British Malaya
Substate | Defunct
1771 CE to 1946 CE
British Malaya loosely describes a set of states on the Malay Peninsula and the Island of Singapore that are brought under British control between the 18th and the 20th centuries.
Unlike the term "British India", which excludes the Indian princely states, British Malaya is often used to refer to the Malay States under indirect British rule as well as the Straits Settlements that are under the sovereignty of the British Crown.
Before the formation of Malayan Union in 1946, the territories are not placed under a single unified administration.
Instead, British Malaya comprises the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States and the Unfederated Malay States.Under British rule, Malaya is one of the most profitable territories of the Empire, being the world's largest producer of tin and later rubber.The Malayan Union is dissolved and replaced by the Federation of Malaya in 1948.
It becomes fully independent on August 31, 1957.
On 16 September 1963, the federation, along with Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore, forms a larger federation called Malaysia.
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He now renames the island the Prince of Wales Island in honor of the heir to the British throne, and establishes the settlement of George Town at the northeastern tip of the island in honor of King George III.
George Town is Britain's first settlement in Southeast Asia, and is one of the first establishments of the British Empire after the loss of its North American colonies.
In Malaysian history, the occasion marks the beginning of more than a century of British involvement in Malaya.
Unbeknown to the Sultan, Light had decided to conceal the facts of the agreement from both parties.
When Light reneges on his promise of protection, the Sultan unsuccessfully attempts to recapture the Prince of Wales Island in 1790, and the Sultan is forced to officially cede the island to the British for an honorarium of six thousand Spanish dollars per annum.
He also encouraged immigrants by promising them as much land as they could clear and by reportedly firing silver dollars from his ship's cannons deep into the jungle
Trade in Penang grew exponentially soon after its founding—incoming ships and boats to Penang will increased from eighty-five in 1786 to three thousand five hundred and sixty-nine in 1802.
Many early settlers, including Light himself in 1794, succumb to malaria, earning early Penang the epithet 'the white man's grave'.
After Light's demise, Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Wellesley, who will go on to become the Duke of Wellington, arrives on the Prince of Wales Island to co-ordinate the island's defenses.
It is today the oldest English-medium school in Southeast Asia.
The opportunity to sell supplies at high prices to Singapore quickly attracts many Malacca traders to the new settlement.
Word of the island's free trade policy also spreadz southeastward through the archipelago, and within six weeks more than one hundred Indonesian inter-island craft are anchored in the harbor, as well as one Siamese and two European ships.
Raffles returns in late May to find that the population of the settlement had grown to nearly five thousand, including Malays, Chinese, Bugis, Arabs, Indians, and Europeans.
During his four-week stay, he draws up a plan for the town and signs another agreement with Hussein and the temenggong establishing the boundaries of the settlement.
He writes to a friend that Singapore "is by far the most important station in the East; and, as far as naval superiority and commercial interests are concerned, of much higher value than whole continents of territory."
Raffles, not wanting the British East India Company to view Singapore as an economic liability, leaves Farquhar a shoestring budget with which to administer the new settlement.
Prevented from either imposing trade tariffs or selling land titles to raise revenue, Farquhar legalizes gambling and the sale of opium and arak, an alcoholic drink.
The government auctions off monopoly rights to sell opium and spirits and to run gambling dens under a system known as tax farming, and the revenue thus raised is used for public works projects.
Maintenance of law and order in the wide-open seaport is among the most serious problems Farquhar faces.
There is constant friction among the various immigrant groups, particularly between the more settled Malays and Chinese from Malacca and the rough and ready followers of the temenggong and the sultan.
The settlement's merchants eventually fund night watchmen to augment the tiny police force.
Both the Dutch and the English had been sending regular expeditions to the East Indies by the early seventeenth century.
The English had soon given up the trade, however, and had concentrated their efforts on India.
The Dutch captured Malacca in 1641 and soon after had replaced the Portuguese as the preeminent European power in the Malay Archipelago.
From their capital at Batavia on Java, they sought to monopolize the spice trade.
