The Atjèh embassy to Prince Maurits of 1601 — in Kreemer’s history, the first Atjèhnese diplomatic mission to the Dutch Republic — was dispatched aboard the homeward-bound Zeeuwsche ships of the le Roy–Bicker mission to Prins Maurits, to ratify the bond of friendship between the Atjèh sultanate and the Dutch Republic. Of the two Atjèhnese grandees (Atjèhsche grooten) who composed the embassy, one died during the sea voyage; the other fulfilled his mission and visited the Prince in his siege-camp before Grave.
The embassy
Kreemer records the embassy as a direct consequence of the le Roy–Bicker mission of 1601, which had secured the Sultan’s permission to erect a factorij and obtained the release of the imprisoned Frederik de Houtman. “Een andere bijzonderheid tijdens het bestuur van Soeltan Ala ad-din Riajat Sjah was, dat met de thuisvarende Zeeuwsche schepen een gezantschap van twee Atjèhsche grooten naar Prins Maurits werd gezonden, om het verbond van vriendschap met hem te bekrachtigen. Een dezer afgevaardigden kwam tijdens de zeereis te overlijden, de ander volbracht zijn zending en bezocht den Prins in het belegeringskamp voor Grave” — “Another particularity during the government of Sultan Ala ad-din Riayat Shah was that with the homeward-bound Zeeland ships an embassy of two Atjèhnese grandees was sent to Prince Maurits, to ratify the bond of friendship with him. One of these envoys died during the sea voyage; the other fulfilled his mission and visited the Prince in the siege-camp before Grave.”
Kreemer notes that the reception of these envoys in Holland is described in Dr. J. J. F. Wap’s Het gezantschap van den Sultan van Achin (1602) aan Prins Maurits van Nassau en de Oud-Nederlandsche Republiek (1862).
Significance
The embassy of 1601 is, in Kreemer’s narrative, the moment at which the Atjèh–Dutch relationship passes from a commercial encounter into a formal diplomatic engagement between sovereign states. It is also the first recorded Atjèhnese diplomatic mission to a European power, and it establishes the pattern — repeated throughout the seventeenth century — of Atjèhnese diplomacy conducted through envoys bearing letters and gifts to the heads of European states. The death of one envoy at sea is a reminder of the human cost of these long voyages; the survival of the other, and his reception at Prince Maurits’s siege-camp, is the founding gesture of Atjèh’s diplomatic relationship with the Dutch Republic.
Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)
The Dutch-Atjehnese alliance and embassy to Prince Maurice of 1601–1602 — the agreement permitting the Hollanders to found a factory in Atjeh, sealed by gifts and a letter from Prince Maurice brought by ships of the Middelburg fleet, and answered by two Atjehnese ambassadors laden with gifts for the Prince — established, for fifteen years, the privileged position of the Dutch at the sultanate, liberated Frederik de Houtman, and carried the alliance as far as the Prince’s siege-camp before Grave.
The Portuguese provocation
In 1601 the Portuguese found in their under-king of Goa a man suited to press demands upon the Sultan of Atjeh for the enlargement of the Portuguese territory: he dispatched an embassy to the Sultan demanding that the latter cede one of the islands on the coast of Atjeh, to enable the Portuguese to build a fort there. In that gesture the Atjehnese saw — “probably not wholly unjustly” — an assault upon their independence, and they changed tack.
The Middelburg ships
In those days there appeared in the roadstead a few Zealand ships, forming part of the Middelburg fleet, commanded by the admirals De Roy and Bickers, charged on behalf of Prince Maurice to convey gifts and a letter for the Sultan. An agreement was concluded whereby the Hollanders received permission to found a factory; and in order to convince the Netherlands Government that the Sultan this time meant his friendship-tokens seriously, two envoys laden with gifts were sent to Prince Maurice with the returning ships. They visited the Prince in the siege-camp before Grave; the Prince showed himself not only grateful for the Sultan’s gifts, but inquired with great interest after the so-recently trodden territory on the north coast of Sumatra. To this favourable turn it was also due that Frederik de Houtman and his fellow-sufferers regained their freedom. Of the two envoys, as the book notes in a footnote, “slechts een dier gezanten keerde naar Atjeh terug, de andere stierf voor de afreis en werd te Middelburg begraven” (“only one of the envoys returned to Atjeh; the other died before the departure and was buried at Middelburg”).
Aftermath
Only fifteen years the Netherlands kept this privileged position: the Spaniards and Portuguese finally regained the friendship of the Atjehnese princes, and in 1627 Iskandar Muda compelled the Dutch to break up the factory and to evacuate the West Coast of Sumatra (see Iskandar Muda’s expulsion of the Dutch (1627)).
See Also
- Acheh
- Prince Maurits
- Sajjid al-Mukammal
- Gerard le Roy
- Laurens Bicker
- Frederik de Houtman
- Cornelis de Houtman
- Grave
- Middelburg
- factorij
- 1601
- 1602
- De Houtman brothers’ voyage to Atjeh (1599-1600)
- Iskandar Muda’s expulsion of the Dutch (1627)
- Shahbandar of Atjeh
Source
Atjèh. Algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en onderhoorigheden, door J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut. Eerste Deel. Leiden: N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill, 1922. Hoofdstuk I, A (“Oudste geschiedenis tot 1824”), blz. 5, n. 4. Citing Dr. J. J. F. Wap, Het gezantschap van den Sultan van Achin (1602) aan Prins Maurits van Nassau en de Oud-Nederlandsche Republiek, 1862.
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 12–13, footnote p. 12.