CRAWFURD, John (1783-1868), a Scottish author, was born in the island of Islay, Scotland. After studying at Edinburgh he became surgeon in the East India Company’s service. He aftervzards resided for some time at Penang, and he was from 1811 to 1817 British representative at Java. In 1821 he served as envoy to Siam and Cochin-China, and in 1823 became governor of Singapore. In 1861 he was elected president of the Ethnological Society.

He wrote a History of the Indian Archipelago (1820), Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands and Adjacent Countries (1856), Journal of an Embassy to the Court of Ava in 1827 (1829), Journal of an Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin-China, exhibiting a view of the actual State of these Kingdoms (1830), Iiupuiry into the System of Taxation in India, Letters on the Interior of India, an attack on the newspaper stamp-tax and the duty on paper entitled Taxes on Knowledge. (1836), and a valuable Malay grammar and dictionary (1852).