Civ 6 Stamford Raffles: Was Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles a real person? Here's everything you need to know

The Civilization games aren't a terrible way to learn new things.

It's easy to shrug off games as being unhelpful in real life, but games like this can serve as a gateway into learning about history, and that's great.

As Civ 6 just keeps getting bigger and bigger, more and more people are introduced, and one of the latest characters is Stamford Raffles.

Who is Stamford Raffles though, and what do they do in the game?

What does Stamford Raffles do in Civilization 6?

Stamford Raffles is a Great Merchant in Civilization 6, and they can bring with them a huge boon to your own prowess if you recruiter them.

According to the update notes, the effect that they can have on your Civilization differs depending on whether you have the base game or the updates as such:

Base Game: Activate in a City-State to absorb it into your empire.Rise and Fall or Gathering Storm: Activate in a City-State to absorb it into your empire. Grants +10 Loyalty per turn in the city.

They're quite powerful as a result, but who were they in real life?

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Who is Stamford Raffles?

Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles is known for being the British Colonial Official who founded Singapore.

Which is to say that he rocked up and secured a British presence there and established a trading port in 1819.

While the post was initially in doubt it became apparent quickly that it was a good place to set a post up because it was doing good business. It was then cemented as a British place in 1824 when the Angle-Dutch Treaty of 1824 was passed.

You'll notice that this has nothing to do with the people living there, which is fairly typical for this period of British history because everyone thought they could go around planting flags in things and generally being kind of horrible to the rest of the world. History is important.

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