The History of Sumatra eBook

William Marsden
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 680 pages of information about The History of Sumatra.

The History of Sumatra eBook

William Marsden
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 680 pages of information about The History of Sumatra.
The unhealthiness of the old situation was thought to render this an expedient step; and accordingly about 1714 it was in great measure relinquished, and the foundations of Fort Marlborough were laid on a spot two or three miles distant.  Being a high plain it was judged to possess considerable advantages; many of which however are counterbalanced by its want of the vicinity of a river, so necessary for the ready and plentiful supply of provisions.  Some progress had been made in the erection of this fort when an accident happened that had nearly destroyed the Company’s views.  The natives incensed at ill treatment received from the Europeans, who were then but little versed in the knowledge of their dispositions or the art of managing them by conciliating methods, rose in a body in the year 1719, and forced the garrison, whose ignorant fears rendered them precipitate, to seek refuge on board their ships.  These people began now to feel alarms lest the Dutch, taking advantage of the absence of the English, should attempt an establishment, and soon permitted some persons from the northern factories to resettle the place; and, supplies arriving from Madras, things returned to their former course, and the fort was completed.  The Company’s affairs on this coast remained in tranquillity for a number of years.  The important settlement of Natal was established in 1752, and that of Tappanuli a short time afterwards; which involved the English in fresh disputes with the Dutch, who set up a claim to the country in which they are situated.  In the year 1760 the French under Comte d’Estaing destroyed all the English settlements on the coast of Sumatra; but they were soon reestablished and our possession secured by the treaty of Paris in 1763.  Fort Marlborough, which had been hitherto a peculiar subordinate of Fort St. George, was now formed into an independent presidency, and was furnished with a charter for erecting a mayor’s court, but which has never been enforced.  In 1781 a detachment of military from thence embarked upon five East India ships and took possession of Padang and all other Dutch factories in consequence of the war with that nation.  In 1782 the magazine of Fort Marlborough, in which were four hundred barrels of powder, was fired by lightning and blew up; but providentially few lives were lost.  In 1802 an act of parliament was passed “to authorize the East India Company to make their settlement at Fort Marlborough in the East Indies, a factory subordinate to the presidency of Fort William in Bengal, and to transfer the servants who on the reduction of that establishment shall be supernumerary, to the presidency of Fort St. George.”  In 1798 plants of the nutmeg and clove had for the first time been procured from the Moluccas; and in 1803 a large importation of these valuable articles of cultivation took place.  As the plantations were, by the last accounts from thence, in the most flourishing state, very important commercial advantages were expected to be derived from the culture.)

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The History of Sumatra from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.