Herstel van het sultanaat

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tagsconcept, colonial, dutch, achehnese, sultanate, political, aceh-war, 19th-century, aceh, 1897, event, acehnese, political-policy, restoration, indrapoeri, kemala
aliasesrestoration of the sultanate, herstel van het sultanaat in Atjeh, restoration of the Achehnese sultanate, sultanate restoration debate, sultanaat herstel, Restoration of the sultanate of Atjeh (proposal), herstel van het sultanaat op Atjeh, restoration of the Acehnese sultanate, Restoration of the Sultanate (1885-1896), Restoration of the Sultanate Atjeh, Sultanate restoration policy, Atjeh Sultanate restoration, Poging tot herstel van het Sultanaat

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Herstel van het sultanaat (“restoration of the sultanate”) was the Dutch colonial policy proposal — debated from 1879 to 1892 and intermittently pursued as official strategy — to restore the indigenous sultanate in Groot-Atjeh under Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed as sultan, within the framework of Dutch sovereignty, as the means of obtaining the submission of the Atjehers and ending the Atjeh-oorlog. The proposal was the subject of a celebrated article by Laging Tobias, “Het herstel van het sultanaat in Atjeh,” published in the Indische Gids of December 1886; was supported by successive ministers of colonies including Fransen van de Putte, Minister van Bloemen Waanders, and Minister Sprenger van Eijk; and was adopted as official policy during the governorship of Generaal van Teijn (1886–1891). It was rejected by Van Heutsz in his 1893 brochure on grounds that the present sultan’s lineage had never possessed real authority, had been placed on the throne by bribery, and was opposed by the chiefs who would be compelled to support it against their own interests.

The restoration of the sultanate of Atjeh was the policy option — the reinstatement of an Acehnese sultan under Dutch suzerainty on the model of the princely houses of Central Java — which was raised and set aside in the Atjeh debate of 16 November 1897.

The Proposal

The proposal for the restoration of the sultanate arose from the perceived impossibility of obtaining submission by military force after the concentration of 1884. Three options were identified by Laging Tobias when he became governor in March 1883:

  1. Concentration in a strongly fortified position with a waiting attitude — which he rejected as the greatest possible error.
  2. Renewed aggression to recreate the position of 1880, followed by a new conciliatory approach and contact with the sultan — which he regarded as the best option but could not recommend because the government had indicated that neither the army nor the finances permitted further expansion of the military force.
  3. Immediate attempt to bring the sultan, with or without his guardian, over to the Dutch side, thereby depriving the irreconcilable chiefs of their rallying point and the means by which they brought the common man into the field against the Dutch — which remained as the only practicable option.

Although Tobias did not mention the restoration in his initial letter of June 1883 to Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed, the idea of restoring the sultanate was already his intention. In August 1883, during a visit by Gouv. Gen. ’s Jacob, the Minister of Colonies, van Bloemen Waanders, raised the same idea. In the first half of October 1883, the Governor of Atjeh wrote to Tekoe Nanta of the VI Moekims (also called Tekoe Lampadang) hinting that if the chiefs of the war party submitted, a restoration of the sultanate under Mohamad Daoed might be possible — the first indication the Atjehers received from the Dutch side about the possibility of restoring their old form of government under Dutch sovereignty.

The idea was subsequently rejected by the Indian government after the departure of Minister van Bloemen Waanders in December 1883, but was revived by Minister Sprenger van Eijk in 1886, supported by Fransen van de Putte (who had been advocating a central indigenous administration in Groot-Atjeh since 1879), Van Swieten (whose letter, published by L. W. A. Kessler in the Nieuwe Rott. Cour. of 29 September 1886, indicated he was not opposed but wished to remove the obstacle that many considered to stand in the way of re-introduction), and Gouv. Gen. van Rees (who was also not against the principle). Generaal van Teijn, who assumed the governorship at the end of 1886, was instructed to proceed in the direction of restoration of the sultanate, with the principle as his basis, making contact with Kemala gradually while avoiding the appearance that the Dutch sought it.

