VIDEO SUMMARY:

• The familiar story of A Famosa makes William Farquhar look like the man who tried to destroy Melaka, while Stamford Raffles appears as the heroic figure who arrived just in time to save it.
• Digging deeper reveals a much more complicated story: the destruction was actually part of an East India Company strategy to make Melaka economically useless and encourage its population and trade to move to Penang.
• Farquhar was not enthusiastically carrying out the destruction. He repeatedly protested the orders and deliberately slowed the demolition wherever he could.
• Raffles didn’t save Melaka by dramatically intervening at the demolition site. As a 26-year-old junior East India Company clerk on medical leave, he wrote a remarkably effective report arguing that destroying Melaka was bad business—and that report ultimately helped stop the plan.

The Story Every Tourist Gets Told

A Famosa is one of those places in Melaka that virtually every visitor is told they have to see.

You find it on the tourist map, take your photograph, and then read the historical plaque explaining what happened. The basic story seems straightforward: the British decided to demolish the Portuguese fortress, William Farquhar carried out the destruction, and then Stamford Raffles and Lord Minto intervened and saved the remaining gate.

It’s a neat story.

It’s also a story that leaves out quite a lot.

When I first encountered it, I had exactly the same mental picture that many visitors probably have. I imagined Stamford Raffles as this enormously powerful historical figure arriving in Melaka and essentially stopping the destruction in its tracks.

But once I started digging into the story, that picture began to fall apart.

The Real Target Wasn’t Just the Fortress

The biggest surprise for me was discovering how much larger the East India Company’s plan actually was.

This wasn’t simply a case of demolishing an old fortress because the British didn’t like having a Dutch military stronghold sitting around.

The East India Company was worried about Penang.

Penang had become an important British trading centre, and Melaka was potentially a competitor. The Company was also facing the expense of maintaining Melaka while knowing that the territory would eventually be returned to the Dutch.

Their solution was remarkably destructive: don’t just hand Melaka back to the Dutch—hand them back something that couldn’t compete.

The plan extended far beyond the fortress walls. Government buildings, military installations and civic infrastructure were targeted. The river would no longer be properly maintained and would eventually silt up, making maritime trade increasingly difficult.

The ultimate objective was to drain the life out of the city and encourage its merchants, population and economic activity to relocate to Penang.

In other words, the proposed destruction of Melaka was an economic strategy.

The horrifying irony is that if the plan had been carried out completely, the Melaka we know today might never have existed.

William Farquhar: The Supposed Villain

This is where the story gets particularly interesting.

The tourist plaques tend to make William Farquhar look like the man responsible for destroying Melaka. But Farquhar was the East India Company’s resident in Melaka—and he was the man who had to carry out orders that he strongly opposed.

He wrote repeatedly to his superiors protesting the destruction.

He argued against dismantling the city and tried to convince them that what they were doing was a mistake. But the orders came from above, and eventually he had little choice but to oversee the demolition.

And according to the material I found while researching the story, Farquhar did something else that may have been extremely important: he slowed things down.

Rather than immediately demolishing everything that had been ordered for destruction, he concentrated much of the available manpower on the fortress itself and delayed other buildings in the demolition schedule.

That bought time.

And that time turned out to matter enormously.

Raffles Wasn’t the Hollywood Hero

The other half of the story is Stamford Raffles.

The familiar legend makes him sound almost like a movie hero: Raffles arrives, sees what is happening, realizes that Melaka is being destroyed, and intervenes.

The reality is much less dramatic—and, in a way, much more interesting.

Raffles was only 26 years old. He wasn’t yet “Sir Stamford Raffles.” He was a junior East India Company official based in Penang, and he came to Melaka because he was ill and had been granted medical leave.

While he was here, he saw the destruction for himself.

He also knew William Farquhar and had the opportunity to discuss what was happening with him.

And then Raffles did something very un-Hollywood.

He wrote a report.

Rather than simply arguing that destroying Melaka was wrong, Raffles understood the language his superiors were likely to listen to. He argued that the Company’s strategy didn’t make economic sense.

The people of Melaka weren’t necessarily going to abandon their homes and move to Penang just because the Company made life more difficult for them. And if Melaka was deliberately weakened, there was a very real possibility that another commercial power would simply move into the vacuum.

