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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 mastersof the region

The area displayed considerable cultural and political diversity. While Javaand 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.1In 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 Malayarchipelago, 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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DetailsI Citation information: Web of Science I Version of record first published: 01 JuI 20081