The Atjèh petition to Turkey of 1868 — in Kreemer’s history, the formal request, dispatched from Atjèh to the Turkish government, invoking Turkish help against the Netherlands and offering the Sultan of Turkey sovereignty over Atjèh — was the first recorded Atjèhnese appeal to the Sublime Porte for protection against Dutch encroachment. It is, in Kreemer’s narrative, a key episode in the diplomatic prelude to the Atjèh-oorlog, and the direct ancestor of the Sultan’s 1872 letter to the Sultan of Turkey that would delay and ultimately derail the Dutch peace mission of late 1872.
The petition
Kreemer records the petition in a single sentence: “In 1868 werd vanuit Atjèh een verzoekschrift gericht aan de Turksche Regeering, waarin haar hulp werd ingeroepen tegen de Nederlanders en aan den Soeltan de souvereiniteit over Atjèh werd aangeboden” — “In 1868, from Atjèh, a petition was addressed to the Turkish government, in which her help was invoked against the Dutch and sovereignty over Atjèh was offered to the Sultan.”
The diplomatic context
The petition of 1868 is, in Kreemer’s narrative, the Atjèhnese response to a quarter-century of Dutch pressure — the flag-visits of 1855–1856, the treaty of 1857 that had proven a “dead letter,” the 1858 Siak treaty that brought the East Coast states under Dutch sovereignty, and the 1860 seizure of two Dutch ships by the Atjèhnese. The offer of sovereignty to the Sultan of Turkey was the diplomatic counterpart of the Atjèhnese policy of seeking protectors among the European powers — the same policy that would lead, in 1872–1873, to the Singapore embassy and the appeal to France.
The sequel: the 1872 letter to Turkey
The 1868 petition was the first of two Atjèhnese appeals to Constantinople recorded in Kreemer’s history. The second came in 1872, when the Sultan — seeking to delay the announced Dutch peace mission — wrote that “het is nu een maand geleden, dat ik een brief gezonden heb aan den Soeltan van Turkije, waarop ik nog geen antwoord heb ontvangen. Wanneer ik eenig antwoord van den Soeltan van Turkije ontvang, zal ik den Grooten Heer een brief schrijven” — “it is now a month since I sent a letter to the Sultan of Turkey, to which I have not yet received an answer. When I receive an answer from the Sultan of Turkey, I will write a letter to the Great Lord [i.e., the Dutch sovereign].” The delay so obtained was the diplomatic manoeuvre that brought the Dutch mission to nothing and led to the declaration of war of 26 March 1873.
Significance
The Atjèh petition to Turkey is, in Kreemer’s account, the founding gesture of Atjèh’s pan-Islamic diplomacy — the appeal to the Ottoman caliphate for protection against a Christian colonial power. It reveals the degree to which the Atjèhnese sultanate, even in its declining years, conceived of its international position not in narrowly Sumatran terms but in the framework of the wider Islamic world, and it is the structural reason why the Dutch could not treat the Atjèh question as a purely colonial matter.
See Also
- Acheh
- Sultan of Atjeh
- Sultan of Turkey
- Causes of the Atjèh-oorlog (Kreemer’s account)
- Panglima Tibang Moehamad
- Declaration of war on Atjèh (26 March 1873)
- Aceh War
- 1868
- 1872
- 1873
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, B (“Periode 1824—1873. Oorzaken van den Atjèh-oorlog”), blz. 12.