History of Penang
Francis Light established Penang to be the first British trading post in the Far East in 1786. The Sultan of Kedah had been persuaded by Light to concede Pulau Pinang (Island of the Betel Nut) to the British in exchange for military support. Although Light occupied the island, he suspended a promise to aid Kedah until the sultan had surrendered additional territory on the neighbouring mainland coast.
A golden shower
When Light landed where the present Esplanade is today, Pulau Penang was practically unpopulated and covered in thick vegetation. In order to persuade his Sepoy forces to take on the hard work of clearing the area, Light is said to have loaded a cannon with coins of gold and fired it into the surrounding tropical rain forest. It didn’t take long before enough land had been cleared to build a settlement, and soon traders and merchants began arriving on the island.
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A safe haven
Much of the appeal of the almost unpopulated island for traders was the fact that Penang was, from the onset an open, duty-free port. In contrast to their Dutch rivals in the area, who pushed for trade monopolies and introduced trade duties, the British preferred to ally themselves with regional powers instead of controlling and making a profit from Malaysian trade. Penang’s main importance to the British was that it functioned as a safe stopover for British ships sailing on the far more lucrative China trade route.
Immigrants
To fuel Penang's development, the British founder and administrator, Francis Light, decided to let immigrants claim any land they could clear. Within a few decades, more than 10,000 settlers and traders had made their homes on the island including Malays, Sumatrans, Indians and above all, the Chinese.
Light's efforts to encourage agriculture on the island were mostly fruitless, but Penang soon developed into a key trading port for tea, spices, china and cloth. Today, the city of Georgetown is a lively metropolitan city where Eastern and Western influences come together to form a unique culture.