British Bencoolen

British Bencoolen was a possession of the English East India Company on the southwestern coast of Sumatra, centred on the site of modern Bengkulu. The Company established a presence there in June 1685, when an expedition from Madras landed at the mouth of the Bencoolen River and built Fort York; a smaller station followed at Manduta. The settlement was intended to secure a share of the pepper trade after the Company lost its factory at Bantam and faced exclusion from Dutch-controlled ports. In 1714 Fort York was replaced by Fort Marlborough, a larger stone fortress built on higher ground about two miles to the south. The possessions stretched nearly 500 miles along the coast and were administered from Fort Marlborough, which became the seat of a deputy governor under Madras. Bencoolen remained a British outpost throughout the eighteenth century, even after other Sumatran settlements were wound up. Under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, Britain ceded Bencoolen to the Netherlands in exchange for Malacca and other concessions.