The Pinang Nota of 1825 — in Van der Kemp’s Dutch Pinangsche nota 1825 — is the celebrated minute drawn up at Prince of Wales’ Island by Governor Fullerton on 21 March 1825 and submitted, with the concurrence of his council members W. A. Clubley and R. Ibbetson of 7 April, to the Bengal Government in response to the Bengal inquiry of 28 January 1825 concerning the future of Anglo-Achehnese relations. The minute, designated by Van der Kemp as “important to our interests”, is the foundational document of the restrictive British reading of the Treaty of London of 17 March 1824 and may be regarded as the diplomatic seed of the entire later Acheh controversy.
The immediate occasion
The Bengal missive of 28 January 1825 had been prompted by the London dispatch of 4 August 1824, in which the East India Company directors transmitted the newly concluded Anglo-Dutch treaty to Calcutta, singling out Acheh as the first point requiring attention. The Bengal Government, concurring with London that the Treaty of Pedir (1819) “had never been anything other than a dead letter”, asked the Pinang government to advise on the measures that might be desirable to attain the limited object of a mere commercial arrangement with the King of Acheen. The instructions expressly authorised the Pinang government to treat “with the existing Government of the country for effecting the special arrangement pointed out in the Note of His Majesty’s plenipotentiaries” — that is, the note attached to the Treaty of London by which the Acheh reservation had been introduced.
Fullerton’s analytical method
To respond to this request, Fullerton determined that the actual state of Achehnese affairs had first to be ascertained. The Malay translator of the Pinang government was dispatched to gather information from the principal merchants trading with Acheh; he reported that every harbour-chief had made himself virtually independent of the central authority. This confirmed the Pinang government’s existing conviction that nothing was to be expected of a further commercial treaty with Acheh: indeed, that such a treaty was no longer necessary, because the more harbour-chiefs were independent, the more ports lay open to Pinang’s trade, and the less tax was levied by the central authority, the better it was for British shipping.
Substantive arguments
The Pinang Nota accordingly opened, on Fullerton’s analysis, by declaring that the articles of the 1819 treaty “never were carried into effect”, that Jowhar Alum “never was in a situation to enable him to carry into execution any stipulation of that treaty”, and that no political or commercial effect had ever resulted from its conclusion: it “may truly be said to have been a dead letter from the day it was signed”. With respect to that treaty, Fullerton concluded, “no discussion can arise nor can any alteration be required consequent on the late arrangement with the Netherlands Government”. Yet, having thus set the 1819 instrument aside as ineffective, the Nota proceeded to insist that the Acheh reservation of 1824 must none the less be rigorously interpreted. The argument was: that the British plenipotentiaries had expressly recognised Achehnese independence; that the Dutch declaration attached to the Treaty of London had reaffirmed it; that Article III of the Treaty (promising no unequal treaties with independent states) would lose all force if Achehnese independence were compromised; and that the Dutch could not therefore pass from Article III to Article II (which permitted differential duties) on the East Coast of Sumatra without British remonstrance.
The programme of “mutual explanation”
The most consequential feature of the Pinang Nota, in Van der Kemp’s reading, was the political programme it set out: that of “mutual explanation hereafter”, to be demanded by Britain whenever Dutch expansion in northern Sumatra touched British commercial interests. The Nota expressly invoked the danger that Dutch supremacy, once established, would enable the levying of differential duties “even at the lowest rate”, and would thus embarrass or even extinguish the trade with the petty states of Deli, Langkat and Siak. Van der Kemp credits Fullerton with “perspicacity” in formulating at once, on receipt of the Treaty of London, the very programme that would be put into operation in the following decades — the programme whose later applications included the circular to nine Siak chiefs and the letter to the Sultan of Siak of 7 February 1828.
The Dutch counter-argument
Van der Kemp’s study stresses that the Pinang Nota rested on a fundamental legal asymmetry. The Dutch plenipotentiaries had agreed to attach a declaration to the Treaty of London expressing a willingness to substitute the 1819 treaty with an arrangement for the hospitable reception of British ships at Acheh; but, in Van der Kemp’s argument, the same plenipotentiaries had no warrant from their King to guarantee Achehnese independence unconditionally. The Pinang Nota seized on this guarantee and turned it into a perpetual instrument of constraint. “Thus did article 6, which we had desired in order to prevent new Singapore scandals, turn against ourselves”, Van der Kemp summarises.
Lasting significance
The programme set out in the Pinang Nota structured Anglo-Dutch relations in northern Sumatra for nearly half a century. The Bellona mission of 1827-1828 provoked precisely the British remonstrances that Fullerton had foreshadowed. Lord Palmerston’s later insistence on “the letter of the treaty of 1824” was the metropolitan continuation of the Pinang policy. Only the Sumatra Treaty of 1871, by which Britain abandoned “all remonstrances against the extension of Dutch authority in any part of the island of Sumatra”, finally closed the chapter that Fullerton’s minute had opened.
See Also
- Acheh treaty of 1819
- Dead letter
- Sphere of influence
- Suzerainty question
- Fullerton’s minute on Acheh (21 March 1825)
- Bengal inquiry to Penang (28 January 1825)
- London dispatch of 4 August 1824
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
- Raising of the Acheh treaty in London negotiations
- Fullerton’s circular to nine Siak chiefs
- Fullerton’s letter to Sultan of Siak (7 February 1828)
- Sumatra Treaty of 1871
- Robert Fullerton
- W. A. Clubley
- R. Ibbetson
Source
Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.