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Bengkulu is a settlement on Sumatra's southwest coast. Bengkulu was the British East India Company's major foothold in the Indonesian archipelago from 1685, when the Dutch forced the British out of Banten, until 1824. Through Fort Marlborough (built in 1714), the company tried to monopolize West Sumatran pepper, but, away from major trading routes, the enterprise was never very profitable. In 1760 the British named Bengkulu capital of their West Sumatran presidency. Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who was a governor from 1818 to 1824, tried to establish a more liberal administration and encourage cultivation of spices including nutmeg, cloves, and cassia. Bengkulu was ceded to the Dutch in 1824 under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty, but they did not move to subdue the region, which became a center of piracy, until 1868. It languished as a backwater, never reemerging as a major trading center. It was Sukarno's place of exile from 1938 to 1942 and became the capital of the newly reconstituted province of Bengkulu in 1967.