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Singapore Anglo-Dutch Competition
In the late eighteenth century, the British began to
expand
their commerce with China from their bases in India
through both
private traders and the British East India Company. The
company had
occupied a small settlement at Bencoolen (Bengkulu) on the
western
coast of Sumatra since 1684; from there it had engaged in
the
pepper trade after being forced out of Java by the Dutch.
Acutely
aware of the need for a base somewhere midway between
Calcutta and
Guangzhou, the company leased the island of Penang, on the
western
coast of the Malay Peninsula, from the sultan of Kedah in
1791.
From these posts at Penang and Bencoolen, the British
began in 1795
to occupy the Dutch possessions placed temporarily in
their care by
the Kew Letters, including Malacca and Java. After war in
Europe
ended in 1814, however, the British agreed to return Java
and
Malacca to the Dutch. By 1818 the Dutch had returned to
the East
Indies and had reimposed their restrictive trade policies.
In that
same year, the Dutch negotiated a treaty with the
Bugis-controlled
sultan of Johore granting them permission to station a
garrison at
Riau, thereby giving them control over the main passage
through the
Strait of Malacca. British trading ships were heavily
taxed at
Dutch ports and suffered harassment by the Dutch navy.
Meanwhile,
the British government and the British East India Company
officials
in London, who were concerned with maintaining peace with
the
Dutch, consolidating British control in India, and
reducing their
commitments in the East Indies, considered relinquishing
Bencoolen
and perhaps Penang to the Dutch in exchange for Dutch
territories
in India.
Data as of December 1989
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