The Atjehsche avonturier at Aroe-baai (1862) is the unnamed Atjehnese adventurer who, in 1862, threw up a benteng (fortification) on the hill of Poelo Kampi in the bay of Aroe and defiantly flew the Atjehsche flag from it — the only recorded instance of an Atjehnese military assertion on the east-coast Sumatran theatre in the immediate pre-Atjeh-oorlog period. The episode is preserved by De Roo de la Faille, who notes it in connection with the Van Rijn visit of 1888 and with the Tanjore inscription of 1030’s “ancient Malayur situated on a high hill”.
The episode
In 1862 — eleven years before the first Dutch expedition against Atjeh of 1873 — an unnamed Atjehnese adventurer threw up a benteng on the hill of Kampi in the bay of Aroe, “and here defiantly let the Atjehsche flag fly”. The episode is recorded in the Van Rijn report of 1888, which notes that the impression of the hill — “as if one has a fortress with breastwork before one” — recalled the Tanjore inscription’s “ancient Malayur situated on a high hill”.
Significance
For AcehWiki, the Atjehsche avonturier at Aroe-baai (1862) is the principal recorded instance of an Atjehnese military assertion on the east-coast Sumatran theatre in the pre-Atjeh-oorlog period — a token of the survival of an Atjehnese memory of the Atjehnese conquest of Aroe of 1539 more than three centuries after the event. The choice of Kampi — the sacred islet of the older Hindu-Buddhist geography, the Noesa-n-ta-ra of the Pararaton — for the Atjehnese flag is, in De Roo de la Faille’s reading, no accident: it marks the same place that the Atjehnese fleet of Alleredin Mahomet had taken in 1539.
See Also
- Aroe-baai
- Poelo Kampi
- Atjeh-Aroe War (1539)
- Atjehsche vloot
- Atjehsche vlag
- Van Rijn van Alkemade
- Eerste Atjeh-Expeditie (1873)
- Aceh Sultanate
- Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java
Source
Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Mendez Pinto op Sumatra”, p. 11.