The term "British Malaya" loosely describes a set of states on the Malay Peninsula and the island of Singapore that were brought under British hegemony or control between the late 18th and the mid-20th century. Unlike the term "British India", which excludes the Indian princely states, British Malaya is often used to refer to the Federated and the Unfederated Malay States, which were British protectorates with their own local rulers, as well as the Straits Settlements, which were under the sovereignty and direct rule of the British Crown, after a period of control by the East India Company.
George Town, the capital of Penang. Across the North Channel seen is Butterworth, on the mainland known as Seberang Perai, formerly Province Wellesley.
Postage stamp of the Straits Settlements from 1883
Raja Abdullah, later Sultan of Perak
Kuala Lumpur circa 1884. Founded in 1859, the mining settlement would grow to succeed Klang town as the capital of Selangor in 1880, and would later be designated as the capitals of the Federated Malay States, the Federation of Malaya and Malaysia.
Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles was a British colonial official who served as the governor of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1816 and lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen between 1818 and 1824. Raffles was involved in the capture of the Indonesian island of Java from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars. It was returned under the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1814. He also wrote The History of Java in 1817, describing the history of the island from ancient times. Rafflesia flower was named after him.
The memorial to Olivia Mariamne Raffles, Raffles's first wife, erected by him along the Kanarielaan in the National Botanical Gardens (now the Bogor Botanical Gardens). Raffles re-landscaped these gardens, which were established in 1744 in Buitenzorg (now Bogor), West Java.
Territory of Bencoolen (pink)