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By Geoff Wade. The central role that Penang played in the early modernisation of South-East Asia is succinctly captured in the fact that it was the place where the region’s press history began. The first newspaper established there was The Prince of Wales Island Gazette. Through it, a new way of knowing and engaging the world, was introduced, contributing greatly to the self-identity of the expanding literate class. Geoff Wade introduces us to this historical newspaper. PENANG lay claim to many firsts, but one of the most illustrious is that it was the place where the first newspaper in South-East Asia was published. On Saturday, March 1, 1806, when Penang had just become a Presidency of India, there was produced on a simple printing press in Beach Street, George Town, the first issue of the Government Gazette, a newspaper which in 1807 was to be renamed Prince of Wales Island Gazette. For the first 20 years of its existence as an East India Company port, and despite its population growing to over 10,000, the settlement at Prince of Wales Island (Penang) survived without a newspaper. One can only imagine what a change the introduction of the newspaper meant for the island’s elite. Prior to the introduction of this new medium, news and information within the societies of the peninsula could only be distributed by word of mouth among individuals, through meetings or gatherings, or through manuscripts copied and recopied. The introduction of the newspaper provided a new means by which to distribute news, administrative orders and points of view.
 The Government Gazette, despite its name, was not a government publication, but a private initiative led by one Andrew Burchet Bone. Mr Bone had been a printer in India and brought his skills to Penang. He went on to print books and can be said to have been the first printer of consequence in the peninsula, printing The Malay Language by John Shaw, which utilised Jawi script, in 1807.
Varying in frequency between a weekly and a bi-weekly, the newspaper continued under various proprietors until replaced by the Government Gazette: Prince of Wales Island, Singapore and Malacca in 1828. A successor publication was printed until January 1830.
While most subscribers to the Gazette would likely have been British (there are however no figures to suggest how many subscribers the newspaper had), the fact that it reached many more persons than just the European population is evidenced by the fact that, at least by the 1820s, advertisements and notices in Jawi were included in the various issues. An advertisement, for example, from an issue in 1822 comprised a ship auction notice in both English and Malay.
 Apart from its intrinsic importance as the earliest regular publication in the peninsula, the various issues of the Gazette provide us with a wealth of information about the delopment of Penang over a period when it was one of the most important entrepôts in South-East Asia. It is impossible to describe any single format which continued throughout the life of the Gazette, but we can make a few generic comments about the publication’s usual structure. The first page bore the masthead and usually a large number of advertisements. These ranged from auction notices for ships, houses or household items, to advertisements for sales of foodstuffs or ship stores. This is also where government notices appeared.
The “Government Gazette” part of the newspaper included details of new personnel posted to the island from Bengal and elsewhere; details of the ships which had arrived or departed; important public events and court notices. Local news was then followed by extracts from various Indian newspapers from Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, the presidencies from where many of the administrators sent to Penang had come.
For the first decade of the newspaper, Singapore did not exist and the city of Kuala Lumpur would emerge only 50 years later. Penang was thus the key city of the peninsula, given that Malacca had seen remarkable decline. News from Europe was also important for readers of the Gazette, even if it arrived up to six months after the event, and thus this was often published. Other items which form staple contents of modern newspapers, such as weather reports, also began to appear.
However, it is obviously items relating to Penang that were the most frequently mentioned in the Gazette. Government orders were included, a particularly poignant one being carried in the issue of Aug 29, 1829, noting that the seat of government of the Straits Settlements Presidency was being shifted from Penang to Singapore, despite Penang having a population four times that of Singapore’s. New laws and cases brought before the courts were detailed regularly, as were activities of the police. Mr Godfrey, for example, head constable of George Town in 1830, was recorded by the newspaper as having been dismissed for having taken bribes from “Apoo, the keeper of a gaming house in George Town’’. Are we not glad that things have changed?
