ABSTRACT
By the end of the eighteenth century, the character and intensity of European intervention in the Straits had begun to change. Whilst the economy, society and cultures of the peoples of the region had long been open to external influences from China, India, the Middle East and Europe, by the 1780s it was the influence of the latter which came increasingly to dominate. Changing patterns of economic development in Europe stimulated by the Industrial Revolution, made the economic and political colonialism of the European powers, especially Britain and Holland, the dominating force in the Straits.
