Original The Expansion of Penang under the East India Company

This study highlights that the British had long experiences in the Malay Peninsula before Francis Light’s acquisition and development of Penang, due to the central role of Malayan ports such as Kedah, Takuapa, Langkasuka, Terengganu, Palembang, Siak, and Malacca in global trade between China and India. Under the influence of Islam, Malacca (and, to a lesser extent, Kedah) became a Muslim Sultanate and reached its peak in this trading network, which attracted European traders (and subsequent colonialism), initially from Portugal and Spain, and later France, the Netherlands, and Britain. After the East India Company attained hegemony in India, it was strongly placed to extend its power from its presidencies in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras. The EIC’s main focus was Bengal, where the Company founded the Fort William College as its headquarters in Calcutta. As trade with China became more important, the Malay Peninsula commensurately became a more attractive destination for investment due to its closer proximity to the Chinese sea lanes, and closer access to the Indo-Malay hinterlands and their products. In 1784, the EIC sent Kinloch to Aceh but he was unsuccessful in negotiating to establish a factory there. Nevertheless, they succeeded in establishing a foothold in Malaya with Francis Light’s embassy to Riau, Kedah, and Penang. Kedah also became prosperous under the Muslim Sultanates. Many Chinese and Indian merchants were settled there, benefitting from the trade in jungle products like camphor, betelnut, bird nests,

India (particularly Gujarat, the Coromandel Coast, Malabar, and Bengal) (Note 9). Malay traders imported Indian textiles from Malacca, sold them to various parts of the Archipelago, and bartered them for spices, aromatic woods, sea products, and other exotic items highly valued by the Indian, Chinese, and Arab traders. Tome Pires in his Suma Oriental (1512-1515) (Note 10) reported that Chinese junks (wooden sailing ships) regularly sailed to Malacca with a special licence from the Viceroy of Kwangtung (a coastal province of South China) despite having to pay exorbitant sums on trade. Sometimes, to evade the tax, many Chinese junk owners used to sail to Malacca or other destinations in the Archipelago without permits, and sold their goods in islands near Canton, leaving the problems of transhipments to the mainland in the hands of professional political intermediaries.
Tome Pires also mentioned that a large number of individual Muslim traders from Cairo, Turkey, Aden, Persia, East Africa and Armenia accompanied the Cambay ships on their annual voyage to Malacca. He exclaimed that "this is a place where you find what you want and sometimes more than you are looking for" (Note 11).
Tome Pires discovered that there were 84 languages spoken in Malacca (Note 12). The majority of the people lived in kampongs (villages) under their own local jurisdiction and places of worship. There were four harbourmasters. One was for the Guajarati community. It was said that about a thousand Guajarati merchants travelled each year to Malacca together with between 4,000 and 5,000 sailors. Another harbourmaster represented people from Bago (Myanmar) and Pasai. The third represented people from the island of Southeast Asia i.e. Java, Maluku, Banda, Palembang, Borneo, and Luzon. The fourth harbourmaster was responsible for people from the north-east, namely Ryukyu, Champa, and China. The Gujarati merchants by no means monopolised Muslim trade in Southeast Asia, for there were substantial numbers of other Muslim Indian traders from the Malabar and Coromandel Cost in South India, as well as from Bengal in North-East India who controlled the trade. Nevertheless, they all played significant role in familiarising the island people of Southeast Asia with Islam, its attitudes, values and ways of life. Thus, it could be concluded that in the 16 th century, Malacca enjoyed a golden era under the Muslim Sultanates (Note 13). Because of the zenith of the Muslim Sultanates, Malacca was the target of European explorers, initially comprising Iberian Crusaders, and later Anglo-Dutch traders.

The Reasons for European Exploration in the East
When Islam (Note 14) spread around the world from the 7 th to 15 th centuries, "Europe" was defined by being the part of Late Roman Christendom that did not come under the sway of Islam. By 1453 the Turks had seized Constantinople, marking the high tide of Islamic conquests. Subsequently, the Muslims were driven from Spain in the Reconquista, and the Catholic Crusaders like Albuquerque continued their battles in North Africa and then in the Indies. This was contemporaneous with the cultural movement subsequently dubbed the "Renaissance" in Europe, when "individuals showed increasing concerns with worldly life and self-consciously aspired to shape their destinies-attitudes that 34 are the key to modernity", as stated by Jacob Burckhardt in his classic study The Civilization of the (Note 23). European merchants generally bought goods with silver bullion. These ideas led to overseas exploration which opened up new frontiers of economic opportunities and colonialism.

The Portuguese and Dutch in the Malay Peninsula
In 1498   implicitly, other Europeans who would clearly be following hard on their heels) (Note 28). Immediately after the defeat of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English occupied all the Portuguese positions (Note 39).

Early British Voyages in the Malay Peninsula
In 1591 onwards, the EIC did not get involved much with the Dutch, and concentrated mainly on its own business, particularly its factory in Banten. The EIC's main concern was to increase it lucrative domination of Bengal, which was facilitated by intermittent Anglo-French warfare in Europe as well as in India itself. From almost two centuries after the Amboinya Massacre, the EIC's focus was in India, which it came to dominate absolutely by the late 18 th century.

The Rise and Growth of the British East India Company
Like all of the European companies, the British EIC mainly aimed to trade with the "Indies", including India and China as well as the lands between, but India was its main source of revenue due to its egregious capture of state machinery there(Note 48). Its initial foothold in the Subcontinent was  concessions. In his letter he wrote "if any enemy comes to attack us by land and we require assistance from the honourable Company will supply at our expense" (Note 60).
Because of his pressure Captain Francis Light went to Calcutta for the above purpose with the

Conclusion
The EIC established three presidencies in India, namely Bombay, Madras, and Bengal, but Bengal was its main concern for strategic reasons, and the ease with which they assumed direct control of that realm. The conquest of Bengal was a remarkable historical aberration, whereby dominion over one of the richest regions in the world was accrued by a motley crew of itinerant traders, forming the nucleus of the unprecedented commercial empire of the EIC, who subjugated the whole of the Indian Subcontinent to their will. Subsequently, Southeast Asia was an attractive launchpad to extent their reach to China, entailing the formation of the Straits Settlements and major naval bases in Penang and Singapore.
It can be noted that James Lancaster played the most significant formative contribution in establishing this dominion in driving the Portuguese out from the Straits of Malacca. Ironically, on the way back to Britain, he met a devastating natural disaster but he could hardly survive. In his second voyage to the Southeast Asia, he also contributed significantly. The establishment of the British 41