Natal

Natal is a port on Sumatra's western coast. In the eighteenth century it drew the attention of European trading companies competing along the coast. According to an account of British Bencoolen, the inhabitants invited the English East India Company to Natal, and in 1752 officials at Fort Marlborough sent agents to take possession of the port despite Dutch objections.

Natal and the company's later station at Tapanuli lay north of its southern pepper districts; their trade was not principally in pepper. The port was thus part of a coastal network linking local communities and traders with wider Indian Ocean commerce.