ACM Friday Evening Lecture: "East Indies – The English East India Company and the Founding of Singapore" by Ian Burnet

the talk was largely an outline of his book: which was arranged according to Portugese, Spanish, Dutch and English and the ports that control in the Indian Ocean, SEA, up to Hong Kong and Nagasaki. He talked quite a bit about the the Dutch VOC and EIC, and also on the founding the Singapore and the efforts of Raffles and Farquhar. Some interesting points: The Opium trade in Riau Islands. English country traders (the same ones who ship opium from India to China) would trade opium, guns and gun powder to Malaya and Riau for spices and tin (from Bangka) which they also ship to Canton. I didn’t know that the Bugis laid siege to Malacca in 1784. Dutch broke that siege and went on to capture Tanjong Pinang in Riau. I asked Burnet if EIC sent their elite and best people out to the East Indies, or do they sent the expendable riff raff. He said that the bulk of the EIC hierarchy would be based in Calcutta. it was certainly true that the more remote the station the more “expendable” ones would be sent there. But he added that there were certainly capable EIC officials in the East Indies, like Raffles and Francis Light