Alexander Hare of Banjarmasin
Alexander Hare reached Malacca from Calcutta in 1807 and started a business as an agent and merchant. Stanford Raffles became acquainted with Hare during two sick leaves late in November 1807 -19 January 1808 and then again from the end of July 1808 to the end of October 1808.
They became friends. Alexander Hare became a leading merchant of the Malacca community and had been watching events in Borneo and felt the island was a golden opportunity. He persuaded Raffles to at least consider the option.
By the end of 1810, Napoleon had planned to attack India with forces from Reunion, Mauritius and Java. Raffles had been appointed to head the Malay States and to begin preparation for the British invasion of Java. Hare assisted Raffles with local information and the introduction to his colleague.
Meanwhile, the Sultan of Banjarmasin could not hold on to his territory because of encroachments by other natives that were not protected by the Dutch. The Dutch left in 1809 because of the unprofitability of the colony. The Sultan sent emissaries to Penang and Malacca requesting British assistance. Hare introduced the emissaries to Raffles.
Alexander Hare was allowed to join the expedition with Raffles. The British arrived off Java without losing a single ship, and after one or two bloody encounters the defenders were set into a pattern of retreat. On 18 September 1811, six weeks after the British landed, the Dutch surrendered unconditionally. Little more than a month later Minto departed for India, leaving Raffles in command as Lieutenant Governor.
As for Borneo, on April 7th, 1812 Raffles instructed Alexander Hare to found a British settlement at Banjarmasin. Raffles secretly had hoped he was founding a settlement from which the British could not be dislodged even if Java were handed back to the Dutch.
Alexander Hare set sail aboard the Phoenix on 21 August 1812. Hare took with him an Assistant-Resident (Mr. van de Wahl), a Chief of Armed Police, two surgeons, a bookkeeper, a ‘Malay writer’, a small number of coolies, policemen, and artificers, and a boatswain for the wharf. There was no military force. Hare knew that the only chance of securing a permanent British foothold in Borneo lay in making the new settlement pay for itself, and pay for itself quickly.
Alexander Hare was to found a kingdom of his own where he could luxuriate in oriental splendour surrounded by slaves and ladies of the harem. He obtained from the Sultan of Banjarmasin a tract of land south of the capital, 1,400 square miles in extent, to be held by himself and his assigns “in full sovereignty and forever”.
Raffles made only one stipulation: Hare could hold his land only “on condition that he would always be ready to transfer his rights to Government, on a fair remuneration for improvements, should they at any time require it”. The truth was, as the Government of Java well knew, that had it not been for Alexander Hare, a British settlement at Banjarmasin might never have been possible.
Having acquired his private empire in Borneo, Hare set to work to make it pay. He seems to have had plenty of money, both his own and the Government’s and he never worried greatly about distinguishing between the two. His intention was to grow export crops, mainly rice and pepper, on his own land, and to exploit the Company’s territory by mining and collecting jungle produce. He also wanted to make Banjarmasin independent of Java salt by constructing proper salt works at Tabanio. He only had one problem: people to work his various enterprises for him.
After consultation with the British Resident in Java and after several attempts of recruitment, Bandjermasin was declared a penal settlement for convicts and the population was to be swelled still further by the granting of permission for the wives and children of offenders to accompany their husbands or fathers.
A settlement composed chiefly of the least desirable elements in Javanese society could not be said to have made a promising beginning. Rare organizing powers would be needed at the top if Banjarmasin was to flourish and, although Hare certainly had a marked talent for getting his own way with his superiors, he had no experience of planting and little administrative ability.
Within a short time, the condition of his settlers was pitiable. Food and clothing were inadequate; no more than a start had been made in laying out the pepper gardens when most of the labour available was absorbed in erecting buildings for Hare’s personal use and attempts at gold and diamond mining collapsed before any profits had been made. The Sultan complained that the rowdier members of the community at the pepper gardens had become so “afflicted by God” that their excesses had driven out the original inhabitants of the area.
A commission between the Dutch and British people for the handover from British rule back to Dutch rule for the Dutch East Indies was established following the war in Europe. (for details see the first article in this series) The sticking point was Banjarmasin and Alexander Hare.
The three Bandjermasin Commissioners, Thomas Abraham, Robert Stuart, and Lieutenant Cathcart Methven, left Batavia for Borneo on September 30th, 1816. This was some time before the Dutch were ready to send similar representatives.