In other words: your plan isn’t just cruel or destructive—it is bad business.

That was an argument the East India Company could understand.

The Report That Changed Everything

Raffles’s report eventually reached Lord Minto, the Governor-General in India.

A friend and ally of Raffles, Dr. John Leyden, helped make sure that the report actually received Minto’s attention.

And Minto agreed with the argument.

His response to the proposed destruction was memorable:

“A most useless piece of gratuitous mischief.”

Orders were eventually sent back through the bureaucratic chain telling the authorities to halt the larger plan.

By that point, much of A Famosa had already been destroyed.

But the bigger objective—the plan to strip Melaka of its remaining civic infrastructure and effectively turn the city into a ghost town—was stopped.

And this is where the story becomes much bigger than A Famosa.

What Raffles Actually Saved

When tourists hear that Raffles “saved A Famosa,” it’s easy to imagine that the entire significance of his intervention is represented by the little gate standing today.

But the consequences were much larger.

If the destruction had continued, the buildings around Dutch Square—including the Stadthuys and Christ Church—were also threatened.

The commercial and residential fabric of the historic centre would have been affected by the deliberate dismantling of the city’s infrastructure. Without a functioning river and commercial base, there would have been little reason for the city to continue functioning as it had.

So when we stand in Dutch Square today and look around at the historic buildings, we’re looking at something that very nearly didn’t survive into the modern city.

The gate is simply the most visible surviving piece of a much larger story.

Myth, Reality—and a More Interesting Hero

What fascinates me most about this story is that the simplified version gets the basic idea right while getting the human story almost backwards.

Yes, Raffles played an important role in stopping the destruction.

But he wasn’t a heroic figure dramatically confronting the demolition crew.

He was a young bureaucrat who wrote a very good report.

And that report had an enormous effect.

At the same time, William Farquhar—usually presented as the villain—appears from the evidence I found to have been doing everything he could within his limited authority to slow down the destruction and preserve as much of Melaka as possible.

So the real story isn’t quite the Hollywood version.

It’s actually more interesting.

A 26-year-old clerk, an embattled local administrator, a sympathetic ally, and a senior official who was willing to listen combined to stop a corporate strategy that could have fundamentally erased the Melaka we know today.

And perhaps that’s the most remarkable thing about standing here as a tourist in 2026: the bustling city around me exists partly because, more than two centuries ago, somebody decided that destroying it was a terrible idea.

One Last Thought

I’m always fascinated when the history presented on a tourist sign turns out to be technically based on real events but dramatically oversimplified.

The plaque isn’t necessarily inventing the story. Raffles really did play a crucial role. The destruction really did happen. A Famosa really was almost completely demolished.

But the deeper you look, the more the neat story falls apart.

The supposed villain wasn’t necessarily a villain.

The supposed hero wasn’t the person the legend suggests.

And the thing that saved Melaka wasn’t a dramatic confrontation—it was a report making a case that the people in charge could understand.

Sometimes history turns out to be much more interesting when you stop looking for the Hollywood version.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Good morning and welcome back to Planet Doug here in historic Melaka, Malaysia on a very busy and very bustling Saturday. And I have to say that in my time here in Melaka, I’ve come across a lot of interesting history, fascinating stories, but the story I’m going to tell you today is my favorite one out of all the things I’ve come across about Melaka. I love this story. When I came across it, I was surprised and it’s not unfair to say I was shocked. And I hope I’m up to the task of telling it to you.

And right out of the gate, I should say that there is a lot of history involved in this story. Too much history for my feeble brain. It’s way above my pay grade, but I’m hoping to keep the story under control, keep it grounded, and sort of walk you through what I learned and what I discovered. And with that in mind, I’m going to approach it from the perspective of a normal tourist, a visitor to Melaka just like me. And if you are a tourist coming to Melaka, this will probably be a good description of you as well.

So this typical visitor tourist coming to Melaka probably doesn’t know a whole lot about the place and then they just know it’s a beautiful city, has a lot of history, a lot of great food. Okay, let’s go there. And then they walk around the city and they’re looking at the maps and they’re reading the boards. And at some point they are told, “You have to come and look at A Famosa, which is the monument you see behind me.” And they don’t know why. They see it on the map. Oh, there’s A Famosa. Everybody tells me, “Oh, yeah. If you’re in Melaka, you got to go look at this thing.” And then you take your selfie in front of it. If you’re a good tourist, you go over there to the sign, the tourism sign. You read it, get a little bit of a history. Oh, that’s A Famosa.

