SEBERANG PENANG STORY LECTURES: Early Views of Province Wellesley

SEBERANG PENANG STORY LECTURES: Early Views of Province Wellesley
by Khoo Salma Nasution

Date: 16 August 2015, Sunday
Time: 9.30 am-12.30pm
Venue: 1st floor, Sri Ananda Bahwan Restaurant. 2985 Jalan Bagan Luar, Butterworth
Near the site of Butterworth Fringe Festival, Jalan Jeti Lama
Please click here for google map.

Free Admission. Limited seats only. RSVP info@pht.org.my.
Tel 604-2642631 before Friday, 14 August, 12 pm.

ABSTRACT
“From Pinang [island] one sees its broad stretches of bright green sugar-cane and the chimneys of its sugar factories, and it grows rice and cocoa-nuts”, wrote Isabella Bird, describing the view of Seberang Perai or Province Wellesley in 1883. Prehistoric remains testify to long human habitation leading to a Buddhist-Hindu period. Carved out of the Kedah kingdom in 1800, the landscape of Province Wellesley was dramatically transformed into cultivated rice-fields and plantations in the nineteenth century. Using almost one hundred photographs, paintings and maps, the speaker attempts to trace the development of Seberang Perai in terms of early explorations, land and water transport, urbanisation, agriculture and industry.

SPEAKER’S PROFILE
Khoo Salma Nasution, nee Khoo Su Nin is a writer, publisher and heritage advocate and an Asian Public Intellectual Fellow. She has been involved in heritage since 1989, first as Honorary Secretary then as President of the Penang Heritage Trust, and through her stewardship of the Sun Yat Sen Museum Penang. She is a co-founder of Areca Books. She has authored or co-authored a dozen books, such as: The Streets of George Town, Penang (1993), Kinta Valley (2005), and Redoubtable Reformer, The Life and Times of Cheah Cheang Lim (2015). Her book, The Chulia in Penang: Patronage and Place-Making around the Kapitan Kling Mosque 1786-1957 (2014), recently won the ICAS Book Prize 2015, Colleague’s Choice Award.

 

Final_Seberang Perai Stories_15 Aug 20152