The Portuguese, By Their Persevering And Relentless Religious Crusade
Against The Mohammedans, Converted All The States Which Were Adjacent
To
Their conquests into enemies, and by 1641 their empire in the
Straits was seized upon by the Dutch, who, not
Being troubled by much
religious earnestness, got on very well with the Malay Princes, and
succeeded in making advantageous commercial treaties with them.
A curious but fairly accurate map of the coasts of the Peninsula was
prepared in Paris in 1668 to accompany the narrative of the French
envoy to the Court of Siam, but neither the mainland nor the adjacent
islands attracted any interest in this country till the East India
Company acquired Pinang in 1775, Province Wellesley in 1798, Singapore
in 1823, and Malacca in 1824. These small but important colonies were
consolidated in 1867 into one Government under the Crown, and are now
known as the Straits Settlements, and prized as among the most valuable
of our possessions in the Far East. Though these settlements are merely
small islands or narrow strips of territory on the coast, their
population, by the census of 1881, exceeded four hundred and twenty-two
thousand souls, and in 1880 their exports and imports amounted to
32,353,000 pounds!
Besides these little bits of British territory scattered along a
coast-line nearly four hundred miles in length, there are, on the west
side of the Peninsula, the native States of Kedah, Perak, Selangor, and
Sungei Ujong, the last three of which are under British "protection;"
and on the east are Patani, Kelantan, Tringganu, and Pahang; the
southern extremity being occupied by the State of Johore.
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