Singapore FOUNDING AND EARLY YEARS, 1819-26
Singapore Malay fishing village, nineteenth century
Courtesysg Library of Congress
Rattan harvesting in nineteenth-century
Singapore
Courtesy Library of Congress
Figure 3. The Straits Settlements, 1826
Source: Based on information from Gerald Percy Dartford, A
Short History of Malaya, London, 1957, 102; and Constance M.
Turnbull, The Straits Settlements, 1826-67, London, 1972.
By the early seventeenth century, both the Dutch and
the
English were sending regular expeditions to the East
Indies. The
English soon gave up the trade, however, and concentrated
their
efforts on India. In 1641 the Dutch captured Malacca and
soon after
replaced the Portuguese as the preeminent European power
in the
Malay Archipelago. From their capital at Batavia on Java,
they
sought to monopolize the spice trade. Their short-sighted
policies
and harsh treatment of offenders, however, impoverished
their
suppliers and encouraged smuggling and piracy by the Bugis
and
other peoples. By 1795, the Dutch enterprise in the East
was losing
money and, in Europe, the Netherlands was at war with
France. The
Dutch king fled to Britain where, in desperation, he
issued the Kew
Letters, by which all Dutch overseas territories were
temporarily
placed under British authority in order to keep them from
falling
to the French.
Data as of December 1989
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