To drive home that point, this is the main sign that the casual tourist is going to find at A Famosa. And I won’t go over the first three paragraphs. The main paragraph, the one that’s most important is down here at the bottom. And it essentially says the British decided to demolish the fortress for fear it would be used against them after Melaka was handed back to the Dutch. So then it goes on to say in 1807 the British resident in Melaka William Farquhar used gunpowder to blow up the fort. However, Lord Minto and Sir Stamford Raffles intervened to stop their countrymen from totally destroying it. Nevertheless, only Porta de Santiago and the surrounding houses were spared.

So that is the story that is presented that was presented to me and is presented to pretty much all of the casual visitors and tourists that come to Melaka. That is the story of A Famosa and the hero of the tale, Sir Stamford Raffles. And if anybody goes that far, they probably think that the local British resident, William Farquhar, he was the bad guy in the story. These very simple historical plaques, they always say William Farquhar was blowing up the fortress and then Stamford arrived and said, “Stop.” And he prevented total destruction. But I’m hoping in this video and in the story I’m about to tell to correct that version and tell the right story about William Farquhar and Stamford Raffles.

Not to get bogged down right out of the gate with historical detail, but if the story needs a villain, well, I would say the true villain of the story is the EIC, the East India Company. Like when you read the casual descriptions, they always say the British were in control of Melaka. The British were blowing up the fortress, destroying this incredible piece of history. But that’s technically not very accurate because it was actually the East India Company that was in charge and it was the decision of the board of directors essentially of the East India Company back in London that made the decision to blow up the fortress. And they did it from a purely profit-driven point of view. Technically, it wasn’t the British government making this decision. It was a mega corporation.

And the East India Company at that time, they were focused on developing Penang as the center of trade for the Melaka Strait. And they were caretakers of Melaka. They were essentially taking care of it for the Dutch and with the idea that they were going to be giving it back at the end of their caretaker period. But then it ended up being quite expensive for them to maintain the fort and keep Melaka in good condition. And when they gave it back to the Dutch, then it would suddenly become a competitor with Penang. So the East India Company made this decision. Okay, we give it back to the Dutch, but let’s give it back to them so that it is of no use to anyone.

So, their plan for Melaka was much grander than most people realize, at least according to what I read. Most people talk about destroying the fort and they think that that’s where it ended. But in fact, the overall plan, the master plan was to turn Melaka into a ghost town. So yes, they wanted to destroy the military defenses. So they were going to blow up and demolish the fort, the fortress walls, the bastions, the towers. But their plan went far beyond that. They were going to tear down the fortress, but that also involved tearing down all the other government and civic and military buildings in Melaka. So they tore down garrisons, any kind of building associated with the defense of Melaka. And the final goal was to strip bare all of the government buildings, all of the civic infrastructure. They abandoned the river. So there was going to be no more dredging of the river, no more taking care of it. They were just going to allow the river to silt up and become unusable. Ships could no longer go in and out by removing all of the civic infrastructure. Taking all the civil servants out. They basically were going to make Melaka unusable. Like you couldn’t even come here to trade anymore. And their ultimate goal was to make the city unlivable. And they were trying to force all the merchants and the capital, the trading infrastructure, force the population to move to Penang. Essentially, their goal was to turn Melaka into, as I said, a ghost town.

And it is true that the destruction was halted as a result of the actions of Stamford Raffles. But most people when they think about that don’t give him enough credit. They say that because of Sir Stamford Raffles, this gate was preserved. And yet the consequences were far greater than that. If the British had carried out their full plan, if they did not halt their destruction, everything would have been gone. The famous buildings of Dutch Square, the Stadthuys, Christ Church, all the buildings you see there, part of, you know, the tourism infrastructure Melaka today, all of that was scheduled for destruction as well. So if the British had gone ahead with their full plan, Melaka as it exists today, wouldn’t even exist. It would not be the historic tourist attraction town that we have today. The Stadthuys wouldn’t exist. As I said, Christ Church wouldn’t exist. There would have been no commercial base in the city anymore. Therefore much of the houses you know the historic district on Jonker Street on Heeren Street a lot of that probably would have fallen into disrepair. So again not to hammer the point again but the British plan was to completely dismantle the entire town and move the population to Penang. That was the goal of the East India Company and they saw it as boosting their bottom line. They were looking at profit margins and that’s where their decision to basically destroy Melaka came from.

