William Marsden entered the service of the East India Company (EIC) at Fort Marlborough in Sumatra in 1771. He rose through the ranks to become the principal secretary to the company’s government in 1774 and received his formal appointment in 1776. Three years later, Marsden resigned from the EIC and thereafter committed himself to his academic and literary pursuits. An accomplished scholar and writer, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1783 and the Society of Antiquaries in 1785. In the same year, he also became a founding member of the Royal Irish Academy. Based on the records he kept of his time with the EIC in Sumatra, as well as the knowledge he had acquired about the island, Marsden wrote a ‘History of Sumatra’ in 1783. A second edition was published in 1784.