Van Heutsz’s Rejection

Van Heutsz, who had served as Chief of Staff under Van Teijn and had discussed the question extensively with him (both in Atjeh and in correspondence after Van Teijn’s departure for the Netherlands), rejected the restoration on the following grounds:

  1. The present lineage was of Bugis origin and had never possessed power. It descended from two Bugis brothers (Daengs) from Wadjo on Celebes; one of them, Daeng Mancoer Boegis, had been wrecked on Poeloe Bras and brought to Loong on the West Coast, where he prospered. His son Tekoe Loöng had married a granddaughter of Soetan Mogal; their offspring Maharadja Lela Malajoe had secured the throne for his son Potjoet Din by bribery — the Djenamoe Atjeh of thirty-two katies of gold. The lineage “never possessed power in the realm.”

  2. The lineage had been placed on the throne by bribery, not by hereditary succession or force of arms. The first sultan of the present line, Alaïdin Achmad Sjah, had been elected because his father bribed the principal chiefs. This meant that the sultanate was a purchased position, not a natural one.

  3. The sultan was destitute when the Dutch arrived. At the beginning of the Aceh War, Sultan Machmoed Sjah — a “nothing-signifying, of nearly all authority and influence deprived, besides nearly reduced to poverty” sultan — was found on the throne. The last legitimate male descendant of Sultan Alaïdin Djauhar Alam (Toeankoe Woed) had died with Sultan Ibrahim in 1870; the last sultan, Mohamad Daoed, and Toeankoe Abdul Madjid and Toeankoe Hoesin were all descended from goendiqs (secondary wives of lower rank).

  4. The chiefs did not want a sultan. In 1874, after the death of Sultan Machmoed, the chiefs did not choose any sultan at all — not even Toeankoe Haschim, the strongest candidate. In 1878, when Haschim finally secured Mohamad Daoed’s election, the chiefs chose a child who could not govern, “clearly indicating that they themselves, each in his own territory, wished to hold the reins.”

  5. The coastal chiefs would oppose a sultan under Dutch protection. The chiefs of the principal coastal states — particularly Pedir — had explicitly stated that they did not want a sultan under Dutch protection. The head of Pedir reasoned that a sultan under Dutch protection, even without direct authority over the dependencies, would exercise indirect influence and draw income from them, and those who refused to pay would be kept in disfavour with the government through false reports from the sultan. The chiefs would thus have to “pay double.”

  6. The restoration would merely play into Haschim’s hand. By seeking the sultan’s submission, the Dutch had already confirmed what Haschim wished to prove: that the sultan was the centre around which everything turned. Restoring him would strengthen the Kemala party and give the resistance a legitimate rallying point.

Bahlmann’s account of why it was foreclosed

Bahlmann argued that the possibility had been destroyed at the outset by two acts. The first was the dispatch of the Minister Fransen van de Putte — “souvereiniteitserkenning of oorlog” — by which “konden destijds de staats- en krijgslieden tot geen andere overtuiging komen, dan dat wij Nederlanders in Atjeh, niet een staat van zaken zouden vestigen als op Midden Java maar dat Atjeh onder ons direct bestuur zou komen.” — the statesmen and soldiers of the day could come to no other conviction than that we Netherlanders in Atjeh would establish, not a state of affairs such as in Central Java, but that Atjeh would come under our direct administration. The second was Van Swieten’s proclamation: “Wij Nederlanders zijn gekomen in plaats van den Sultan. Wij hebben de Souvereiniteit over het geheele land aanvaard.” — We Netherlanders have come in the place of the Sultan. We have accepted the Sovereignty over the whole country.

Bahlmann concluded: “Vergis ik mij niet, dan is van de Regeering niet te wachten: herstel van het sultanaat op Atjeh. Het schijnt dat niet alleen de Indische Regeering, maar ook deze Minister van dergelijken eisch tot pacificatie niets wil weten. Ik zal daarop dan ook niet verder aandringen. Men wil nu eenmaal de souvereiniteit over Groot-Atjeh. Laat men dan geen halve maatregelen nemen, maar in de ingeslagen richting consequent doorgaan.”

