Race, Empire and Liberalism: Interpreting John Crawfurd’s History of The Indian Archipelago

Born in 1783 and dying in 1868, John Crawfurd’s life spanned Britain’s industrial revolution. He was a doctor, colonial administrator, diplomat, political candidate and orientalist scholar. He served the British East India Company in Northern India, Penang, Java, Singapore, and as a diplomat to Burma and Siam. Like many company officials, he believed that academic inquiry was part of his official duties. His scholarly interests included: philology, ethnology, geology, biology, and political economy. In the eighteenth century, such renaissance approaches were common, however, by the nineteenth century the idea of specialisation had started to take precedence. Such a range of disciplinary prowess razes problems in interpreting Crawfurd. One of Crawfurd’s key legacies is his History of the Indian Archipelago (1820).