Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrai9101882roya).pdf/322

 Padang and the other Dutch Settlements in Sumatra were seized by a military expedition from Bencoolen. These acts fostered the enterprises Captain and Captain  were carrying on when a Settlement on Pulau Pinang was first projected (1781-6). That political motives and objects were not wanting is clear from the Treaty with Kĕdah, and the correspondence that preceded it, and particularly from the interest took in its foundation. The Settlement was made in 1786 by friendly cession. In 1797-8 a second expedition against Manila was fitted out from Madras by Sir, under the command of Colonel. It was recalled before it left Penang; a full account of the island at that time, written by its Commander to his brother, who had become Governor-General, is to be found in "The Wellington Despatches" (Supplementary Despatches, Vol. I., p. 25).

The history of this latest of the three divisions into which the British connection with Malaya naturally falls, is, speaking generally, the history of enterprises in which the Government, actuated by political considerations, has taken the lead in promoting British connection with those regions. There are certainly two recent exceptions to be made, in Borneo, of enterprises which bear something of the earlier private character, viz.:—Mr. 's action in Sarawak (1810-2), and Mr. 's more recent enterprise in Sabah (1880). But the general character of the period is seen in the two Manila expeditions—the successful one of 1762, and the abortive one of 1797; in the occupation, loss, recapture, and final surrender of Balambangan (1775-1803); in the foundation of Penang (1785), after some years of negotiation both in Bengal and Kĕdah; in the cessions and retrocessions of Malacca (1795-1825); in the foundation and support of Singapore (1819); and in the protection (since withdrawn) afforded to Achin (1819), and the States of the Malay Peninsula, with which Treaties have, from time to time (1818-76), been entered into since that first one with Kedah.

There are three principal dates in this interval:—1805, 1827. and 1867.

The first of these brings to a close the period in which no regular English administration had been organised; affairs were