The Commissioners ran into trouble immediately when they asked to see the Residency accounts. (The accounts were a mixture of Hare’s own money plus the grants from Java. A mixed up mess.) Alexander Hare was in Java at the time, on recreational leave in Rembang, and he successfully resisted all attempts to make his return to Borneo. His brother, John, who was in charge of the enterprise for him while he was away, told the commission he took the account books with him. Hare was accused of not paying any duty on his own trade and was accused of using the salt monopoly for his own devices.
The first problem was what to do with the people on Hare’s estate. The first proposal of turning them over to the Sultan which he refused because he could not feed them. The second was to remove them to another penal colony such as Penang or Bengal but that would cause considerable delay and expense while the third solution was to return the whole lot of them to Java.
The convict registers were in disarray. There was no accounting of the convicts and free men at his estate. The British decided to ship the whole lot, free men, convicts and slaves alike back to Java. The trouble was many did not want to return to Java. Many escaped into the forest and had to be rounded up by the troops. When they finally disembarked in Java, the Dutch did not want them and rioting ensued.
A group of 61 arrived off of Gersik without papers of any kind and the Captain was told to offload them there or anywhere else along the Java coast. A similar event happened at Rembang on December 7, 1816, where 138 arrived in the harbour. Again, the Captain had no lists of the passengers or their status being free men or hardened convicts. Similar other arrivals occurred along the north Java coast.
As a result, many notorious criminals were released into Javanese society in the guise of ‘free settlers’ from Bandjermasin, and a number of outbreaks and disturbances were caused by them, particularly at Cheribon. The British flag was lowered over Banjarmasin and the English left.
Dutch Commissioner van Boekholtz, with a small civil establishment and sixty soldiers, made the voyage to Borneo in the colonial navy vessel, Iris. They found everything at Bandjermasin in ruins. The official houses of the Resident and the officer commanding the troops were uninhabitable; the local Bandjar population had occupied the customs house; the barracks were derelict, and the only accommodation that could be found for the soldiers was in the pepper godown. The ‘fort’ at Tatas turned out to be no more than a dilapidated wooden palisade, ten or twelve feet high. Its only occupant was an overseer, asleep on the ground; no guns or ammunition were to be seen anywhere; and Sultan’s flag flew overhead.
The sometime ‘White Raja of Moloeko’, Alexander Hare, was by no means reconciled yet to the loss of his Bornean kingdom. In October 1816 he had demanded that the British Board of Commissioners should obtain estates for him in Java as compensation for those he seemed likely to lose in Bandjermasin, but this request had naturally been rejected.
The Dutch Government’s attitude to Hare at this time is well illustrated by a private letter from Elout (the most forceful of the Commissioners-General) to the Colonial Department in Holland.
“We have received a pressing request from the Sultan of Bandjermasin”, he wrote, “for protection against Mr Hare, whose endless pretensions our official and private letters have mentioned many times already. The necessary orders have been given for the resumption of his land by the local authorities. Mr Hare and his representative have tried to lead us up the garden path (ons om den tuin te Leiden): he is a friend of Mr Raffles, though held in contempt by all the other members of the former British administration here”. Hare’s friendship with Raffles was not likely to endear him to the Dutch Commissioner-General.
In May 1818, the Commissioners-General made their final decision regarding the disputed estates. They categorically denied that Hare had any legal title to Hares’s estate, and declared that his representative, Ross, had forfeited all right to favourable treatment because of his highhanded behaviour. The Dutch officials at Bandjermasin were ordered to take possession of Hare’s estate at Moloeko, if necessary, by force.
Alexander Hare was to continue his pleas for compensation for his lost estate. He was expelled from the Netherland East Indies in 1820 and went to live at the Cape of Good Hope. From there he continued to plead his case through his brother in London but without success. In 1827 he settled in the Cocos Islands and, after disputing possession of them for many years with his former employee, John Clunies-Ross, was finally ejected in 1831. From Cocos, he moved to Bencoolen and probably ended his days there or while on a journey into the Sumatran interior a year or so later.
Bibliography
Gibson-Hill, C.A. Raffles, Alexander Hare & Johanna van Hare Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 28, No. 1 (169) (March, 1955), pp. 184-191 (8 pages)
Gibson-Hill, C.A. editor Documents relating to John Clunies Ross, Alexander Hare and the early history of the settlement on the Cocos-Keeling Islands Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (December 1952), pp. 5-306
Irwin, Graham Nineteenth Century Borneo: A Study in Diplomatic Rivalry ‘ S.GRAVENHAGE – MARTINUS NIJHOFF, 1955
Oats, David Alexander Hare in the East Indies: A Reappraisal The Great Circle vol 21, no 1 1999
BorneoHistory.net