The early administrative apparatus of the city was also detailed. One of the earliest of these bodies was the Committee of Assessors, the precursor to the City Council of George Town, and today’s Majlis Perbandaran Pulau Pinang. This was established in 1800 and was responsible for fixing assessments (rates) and supervising road-making and drainage. Unusually for this early period, it included local members who were not British.
But, more pertinent to the existence of the port of Penang were the economic activities which sustained the settlement. As a free port it could not tax trade, and thus the bulk of the revenue which Prince of Wales Island was to gain in its first 20 years came from revenue farms – monopolies on the sale of certain products or services, auctioned publicly to the highest bidder. These include monopolies on arrack (liquor), gambling dens, opium farms, pork, sirih and betel leaf.
Another major area in which the administration hoped to make Prince of Wales Island an economically powerful entity was that of pepper and spice culti-vation. Early experimental plantations were established in Air Itam and Gelugor (planted by James Brown after whom Brown Garden is named). When Philip Manington, the first Magistrate of Penang died in 1807 the Gazette advertised an auction of his estate “in the district of Ayer Etam, called Mount Felix, on the left side of the road leading to the Flagstaff Hill, about four-and-a-half-miles from town,” containing 25,000 pepper vines.
What kept the settlement alive were the ships which frequented the port, and their importance was underlined by the fact that the arrival and departure of all shipping was recorded in the POW Island Gazette. The shipping lists recorded arrivals from and departures to, among other places, Acheen (Aceh), Pedier, Calcutta, Quedah (Kedah), Malacca, Singapore (after 1819), Batavia, Canton, Macau, Nagore, Madras, Perlice (Perlis), Pera (Perak), Jidda (Jeddah), Salangor, Trengganu, Kelantan, Riau, Rangoon, Barus and Manila.
Those interested in the commodities traded in early 19th century Penang (and their prices) will also find relevant items in the POW Island Gazette. The newspaper included current prices for: bee’s wax, pepper, rattan, betel nut, Perak tin, Lingin tin, cutch, elephant’s teeth, Gum Benjamin, sugar, cloves, nutmeg, opium, fish maw, bird’s nest, Barus camphor, bêche-de-mer, sharks fin, tortoise shell, and Batavian arrack. It should be noted that the majority of these commodities had been traded in Asian markets for centuries, and thus we see that Penang was initially another port-polity in the traditional Asian trading system. However, its links through India to Europe and to the United States meant that Penang also began to serve as a channel through which many new European and American products were introduced to the markets of South-East Asia.
Some modern inhabitants of Penang may not realise that there were two major settlements on the island in this early period – George Town and James Town. George Town was of course the settlement on the northern part of the island and which has retained its name until today. James Town was another settlement established opposite Pulau Jerejak on the Sungei Kluang, near Universiti Sains Malaysia today. This was established as a speculative move by James Scott (after whom Scott Road is named) in the late 18th century, based on the assumption (subsequently proved false) that it would become a naval and ship-building base. The newspaper details some aspects of early James Town.
One can glean much about the development of George Town from the pages of the Gazette. As proof of how much the town has changed in 200 years, the Government Gazette of September 27, 1806, describes a piece of ground situated on the Point known by the name of Mount Airy, which is today near the E&O Hotel, and which had been granted by Francis Light to its “present Proprietor” Francis Simson. The reason Mr Simson’s land was detailed in this notice was that it allegedly had become a “noisesome and pestilential swamp, the exhalations from which are highly prejudicial to the health of the inhabitants”, and it was to be offered for public sale if it was not drained. Other examples of quite specific descriptions of land in the city are provided in the Gazette, and could help build up a useful archive of early land-holdings in George Town and their evolution.
Understanding how the city developed may be essential to how it can be taken into the future. In Penang Views 1770–1860, Lim Chong Keat, brother of former Chief Minister Lim Chong Eu, noted that “A separate work on the town planning history (of Penang) would be needed, based on further research.” While the paintings, drawing and maps contained within his volume provide an important avenue for understanding the urban development of George Town, any such study will certainly gain through the collection and analysis of the invaluable references to roads, buildings and urban facilities contained in diverse issues of the Prince of Wales Island Gazette.
