SYMPATHY AND CONFIDENCE TOWARDS EUROPEANS. 277 
world, the Malays too were a nation of murderers and pirates.* It 
is certain also that Islamism leads its followers into ignorance, and 
consequently into superstition, which is its usual result. It is ascer¬ 
tained by travellers, that countries inhabited by Mohammedans, are 
those where exists the profoundest ignorance. And every one is 
aware of the historical fact of the destruction of the famous Library 
of Alexandria, under the pretext that the Koran was the only book 
necessary, all others being useless; hence was destroyed this sacred 
sanctuary of doctrine, and extinguished one of the brightest scientific 
luminaries, which has ever enlightened any part of the world. 
SYMPATHY AND CONFIDENCE TOWARDS EUROPEANS. 
If the Jakuns hate the Malays, and fear them, it is certainly not an 
effect of egotism, and of a natural timidity; for they do not so towards 
* u From the period at which Europeans first visited these islands, their 
civil history may be summed up in few words; it is included in that of their 
commerce. The extensive trade of these islands had long collected at cer¬ 
tain natural and advantageous emporia; of these Bautnin, Achau, Malacca, 
and Macasser, were the principal. The valour of Portugal broke the pow¬ 
er of the native states, and left them exposed to the more selfish policy of 
their successors. The Dutch had no sooner established their capital at Ba~ 
tavia, tha n, not satisfied with transferring to it the emporium of Bautnin, 
they conceived the idea of making it the sole and only depot of the commerce 
of the Archipelago. Had this object been combined with a liberal policy, 
and had the local circumstances of Batavia not obstructed it, the effect might 
have been different, and, instead of the ruin and desolation which ensued 
throughout a large portion of these islands, t ey might have advanced in 
civilization, while they contributed to raise the prosperity, and support the 
ascendancy of the Dutch metropolis. But w hen we advert to the greedy 
policy which swallowed up the resources of this extensive Archipelago in a 
narrow and rigid monopoly ; and that, instead of leaving trade to accumu¬ 
late, as it had previously done at the natural emporia, it was forced, by 
means of arbitrary and restrictive regulations, into one which, independent 
of other disadvantages, soon proved the grave of the majority of those who 
were obliged to resort to it, we shall find the cause which made it as ruin¬ 
ous to the Dutch as to the people. By attempli ig too much, they lost what, 
under other circumstances, might have been turned to advantage, and the 
native states, deprived of their (air share of commerce, abandoned all at¬ 
tempts, and sunk into the comparative insignificance in which they were 
found at the period when our traders began to navigate those seas from Ma¬ 
dras and Bengal. The destruction of the native trade of the Archipelago 
by this withering p olicy may be co nsidered as the origin of many of the evils , 
and of all the piracies of which ivenow complain. A maritime and com¬ 
mercial people, suddenly deprived of all honest employment, or the moans 
of respectable subsistence, either sunk into apafhy and indolence, or ex¬ 
pended their natural energies in piratical attempts to recover, by force and 
plunder, what they had been deprived of by policy and fraud. ”—Sir T. S. 
Raffles, Introduction lo Leyden’s Malay annals, p. vii. Ed. 
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