Their short-sighted policies and harsh treatment of offenders, however, had impoverished their suppliers and encouraged smuggling and piracy by the Bugis and other peoples.
The Dutch enterprise in Asia was losing money by 1795 and in Europe the Netherlands was at war with France.
The Dutch king had fled to Britain where, in desperation, he had issued the Kew Letters, by which all Dutch overseas territories were temporarily placed under British authority in order to keep them from falling to the French.
The British had begun to expand their commerce with China from their bases in India through both private traders and the British East India Company in the late eighteenth century.
The company has occupied a small settlement at Bencoolen (Bengkulu) on the western coast of Sumatra since 1684; from there it had engaged in the pepper trade after being forced out of Java by the Dutch.
Acutely aware of the need for a base somewhere midway between Calcutta and Guangzhou (Canton), the company had leased the island of Penang, on the western coast of the Malay Peninsula, from the sultan of Kedah in 1791.
From these posts at Penang and Bencoolen, the British had begun in 1795 to occupy the Dutch possessions placed temporarily in their care by the Kew Letters, including Malacca and Java.
After war in Europe ended in 1814, however, the British had agreed to return Java and Malacca to the Dutch.
By 1818 the Dutch have returned to the East Indies and had reimposed their restrictive trade policies.
In that same year, the Dutch negotiated a treaty with the Bugis-controlled sultan of Johore granting them permission to station a garrison at Riau, thereby giving them control over the main passage through the Strait of Malacca.
British trading ships are heavily taxed at Dutch ports and suffer harassment by the Dutch navy.
Meanwhile, the British government and the British East India Company officials in London, who are concerned with maintaining peace with the Dutch, consolidating British control in India, and reducing their commitments in the East Indies, consider relinquishing Bencoolen and perhaps Penang to the Dutch in exchange for Dutch territories in India.
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the lieutenant governor of Bencoolen in 1818, vigorously opposes his government's plan to abandon control of the China trade to the Dutch.
Raffles, who had started his career as a clerk for the British East India Company in London, had been promoted at the age of twenty-three to assistant secretary of the newly formed government in Penang in 1805.
A serious student of the history and culture of the region and fluent in Malay, Raffles had served as governor general of Java (1811-16).
In 1818 Raffles sails from Bencoolen to India, where he persuades Governor General Lord Hastings of the need for a British post on the southern end of the Strait of Malacca.
Lord Hastings authorizes Raffles to secure such a post for the British East India Company, provided that it does not antagonize the Dutch.
Arriving in Penang, Raffles finds Governor General James Bannerman unwilling to cooperate.
When he learns that the Dutch have occupied Riau and are claiming that all territories of the sultan of Johore are within their sphere of influence, Raffles dispatches Colonel William Farquhar, an old friend and Malayan expert, to survey the Carimon Islands (modern Karimun Islands near Riau).
Disregarding Bannerman's orders to him to await further instructions from Calcutta, Raffles slips out of Penang the following night aboard a private trading ship and catches up with Farquhar.
Raffles knows of Singapore Island from his study of Malay texts and determines to go there.
Raffles and Farquhar anchor near the mouth of the Singapore River on January 28, 1819.
The following day the two men go ashore to meet Temenggong Abdu'r Rahman, who grants provisional permission for the British East India Company to establish a trading post on the island, subject to the approval of Hussein.
Raffles, noting the protected harbor, the abundance of drinking water, and the absence of the Dutch, begins immediately to unload troops, clear the land on the northeast side of the river, set up tents, and hoist the British flag.
Meanwhile, the temenggong sends to Riau for Hussein, who arrives within a few days.
Acknowledging Hussein as the rightful sultan of Johore, on February 6 Raffles signs a treaty with him and the temenggong confirming the right of the British East India Company to establish a trading post in return for an annual payment (in Spanish dollars, the common currency of the region at this time) of Sp$5,000 to Hussein and Sp$3,000 to the temenggong.
Raffles now departs for Bencoolen, leaving Farquhar in charge, with instructions to clear the land, construct a simple fortification, and inform all passing ships that there are no duties on trade at the new settlement.