Feb. 13 , 1858 .] 
CRAWFURD’S DICTIONARY. 
143 
a few Parliamentary Reports ; the Singapore newspapers, and especially the 
Journal of the Indian Archipelago, edited by Mr. Logan, have contributed 
further information respecting different parts of this vast region. But no one 
that we are aware of, excepting Mr. Crawfurd, has ventured upon the labour 
of producing a systematic and comprehensive work on the subject, such as 
his 4 History of the Indian Archipelago ’ and the volume before us. Doubtless 
the author has availed himself of all the foregoing sources of information, in 
addition to his personal knowledge of this part of Asia, and the researches 
which he had already made previously to the appearance of the works above 
indicated ; and the result is a catalogue raisonne in reference to the islands of 
the Eastern Seas and adjacent countries, which ought to find a place in every 
geographical library. 
As might be expected, the countries personally travelled in by Mr. Crawfurd 
are those which he has treated of at the greatest length. It is well known that he 
was more than thirty years ago a special envoy from the British Government to 
the courts of Anam and Siam, and on behalf of the British Sovereign concluded 
the treaty with the Burmese after the invasion of the empire of Ava in 1826. 
Accordingly, he has introduced into the Dictionary lengthened articles on Siam, 
Cochin China, and the adjacent countries, respecting which he is certainly one 
of the chief authorities, or we might more properly say, our principal and most 
trustworthy informant. He has also given a very extended and valuable 
account of the important island of Java, where he resided and held a distin- 
guished position under Sir Stamford Raffles during its occupation by the British 
from 1811 to 1816 ; and he has treated to an adequate extent of Singapore, in 
which thriving settlement he is, we believe, a landed proprietor, and in which 
he succeeded Sir S. Raffles as governor. 
We shall enter into no disquisition on the ethnological researches of our 
author, as with some of his conclusions many readers may not feel inclined to 
accord ; but we cannot overlook the acuteness and value of some of his ety- 
mological remarks with which the Descriptive Dictionary is abundantly inter- 
spersed, and which our learned fellow-member is rendered highly competent to 
make, by his knowledge of some of the living languages of continental India, 
where Mr. Crawfurd resided for a considerable length of time. 
In several of the articles old and long-persistent errors are for the first time 
corrected. Thus, for instance, the island known in maps as Gilolo, is described 
by Mr. Crawfurd under the name of 44 Almahera,” as its proper appellation — 
Gilolo, or Jilolo, being merely the name of a baj T and of a kingdom on the 
western side of the northern limb of the island in the time of the early Portu- 
guese writers. On another hand unwarranted innovations are exposed. The 
name of Tanah-Kalamantan, or 44 Land of Mangoes,” which has of late found 
its way into some books as applied at large to the great island of Borneo, is 
stated by Mr. Crawfurd to be only a Malay term, and a mythic, and neither a 
popular nor well-known name for that country. 
Mr. Crawfurd, in many parts of this work, vigorously denounces the 44 vio- 
lations of the sound principles of commercial policy ” (p. 191), which, prompted 
by rapacity, the conquering European nations, the Portuguese, Spaniards, Eng- 
lish, and Dutch, have more or less adopted in the Indian Archipelago. The 
production of its great staples — rice, spices, tin, &c. — has, as he shows, been 
fettered and cramped by the most narrow-minded and tyrannical regulations. 
As respects the clove, for example, and the periodical destruction of the trees 
producing it in islands beyond the Dutch dominion, Mr. Crawfurd remarks, 
44 The Dutch Government has only to pursue a course exactly the reverse of 
that which it has followed for two centuries and a half, and it will be right. . . 
There seems no good reason to doubt that the consumption of cloves might, 
with equal cheapness and freedom, become co-extensive with that of pepper ” 
(pp. 104-5). With respect to the production of tin in Banca, the author 
