Van Swieten’s Ultimatum to the Sultan of 2 January 1874 was the third and final letter dispatched by Lieutenant-General Van Swieten to Sultan Mahmud Shah during the Second Expedition. Written after twelve days of waiting without response to the two letters of 1 December 1873 and after the disappearance of the emissary Mas Soemo Widikdjo, the ultimatum demanded to know what had become of the envoy and threatened to bombard the Kraton within days if no answer was received. The letter announced that Van Swieten would request his English friend, Colonel Woolcombe of {{HMS Thalia}}, to transmit it together with a letter from Queen Victoria to the Sultan — a remarkable invocation of British diplomatic authority in a Dutch colonial war.
Context
The two letters of 1 December 1873 — one setting out the Dutch peace terms and the other proposing mutual observance of the laws of civilized warfare — had been carried into the Acehnese lines by Mas Soemo Widikdjo, who never returned. Twelve days passed without any response from the Sultan. Van Swieten, concluding that the Sultan had chosen silence and that the parlementair had been killed or detained, resolved to issue a final demand.
Key Passages
The letter opened with a reference to the two unanswered letters: “I have sent Your Highness two letters twelve days ago. In the one I offered you peace on acceptable terms, to put an end to the war that will devastate your land and make Your Highness poor. In the other I requested Your Highness to observe, as is customary in all countries of the East and West, the principle of doing no harm to my envoys.”
The letter then confronted the Sultan directly:
“On my letters I have received no answer, and my envoy has not returned. Among no people in the world are envoys detained or insulted by warring parties. What have you done with my envoy MANTRIE MAS SOEMOE WIDIKDJO, a man of standing and advanced years?”
“It is also not customary among any people to leave letters unanswered. What can be the reason that Your Highness has been unwilling to answer my offer to conclude peace?”
“Is it then the will of Your Highness that your land be entirely devastated?”
The letter continued with an expression of shame — a powerful rhetorical device in the Acehnese cultural context:
“I am ashamed that Your Highness has dealt so discourteously with my envoy and my letters. I can now find no one willing to carry a letter to the Kraton. I therefore have no other choice than to continue the war in the most serious manner and to hold Your Highness responsible before all civilized peoples for the consequences.”
The letter concluded with the threat: “I inform Your Highness that I shall be ready in a few days to bombard the Kraton, and that I shall then be obliged to destroy the Kraton together with all the houses standing within and surrounding it.”
The British Connection
Perhaps the most remarkable element of the letter was Van Swieten’s announcement that he would request “my friend, the English Colonel Woolcombe, of Her British Majesty’s ship Thalia, to transmit this letter together with the letter of Queen Victoria to Your Highness.” The invocation of British diplomatic authority — and specifically the personal intercession of Colonel Woolcombe and the authority of Queen Victoria — was a calculated move designed to lend weight to the Dutch demand and to demonstrate to the Sultan that the international community was watching.
Outcome
The Sultan did not respond. The bombardment of the Kraton proceeded as threatened, and the Kraton fell on 24 January 1874. Whether the threat of bombardment contributed to the Sultan’s decision to flee rather than fight within the Kraton is unknown; what is certain is that the Sultan’s silence and the disappearance of Mas Soemo Widikdjo left Van Swieten with no diplomatic alternative.
See Also
- Jan van Swieten
- Sultan Aladin Mahmoed Shah
- Mas Soemo Widikdjo
- The Death of Mas Soemo Widikdjo (January 1874)
- Van Swieten’s Letter on Civilized Warfare (1 December 1873)
- Capture of the Kraton (24 January 1874)
- Aceh War
Source
De waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh, door den Luitenant-Generaal J. van Swieten, Zalt-Bommel, Joh. Noman en Zoon, [1879], Bijlage F, pp. 474–475.