Willie Farquhar - a misunderstood man?

During our history lesson back in school, we were being etched onto our mind that Sir Thomas Stafford Raffles was the founder of modern Singapore in1819.

While his "good friend" Colonel William Farquhar was merely mentioned as his deputy in the negotiation with Tengku Long (later Sultan Hussein) of Johor to allow the British to set up a trading post in Singapore, in return for the Britain's recognition of Tengku Long as the rightful ruler of the Johor-Riau Sultanate.

Last piece of details we had learnt on Farquhar was that he was fired by Raffles as the "Resident" of Singapore for "not doing good job of running the newly set-up trading post" and allowing unethical activities such as "gambling and cock-fighting" to flourish.

Yet when I visited the "William Farquhar Exhibition" held at the National Library. I was being presented to a different side of Scottish-born administrator.

As you can see from the text above, Farquhar actually was "wronged" to be labelled as the "destroyer" of Malacca as he was the one who ordered the preservation of the "A'Formosa", the Christchurch and other historical landmarks.

It was revealed that the "Rajah of Melaka" (as he was nicknamed as) fought hard to have the historical town to be preserve, after the British saw Malacca as a threat to their newly set-up based in Penang.

While the illustration above mentioned that Farquhar claimed he was the one who found Singapore, not Raffles.

So much so that he actually wrote to the press (as pictured above) to stake his share of honour after the widow of his "friend-turned-foe" claimed full credit for founding Singapore.

In the account shown during the exhibition that this first Resident of Singapore was a "well-liked" man by all the communities in this island and a grand farewell party and sending off was organized in his honour.

Yet, during my school days he was being portrayed as an "incompetent" administrator, who actually should be credited for laying the foundation of this island with scarce resources and staff at the point of time.

Alas, it prompted me to left a message on my tweets that reflected on my Facebook as well ...

Interesting to see how history can be dat biased after visited much discredited Willie Farquhar's exhb at NLB

Soon after that was a reply by a friend on my Facebook

History is written by the victors...and most of the time, the vanquished aren't always the bad ones in reality (sic)

How true it is, as people will always remember and lauded those who were superiors...