The Founding of Penang, Malaysia
Francis Light of Phuket, Penang and the East India Company
Mar 15, 2009
Although he established the foothold that enabled the British to conquer the Malayan states, Francis Light is still honored in Penang as the island’s founder. His statue guards Fort Cornwallis. Most of the streets in Georgetown, the oldest part of the northern Malaysian city, retain the names that he bestowed on them. His gravestone can still be found in the long neglected Protestant cemetery.
It's difficult, though, to find any glimpse of Light on Phuket, today the locale of Thailand’s largest tourist resort. Yet for 15 years, beginning in 1771, Light was based on the island, then known as Junk Ceylon, as a "navigating merchant," a manager of a coastal trading company. He lived in a small European trading post on the southeast coast at Tha Rua. The Europeans' homes of thatch and brick, together with the few opulent teak houses of wealthy Siamese, were razed to the ground in the Burmese invasions of 1809 and 1810.
While living on Phuket, Light took a common-law wife of Thai and Portuguese parentage, Martina Rozells. ( A possible explanation for the lack of a legal marriage: she was Catholic and the East India Company forbade its employees from marrying Catholics.) He mastered Thai and Malay, and voyaged often to India. He also spent of great deal of that time plotting to set up a full-fledged British-run settlement. This entailed extensive negotiations with Sultan Abdullah of Kedah, successive governors of Phuket's capital of Thalang, and the thick-headed czars of the East India Company in Calcutta.
Francis Light’s Mercenary Intentions and Bugis Pirates
In writing The Connection: Phuket, Penang and Adelaide (Siam Society, 1993), Ian Morson immersed himself in this copious correspondence. Light never pretended to have a civilizing mission. His intentions were strictly mercenary. As for the Company, the most rapacious transnational corporation of the age, it was desperate to establish a British base on the east side of the Bay of Bengal to protect its opium trade route between India and China.
Also from mercenary motives, the Siamese governors and the Malay sultan were eager to attract the 18th-century foreign property developers. In exchange for trade concessions, they hoped the British ships and soldiers would provide some defense against the relentless raids of the Bugis, the ferocious pirates from Sumatra and the Celebes.
Despite Phuket's more advanced state of settlement, the sultan's offer of Penang eventually won out. More accurately, the sultan was swindled, like so many Asian rulers before and after him. He never agreed to cede the island and the Company never satisfied his original demands for compensation and a military alliance. When the sultan's army attempted to retake Penang in 1790, it was defeated by Light's troops. The sultan even had to pay the British compensation.
Founding and Construction of Georgetown
In July 1786, about a decade after Britain had lost its principal North American colony, Light and about 100 of the company's Indian troops landed on what is today Penang's Esplanade and started making a town. Describing Light as Penang's "founder" rightly annoys many people. When Light arrived, there was already a small community of Malay fishermen living on stilt houses by the sea. Chinese, Indian, Portuguese and French ships had been visiting the island for centuries. The island was known by the name still used by Malaysians: Pinang, after the abundant betel nut trees that grew there.
But credit has to be given to Light for clearing the jungle and mapping the city of Georgetown with a negligible labor force. And almost singlehandedly, he introduced all the trappings of government administration. Within four years, Penang had grown to a bustling port of 7,000 inhabitants. Many men were already making their fortunes. Light, though of an ambitious and even devious nature, was never one of them. When he died in 1794, his widow and five children inherited little, aside from some prime real estate.
William Light, founder of Adelaide
Francis Light's connection to Adelaide in south Australia was established long after his death, in 1836. That was when his son, William, founded Adelaide. William last saw his father at the age of six, when he was to England for schooling.
Morson, a former officer in the British army now retired in Bangkok, is not a professional writer and The Connection is not always a smooth read. Light is a compelling character but for too many long, dry patches, we lose all sight of him. The social and political climate of his times never jells.
Nevertheless, this book could prove to be popular among devotees of Phuket or Penang. Affection for a place breeds curiosity about it. Readers pick up all sorts of nifty facts about Penang, such as the origin of many place names and the site of Light's gravestone. (It's in the Protestant cemetery on Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah.) In Phuket, they will enjoy description of the straitened life in the vanished trading post. And finally, it's irresistible to ponder how the course of history would have unfolded if the East India Company had settled on the island of Phuket instead of the island of Penang.
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