A pluriversal analysis of eighteenth-century British imperial designations of space, place and peoples through the contending performances cultures of British Sumatra as relayed by young naturalist William Marsden. In Bencoolen from 1771 to 1778, Marsden demonstrated that the island was the center of a new world historical language stretching from Madagascar to Easter Island. Here a performance of The Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret, in conjunction with the gathering of materials for his future history of Sumatra, galvanized new appreciation for Sumatrans’ diverse cultures and their place in Britain’s glbal history.

This chapter emphasises the significance regional variations had for the Company’s development in Asia, using Sumatra as a case study to demonstrate the limits to the Company’s political and economic enfranchisement by Asian rulers and elites. While powerful states such as the Mughal empire or the sultanate of Golconda could integrate, subordinate and utilise the Company’s presence, the demand of Company servants for sweeping powers and privileges in the smaller polities of Asia proved destabilising and destructive. On the West Coast of Sumatra, Company servants were reluctant to abandon the strategies of integration and subordination which had proved so successful on the subcontinent, and therefore struggled to establish a sustainable presence at places such as Bencoolen when these rights could not be acquired or mobilised. With limited economic resources, few opportunities for transcultural networks and a shifting state formation process in which multiple imperial powers sought to claim the West Coast as part of their own jurisdiction, Company servants repeatedly failed to acquire a durable foothold on the Coast, and Bencoolen struggled to develop into a vibrant city as both Madras and Calcutta had.