This post was written by Kat Fatland

Much ink has been spilt over Penang’s heritage, but what was the key to the island’s history during its most formative years? Join Kat Fatland as she retraces the steps of an author whose curiosity about Penang’s past led him on a lifetime of discovery.

In the early months of 1977, author Marcus Langdon, a young backpacker in the middle of a two-year jaunt across Asia and the Middle East, landed on the little island of Penang. In those days, nothing obscured the skyline except for the island’s hilly backbone: KOMTAR was just a skeleton of construction; only quiet kampungs and atap lean-tos dotted the shores of Batu Ferringhi.The island itself could only be accessed from the mainland by ferry. As he wandered George Town’s city streets, Marcus became immediately interested in the cacophonous blend of cultures intermingling within every facet of life.The contrast between mosque and temple, the warm scent of the joss stick against the fragrance of freshly ground spice, evoked the same curiosities many of us feel while walking through the city today: what made George Town what it is today? What common thread of history might these cultures share?

Two decades later, while researching his family’s genealogy and ties to his home of Melbourne, Langdon found he had a direct connection to Penang: an ancestor named George Porter. In the eary 1820s, Porter worked as an employee of the British East India Company. He was working as an overseer of the Botanic Gardens in Calcutta, one of the company’s presidencies, when he was called to Penang, another presidency, to collect plant samples. During his 13-year stay, Porter filled positions for the company as needed, acting as superintendent of a small Botanic Garden and later as the headmaster of the Penang Fee School. Porter eventually acquired enough wealth as a Beach Street merchant to relocate to Australia and become a pioneer of the city of Melbourne. A family rumour suggested he once owned half of that city: interesting fodder for Langdon indeed. But Marcus soon found himself drawn away from his original subject matter and into a topic of research that would soon consume the next decade of his life:

How did the tiny island of Penang rise to such importance to be called a Presidency?

A Struggle for Control

For most readers, the question’s topic sounds rather obscure: what does a Presidency mean in this context? But as Langdon’s research shows, it’s because of this title that Penang is what it is today.

By the late 1700s, the British East India Company had elevated three of its largest trading centres in India to presidencies, namely Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay.The status of presidency granted these ports certain autonomous control. Each presidency had its own governor and council, which allowed for greater efficiency in both business and administrative dealings. After all, this was an era where any question that arose had to be sent by way of a boat-trip back to Britain; answers might not come for a year or more.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, a British trader and sailor named Francis Light was working out an arrangement with the Sultan of Kedah, who owned Pulau Pinang.The Sultan agreed to lease his island to the British East India Company in exchange for protection from the Siamese and Burmese, who were constantly threatening to take over his spread of land in northern Malaya. Apart from being a good rest stop on the trade route between Britain and China, Light found the island’s strategic placement in the Strait of Malacca a convenient location for curtailing the Dutch and the French in their quest to gain more regional influence. In the ensuing years, tensions rose so high between these warring countries that the British government confirmed Light’s rationale for leasing the island: just 20 years after its founding, Penang became a Presidency.

Light, who saw Penang’s potential, beckoned traders from nearby nations to settle in on the island, promising them free grants of land. Although Light diedin 1794, before he could see the island rise to such importance, regional traders and merchants continued to settle there long afterward.The island’s new status also drew settlers, with its promise of a strong British defence should anything happen.Thus, the island grew into a flourishing centre of commerce and trade and a hub for the British navy, who kept a watchful eye out for any detractors.

A Lasting Legacy

Penang’s rise to a Presidency changed the very fabric of the island, both culturally and tangibly, in ways that can still be seen and felt today.The city’s cultural heritage, much of which began during this era, is on display on every corner. It’s easy to picture the shop houses hosting traders and merchants alike, fine-tuning their products that would come to define the family business for decades, or to picture the men whose names now reside on the city’s street signs meeting with one another at the old Government House and Suffolk House to talk business and politics. Certainly, the island has changed, but much of what makes it special now could surely be felt even then.

Penang held onto its presidency status for just 25 years.Tensions between France and Britain began to ease just a few years after the island was granted its title. On the trading side of things, Britain’s East India Company was in great debt even before Light leased Penang from the Sultan of Kedah. As the British Government took a greater interest in the company, their trade monopoly in the region was curtailed. By 1830, the Company saw no reason to maintain Penang’s status as a presidency any longer, and the title was abolished. But the story of what happened during those 25 years and immediately previously to them remains an integral piece of Penang’s history: a piece that has not yet been touched upon in detail by any scholar or researcher until now.

Keeping in mind that these 25 years were arguably the island’s most formative, it’s easy to see how Langdon got wrapped up in the early history of Penang. For the greater part of the last ten years, he’s worked tirelessly to compile all of the pieces of this story into a book that the history shelves have long been without. His final product, Penang,The Fourth Presidency of India 1805-1830 is a compilation of letters, records and images that allow the reader to piece together an image of Penang as it once was, and how the island’s culture came together out of the most unusual of circumstances.

The first volume of three, subtitled Ships, Men and Mansions delves into great detail in each of its four main subject matters, always connecting them back to the greater historical context. In this book, readers can peruse the writings of Francis Light, discover the story behind the Suffolk House and who built it, and find out why only two ships were ever built on an island that rose to a Presidency created partly for the reason of building a naval dockyard.Throughout his work, Langdon has endeavored not to narrate the Island’s history, but to record it as it actually happened.The result is a lucidly-written account of the rapid rise of Penang, complete with interesting and little-known facts about the island as well as facts widely known but never fully explained.

Langdon’s research has shifted Penang’s appeal from sensory to historical. He now lives in a Penang different from the Penang he visited over three decades ago as a young man, and certainly different from the one most of us reside in now.The Penang he sees in his mind’s-eye resembles the one that existed two centuries ago. He walks the streets and sees the shop houses and buildings as they once were: structures as unique and varied as the people that built and lived within them, on an island whose history, in all its brief glory, still draws on the curiosities of visitors and locals alike. With his newly-published book, he now passes this privilege on to his readers, allowing them access into the deeply engrossing and expansive history of the rise of Penang, the Fourth Presidency of India.

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Penang:The Fourth Presidency of India 18051830, published by Areca Books, is on sale for RM150 at all major bookseller outlets.

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Source: Penang International April 2013 – May 2013

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