Getting back to the story of Raffles himself, I have to say that I didn’t know much about him. I’d come across the name throughout my lifetime and I know that there are these luxurious historic five-star hotels that are named after him. So I had this pre-impression of Sir Stamford Raffles, a powerful figure in British history. So when I read the sign that Raffles came and he stopped the destruction, I was picturing that Sir Stamford Raffles, the Raffles I know of history, this powerful, influential man who came here and saved the day. So I was so surprised and kind of shocked to learn that that was far from the truth. At the time that this was all taking place, he wasn’t Sir Stamford Raffles. He was just Stamford Raffles. And he was a 26-year-old clerk in the East India Company based in Penang. He was like a junior secretary in the East India Company. And he didn’t come to Melaka to have this dramatic moment where he runs up to the demolition and says stop. No, he was very ill at the time. Tropical fever of some kind. And he came to Melaka on medical leave. So that’s why he came to Melaka in the first place.

And he was well aware that the destruction was taking place. He was an official of the East India Company. The orders to level Melaka, destroy the fortress and strip the town, turn it into a ghost town. That decision was made in London, but then it was transmitted to the authorities in Penang and then they sent the orders down to here where the British resident William Farquhar was given the orders to carry out the destruction. It was his job to do it and Raffles would have been completely aware of all of this going on. And then he came here for his on his medical leave and while he was here, he saw the destruction in person.

And one of the surprising things I learned while researching this bit of history, this story, is that far from the British resident William Farquhar being the bad guy in the story and he’s always presented as the guy blowing up the fortress, he was far from a villain. In fact, you could argue that he was the true hero. In fact, when he was given the orders to blow up the fortress and basically tear down the city, he resisted it. He wrote many strong letters to his superiors in Penang and he pleaded with them not to do it and he had all kinds of reasons for it. And he wrote to them over and over again pleading with them, don’t do this. Don’t tear down the fortress. Don’t dismantle this city and he had all his reasons why it was such a bad idea but his superiors in Penang said no ignored his input and basically told him carry out your orders. So Farquhar had no choice. So he oversaw the demolition of Melaka but he was very very much against it.

And when Raffles came here on his medical leave, he knew Farquhar, they spent time together. And again, from what I read online, Farquhar would take him out on tours and they would go see the ongoing demolition and they talked about it. And this is the point where Raffles took his rightful place in the story. And as I said, he was not a powerful figure come here to investigate or stop the demolition. He was a junior secretary, 26 years old, unwell, and he was here on medical leave. But now that he witnessed for himself what was happening and heard the input of William Farquhar Raffles sat down and essentially wrote a memo.

And that’s what I find so fascinating about the difference between myth and reality. In the myth, like I said, even I had this image of Raffles running from the harbor jumping off his ship like a Hollywood movie. You know, stop the destruction. This is madness. And then he personally intervened and saved this last remaining gate. But in fact he wrote a report and it was a very good report. He was very well spoken, very intelligent. He was passionate about the Malay people, the Malay language. He spoke Malay and he laid out his arguments in language that the East India Company would understand like arguing with them about what’s moral, what’s right, what is justice, thinking about the local people and their feelings. That’s not how corporations operate. They worry about profit. And Raffles couched his report in those terms.

For one thing, he pointed out that okay, your idea is to prevent Melaka from competing with Penang. You want the merchants and traders from Melaka to relocate to Penang. Well, they’re not going to. There was tremendous resistance among the local people here. The East India Company again according to what I read offered incentives. They were basically destroying the city making it unlivable and then they said to the local people listen we will give you free transport to Penang. You can get land there and we will help you settle there. And the local people said no I mean this is our place. This is our home, our family. This is where our lives are. So Raffles pointed out, your plan is a failure right out of the gate. The population of Melaka is not going to go to Penang. They’re going to stay right here. And if you destroy this as a center, if you destroy Melaka and leave, you’re just creating a power vacuum and one of your competitors is just going to move in and take over. So this whole plan of yours is folly and it’s going to cost you a lot of money, right? So he spoke their language. He wrote a very long very detailed report and then he submitted it to his superiors.

