BENGKULU

Bengkulu is a province of Indonesia. It is on the southwest coast of the island of Sumatra, and borders the provinces of West Sumatra, Jambi, South Sumatra and Lampung. The capital and largest city of the province is Bengkulu city. It was formerly the site of a British garrison, which they called Bencoolen. The province has a population of 1,405,060 (2000 census). The province also includes Enggano Island.

History

The British East India Company established a long-running pepper-trading center and garrison at Bengkulu (Bencoolen) in 1685. In 1714 the British built Fort Marlborough in the city; the fort still stands. The trading post was never financially profitable for the British, hampered by a location Europeans found unpleasant, and, more importantly, an inability to find sufficient pepper to buy.

Despite these difficulties, the British persisted, maintaining the presence there for 150 years before ceding it to the Dutch as part of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 to focus attention on Malacca. Like the rest of present-day Indonesia, Bengkulu remained a Dutch colony until after World War II.

During Sukarno's imprisonment by the Dutch in the early 1930s, the future first president of Indonesia lived briefly in Bengkulu. Here he met his wife, Fatmawati, who gave him several children, the most famous being the first female President of Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Bengkulu lies near the Sunda Fault and is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis. In June 2000 a quake caused damage and the death of at least 100 people. A recent report predicts that Bengkulu is "at risk of inundation over the next few decades from undersea earthquakes predicted along the coast of Sumatra"