde,
including Java, which the British had seized. But, though Raffles ruled
in Java for barely four and a half years, his spirit goes marching on,
the system of colonial government which he instituted having been
continued by the Dutch, in its main outlines, to this day. He won the
confidence and friendship of the powerful native princes,
revolutionized the entire legal system, revived the system of village
or communal government, reformed the land-tenure, abolished the
abominable system of forcing the natives to deliver all their crops,
and gave to the Javanese a rule of honesty, justice and wisdom with
which, up to that time, they had not had even a bowing acquaintance. As
a result of the lessons learned from Stamford Raffles, the Dutch
possessions in the East are today more wisely and justly administered
than those of any other European nation.

The Dutch had not seen the last of Raffles, however, for in 1817 he
returned from England, where he had been knighted by the Prince Regent,
to take the post of lieutenant-governor of Sumatra, to which the
British did not finally relinquish their claims until half a century
later. His administration of that great island was characterized by the
same breadth of vision, tact, and energy which had marked his rule in
Java. It was during this period that Raffles rendered his greatest
service to the empire. The Dutch, upon regaining Java, attempted to
obtain complete control of all the islands of the archipelago, which
would have resulted in seriously hampering, if not actually ending,
British trade east of Malacca. But Raffles, recognizing the menace to
British interests, defeated the Dutch scheme in January, 1819, by a
sudden _coup d'etat_, when he seized