391 



EARLY PLANTING ENTERPRISE IN THE 

 STRAITS. 



In the great building consecrated to the official uses of India at 

 Whitehall there are preserved several hundred volumes of records 

 relating to the Straits Settlements, abstract and brief chronicles of 

 the days when British Malaya was in the making. They give a won- 

 derfully vivid picture of the life of the early settlers. The old 

 servants of the East India Company allowed nothing to escape their 

 vigilant observation and so we have inscribed in these time-stained 

 documents the most intimate details affecting the interests of the 

 Settlements. There we may see set out the price paid for labour 

 more than a century ago, the cost of provisions and the methods of 

 doing business side by side with other prosaic matters. We have 

 accounts of official quarrels and (whisper it gently) official vices. 

 Occasionally the suggestion of a duel flits across the page to add 

 piquancy to the official story. Nor is the element of pure romance 

 wanting. In the stories of old time piracies related in matter of fact 

 style by the official diarist there is material for a score of thrilling 

 novels. 



The substantial interest and value of the records lie in the light 

 they throw on the origin and infancy of the principal administrative 

 institutions and the developments of the Colony's commercial enter- 

 prises. If, for example, we take planting as a theme we find an 

 abundance of material illustrative of the beginnings uf the wide 

 reaching system of agricultural exploitation which gives the British 

 Malayan region such an enviable superiority amongst countries which 

 compete for the supply of tropical products in the world's markets. 

 In reality British planting enterpise is very much older than any of 

 the existing Settlements. It plates back to the period towards the end 

 of the seventeenth century when the English East India Company 

 was in strenuous rivalry with the Dutch East India Company for the 

 supply of spices to the European markets. Driven out of the Eastern 

 Islands and circumscribed in their operations at Batavia and Bantam 

 the agents of the English Company established themselves on the 

 West Coast of Sumatra, principally at Bencoolen, officially designated 

 in the records, first Fort Java, and afterwards Fort Marlborough. 

 Here they inaugurated a system which is well described in the accom- 

 panying extract : — 



" We can truthfully assure your honours that our utmost diligence 

 and endeavours have not been wanting for promoting the increase of 

 Pepper and we hope a few years will give ample demonstration that 

 they have not been ineffectual (we) having left no stone unturned to 

 put them on that necessary work. * * There are now both here and 

 at ye North ward a great number of Pepper trees lately planted, the old 

 plantations being generally decayed as they usually die in 14 or 15 

 years time and the young ones are generally three or four years 

 before they produce any quantity, which is the reason of our crops at 