And kind of a secret weapon of Raffles from what I read online again is that he had a good friend someone that he’d met that was now working in the office of Lord Minto who was running into trouble with the vocabulary here but like the head of the East India Company in India. The governor general. So Raffles report went from here where he wrote it. He submitted it to his superiors in Penang. They passed it on to Lord Minto in India and then it likely would have just sat on a desk and been ignored. But Raffles had a friend working in that office who admired Raffles, knew what an intelligent man he was, and basically put that report in front of Lord Minto and said, “Listen, this guy, this Raffles guy, he knows what he’s talking about. You better read this report and pay attention to it because he’s got his ear to the ground and he knows what’s happening.” I think the guy’s name was Leyden or something like that. And I’ll put it in the captions.

And so even though all of the desperate letters from Farquhar went ignored, this report very detailed, very strategically written by Raffles, landed on the right desk, got in front of the right eyes, and then Lord Minto sent out the order to stop this plan, our plan to turn Melaka into a ghost town. Yeah, let’s cancel that. But then that order had to travel through bureaucratic channels to Penang and then finally come down to here. And by then it was kind of too late as far as the fortress was concerned. In fact, as far as I remember from what I read, even when Raffles came down here on medical leave, most of the fortress had already been destroyed. So even way before he even wrote his report, it was too late. However, his report managed to save this gate and halt the overall plan to basically destroy Melaka as a livable city.

I’ve moved a few feet away from A Famosa. I’m just here at the base of what they call these days Bukit Melaka. Used to be called St. Paul’s Hill. St. Paul’s Church up there. And I noticed there were all of these historical plaques. And I remember reading all of these when I first came here. I read them and included all this information in a video. And it just kind of made me smile because they tell the same story here and it ties into my whole idea of the myth, the legend versus the reality.

So this one has a little bit more information, a little bit more detail and it says basically starting at the top circa 1790 due to its precarious position in Europe because of the war with France led by Bonaparte Napoleon Bonaparte the Dutch were forced to temporarily cede Melaka to the British and this cessation was made on the understanding that Melaka would revert convert to Dutch rule once the war in Europe ended. So that handover took place. But in the meantime, of course, Francis Light founded Penang in 1786. And then it says, “Fearing the resurgence of a Dutch-held Melaka with its strong fortress and superior harbor, the British under William Farquhar initiated a systematic destruction of Melaka’s defenses. Only the intervention of Lord Minto and Sir Stamford Raffles put an end to this effort, which managed to save the main gate and the surrounding houses.”

So I find that really fascinating in terms of how a casual tourist like myself would come away. What would be our understanding? And of course it’s pretty clear the bad guys are the British and William Farquhar. Those are the bad guys. They’re the ones blowing up the fortress. And then the heroes, they intervened. Lord Minto and Sir Stamford Raffles. But there is so much there that is misleading. The main one as I said well not the main one but one of the main ones is that the British strategy was not coming from Britain per se. This was the strategy of a mega corporation worried only about money. The East India Company they were the ones making the decisions. They were the ones in control. And of course, the East India Company was tightly connected to the British government. But again, that that’s beyond my pay grade in terms of understanding history. But I think the fact remains that the EIC was a corporation. They were all about making money and they were the ones who decided to demolish Melaka. So it wasn’t really the British, this should say the East India Company.

And it makes it sound like poor William Farquhar, the British resident here in Melaka, that he was the one. It was his idea to blow this place up and destroy it. But he was very very very much against it. He fought against the plan as hard as he could, but all of his input was ignored. So he was one of the unsung heroes of saving Melaka. And then of course we get to Sir Stamford Raffles. But again, as far as I know, he was not a knight at the time. He was not Sir Stamford Raffles. He was a junior secretary, a 26-year-old clerk in the East India Company. So that kind of gives the wrong impression as well. Though it does say it gives Lord Minto his due and I think he does deserve it because after he read Raffles’s report he had the wherewithal to understand it agree with it and then there’s a very famous quote from Lord Minto I’m going to look it up for you.

