8 Life of Sir Stamford Raffles — Introduction. 



Asia, was confined to its Western divisions, but at the present 

 day it is with the Eastern Asiatics that they are principally 

 connected ; and British India, — which may be said to compre- 

 hend the whole of the Peninsula between the mouths of the 

 Indus and the Ganges, — the territories of Malacca, Siam, and 

 Cochin-China, with the Empires of China proper and Japan, and 

 the islands of the Indian Archipelago, are now indubitably the 

 most important districts of the whole continent ; w hether regarded 

 with philosophic or with commercial views. 



Terminating here our historical review of the relations to each 

 other of those two divisions of the world, the ruling powers of 

 which have successively enjoyed the chief sway over the destinies 

 of mankind, we proceed to notice the principal benefits that have 

 accrued to the nations of Europe, from their possessions and au- 

 thority in Eastern Asia ; especially those derived by Britain from 

 her Indian conquests ; dwelling more particularly on the advan- 

 tages which modern science has either received already, or may 

 yet receive, from the vast field of research thus opened for her 

 cultivation. Having done this, we shall find in the powerful and 

 continued exertions made by Sir Stamford Raffles towards effect- 

 ing some of the investigations thus called for from the patrons and 

 the votaries of knowledge, an appropriate and sufficient apology 

 for entering into details, on an extensive range of subjects in phi- 

 losophy and literature, in a work professedly devoted to Zoolo- 

 gical Science. 



To expatiate on the political and commercial importance of 

 Eastern Asia to the nations of Europe who have possessed 

 settlements on its shores, or to dilate upon the history of those 

 *' Merchant-Princes," as they have appropriately been deno- 

 minated, who now hold in the metropolis of Britain the reins 

 of government over an immense population in India, consti- 

 tuting, in an age not long since expired, several mighty empires, 

 with innumerable tributary states ; and who appear destined, 

 eventually, to extend the British dominion over all the countries 

 of Southern Asia, from the Bay of Bengal on the west, to the seas 

 of Japan and Ochotsk on the cast, would be foreign to the objects 

 of this memoir. Nor would the picture be in all respects an 



