The Straits Settlements were a group of British territories located in Southeast Asia. Originally established in 1826 as part of the territories controlled by the British East India Company, the Straits Settlements came under control of the British Raj in 1858 and then under direct British control as a Crown colony in 1867. In 1946, following the end of World War II and the Japanese occupation, the colony was dissolved as part of Britain's reorganisation of its Southeast Asian dependencies in the area.
Yaohan Co., Ltd. or Yaohan; Chinese: 八佰伴) was a Japanese retail group, founded in 1930 by Ryohei Wada and his wife Katsu Wada. Initially a single shop selling vegetables, it was expanded by their son Kazuo Wada into a major supermarket chain with most retail outlets located in Shizuoka prefecture, south of Tokyo. It was incorporated in 1948 and listed on Tokyo Stock Exchange. The store was far more established and notable outside Japan, due to restrictive laws in Japan that made it difficult to set up new businesses, such that by the time it opened its first store in the Tokyo metropolitan area, the company was already in a state of decline due to accumulated debts from over-expansion.
Francis Light was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer best known for founding the colony of Penang and its capital city of George Town in 1786. Light was the father of William Light, who founded the city of Adelaide in South Australia in 1836.
Indian Bank is an Indian public sector bank, established in 1907 and headquartered in Chennai. It serves over 100 million customers with 40,187 employees, 5,847 branches with 4,937 ATMs and Cash deposit machines. Total business of the bank has touched ₹1,221,773 crore (US$150 billion) as of 31 March 2024.
Sir Frank Athelstane Swettenham was a British colonial administrator who became the first Resident general of the Federated Malay States, which brought the Malay states of Selangor, Perak, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang together under the administration of a Resident-General based in Kuala Lumpur. He served from 1 July 1896 to 4 November 1901. He was also an amateur painter, photographer and antique collector.
Raffles Place is the centre of the Financial District of Singapore and is located south of the mouth of the Singapore River. It was first planned and developed in the 1820s as Commercial Square to serve as the hub of the commercial zone of Singapore in Raffles Town Plan. It was renamed Raffles Place in 1858 and is now the site of a number of major banks. It is located in the Downtown Core within the Central Area, and features some of the tallest buildings and landmarks of the country.
Baghdadi Jews or Iraqi Jews are historic terms for the former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East. They settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
The Straits dollar was the currency of the Straits Settlements from 1898 until 1939. At the same time, it was also used in the Federated Malay States, the Unfederated Malay States, Kingdom of Sarawak, Brunei, and British North Borneo.
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.
Singapore in the Straits Settlements refers to a period in the history of Singapore between 1826 and 1942, during which Singapore was part of the Straits Settlements together with Penang and Malacca. Singapore was the capital and the seat of government of the Straits Settlement after it was moved from George Town in 1832.
Richard James Wilkinson was a British colonial administrator, scholar of Malay, and historian. The son of a British consul, Richard James Wilkinson was born in 1867 in Salonika (Thessaloniki) in the Ottoman Empire. He studied at Felsted School and was an undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was multilingual and had a command of French, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish, and later, Malay and Hokkien which he qualified in, in 1889, while a cadet after joining the Straits Settlements Civil Service. He was an important contributor to the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JMBRAS). On 7 November 1900 Wilkinson presented a collection of Malay manuscripts and printed books to the University of Cambridge Library. He was appointed CMG in 1912.
The Malaysian Public Works Department (Malay: Jabatan Kerja Raya Malaysia (JKR); Jawi: جابتن كرجا راي مليسيا) is the federal government department in Malaysia under Ministry of Works Malaysia (MOW) which is responsible for construction and maintenance of public infrastructure in West Malaysia and Labuan. In Sabah and Sarawak, a separate entity of Public Works Department exists under the two respective states government jurisdiction but both departments are also subordinate to the parent department at the same time.
The Battle of Kuala Lumpur was a battle between Japanese invasion forces and the British forces in Kuala Lumpur, in the then capital of the Federated Malay States, a British protectorate. Starting in late December Japanese began bombing the city;ground forces reached the city by 11 January 1942. The battle was part of Empire of Japan's expansive attack across the Pacific in December 1941, invading and attacking all over the Pacific, from Pearl Harbor, striking islands across the Pacific, Philippines, Malaya, Borneo, Burma, and Thailand. The invasion of Malaya leading up this battle had started after midnight on December 8 with the invasion of Kota Bharu.
Jalan Tun Perak, formerly Jalan Mountbatten (1961–1981) Mountbatten Road (1946–1961) and Java Street (1889–1946), is a major road located in the historic centre of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was a major commercial street of early Kuala Lumpur, and is now the location of a few financial institutions. The entry to the Jamek Mosque is located here, and the light rapid transit stop on this street is Masjid Jamek LRT station.
The Eastern Bank Limited, was a British bank founded in 1909 in London, to help finance trade with the Far East. In 1957 Chartered Bank, acquired Eastern, and eventually absorbed it into Standard Chartered in 1971.
Sir Robert Laidlaw KT was a philanthropist, entrepreneur and British Liberal Party politician.
Arthur Benison Hubback was a British Army officer and architect who designed several important buildings in British Malaya, in both Indo-Saracenic architecture and European "Wrenaissance" styles. Major works credited to him include Kuala Lumpur railway station, Ubudiah Mosque, Jamek Mosque, National Textile Museum, Panggung Bandaraya DBKL, Ipoh railway station, and Kowloon railway station.
Robert Norman Bland (1859–1948), or "R. N. Bland," as he was more commonly known then in The Straits, was Resident Councillor of Penang and a career civil servant in the Colonial Administration of the Straits Settlements.
The Seri Rambai is a seventeenth-century Dutch cannon displayed at Fort Cornwallis in George Town, the capital city of the Malaysian state of Penang and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the largest bronze gun in Malaysia, a fertility symbol and the subject of legends and prophecy.
