the East India Company, in exchange for military protection from Siamese and Burmese armies who were threatening Kedah. For Light, Penang was a convenient magazine for trade and an ideal location to curtail French expansion in Indochina and Dutch foothold in Sumatra. On 11 August 1786, Francis Light landed on Penang at what is later called Fort Cornwallis and took formal possession of the island in the name of His Britannic Majesty, King George III and the Honourable East India Company, and renamed the island Prince of Wales Island in honour of the heir to the British throne but the name never caught on. In Malaysian history, the occasion marked the beginning of more than a century of British involvement in Malaya.
Unfortunately for the Sultan, the EAC's new governor-general Charles Cornwallis made it clear that he could not be party to the Sultan's disputes with the other Malay princes, or promise to protect him from the Siamese or Burmese. Unbeknownst to Sultan Abdullah, Light had decided to conceal the facts of the agreement from both parties. When Light reneged on his promise of protection, the Sultan tried unsuccessfully to recapture the island in 1790, and the Sultan was forced to cede the island to the company for an honorarium of 6,000 Spanish dollars per annum. Light established Penang as a free port to entice traders away from nearby Dutch trading posts. He also encouraged immigrants by promising them as much land as they could clear and by reportedly firing silver dollars from his ship's cannons deep into the jungle. Many early settlers, including Light himself, succumbed to malaria, earning early Penang the epithet "the white man's grave"
After Light's demise, Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Wellesley, later to be Duke of Wellington, arrived in Penang to co-ordinate the defences of the island. In 1800, Lieutenant-Governor Sir George Leith secured a strip of land across the channel as a buffer against attacks and named it Province Wellesley
