Britain expanded further into Southeast Asia
In the second half of the eighteenth century, Britain entered a period of rise and expansion of industrial capitalism. At this time, the British first carried out colonial expansion into the Malay Peninsula, and the main factors that led to this action were the following:
The first is the need for the rapid development of industrial capitalism, especially the urgent need for the rapid expansion of trade between India and China.
The British East India Company made huge profits by exporting cotton, cloth, and opium from India to China. Subsequently, the tea trade between British India and China became an important source of revenue for the British government.
In order to ensure the smooth development of these trades, Britain urgently needed to find an intermediate base in Southeast Asia, a place of anchorage for maritime traffic.
Second, after the United States gained independence in the second half of the 18th century, Britain lost one of its most populous and important colonies in North America, and the British bourgeoisie began to look to the East for compensation, which prompted it to expand into Southeast Asia.
After the French Revolution, Napoleon's France became a fierce rival of Britain, and the confrontation between Britain and France intensified. At the same time, the Dutch monopolized the spice trade in Southeast Asia and held the important Strait of Malacca.
In order to compete with European countries and prevent French control of Southeast Asia, Britain had to strike first, especially in the area of the Strait. These reasons were important reasons why Britain stepped up its expansion in Southeast Asia.
At the end of the eighteenth century, Spain was falling behind in the struggle for hegemony among the Western colonial powers and occupied the Philippines near the Spice Islands. The conflict between the British and Dutch monopolies became more and more intense, especially the Spice Islands.
The British East India Company was established in December 1600 and served until 1858, becoming an important tool for British colonial expansion into the East. The establishment of the British East India Company advanced British colonial expansion into Southeast Asia.
France's overseas colonization began late, and it was not until 1664 that France intensified its colonization of India and Southeast Asia when it reorganized the Oriental Company into the East India Company.
The establishment of British empires in the island regions of Southeast Asia was largely a product of expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries. Until then, Britain had not paid enough attention to the Pacific.
At the beginning of the 17th century, the British East India Company fought with the Dutch East India Company for the Pacific Islands, but failed. Because at this time, the Dutch overseas expansion was gaining momentum.
Subsequently, the British East India Company concentrated on India. Following the Indian Act of 1773, the London government tightened its grip on Indian affairs in 1784 through Pitt's India Act, which was a major action taken by Britain to save the new empire after the collapse of the old empire.
Through a series of reforms, the British formed a system of dual centers of power over Indian affairs, placing the East India Company under the direct control of the British Parliament, thus beginning a new era of British rule over India.
The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of 1780-1784 made British political power in the East Indies more active.
The Bangladeshi government's attempt to establish a middle ground in the island region of Southeast Asia was first targeted at Aceh. But at this time, the Netherlands still had an absolute influence in the region. The British could only find a base on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, close to India, as a bridgehead for their advance.
The British, who were the first to sail to India, were not in search of India at all. During the reign of Queen Eliza I, the Portuguese Vasco da Gama sailed around the southern tip of Africa to India, opening up a new route from Europe to India and China.
Since then, Western countries have begun to compete for India and the Indies. India has undoubtedly been the most important imperial territory: it is because of India that the British Empire is as special as Egypt was to Rome.
India's position was becoming more and more important, and decisions made in Delhi would affect the policy of the entire empire.
Despite fierce resistance from London, the Indian government made Singapore a British colony, incorporated Aden into its territory, established hegemony in the Persian Gulf, and conquered Burma. The policies of the Anglo-Indian governments were largely independent of Britain itself.
The British East India Company's early policies in Southeast Asia
On the question of empire, Britain adopted a policy of plundering enemy colonies and capturing strategically important strongholds. During the Napoleonic Wars, this policy was largely successful.
Britain seized a large number of colonies from France, the Netherlands, Spain and other countries, including the colonies of the French West Indies, the Cape colony of the Netherlands, Ceylon and Malta in the Mediterranean, which greatly expanded the territory of the British Empire.
At the end of the war, Britain abandoned some of the colonies it had conquered, but those that were strategically important were permanently occupied by the British.
It can be seen that Britain was not too interested in expanding new colonies. At the end of the war in 1815, the long-term struggle between Britain and France for commercial and overseas colonial rights officially ended, France was relegated to a second-class power, and Britain achieved its "goal of further expanding trade in the East and seizing strategic positions around the world" and became a world-class power with exclusive maritime supremacy.
