Day 12.
Many, many guide books for this region contain brief contextual histories of the past, particularly the colourful British... 'presence' in Penang. Several volumes have been filled with the details of their arrival, aspiration, tenacity and eventual victory in their pursuits. Suffice it to say, in their time they acted according to their morality and did their bit. Quite whether their 'bit' was selfless duty to King and Country, greedy acquisition or vaunted ambition is the question for which hindsight and history were invented.
Penang's (Georgetown's) air is not unpleasant. The sea-breezes swoop down from the north onto Fort Cornwallis and barrel through the city's street and little lanes, past busy trader's stalls and slumbering bicycle rickshawmen. As far-eastern postings go, this may have been one of the most gratifying for later, top-hatted British-types. For those on their ways further east or south, Penang must have been a moment of hesitation: surely all they sought was here -warmth, security, an intact class structure.
Fort Cornwallis is so-named after the 1st Earl of that name. An army adventurer in youth, he entered politics and held much sympathy for the American colonists. The irony of his political standings became apparent when he was given a leading role in the largely-successful opening phase of the American War of Independence. His later southern campaigns were dogged by difficulties and founded when he finally faced the combined Continental army and French fleet. Returning to Britain, he acted as British ambassador to Frederick the Great of Russia and was then sent to India to enact reforms of the land, tax and administrative systems. He eventually fought against and beat the famous Tipu Sultan in the Third Anglo-Mysore War and then withdrew home where he was employed to accomplish much for good or ill in Ireland and then against Napoleon -a story worth mentioning another time.
Such an honorary title would, at the time, have made an obvious connection in the minds of those that knew anything about current events. The effect of the pragmatic warhorse's name and reputation would have been self-evident. So, the men employed by the British East India Company to cut down their palm trunks and stack them into walls with sand and rocks from the hastily-dug moat would have drawn inspiration from their exploits under the name of this living legend: Captain Sir Francis Light, their commander, was no fool. The fort protected the early settlement from pirates, from the sultan on the mainland (whom he did not support in his wars against Siam, despite earlier promises) and eventually against any Napoleonic French aspirations in the region.
Francis Light, an accomplished trader and reader and writer of both Malay and Thai, died of malaria in 1794 and is buried in the town. Publicly, he helped forge a stronger British presence in the region that saw off the Dutch from the Malay Peninsula and enabled the White Rajahs to begin prospering in places like Singapore. More privately, he did not marry his partner of many years, Martina Rozells, with whom he had a large family, most likely because of political matters within the East India Company -their employees could not marry Catholics.
Whatever we now think about the British and their presence in the region, it is clear that these men and women had guts and determination, strength and wit -not only to build forts made of wood, but also to change the world they lived in. If Penang today represents anything like their vision, maybe it wasn't such a bad adventure to begin.
