Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830. Vol. 3: Water, Wigs and Wisdom by Marcus Langdon

Abstract

Reviewed by: Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830. Vol. 3: Water, Wigs and Wisdom by Marcus Langdon Kwa Chong Guan Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830. Vol. 3: Water, Wigs and Wisdom, by Marcus Langdon. Penang: Entrepot Publishing, 2021, 505 pp. ISBN 978-967-17008-6-0 This is the third volume of Marcus Langdon’s massive and monumental collation of the archived records on Penang’s history between 1805–1830. Volume One was published in 2013 and reviewed by John Bastin in volume 87, part 1 of this Journal. Bastin noted that Langdon “is a British-born Australian amateur historian who first visited the island in the mid-1970s, attracted by a family legend relating to an ancestor employed in the Penang Botanical Garden. The word ‘amateur’ in the present context is hardly appropriate as the book is unquestionably one of the most professionally conceived and well-written works published in an area of Malaysian history.” Volume Two was published in 2015 and we now have volume 3 published in 2021, which continues the structure of the preceding two volumes of collating [End Page 146] the archived records on Penang according to the issues preserved in the archives. Volume One collated the records for the elevation of the twenty-year old British settlement on Penang into an East India Company (EIC) Presidency of India equivalent to Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, all governed by the Company from its Bengal offices. Volume One also detailed the records of the men charged with the administration of Penang, from Francis Light to Kenneth Murchison, the Governor from 1833 to 1836. The other issues examined in Volume One are the construction of the two buildings which were the centres of government: Government House which survives today as part of the Convent Light Street and Suffolk House, also standing today as heritage building. Volume Two looked at the central structure constructed by the EIC to defend its settlement: Fort Cornwallis. In this context, Fort Cornwallis performed a central function similar to Fort St George in Madras, Fort William in Calcutta and Fort George in Bombay. Similarly, Fort Canning and a series of other artillery forts protected Singapore in the nineteenth century. In earlier centuries, a series of forts defined the port cities of the Dutch and the Portuguese. Besides Fort Cornwallis, Volume Two also examined four institutions in Penang’s historical development: The Free School, St. George’s Church and the Spice and Botanic Gardens and the Library. Two issues which challenged the development of Penang are also covered in this volume. They are the fires in George Town and seashore erosion threatening Penang’s north shore. Volume Three continues this institutional history of Penang with a review of issues in the building of an aqueduct for the provision of potable water to the growing town; and critically, the development of the Jetty or quay central to Penang’s raison d’être as a port-city. The volume also collates the records on the establishment of the public hospital and the introduction and administration of law and order in the settlement and the jail as part of an evolving colonial penal system. Finally, the volume looks at the early newspapers published in Penang from which Langdon draws much information for this history of Penang. Langdon has systematically combed the records of the East India Company in its Straits Settlement Records archived in Singapore and in London, and the India Office Records for this history on the formative twenty-five years of Penang’s history. The salient feature of this history is that Langdon has summarised or reproduced in extenso much of the records he found, so enabling others to draw upon them for their own interpretation of Penang’s early history. The issues and events that Langdon has reconstructed from these archived records of the Hon. Company were what preoccupied the administrators of Penang from Francis Light and his successors, including George Caunter, George Leith among others. It is an account of the problems and challenges they confronted in keeping alive the fledgling settlement they had charge of. It is a history of the system and institutions they put in place...