Treaty of 1857 between Netherlands and Aceh was a bilateral diplomatic agreement negotiated and signed in 1857 between special envoy General J. van Swieten of the Dutch East Indies Government and the royal court of the Aceh Sultanate at Kraton of Aceh. The agreement represented the last formal treaty establishing commercial and political peace between the Netherlands and Aceh before the outbreak of the Aceh War in 1873.
Diplomatic Context and Provisions
Following decades of friction over coastal trade and piracy, Governor-General of the Netherlands East Indies commissioned General J. van Swieten to visit Kraton of Aceh in 1857. The resulting treaty affirmed mutual friendship, regulated merchant shipping, and pledged cooperation in suppressing maritime unrest.
Impact on Subsequent Military Intelligence
As General G. G. Booms argued in his 1875 analysis, the conclusion of the Treaty of 1857 between Netherlands and Aceh induced a false sense of security within the Dutch East Indies Government. Successive colonial administrations after 1857 neglected to systematically update their topographical and political intelligence regarding Aceh.
Consequently, when the First Aceh Expedition was dispatched in 1873, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army relied on fragmentary data gathered by J. van Swieten during his 1857 mission, a major contributing factor to the expedition’s failure.
Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)
The Treaty of 1857 with the Sultan of Atjeh — the “overeenkomst van vrede, vriendschap en handel” (“agreement of peace, friendship and trade”) concluded by General J. van Swieten, Governor of Sumatra’s West Coast on behalf of the Netherlands Indian Government, with Ibrahim Mansoer, who had meanwhile come forward as Sultan of Atjeh — was the last Dutch attempt, “nogmaals langs den weg der verzoening” (“once more along the road of reconciliation”), to call a better state of affairs into being before the slow escalation toward 1873.
Provisions
Concluded in 1857, the agreement contained inter alia:
- provisions concerning the admission of each other’s subjects to the trade, the shipping and the residence in one another’s countries;
- further provisions to combat sea-, strand- and man-robbery (zee-, strand- en menschenroof);
- the agreement that all claims on account of former facts would lapse — burying, among other incidents, the matter of the schooner Dolphiijn (1836), whose 30,000-guilder money shipment and guns the Sultan had kept for himself.
Context and effect
The treaty answered the chronic insecurity which had produced the American chastisement of Kuala Batee (1831), the Dutch expulsion of the Atjehnese from Baros and Singkel (1840), the English chastisement of Koeala Batië and Koeala Meureudoe (1844), and the robberies of a Neapolitan schooner (1851) and an English merchantman (1852). “‘t Ging goed… tot 1858!” — it worked, author Joh. Langhout writes, until 1858, when the Netherlands Indian Government’s contract with the Sultan of Siak moved the Sultan of Atjeh to revive lapsed claims upon that realm, opening the road to the expedition of 1865, the refusal of the chiefs’ petitions of sovereignty (1868) and, after the Treaty of 1871, the mission of Nieuwenhuizen (see Nieuwenhuizen’s mission to Atjeh and the declaration of war (March 1873)).
See Also
- 1857
- J. van Swieten
- G. G. Booms
- Military Intelligence in the Aceh War
- First Aceh Expedition
- Aceh Sultanate
- J. van Swieten
- Sultan Ibrahim Mansur
- Dutch treaty with the Sultan of Siak (1858)
- Sea robbery on the Atjeh coast
- Acheh War
Source
Over de eerste expeditie tegen Atjeh: Een antwoord aan Generaal de Stuers, G. G. Booms, ‘s-Gravenhage: A. van Hoogstraten & Zoon, 1875, pp. 14-15; Atjeh gedurende de tweede expeditie en later, Een Oud Officier, Batavia: Ogilvie & Co., 1876, pp. 10-15.
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 16–17.