Atjehsche invloed op het Karoland — the Atjehnese influence on the Karo-Batak hoogvlakte — was, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions, the institutional and cultural imprint left by the Atjehnese sultanate on the Karo-Batak lands during the long period of Atjehnese supremacy in the Gajo- and Alaslanden. The influence was, the Bureau records, surprisingly slight: despite “de geregelde verbindingen, welke tusschen het Karoland en Atjeh bestaan hebben” — “the regular connections that existed between the Karoland and Atjeh” — the Atjehnese imprint on the Karo institutions had “slechts zeer weinig levenskracht gehad” — “had had only very little vitality.”
The institutional imprint: the radja berempat
The principal institutional imprint of Atjeh on the Karo lands was the radja berempat — the “four-princes” institution by which four of the Karo sibajaks (the oeroeng-chiefs) were singled out for special responsibility for the maintenance of good relations with the Atjehnese sultanate. The Bureau records that “sommige bestuursinstellingen volgens het Atjehsche viervorsten-systeem (dat ook op de Karo-hoogvlakte werd ingevoerd door Atjeh) worden nog aan dien invloed toegeschreven” — “some administrative institutions according to the Atjehsche four-princes system (which was also introduced on the Karo hoogvlakte by Atjeh) are still attributed to that influence.” The four Karo sibajaks of Lingga, Sarinembah, Baroes Djahé and Soeka were, the Bureau records, the Karo radja berempat — the institutional echo of the Atjehsche viervorsten-systeem in the Karoland.
The slightness of the imprint
Despite the institutional imprint of the radja berempat, the Bureau records that the broader Atjehnese imprint on the Karo institutions was slight. “Het meest ongeschonden zijn de oude instellingen gebleven in het Karoland; wel vinden wij ook hier sporen terug van Atjehschen invloed, doch zelfs deze hebben, ondanks de geregelde verbindingen, welke tusschen het Karoland en Atjeh bestaan hebben, slechts zeer weinig levenskracht gehad” — “The most intact old institutions have remained in the Karoland; we do indeed find here too traces of Atjehnese influence, but even these have, despite the regular connections that existed between the Karoland and Atjeh, had only very little vitality.” The Bureau’s characterisation of the Atjehnese imprint as having had “slechts zeer weinig levenskracht” — “only very little vitality” — is a striking judgement: the Atjehnese supremacy in the highlands had been a sustained political fact for more than two centuries, yet its institutional imprint on the Karo lands had been superficial.
The contrast with the Malay coastal influence
The slightness of the Atjehnese imprint on the Karo lands is, the Bureau records, all the more striking in contrast with the Malay coastal influence on the Karo Doesoen and Timoerland. The Bureau records: “De Maleische invloeden uit de kuststreken echter, die in de Doesoen, doch vooral in het Timoerland, zoo goed zijn na te speuren, bestaan hier niet” — “The Malay influences from the coastal regions, however, which in the Doesoen, and especially in the Timoerland, can be so well traced, do not exist here [in the Karoland].” The Karo hoogvlakte, in other words, had been more open to Malay coastal influence — mediated by the Djohorese Malays of the East Coast — than to Atjehnese influence across the highlands.
The revival under Dutch rule
The Atjehnese imprint on the Karo lands — slight as it had been — was, the Bureau records, deliberately revived and amplified by the Dutch colonial state after the annexation of the Karo hoogvlakte in 1904–1906. The Bureau records that the Dutch “de vergeten positie dier radja-berempat opgerakeld” — “resurrected the forgotten position of those radja-berempat” — and granted them “in het Karoland zelf een macht, welke zij daar nimmer bezeten zullen hebben” — “in the Karoland itself a power which they will never have possessed there.” To the four Atjehnese-era sibajaks of Lingga, Sarinembah, Baroes Djahé and Soeka the Dutch added a fifth — the Sibajak of Koeta Boeloeh — producing the five-sibajak arrangement of Karo landschapshoofden that would govern the Karo hoogvlakte throughout the colonial period.
Significance
The Atjehsche invloed op het Karoland is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, the institutional trace of the Atjehnese supremacy in the Gajo- and Alaslanden on the eastern side of the highlands. Its slightness — the Bureau’s judgement that it had “slechts zeer weinig levenskracht gehad” — is, in the Bureau’s framing, the more remarkable in view of the duration of the Atjehnese supremacy and the regular connections between the Atjehnese and Karo lands. The deliberate Dutch revival of the Atjehnese-era radja berempat after the 1904–1906 annexation is, in turn, the most striking instance of the colonial state’s strategic use of the Atjehnese institutional legacy to structure its own administration of the highland Batak lands.
See Also
- Acheh
- Batak-Karo
- radja berempat
- sibajak
- atjehsche-viervorsten-systeem
- atjehsche-oppermacht-in-de-gajo-en-alaslanden
- Lingga
- Sarinembah
- Baroes Djahé
- Soeka
- Koeta Boeloeh
- Dutch subjugation of the Karo-Batak lands (1904-1906)
- Djohor
- 1607
- 1636
- 1904
- 1906
Source
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Afl. 3: Oostkust van Sumatra. Eerste Stuk, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1918), pp. 117, 166, 174. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.