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British colonial administrator

William Farquhar ('/f//ɑː//k//ər/ FAHkər; 26 February 1774 – 11 May 1839) was a Scottish colonial administrator employed by the East India Company, who served as the sixth Resident of Malacca between 1813 and 1818, and the first Resident of Singapore between 1819 and 1823.

Farquhar was born in Newhall, Aberdeenshire, near Aberdeen in 1774 as the youngest child of Robert Farquhar and Agnes Morrison, his father's second wife. His brother, Arthur, two years his senior, rose to the rank of rear admiral in the Royal Navy, and received a knighthood for his distinguished services during the Napoleonic Wars. Shortly after arriving in Madras on 19 June 1791, Farquhar joined the East India Company as a cadet at the age of 17. He was promoted to a low rank commissioned officer of the Madras Engineer Group on 22 June 1791. Two years later, on 16 August 1793, he became a lieutenant in the Madras Engineer Group.

Between 1795 and 1813, Farquhar was the chief administrator of British occupied Malacca. Farquhar was Chief Engineer in the expeditionary force which took Malacca from the Dutch on 18 August 1795. He spoke Malay and was popularly known as the ‘Rajah of Malacca’. He kept a Malaccan French mistress, Antoinette "Nonio" Clement, with whom he had at least six children, one of which died while still an infant. Their eldest daughter Esther Farquhar would marry Captain Francis James Bernard who became a prominent part of early Singapore. On 1 January 1803 he was promoted to the rank of full captain. During his tenure here he assisted in missions around the region, including the British Invasion of Java led by Governor General Baron Minto and Sir Stamford Raffles in August 1811. He was made a full major in Corps on 26 September 1812, before he was officially appointed Resident and Commandant of Malacca in December 1813. He was made in charge of both civil and military offices until the Dutch returned in September 1818. An engineer, his reputation was established by his long and successful term as Resident of Malacca, of which he was given charge when it passed into British hands from the Dutch. A task given him by the British Government was to demolish all the structures left by the former occupants; he blew up the fortifications with gunpowder but spared some of the other buildings, showing great intelligence. While still in Malacca, Farquhar learnt the Malay language and married a local Malay woman. Communication with Raffles in Bencoolen and the East India Company in Calcutta were so poor that for more than three years Singapore developed on her own with Farquhar at the helm. On 9 May 1821, Farquhar was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Despite his many positive achievements in the formative period of Singapore's development, he adopted measures in his administration that conflicted with Raffles' ideas, notably in allowing the erection of houses and godowns on the Padang and on the nearby banks of the Singapore River. His justification was that in the rapidly expanding settlement 'nothing is heard in the shape of complaint but the want of more ground to build on'. However, when Raffles returned in October 1822, he was furious to discover his ideas had been neglected and that moreover local vices, such as the trading of opium and slave trading, were being tolerated. He then dismissed Farquhar, who first refused to leave and later sued Raffles for tyrannical behaviour.

On 11 March 1823, as Farquhar walked into his garden, Sayid Yasin, a man from the established Malay community in Singapore, stabbed him with a kris. Sayid was prevented from completing his task only by the timely arrival of Farquhar's servants, who killed him immediately. The stabbing was not fatal. The European settlers assumed immediately that Sayid must have been acting in the name of the Temenggong Abdul Rahman, but that was not true. Sayid and Farquhar then had a semi private dispute; when Sayid was proven unable to pay his debts, Farquhar sent him to gaol. That fate was humiliating to Sayid and so he sought revenge. Raffles argued that an attack on an official should be met with an exemplary punishment and called for Sayid's corpse to be put in chains in an iron cage and exhibited publicly at Tanjong Malang for a fortnight. Sayid's grave at Tanjong Pagar, however, would soon become a shrine and remained a place of pilgrimage for many years, making many Europeans think that Raffles had endangered their lives by needlessly antagonizing the Malays.

The conflicts which arose during Raffles' final stay in Singapore led to Farquhar's dismissal on 1 May 1823, to be succeeded as Resident by Dr John Crawfurd without the knowledge of Farquhar himself. He remained in Singapore after that for a few months. At a farewell dinner with the principal merchants and British inhabitants on 27 December 1823, Lt Col William Farquhar was presented with a plate valued at 3000 sicca rupees as a farewell gift. He asserted that "She very modestly and candidly allows (her late husband) the sole and exclusive merit of having established and brought into commercial importance the new settlement of Singapore, which is styled his Settlement." Farquhar published an article in which he contended that he had "at least a large share in forming that establishment" and that, having stated all the circumstances, he would "leave the public to judge on whether Lady Raffles can fairly claim for her husband the sole and exclusive merit of having formed the settlement of Singapore." On 17 August 1833, Farquhar drafted the Deed of Settlement for his former mistress Antoinette "Nonio" Clement, to whom he bequeathed his house and contents in Kampong Glam, together with an annuity of sp350 paid half yearly in advance. In 1837, Farquhar was promoted to the rank of major general. William Farquhar died on 11 May 1839 at age 65 in his home, Early Banks, in Perth, Scotland. He has a mausoleum in Greyfriars Kirkyard, Perth. On his tomb, there is the following inscription in block capitals: "Sacred to the Memory of Major General William Farquhar of the H. E. I. C. Service and Madras Engineer Corps who served in the East Indies upwards of 33 years. During 20 years of his valuable life he was appointed to offices of high responsibility under the civil government of India having in addition to his military duties served as Resident in Malacca and afterwards at Singapore which later settlement he founded. In all the stations which he filled he acquired honour to himself and rendered service to his country. He departed this life at Early Bank, Perth, on the 11th of May 1839, highly respected and deeply regretted by all who had the happiness of his acquaintance."

Between 1819 and 1823 Farquhar commissioned unidentified Chinese artists to illustrate local flora and fauna. This project resulted in 477 watercolours of plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and insects found in Malacca and Singapore. These paintings played a pivotal role in revealing the region's biodiversity to Western naturalists, and are interesting in their blending of the stylised oriental manner with the realism of western art. The William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings, showing 141 of these illustrations, was published in 1999. A volume containing prints of all 477 works in the Farquhar collection was published by Editions Didier Millet and the National Museum of Singapore in 2010.

Farquhar Street, a former street in Singapore, was named after him. This street was located in the Kampong Glam area between Beach Road and North Bridge Road. It was expunged in 1994 due to street realignment and no longer exists. Lebuh Farquhar (Farquhar Street), another street in Penang, Malaysia is mistakenly thought to be named after him. It is actually named after Robert Townsend Farquhar (no relation), Lieutenant General of Penang from 1804 05. In 1993, the silver epergne, which William Farquhar received from the Chinese community before his departure from Singapore on 27 December 1823, was acquired by the National Museum of Singapore from his descendant Captain David John Farquhar Atkins, for S$52,000. Through his eldest daughter Esther Asther Bernard, Farquhar, Farquhar is a fifth great grandfather of Justin Trudeau, the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada, and fourth great grandfather of Margaret Trudeau, onetime wife of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the 15th Prime Minister of Canada.