The Gazette also informs us of terrotories beyond the urban area. The area between the waterfall in what is today the Waterfall Gardens and Penang Road, incorporating today’s Bagan Jermal, Gurney Drive, Kelawai Road, and Northam Road were known as Telok Ayer Rajah (the “Bay of the Raja’s Water” – a reference most likely to the overall coastal area where people anchored to obtain water from the waterfall). Some of the land in this area was initially developed by people who bore Islamic names, but their place of origin is not clear. An advertisement from a Gazette of May 1806 carried the following notice:
“Public sale: To be sold by A. Macintyre by order of Hadjee Yunoos, administrator, on 20 May, a piece of ground, situated in the district of Tulloh Ayer Rajah, the property of Hadjee Yunoos, deceased. Bounded eastward by the beach, westward by the woods, northward by Hadjee Sonien’s ground and southward by Hadjee Mohammed Ally and Shah Mohammed’s ground.”
But some of the most interesting details revealed by the newspaper are those which relate to Penang society. The society which developed in Penang from the 1780s was a diverse one, ethnically and otherwise. The Prince of Wales Island Gazette concerned itself mainly with a population which has since basically ceased to exist in Penang – the British/European community, and it is thus this community for which we have most information. This community had between 1,000 and 1,500 people over this period, possibly two to four per cent of the total population.
Other communities in Penang did not receive as much attention in the Gazette as their British counterparts. However, the elites of all groups were mentioned in a wide range of contexts. Within the Islamic community, comprising mainly Malay, Mandailing, Javanese, Bugis, Arabs and Indian Muslims there was obviously a number of members who were quite prominent. One “Tuan Syed Hussen” was noted in the newspaper as having given several dinners and parties attended by the governor and up to 70 of the other social elite of the settlement. This was presumably Tengku Said Hussain, one of the founders of the Acheen Street Mosque. The frequent movement of members of the Marican and the Maydin (Maydeen) families between Acheen (Aceh), Nagore and Malacca, as recorded in the shipping lists of the Gazette, suggests wide-ranging family business networks, and reflects the importance of the Penang-Aceh linkages in the early 19th century. The members of these families were some of the first to settle in the Acheen Street area. There is also occasional reference to the visit of members of the Sultan of Kedah’s family, and in August 1819, we read of the arrival in Penang of the “Raja of Salangore’’ and his entourage of 67 persons.
In order to control the respective communities on the island, East India Company administrators appointed community heads who would be responsible to the administration for the actions of members of that community and for maintaining tranquillity within that community. These Capitans/Kapitans were usually of great social or commercial standing. Francis Light appointed someone called “Checka” as the first Kapitan Cina in 1787. Governor Leith later employed Kapitans for the Islamic community, the Chinese community and the Indian community, providing them with more formal letters of appointment and a range of formal duties. This appears to have been the system in place in 1810 when the following notice appeared in the Gazette:
“This is to give notice that it is agreed, at a meeting of the inhabitants of Prince of Wales Island, of the Mahometan Faith, that it is necessary to have an intelligent person well versed in the Laws of the Koran, at the head of their sect, to settle such disputes as may arise respecting their marriages and descent of property, according to their religion, and also to give such information to the Court of Judicature, concerning the usages of Mahometans, as from time to time may be necessary; we have therefore unanimously fixt on, and nominated Seyd Allie to be Khaulle and Cauzee (Kadi), placing him at the head of our sect.”
To what degree this person was representative of or accepted by the Islamic community is difficult to assess, but it appears that through this advertisement, the British were accepting Seyd Allie as the representative of the Islamic population of the island.
The Maydin or Maydeen clan was considered as Indians and Cauder Meydeen was recorded in the newspaper as the Kapitan Keling, or Indian Captain, under Governor Leith. Other Indian groups mentioned in the newspaper are the Tamils, Bengalis and Parsees.
