Sir Andrew ClarkeBorn 27 Jul 1824; died 29 Mar 1902 at age 77.British military engineer and politician with scientific interests, who became surveyor-general of Victoria, Australia (Mar 1853) where he planned railways, installed telegraph communication and initiated the Museum of Natural History there (1854). While governor of the Straits Settlements (1873-75), he negotiated the Pangkor Treaty (1874) providing for British political control of Perak and later the other peninsular Malay States. In Perak, he developed a communication system by which state roads were constructed between the principal mining towns. In 1885, a railway line 12.8 km long joined Taiping, the distribution centre for the Larut tin fields, to Port Weld for shipping tin back to the United Kingdom. Thus, it was with the provision of infrastructure to support tin mining, that Malaysia began its develoment.« |
