Early Penang Hill Station

Abstract

Penang Hill is one of the hill stations that originated in the upland tropics during the colonial era. Functional composition and landscape characteristics of Penang Hill during the early nineteenth century are described in the context of contemporary medical concepts, perceived health hazards, leisure pursuits, and cultural transfers. Penang Hill increasingly resembled an ideal model of TROPICAL hill stations were functionally specialized outposts of colonial settlement that initially served as health-and-recreation centers for civil servants, military personnel, planters, miners, and other expatriate Europeans or as strategic bases and military cantonments. Hill stations originated in Dutch and British Asiatic colonies during the early nineteenth century, and this type of settlement spread to other parts of Asia that came under colonial domination.' The form failed to develop in regions that were not brought under direct European control. A metaphor is that of a belvedere, a lofty site with a commanding view. Simla, the summer capital of the Raj, was the British belvedere par excellence. Hill stations were made possible by the ability of Europeans to acquire territory, to command strategically important uplands, to construct roads and railroads into previously inaccessible hills and mountains, and to control and exploit the economies, natural resources, and peoples of subjugated lands. Accompanying these forces were certain attitudes toward people, places, and landscapes and certain socially and culturally prescribed behavioral patterns. The sociocultural background and experiences of the Europeans provided the rationale for a possible, though not inevitable, outcome of colonialism. Colonial hill stations conjured up prospects of health and vitality, promises of fun and relaxation. In both image and reality they served as the tropical equivalents of the European spas and seaside resorts. Detached from the alien life in the lowlands, the hill stations offered isolated, exclusive milieus where sojourners could feel at home. The feeling was reinforced by familiar-appearing landscapes, gardens, and architecture that evoked images and memories of well-loved distant homelands. No wonder that visitors to hill stations commented so frequently on their bracing air, their temperate flowers and fruits, and their neat little gardens as well as simple reminders * I am grateful to the Association of American Geographers and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding. I thank John Bastin, Ray Desmond, John Dransfield, and Anthony D. King for their good counsel. Lawrence P. Kredl drew the map. I J. E. Spencer and W. L. Thomas, The Hill Stations and Summer Resorts of the Orient, Geographical Review 38 (1948): 637-651; Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), 156-179; Robert R. Reed, Remarks on the Colonial Genesis of the Hill Stations in Southeast Asia with Particular Reference to the Cities of Buitenzorg (Bogor) and Baguio, Asian Profile 4 (1976): 545-591. * DR. AIKEN is an associate professor of geography at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada H3G 1M8. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.162 on Thu, 11 Aug 2016 04:14:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 422 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW of other climates like a fire in the hearth or a blanket on the bed. Nostalgia was the common experience. Penang Hill, located on Penang Island, is the oldest of the four hill stations of colonial origin in Peninsular Malaysia (Fig. 1). The purpose of this article is to describe the origins, functional composition, and landscape characteristics of early Penang Hill, and I also attempt to evoke an image of the place. The principal functions of hill stations were refuge and resort: early Penang Hill served both as a refuge from the disease hazards and enervating climatic conditions of the lowlands and as a social place. In this study bungalows and gardens receive particular attention as evidence of cultural transfers. The period covered is the formative years prior to 1830, when the basic outlines of Penang took shape and the mold or template into which later developments were fixed was established. A long period of stagnation began after 1830 and lasted until the early 1920s, when a funicular railroad made Penang Hill more accessible than it had previously been.2