Stamford Raffles

Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles (5 July 1781, offshore Jamaica – 5 July 1826, London) was a British statesman, Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch East Indies (1811 – 1816), and Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen (1818 – 1824), known as the founder of modern Singapore and the Straits Settlements.

Raffles was heavily involved in the capture of the Indonesian island of Java from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars, and the running of day-to-day operations on Singapore. In 1817, he published The History of Java, a reference study in which relations between Champa, Cambodia and the Javanese Empire of Majahapit are considered.

After his death, Raffles’s substantial collection of Indonesian antiquities and ethnography was donated to the British Museum by his nephew, Rev William Charles Raffles Flint. 

The Raffles Hotels in Phnom Penh (Le Royal) and Siem Reap (Grand Hotel d’Angkor) were founded in 1997, the first properties outside of Singapore part of the Raffles Hotels & Resorts group, named after Sir Raffles. The first Raffles Hotel opened in Singapore in 1991.