Singapore is one of the busiest and most prosperous
ports in the Far East. The success of the port is due to one man, Sir Stanford Raffles. In the early 19th century the
British and
Dutch were competing for the highly profitable trade routes of the Far East. Raffles was employed by the British East India Company.
In the course of his duties, Raffles came to notice a swampy
island called Singapore at the tip of the Malaysian Peninsula. Though it was an unattractive place, Raffles noticed that it stood at the crossroads of the very
trade routes for which Britain and Holland were struggling.
In 1819 he founded a British settlement in Singapore and persuaded the East India Company to buy the island from the
Sultan of Jahore. The wisdom of this move was not at first apparent, and when Raffles died in 1826 the company charged his widow for the
expenses of the
transaction.
Within a few years, however, Singapore had mushroomed into the large and vitally important port which it remains to this day.