A review of “Penang, the Fourth Presidency of India” April 2, 2013 – Posted in: In The News

by Looi Sue-Chern IMPORTANCE: Penang was more than just one of the Straits Settlement states under British rule, learns Looi Sue-Chern from an Australian author researching the history of Melbourne Driven by his ancestral links, Australian author Marcus Langdon began a search into Melbourne’s early history in the mid-1990s but his quest eventually took him to Penang. While researching the history of the second largest Australian city, Langdon, 58, discovered that an early Melbourne pioneer…

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A History of Phuket: “An Absolute Must Read” March 29, 2013 – Posted in: Reviews

Review by Alasdair Forbes First, a declaration of interest: I edited an early version of Colin Mackay’s A History of Phuket and the Surrounding Region. I thought then that it was an excellent piece of work. The final product is just plain superb. Mackay spent five or six years researching the book, unearthing memoirs, official documents, love letters and even an epic poem, in Thai, English, Dutch, Russian, German, Portuguese, French, Danish, Malay and more languages.…

“A Historical Book on Phuket” – Posted in: Reviews

COLIN Mackay’s A History of Phuket and the Surrounding Region (White Lotus, Bangkok, 2012, 418pp) is a magnificent achievement: a towering work of erudition leavened with sly humor and fascinating side-bars. While destined to be the standard reference text for the island’s history, the book is so vividly written that it deserves to be a raging best-seller. Mackay covers the early waves of migration down the Malay peninsula – Negrito, Malay, Mon, Burmese, Thai – until the dawn of empires: Funan spreading from Vietnam, Srivjaya from Sumatra and Chola from the Tamil Coromandel…

“Some Thoughts on the Dulang Washer” March 14, 2013 – Posted in: Reviews

Review by Susan Abraham What a superb book The Dulang Washer, that featured the gruelling industry of Malaya’s ancient tin-mining era, turned out to be. Here then lies an expansive work of essential historical fiction, thoughtfully and painstakingly composed by Irish writer, Paul Callan in his promising debut career as a novelist. The Dulang Washer – meaning an old-term description of a washerwoman who pans for tin sediments at the water’s edge – is published…

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Napoleon’s Role in Shaping Penang as Key Player in World Trade March 11, 2013 – Posted in: In The News

Carolyn O’Donnell interviews Marcus Langdon on his new book, “Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India”

“Between Lives”: A Book Review March 5, 2013 – Posted in: Reviews

Review by Karishma Attari Between Lives begins with an intriguing prospect. A young Malaysian girl working at the Social Reconstruction Department is selected, perhaps for people skills, but probably for her knowledge of Tamil, to handle the eviction of an old woman who refuses to surrender valuable forestland for the construction of a theme park. Sumitra is eager to participate in “the wind of change that is at last unsettling old habits of thought and behaviour.”…

“The Planter’s Bungalow” Review March 3, 2013 – Posted in: Reviews

Review by Simon Hutchinson On first seeing this handsomely produced, lavishly illustrated book one would take it for one of those ‘coffee-table’ volumes displayed for visitors to admire and perhaps glance through rather than actually read. The title may suggest an almost eccentric specialization (Book about bungalows?! Who on earth would want to read it?’) but open this book at any page and you will be drawn into a fascinating journey through once familiar times…

“Going back in Time”: A Review for Planter’s Bungalow – Posted in: In The News

Call it a consummate passion or, simply, a labour of love, but for the past five years, retirees Datuk Peter Jenkins and his wife Waveney have travelled through hundreds of miles of English, Scottish and Malaysian highways and laterite tracks, and shuttled between their Isle of Man and Pahang homes, to conduct countless interviews, pore over documents and eventually amass 1,200 photographs. All this for a book called The Planter’s Bungalow: A Journey down the…

Introduction to Book Four of “Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India” February 15, 2013 – Posted in: Excerpts

(please click here to find more excerpts from the book) Book Four is entitled: “Suffolk House” Perhaps more than any other early building in Penang, Suffolk House represents the high expectations that were held for the island as the fourth presidency of India. Indeed it seems to have mirrored the changing fortunes of the island: planned at a time when the promise of Penang becoming the principal British naval hub on the eastern side of India…

Introduction to Book Three of “Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India” – Posted in: Excerpts

Book Three is entitled: “Government House” (To read the entire introduction to Book Three, please click here) Francis Light’s many years of experience as a trader in the eastern seas, together with his repeated personal recommendations for the utilization of Penang as an East India Company port, led to his being charged with settlement and superintendence of the island in 1786. The position carrie far more responsibility than he had known before. Although an arduous and…