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ANTHONY WEBSTER, British Expansion in South-East Asia and the Role of Robert Farquhar, Lieutenant- Governor of Penang, 1804-5.

The Journal of imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 23, No. t, pp. 1-25 PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS. LONDON. The period from 1780 to 1830 saw a dramatic transformation of British policy and presence in South-East Asia. Until the establishment of a British base at Penang in 1786, the region was almost exclusively a preserve of Dutch imperial authority, in which British influence was at best peripheral and subject to Dutch willingness to tolerate a limited British presence. The only British possession was Bencoolen, a forlorn and fever-ridden outpost on the west coast of Sumatra, which achieved only limited commercial success. By 1830 the situation had been transformed. The British had acquired a chain of ports along the western coast of the Malay peninsula, the most prosperous being Singapore, from which British merchants effectively dictated the pattern of commerce in the region. In short, the British had displaced the Dutch as imperial masters of the region. The area displayed considerable cultural and political diversity. While Java and the Moluccas were under direct Dutch rule, the rest of South- East Asia consisted of numerous indigenous polities which viewed each other with suspicion and hostility. Warfare and piracy disrupted the region before and after the arrival of European interests.1 In addition, the emergence of the British challenge to Dutch authority in the late eighteenth ccntury resulted in a complex overlay of European rivalry upon existing indigenous disputes and feuds. This complicated interplay of forces formed the context within which British policy was shaped during the priod from the founding of Penang in 1786 to the of commerce in the region. In short, the British had displaced the Dutch as imperial masters of the region The area displayed considerable cultural and political diversity. While Java and the Moluccas were under direct Dutch rule, the rest of South- East Asia consisted of numerous indigenous polities which viewed each other with suspicion and hostility. Warfare and piracy disrupted the region before and after the arrival of European interests.1 In addition, the emergence of the British challenge to Dutch authority in the late eighteenth century resulted in a complex overlay of European rivalry upon existing indigenous disputes and feuds. This complicated interplay of forces formed the context within which British policy was shaped during the period from the foundation of Penang in 1786 to the acquisition of Singapore in 1819. At the turn of the century, British involvement was focused principally on the northern Malay archipelago, although the patterns of commerce and political relations inevitably drew British attention further afield from time to time, to Java, southern Sumatra and other Islands of the southern archipelago. Commercial opportunities available on Penang, the principal British settlement, attracted Chinese merchants and itinerant Chullah labourers from the Coromandel coast of southern India. As a consequence British administrators there had to deal with sensitive issues and problems which arose

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