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importance as England gradually began to win a new empire in India. On the mainland the Dutch estab- lished trading-posts in Pêrak and Sêlângor, but through these were presently withdrawn. Malacca was held until 1795, when it was attacked and taken by the British; it was restored to Holland in 1818 under the Treaty of Vienna, but six years later was exchanged for Beukulen, and this time passed finally into the keeping of Great Britain. The East India Company had meanwhile founded a settlement on the island of Penang, which was leased by them from the Râja of Kedah in 1786, and in 1798 the territory on the mainland, now known as Prov- ince Wellesley, was purchased for $2,000. Sir Stanford Raffles, whose statesman's eye saw the strategic and com- mercial value of the position, obtained the cession of the island of Singapore from the Sultan of Johor in 1819, but the territory immediately behind the town of Malacca was not brought under British jurisdiction until 1833- An English expedition invaded and took possession of Java in 1811, but in 1818 the island was restored to Holland. The remaining British settlements on the is- land of Sumatra were ceded to the Dutch by a treaty concluded in 1871, under the provisions of which Hol- land abandoned all claims in the Malay Peninsula, and with the extension of British influence throughout the Native States of the mainland, which began in 1874, the real exploration of this Malayan region had its beginning. Up to this time the Malay Peninsula, in all save its coast-line and its ports, at some of which small Dutch factories had from time to time been established, was