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Tahiti (17°40' south 149°30' west) was proclaimed a French protectorate in 1842 and was formally annexed the following year: thereafter the island had an undefined and nebulous status until it became a French imperial possession on 29 June 1880. The Marquesas were subjected to an American proclamation of annexation in 1813 that was repudiated by Congress; after the French move into the group in 1842, the islands became part of the French empire, again after several decades of ambiguous status, in 1870. The British landing on Singapore Island was on 29 January 1819 and the treaty whereby the island was secured from Johore was concluded on 6 February. Initially, Singapore came under the East India Company and was ruled first from Bengal and then Delhi; with the mainland provinces it became the Crown colony, the Straits Settlements, in 1867. The British secured Malacca (present-day Melaka in 02°14' North 102°14' East) from the Dutch by the Treaty of London, 17 March 1824. Hongkong Island, the opening of five treaty ports, and an indemnity were secured by Britain at the Treaty of Nanking, 29 August 1842. The Kowloon peninsula was secured by the terms of the Convention of Peking of 24 October 1860 in the wake of the Second Opium War. Various adjacent lands, including New Kowloon and Lantau Island , which were and collectively known as the New Territories, were then secured by Britain, by lease for ninety-nine years, after 1 July 1898. The colony was renamed Hong Kong in September 1926 and the New Territories should have reverted to China with Japan’s surrender in 1945. Britain re-occupied Hong Kong and controlled the colony until 30 June 1997, when it was ceded to China: Britain was not obliged to surrender the 1842 and 1860 provisions, only the areas bound by the 1898 arrangement. The first British settlement on Labuan Island was established in 1840 as part of the navy’s anti-piracy effort, and formal possession, from Brunei, was forthcoming 18 December 1846; Labuan became a crown colony in 1848. The process whereby North Borneo became British was complicated. The Americans established themselves in North Borneo (Jesselton, present-day Kota Kinabalu, in 05°59' North 116°04' East) in appendix 1.1. the pacific and the east indies in the nineteenth century appendix 1.1 29 1865 but relinquished all holdings and ambitions in North Borneo in 1875 when technically it became an Austro-Hungarian possession as a result of local initiative. When Vienna disclaimed interest in and responsibility for North Borneo, the initial move was to offer the territory to Italy as a penal colony, but British money had provided for the Austrian purchase of 1875 and as a result the British North Borneo Company was formed in August 1881 and it took over the territory, as a British possession, on 1 November 1881. Sarawak (Kuching 01°32' North 110°20' East) was perhaps the strangest of all British acquisitions. It was part of Brunei when, on 24 September 1841, a Britisher was appointed governor; on 18 August 1842 he became rajah, and the territory remained a possession of the Brooke family for all but a century. In that time it was, for all intents and purposes, British, though whether it was ever formally secured is not clear: it seems that there may have been some formal proclamation, perhaps of protectorate status, in 1888, but there was no change in the system of government of Sarawak. The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were formally proclaimed British protectorates on 27 May 1892. The first British move into the lower Solomons was in 1893, and then there were moves into the central and upper Solomons in 1898 and 1899, respectively. With the latter moves the British came alongside the Germans, who had established themselves in New Britain, subsequently renamed Neu-Pommern (Rabaul 04°13' South 152°11' East) and New Ireland, subsequently renamed Neu-Mecklenburg; in 1900 Germany relinquished all claims on the Solomons Islands other than these in favor of Britain. There are real problems in definition with reference to the East Indies, in no small measure because for more than two centuries after their arrival in the Indies the Dutch, primarily concerned with “informal colonialism,” that is, ports, trade and spices, and recruitment of local soldiery, for the most part sought arrangements with local rulers rather than the imposition of their own direct rule, Java in large measure excepted. The Dutch arrived at Jayakarta...

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