Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles is one of the key persons who are responsible to the founding of modern Singapore. He played an important role in forming a British Settlement, Singapore, in the Melaka straits despite facing rejections, such as Dutch or even resistance in London itself. He is a controversial person even in his time. Hence there is no doubt that there are lots of information about him and founding of Singapore in the internet. However, how do we assess these websites for its appropriateness towards scholarly research is the main objective of this essay.

According to The Sheridan Libraries an appropriate source for scholarly research would have information such as “authorship, publishing body, point of view, referral to
With these additional information provided, Raffles is not the only one credited with the establishment of early Singapore and thus gives a more objective view of early history of Singapore under British possession.

The third source I’m going to examine is from suit101 . This passage gives a general overview of Raffles and his involvement in Singapore. This source is a summary of his early life, his career, and also how it links to the founding of Singapore. Compare to the first two sources, this source is comparatively less detailed information. For example, “Following the hallowed English tradition of divide and conquer, Raffles and his successors …” The source didn’t mention about who are the other successor. Is it Farquhar? Is it John Crawfurd? Or is it somebody else? This source gives a very subjective view towards Raffles, “Raffles continued to enjoy a long and celebrated career in imperial administration.” How does the author know the feelings of Raffles despite so many obstacles in his tenure as stated in the first and second source?

Before I choose one of these sources to be an appropriate source for scholarly historical research, let me examine the authorship of these three sources. The source from Wikipedia, apparently is edited by not a few but a lot of authors. Just a brief view in the “history” link in the