Fort Cornwallis is a bastion fort in George Town, Penang, built by the British East India Company in the late 18th century. Named after the then Lieutenant-General The 2nd Earl Cornwallis (1738–1805), the Governor-General of Bengal at the time of the fort’s construction, it is the largest standing fort in Malaysia.
Inn 1786, when Captain Francis Light took over Penang, he decided to built a fort, which covers an area of covering an area of 417.6 square feet to protect Penang from pirates and other threats. A moat 9 metres wide by 2 metres deep once surrounded the fort but it was filled in the 1920s due to a malaria outbreak in the area.
Even though the fort was originally built for the British military, its function, historically, was more administrative than defensive. For example, the judge of the Supreme Court of Penang, Sir Edmond Stanley, an Anglo-Irish barrister, was first housed at Fort Cornwallis when the court opened on 31 May 1808. During the 1920s Sikh police of the Straits Settlements occupied the fort.
When the World War II hits Penang in December 1942, the Japanese forces landed after a series of aerial bombing raids, resulting in the controversial evacuation of the island by the British. The Japanese utilised the fort and its adjoining Esplanade to construct rows of warehouses, supplied via a light railway that passed right through the fort.
In the years following the end of WWII, efforts were made to retrieve some of the fort’s lost cannons and recognise its historical importance. By the early 1970s an amphitheatre and ancillary buildings had been constructed in the fort and in March 1976, Fort Cornwallis was declared a National Monument under the Antiquities Act. An extensive restoration programme was undertaken in 2000– 2001, including reconstruction of the demolished western wall.
The largest cannon of the fort, known as Seri Rambai, was cast in 1603; in 1606 the Dutch East India Company gave it to the Sultan of Johor. In 1613, the Acehnese took possession of Seri Rambai and carried it to Aceh. In 1795, the Achenese gave it to Kuala Selangor. The British seized Seri Rambai in 1871 as booty after a punitive raid on Kuala Selangor, and took the cannon to Penang. The government moved it to the fort in the 1950s.
The long history of Fort Cornwallis and the critical role it played in attracting settlers to Penang played an integral role in UNESCO declaring George Town a World Heritage Site, in conjunction with Malacca, in 2008.