Cremer’s position

The Minister of Colonies Cremer confirmed the reading. He stated that the requirements laid down by Bahlmann concerning the capture of Toekoe Oemar and the conclusion of an agreement with the sultan formed no necessary parts of the government’s programme; that no approach had so far come from the sultan’s side; and that “herhaling van de onderhandelingen met den sultan onzerzijds ligt niet in de bedoeling.” — a repetition of the negotiations with the sultan on our side does not lie in our intention.

He gave a further ground, drawn from his view of the Acehnese polity: “Er wordt geen vrede gesloten met een volk, dat geen hoofd heeft of ooit gehad heeft, met zooveel invloed, dat het voor het geheele volk kan spreken, en dat voor een zeer groot deel onze souvereiniteit erkent. Dus zal de oorlog ook nooit op een gegeven oogenblik uit zijn; men zal nooit een bulletin kunnen uitgeven: de Atjeh-oorlog is uit.” — No peace is concluded with a people that has no head, and never has had one, of such influence that he can speak for the whole people, and that recognises our sovereignty for a very great part. Thus the war will also never at a given moment be over.

The alternative pursued

In place of a treaty with a restored sultanate, Dutch authority on the coast rested on the declarations of the sixty-two coastal princes, the earliest of 1885, by which each ruler individually acknowledged that his landschap belonged to Netherlands India and recognised the Queen as lawful sovereign. In Groot-Atjeh it rested on the system of mobile columns and on government “in vereeniging met de hoofden” — with the acknowledged difficulty that those chiefs could not exercise sufficient authority over their subjects.

Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)

Verstege gives the neglected offers their place in the history of the solution thrown away. Gouverneur Laging Tobias, bleeding the truth of Atjeh from all parties, “getracht heeft te doen: herstel van het Sultanaat” (“attempted: the restoration of the Sultanate”), “afgestuit op de inzichten der Indische Regeering, die zulk eene oplossing onvereenigbaar achtte met onze annexatie van 1874” (“which foundered on the notions of the Indian government, which considered such a solution irreconcilable with our annexation of 1874”). In elaborating the same theme from Kielstra’s lecture in the Indisch Genootschap (Indische Gids, December 1883), the pamphlet recalls the earlier offers of Habib Abdoerrachman el Zahir in 1874 and 1875: already then it had been answered “dat er slechts sprake kon zijn van volledige onderwerping” (“that only complete submission could be in question”); and from the meeting of 20 May 1875 at the house of the Lieutenant-Governor of Penang came his — with Lavino — concrete project of negotiation: the elevation of Toeankoe Daoed to Sultan and the appointment of the Habib as regent. The Indian government rejected it entirely “because the nature of our vestiging in Atjeh, whereby we stepped into the place of the princely native government, was not compatible with a new Sultanate”. Ten years later that same annexation was pointed out as what had made a retreat with honour, with a Sultan as a neutral receptacle, impossible — the candidate had been declared of age at Kemala in August 1884 himself, and was in the eyes of the Atjehers their lawful Sultan (see Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed): to him one could bring at most “a paper crown” now.

See Also

Sources

De onderwerping van Atjeh, by J. B. van Heutsz, Majoor der Infanterie, gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef; Batavia: G. Kolff en Co., 1893, pp. 26–28, 42–57, 90–94.

Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, pp. 29–30, 54, 58.

Acknowledgement of sources. This article combines material from the publications cited above; the material newly added derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897) and Een strijd in Atjeh (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering. De Atjeh-Oorlog: Kort Overzicht van Oorsprong, Verloop en Gevolg, door J. A. Kruijt. ‘s-Gravenhage: Loman & Funke, 1896. Chapter VIII (the Laging Tobias attempts), Chapter IX (the Atjehese restoration), Chapter X (the Van Teijn pursuit), Chapter XII (the 1894 flight from Kemala). OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-101-De_Atjeh_oorlog_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 44, 49–50, 56–57, 68.

Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 97-98. OCR: DLP-158.

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