Chinese persons are noted for their role as revenue farm holders, as land-owners, in court reports, as ship captains and as commercial elites. In 1824 the Gazette records that the Chinese community of Penang presented to Sir Ralph Rice prior to his departure from Penang a written address of appreciation, enclosed in an ivory case. It also provides a list of the 22 persons who submitted the address, persons who would likely have been at the very pinnacle of Chinese society in Penang at this time: Neang Bee Kee, Kam Ee, Le Twat, Lim Seung, Koo Beng San, Choo Koo, Koo Cheng, Seay Suy, Ho To, Lim Tong, Koo Chuan, Seay Naou Say, Tin Tac Gam, Le Kow E, Seay Chong Boo, Le Eng Au, Seay Chan Heen, Tsae Kim Seng, Tin Som, Lim Thong, Seay Yem, and Ho Mooe.
From the earliest days of the settlement at Prince of Wales Island, there would have been a demand for education for the children of the various communities. In April 1806, on the front page of the Gazette, under the heading “School”, Peter James Hart advertised that he had “opened a school in Old Gaol Street, for the purpose of teaching Children in Reading and Writing the English Language, and Accounts.” In 1807, a Mr T. Cullum advised the public that he was opening an “Academy” at 28, China Street “for the instruction of Children in the English Language”. These “schools” would have educated only small numbers of students, and the need for education facilities for the growing population is reflected in other accounts found within the pages of this newspaper. The issue of Feb 17, 1816, carried an “Address to the Public in behalf of a school to be established in Prince of Wales Island”, which comprised a call by a group of residents noting their desire “That the school may be open to the reception of all children of the island, of every description, whose parents are willing to submit them to the rules of the institution.” This heralded the beginnings of Penang Free School.
While the Prince of Wales Island Gazette formally ended publication in 1828 and its related publication ceased in 1830, other newspapers had already begun sprouting in the Straits Settlements. The Singapore Chronicle, Singapore’s first newspaper, was published in January 1824, a Commercial Register and Advertiser was added in 1826, and a newspaper named the Malacca Observer was established in the same year in the town after which it was named. In the late 1820s, an obvious rivalry existed between the Government Gazette and the Singapore Chronicle, and this also reflected the rivalry between the ports they represented. Following the closure of the Government Gazette, Penang did not see another newspaper until 1838, when the Penang Gazette and Straits Chronicle was established. This newspaper had one of the longest runs of any newspaper in the peninsula, remaining in press under different names until 1968!
If we look back on the significance of this first newspaper, we can truly say that the Prince of Wales Island Gazette constituted a “new way of knowing” in diverse respects. The hand-presses on which it was printed allowed ideas as well as information on local and foreign events and markets to be distributed swiftly and regularly throughout society. This was thus a change which spurred much other change, and by which Penang elite society was tied into global networks and new ideological systems. The newspaper – quite a new medium even for those from Europe – provided a new form of knowledge dispersal. For the peoples of Penang and other parts of the peninsula, it also provided a new way of knowing about worlds well beyond Southeast Asia. And for us today, the Prince of Wales Island Gazette provides new ways of looking at and knowing about the development of Penang in its first half-century.
Geoff Wade is a historian who engages with diverse aspects of Sino-Southeast Asian interactions over time. He is currently with the Nalanda-Sriijaya Centre of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
** Reproduced with permission. This article first appeared in the May 2010 issue of the Penang Economic Monthly. This 11-year old magazine published by the Socio-economic and Environmental Research Institute (SERI) is being overhauled and commercialised. This endeavour is in response to the growing insight among Penangites and Penang lovers that the downward trend in the state's fortunes cannot be succesfully reversed unless they themselves get seriously involved. The goal is to inspire positive action among readers towards attaining a "Penang Renaissance".
 For more information, please visit the Penang Economic Monthly site or contact the Socio-economic and Environmental Research Institute (SERI) at 604-2283306.
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