Penang: History

Pre-20th-Century History

Little is known of Penang's early history. Chinese seafarers were aware of the island, which they called Pulo Pinang (Betelnut Island), as far back as the 15th century, but it appears to have been uninhabited. When English merchant-adventurer Captain James Lancaster swung by in 1593, Penang was still an unpopulated jungly wilderness. It wasn't until the early 1700s that colonists arrived from Sumatra and established settlements at Batu Uban and the area now covered by southern Georgetown. The island came under the control of the sultan of Kedah, but in 1771 the sultan signed the first agreement with the British East India Company, handing it trading rights in exchange for military assistance against Siam. In 1786 Captain Francis Light, on behalf of the East India Company, took possession of Penang, which was formally signed over to the company in 1791.

Light renamed it Prince of Wales Island, as the acquisition date fell on the prince's birthday. It's said that Light fired silver dollars from his ship's cannons into the jungle to encourage his labourers to hack back the undergrowth for settlement. Whatever the truth of the tale, he soon established the small town of Georgetown, also named after the Prince of Wales (who later became King George IV), with Lebuh Light, Lebuh Chulia, Lebuh Pitt and Lebuh Bishop as its boundaries. By 1800 Light had also negotiated for a portion of the mainland adjacent to the island; this became known as Province Wellesley, after the governor of India.

Light permitted new arrivals to claim as much land as they could clear, and this, together with a duty-free port and an atmosphere of liberal tolerance, soon attracted settlers from all over Asia. By the turn of the 19th century Penang was home to over 10,000 people. The local economy was slow to develop, as mostly European planters set up spice plantations - slow-growing crops requiring a high initial outlay. Although the planters later turned to sugar and coconut, agriculture was hindered by a limited labour force.

In 1805 Penang became a presidency government, on a par with the cities of Madras and Bombay in India, and so gained a much more sophisticated administrative structure. It even became the capital of the Straits Settlements briefly in 1826 (including Melaka and Singapore) until it was superseded by the more prosperous Singapore. By the middle of the 19th century, Penang had become a major player in the Chinese opium trade, which provided more than half of the colony's revenue. It was a dangerous, rough-edged place, notorious for its brothels and gambling dens, all run by Chinese secret societies. In 1867, the simmering violence came to a head when large-scale rioting broke out between two rival Chinese secret societies, who had each allied themselves with similar Malay groups. Once the fighting had been brought under control, the British authorities fined each group the then huge sum of $10,000. The proceeds were used to establish a permanent police force in the colony.

Modern History

Although Penang thrived as a centre of international trade, it never saw the rapid development experienced by Singapore, resulting in much of its early colonial architecture remaining intact to this day. A royal charter awarded city status to Georgetown in January 1957, just seven months before Malaysian independence; in the 1960s Penang became a free port.

Recent History

The island enjoyed rapid economic growth in the following decades, but lost its duty-free status to Langkawi in the 1980s. Since then, numerous international high-tech companies have set up in Penang, earning it the title of 'Silicon Valley of the East', while tourism has become one of the state's most lucrative industries.

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