national history

What do we really know about Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and his role in 19th-century Southeast Asia? What else was he doing in the region, beyond establishing a British East India Company outpost on the island of Singapore? The Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) seeks to answer these pressing questions with Raffles in Southeast Asia: Revisiting the Scholar and Statesman. Director of the ACM, Kennie Ting, explains, “There are two main intents for this exhibition. The first is to objectively address the figure of Raffles, presenting him as a complex and multifaceted personality, rather than the mythical, one-dimensional ‘founder figure’ most…