I found the quote after Lord Minto read Raffles’s report and he was encouraged to read it by Dr. John Leyden, he was the ally of Raffles and made sure that Lord Minto read the Raffles report and was aware of it. And then after he read it, Lord Minto agreed with the logic in the report and he said the planned destruction of Melaka was a most useless piece of gratuitous mischief. So yeah, we’ve got the three main names here, William Farquhar, Raffles, and Lord Minto. But the error, the biggest error in this sign is portraying poor Farquhar as kind of the villain of the piece when he was in fact you could argue the main hero. Certainly the unsung hero of saving Melaka. And Minto and Raffles, of course, they get their proper due here. It was because of Raffles writing the report, Lord Minto taking it seriously that Melaka was saved from basically total destruction.

I left A Famosa and I came over here to Red Square to Dutch Square to end the video because I think this location and showing just how popular Melaka is, how bustling it is, and how central to Melaka the Dutch Square is, you know, from the tourist experience. All of that can kind of help wind up some of the themes that I was trying to develop whether successfully or not. One is this idea of the myth of Raffles compared to the legend. I find this really interesting because the myth like from a western point of view just reading the simple historical placards gives you this image of Raffles as a Hollywood hero rushing to save the day. But he wasn’t like that at all. It’s not like he was Bruce Willis grabbing some guns and being the hero kicking down his boss’s office and hammering on the desk and saying, “This is madness. You have to stop this destruction.” No, he was a bureaucrat, a junior secretary, and he wrote a letter, he wrote a memo, he wrote a report and submitted it through the proper channels. So that kind of goes against the heroic legend, right?

But on the other side, the results of that report were far greater than people tell you. Like as a casual tourist, you’re told that Raffles saved the one gate and that’s what he did. But the impact of the report that he submitted with the input of Farquhar was far more like farreaching effects. In fact, it saved the Stadthuys that you see there. It saved Christ Church. It saved so many of the buildings that you see around me because all of this was slated for destruction under the EIC plan. It wasn’t just tear down the fortress and that’s it. No, they were going to gut the city of all government, of all civic infrastructure, all the buildings. They were going to let the river rot, silt up, become unusable for maritime trade, and yeah, they were going to strip the city bare. And that involved tearing down all of these buildings you see around me. So, the Raffles report did way more and made Raffles much more of a hero than just saving that gate.

So, you see what I mean? It’s like the myth made him out to be a hero that he’s not like a movie star superhero. But in reality, he was much more of a hero, had much more of a lasting impact than they give him credit for. And the city that you see around me today would basically not exist if it weren’t for Raffles writing his report. A fascinating story.

And also I really want to give William Farquhar his due because I think he really doesn’t get enough credit. According to what I read, he was key to saving Melaka because of he gave a lot of ideas and input to Raffles for his report, but also he was in charge of the EIC plan to turn Melaka into a ghost town. And he did everything in his power to slow it down. I mean, he protested. He wrote letters pleading with them not to do this, but they ignored him. So, even when he got the orders, he was a skilled bureaucrat, I guess, and he deliberately slowed down the destruction. So, he took a lot of these buildings, reclassified them so that they were delayed in the schedule for demolition, things like that. And he focused all of the demolition on the fortress walls because that would take all the manpower and all the time and that gave him more time to try to plead with them not to do this and it saved all of these buildings around us. He basically devised a schedule and put in delays so that these buildings their destruction was put at the end of the schedule and he saved them by the time Raffles report was accepted by Lord Minto these buildings were still standing and that was largely due to the intervention of William Farquhar.

So anyway, whether I got all the facts correct there or not, you know, I’m sure true historians can nitpick and quibble about things here and there, that’s all fine. But I think the basic story there is really something worth telling. The story of how a 26-year-old junior secretary essentially saved the city of Melaka.

That’s it for this video. Shutting down now. Shout out to the Crunch Club. You know who you are. Shout out to my Touch ‘n Go supporters. You know who you are. Thank you very much to all of you. And shout out to all the Planet Doug Patreon members. I appreciate you guys very much. And my coffee posse over there on the Buy Me a Coffee platform. And PayPal supporters in particular. Link to PayPal for Planet Doug in the video description. If you want to encourage me to make more videos like these in the future and make it possible for me to do this. Thank you very much to all the Planet Doug supporters out there. See you in the next video.