Following creation of a trading station on Penang by Britain’s East India Company in 1786, the island quickly developed into a flourishing maritime port of exchange. By 1805 the population was so diverse that residents used 13 distinct alphabets and spoke 28 distinct dialects. The 200 concise biographies of early Penang mercantile personalities gathered in this volume offer the reader a rare glimpse into the lives of a cultural cross-section of the people who pioneered the growth of Penang in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It highlights their contribution to the economic, social, political, and cultural development of Penang and of Malaysia and Southeast Asia as a whole.

Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Explanatory Note on Entries
List of Entries
Entries
Brief Entries
Illustrations
Glossary
Abbreviations
Contributors (biodata)
Bibliography
Author Index (entries)
Index of Names