For the first half of the 19th century, the policy of the British was firmly guided by the East India Company's directives that the goal in the eastern part of Malacca was "trade rather than territory", which was the "static policy inherited from the East India Company".
There were few and scattered connections between the Straits Settlements, as well as few connections with the East India Company.
The only value of the early Straits Settlements to the East India Company was to protect and facilitate trade with China. The building of Britain's maritime power was invariably linked to overseas trade.
The development of the Industrial Revolution made foreign trade the engine of British industrial growth. At this time, the British colonial policy in Southeast Asia was mainly to maintain the Indian territory, and the occupation of Malta, the Cape, Ceylon, etc., was also to ensure the smooth navigation route to India.
This is also in line with the UK's Global Ocean Strategy. The domestic tradition in Britain is that the army is weak and the navy is strong.
And a strong navy was enough for Britain to roam freely at sea, defend British colonies, seize French colonies, and occupy strategically important colonial strongholds, thus maintaining its dominance at sea.
With the establishment of the Second Empire, Britain gradually abandoned trade with its colonies and implemented free trade. The British Empire's overseas expansion was "trade rather than territory", a characteristic that became one of the key factors in the British Empire's ability to maintain a huge "empire on which the sun never sets" for more than 100 years.
The British Empire was committed to conquering strategically important strongholds, both in India and in the Straits Settlements, and in the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution developed liberalism further, and Adam Smith's theory of free trade and Burke's ideas of free empire spread rapidly.
Edmund Burke's theory of colonial trusteeship advocated a good government for the colonies and put an end to corruption.
As foreign trade became the engine of British industrial growth, the free trade policy towards the colonies became a key issue for the authorities to consider.
The establishment of colonial self-government in the seventies of the nineteenth century and the establishment of the British Commonwealth in the twentieth century embodied Burke's idea of an "imperial constitution".
Guided by this view, the defense of Europe's sea lines of communication with India and China has become a top priority. At the same time, for the global strategy of the British Empire, it was imperative to control the entire sea area.
The British gradually occupied three ports in the Channel area
In the eighteenth century, the industry and commerce of the major European countries began to gradually penetrate into the Asian region, which had a far-reaching impact. The root cause of this is the simultaneous participation of different political forces in the major European powers.
In fact, more than 50 years before the signing of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London in 1824 was a period of great interest in the competition between the two European powers, Britain and the Netherlands, in the Malay world.
This century saw a relative change in the commercial position of Britain and the Netherlands. The "Commercial Revolution" in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century and the acceleration of the "Industrial Revolution" in the following decades brought about commercial expansion and the prosperity of the Republic, while also witnessing the continued decline of Dutch commerce.
The changes in Europe are naturally evident in the Asian region, especially in the Anglo-Dutch business position in the Malay world:
The Malay world was of great importance to the Dutch East India Company, both as an important area for intra-Asian trade such as tin mines, and as a source of Sumatran pepper, which was urgently needed for the European market.
By monopolizing ties with the Sultan of Palembang in South Sumatra and the rulers of Perak or Limmao on the Malay Peninsula, the Dutch ensured trade security in the region.
In the 18th century, the Malay world and the tea trade with China also developed rapidly. At the same time, however, Indian opium gave the British an advantage in Canton trade, and at the same time exported to the East Indies, posing a threat to the Dutch monopoly in the region.
In particular, Johor, the ancient empire of the Malay Peninsula, as a trading center, became less and less controlled by the Dutch. British interests in India and China made the East Indies both strategic and commercial.
In the battle with France for India, Britain needed to occupy the port of Bengal at all times, whether in a tailwind or a headwind season. Second, the development of trade with China meant that control of this sea lane could protect British merchant ships in the event of war.
In order to compete with the French in India, the British needed to occupy Trincomalee, a military stronghold, to preserve Ceylon's spice trade.
On the basis of a preliminary agreement between Great Britain and the Netherlands, on 19 January 1783 the Government of London and the French Foreign Secretary Vijean reached an agreement:
First, to ensure the East India Company's navigation and trade in the Eastern seas, and secondly, to obtain the right to freedom of navigation in these waters, the Netherlands was required not to interfere with Britain.
The Netherlands is clearly unhappy about this. The British East India Company's objectives at this time were clear: it was important to ensure freedom of navigation from the East Indies to China, and at the same time to break Dutch trade control over each of the islands in the seas.
When the new government of Pitt Jr. came to power in 1783, it quickly abandoned the conservative policies of its predecessor and attempted to get the Anglo-Dutch East India Company to sign an agreement guaranteeing trade security in the East.