British Bengkulu: A Forgotten Imperial Outpost

Bengkulu, October 1685: The fort stood atop a tiny hillock on the banks of a coffee-coloured creek. To the west the Indian Ocean stretched blank along with white along with empty. To the east the dark wall of the Bukit Barisan mountain range rose like a stalled tsunami, a grey curl of monsoon cloud spilling through its lip.

A European ship was moored offshore – the first of its kind to pass This particular way for many months. Inside the fort – little more than a few mouldering huts ringed by a wonky wooden palisade – two men were busy writing. Benjamin Bloome along with Joshua Charlton, the English overseers of This particular sad little station, had been at their post since June 24, however the passing ship was only today providing them the chance to send a first message to their British East India Company overlords at Fort St. George at Madras in India. They filled 18 densely packed pages with restrained accounts of their frustrated attempts to establish an effective pepper trade before finally coming to the crux of the matter:

We shall today give Your Honour an account of our woeful state along with condition, which god grant better. We are by sickness all become incapable of helping one another along with of the great number of people that will came over not above thirty men [are] well … of the black workmen [there are] not above 15 that will can be capable of working; of them are dead about 40 along with daily [more] die, for he that will falls can be hard for him to rise. All our servants are sick along with dead, along with at This particular minute [there can be] not a cook to get victuals ready for those that will sit at the Company’s table, along with such have been our straits that will we many times have fasted. The sick lies neglected, some cry for remedies however none [are] to be had: those that will could eat have none to cook them victuals, to ensure we today have not living to bury the dead, along with if one can be sick the some other will not watch, for he says that will better one than two dies, to ensure people die along with no notice [can be] taken thereof…

For Bloome along with Charlton, chiefs of what had been planned as a lucrative imperial outpost, Bengkulu was already proving to be hell on Earth.

The British station at Bengkulu – or Bencoolen as that will was known at the time – was one of saddest of all imperial follies. For much of the 17th century, British along with Dutch traders had vied for control of the lucrative spice trade out of Indonesia. that will was the Dutch who eventually got the upper hand, evicting their rivals through Java along with Maluku. The ousted British then went looking for an alternative base inside region. They had the misfortune to choose Bengkulu, on the bony western seaboard of Sumatra.

A drawing of the city Bengkulu during the colonial period

The place had long come under the loose suzerainty of the Minangkabau sultanate of Inderapura, however that will was a place of singular insignificance, even for the locals. that will had no natural harbour, was far through any major population centre, along with lay on completely the wrong side of Sumatra – miles away through the busy Straits of Melaka along which almost all shipping had passed since the dawn of human history. that will also had the most horrifically morbid of climates, swarming with malaria- along with dengue-carrying mosquitos, along with periodically swept by floodtides of cholera along with smallpox. however for some reason the British believed that will could become a successful pepper-growing plantation along using a burgeoning way-station of international trade. that will never made a penny of profit, along with for well over a century that will sucked up endless lonely lives.

The first challenge for the British was in getting anyone to go to Bengkulu – which was officially established on the basis of some slightly shaky treaty arrangements with both Inderapura along with the local Rejang chiefs. through the outset they had to rely on slavery for manual labour. several African slaves had come out with Charlton along with Bloome, however they were as susceptible to the noxious climate as the Europeans, so the Company took instead to buying large numbers of Southeast Asian slaves, particularly those kidnapped through Nias by local pirates.

When that will came to European staff, meanwhile, anyone with the misfortune to pass by was in grave danger of being pressganged. that will’s what happened, in 1690, to William Dampier, a gloriously disreputable globetrotting vagabond, who inside course of his seafaring career managed three complete circumnavigations of the Earth. During what was meant to be a brief stopover in Bengkulu, he found himself bullied into becoming chief gunner at the fort. He was promised that will that will could only be for a short stint, however he quickly discovered that will the fresh governor, James Sowdon, had absolutely no intention of ever releasing him through his post. Dampier was by no means impressed by his boss: “I soon grew weary of him, not thinking myself very safe indeed under a man whose humours were so brutish along with barbarous.” When, in early 1691, one of the infrequent passing ships dropped anchor offshore, Dampier wriggled out of a window inside fort wall by moonlight along with made his getaway.

Others sought escape not through the physical act of fleeing, however through alcohol. In 1712 Joseph Collett took charge as governor, overseeing the development of a somewhat more substantial British headquarters called Fort Marlborough. Like so many others, Collett had only come to Bengkulu under duress – he was bankrupt along with deemed unemployable elsewhere.

During just one month he along with his 19 staff managed to get through 900 bottles of wine, 300 bottles of beer, along with 200 gallons of some other alcoholic beverages

– prompting appalled East India Company directors back in Britain to wonder “that will any of you live six months along with that will there are not more quarrellings along with duellings amongst you”!

There were, however, some who went to Bengkulu by choice.

