This monograph, the first in Penang Institute’s Concise Histories of Penang Series, highlights the surprisingly important role that Penang and its mainland territory of Seberang Perai played in global agriculture over the last 200 years and more. It is hard now to imagine that Penang once produced some of the best pepper, nutmeg, mace, and cloves in the world. Its industrious inhabitants developed a major sugar export industry. Malaysian tin, rubber, copra, coconut oil, tapioca, sago, cocoa, coffee, and goods such as Sumatran tobacco poured through Penang’s port to global markets.