Lion City

What if one man could redraw the map of empire—at the cost of everything he loved? At fourteen, Thomas Stamford Raffles was a clerk. Before he was forty, he would seize control of the most valuable trade route on earth. The Strait of Malacca was the choke point of empire, where Chinese tea, Indian opium, and the riches of the East passed between oceans. While others fought over established ports, ...