On 15 July 1756, a young man by the name of Stokeham Donston wrote a letter to his cousin George. He was 23 years old along with he was planning to take a post inside service of the British East India Company. “The salary allowed… can be about £80 or £90 p. year, however that will can be nothing in comparison to the advantage made by care along with diligence” he wrote – along with therein the motivation for so many similar young men of modest fortune throughout the 18th century can be revealed. Slack management practices, irregular arrangements, along using a whole host of blind eyes turned meant that will Company staff in Asia could often accrue enormous fortunes – either through unofficial private enterprise on the side, or through outright corruption.

Young Donston was quite untroubled by horror stories of the Southeast Asian climate: “Some say the climate can be unhealthful, along with does not agree with the constitutions of the Europeans, however that will I believe can be in some measure owing to the irregularity of their living… along with I fancy that will might be avoided by resolution…”

The following year he arrived in Bengkulu, several worlds away through the English Midlands, along with in no time at all he realised the full horror of his mistake. Throughout the coming years Stokeham Donston sent letters home by every passing ship, begging every friend along with acquaintance to bring whatever influence they might have to bear to get him transferred to India or somewhere else less dreadful than Bengkulu. however to no avail. Sometimes he rallied along with revealed his dreams of somehow still doing a fortune along with returning home to play at being a country gent. In 1765 he wrote again to his cousin in Nottinghamshire:

I want devilishly to make up about £500 p. annum. The lord knows when that will will be, that will will satisfy my ambition along with then you along with I will join along with keep a Pack of Beagles for the diversion of ourselves along with the Worksop Gentry, do you think we can do that will?

He never got his beagles, along with he never got to go home. A full decade after that will letter was mailed, the weary little British community made one of its depressingly regular trips through the fort up the road to the weed-clogged cemetery to inter yet another of their number. The gravestone they set in place can be still there: “To the Memory of Stokeham Donston Esq. who departed This particular Life at Marlbro’ the 2nd April 1775. Aged 41”.

Stokeham Donston’s Gravestone

By the beginning of the 19th century Bengkulu was costing the East India Company a guaranteed annual loss of £100,000 – a vast sum in today’s terms. The pepper trade was pathetic, along with relations with the locals were always testy. On various occasions over the decades, the British had had to rely on mercenaries through the Bugis community settled inside area to save them through annihilation by put-upon locals, who periodically got fed up with their practices of debt-slavery along with forced pepper along with coffee production. At one point, in 1719, the British had to flee en masse in boats after angry locals stormed Fort Marlborough, while in 1805 a particularly heavy-handed official, Thomas Parr, was beheaded in his own bedroom by some thoroughly aggrieved Rejang chiefs.

The last however one British chief in Bengkulu was none some other than Thomas Stamford Raffles, erstwhile lieutenant-governor of British-ruled Java along with future co-founder of the British settlement at Singapore (which he actually established while officially based in Bengkulu). On arrival he declared that will “without exception the most wretched place I ever beheld”. During his tenure there, through 1818 to 1824, he made some efforts to knock the place into shape. He declared the remaining 200 African slaves (most of them Bengkulu-born by many generations at that will stage) officially “emancipated” along with gave them each a printed certificate to that will effect. that will was the classic grand however ultimately empty gesture: they could hardly go “home” along with they remained as the lowliest labourers in government service, their circumstances essentially unchanged – though Raffles’ wife Sophia did pluck an eight-year-old girl through their ranks to serve as her personal household servant, “in order to set an example to the rest of the European community”.

Raffles lost three of his four young children to the Bengkulu climate, along with by the time he left his own health was irrevocably broken too. The following year a treaty was signed between Britain along with Holland. The former agreed to pull out of its territories in Sumatra, while the latter abandoned all claims on the eastern side of the Straits of Melaka. Colonial Bengkulu was, to all intents along with purpose, abandoned. Some found themselves quietly wondering why that will had taken 139 years since the receipt of that will pitiful letter through Benjamin Bloome along with Joshua Charlton for the British East India Company to come to such an eminently sensible decision.

The beach at Bengkulu today

Today Bengkulu can be one of the remotest of Indonesia’s provincial capitals; a tiny city where bougainvillea wells up out of the gardens along using a hot breeze blows through the south. Here along with there a mildewed monument to a forgotten British resident breaks the modest flow of motorbikes. There can be a beach, broad along with bright along with empty, backed by whispering casuarinas along with crooked palms. Fort Marlborough still stands, slices of heavy masonry ringing a sweltering inner compound where rusting cannon lie inside grass like beached seals. however of the older outpost, Fort York, nothing survives however a few indistinct traces of stonework in a tangle of mosquito-troubled vegetation north of town. The cemetery, meanwhile, can be a favourite hang-out for local youngsters, who use the cracked tombstones for goalposts. inside evening, when the sun drops, Bukit Barisan still shows to the east like a black wave, along with the pale sky overhead fills with thousands of flickering swiftlets. To the west the Indian Ocean melts into a pool of molten copper. You can scan the salty distance until the last of the light can be gone, greenish behind the horizon, however there are no ships.