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became British territory. Malacca was administered by the Dutch until the signing of the Anglo-Dutch treaty in 1824, whereby it was ceded to the British among other terms. Two years later, Singapore and Malacca came under the Penang Presidency.
According to Turnbull, the Straits Settlements were the East India Company's most incongruous offspring….The Straits Settlements formed a scattered unit, which was difficult to administer efficiently.” In legal terms, it included Western laws at constitutional level, and local legal systems under the control of sultans.
Physical/geographical problems
Penang Island lay opposite Province Wellesley (a strip of land about 30 miles long and three miles wide) which the EIC acquired from the Sultan of Kedah in 1800. Malacca was about 260 miles to the south of Penang. Singapore Island was a further 120 miles south, at the tip of the Malay Peninsula.
There were problems of communication between these settlements, being only by means of sea. Until 1861, the Straits government possessed only two antiquated sailing gunboats and one steamer, used mainly to ferry the governor, recorders and senior officials between the three stations. Communications with the EIC's headquarters in Calcutta were also poor, and until 1864, a monthly steamer service between Calcutta and the Straits Settlements remained the only link with the seat of government."
Administration problems
According to Turnbull, '[d]ivision of interest between the East India Company and its eastern dependencies was even more formidable than the geographical and physical problems of administration. The sole value of the Straits Settlements to the East India Company was to protect and stimulate the China trade. When [the EIC] lost its monopoly of this trade in 1833 Calcutta was left with an unrewarding and expensive burden. She could not abandon the Straits Settlements but constantly begrudged the drain they made upon India's financial resources and upon the time and attention of senior officials over the next thirty years.'