The Atjehsche invasie in Tamiang en Noordelijk Langkat — the Atjehnese invasion of Tamiang and Northern Langkat — was, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions, the immediate sequel to the destruction of the Batakrijk Aroe (c. 1589), by which the Atjehers installed a vertegenwoordiger — a resident representative of the Sultan of Atjeh — to govern the conquered districts. The invasion is the first formal imposition of Atjehnese sovereignty on the East Coast south of the Atjehnese border, and it established the precedent of resident Atjehnese vertegenwoordigers that would later be invoked in support of 19th-century Atjehnese claims to overlordship over Langkat, Deli and Serdang.
Background: the destruction of Aroe and the coastal invasion
The Bureau’s account places the invasion of Tamiang and Northern Langkat immediately after the destruction of the Batakrijk Aroe. The destruction had been followed, the Bureau records, by an “invasie van vreemde elementen in het kustgebied” — “invasion of foreign elements into the coastal territory.” In the most northerly districts, Tamiang and Northern Langkat, the invading element was specifically Atjehnese: “In Tamiang en Noordelijk Langkat waren het de Atjehers, welke onder een vertegenwoordiger van hun Sultan de macht aan zich trokken” — “In Tamiang and Northern Langkat it was the Atjehers who, under a representative of their Sultan, drew the power to themselves.”
The institution of the Atjehnese vertegenwoordiger
The institution of a vertegenwoordiger van den Sultan van Atjeh — a “representative of the Sultan of Atjeh” — resident in Tamiang and Northern Langkat is, in the Bureau’s account, the first formal imposition of Atjehnese sovereignty on the East Coast. The vertegenwoordiger governed on behalf of the Sultan of Atjeh rather than in his own name, and his presence in the most northerly districts of the coast established the documentary and institutional basis for the later, more sweeping claims of Atjehnese overlordship that would be asserted under Sultan Iskander Moeda and revived in the 1854 reimposition.
The parallel Malay-Djohorese movement south of Tamiang
The Atjehnese invasion of Tamiang and Northern Langkat was paralleled, further south, by a movement of the Maleiers of Djohore. The Bureau records that “meer naar het Zuiden maakten de Maleiers van Djohore, evenals na de vernietiging van het rijk Gasip gebruik van den verwarden toestand om de kuststreken (riviermonden) te bezetten en daardoor een groot economische overwicht op het binnenland te verwerven” — “more to the south, the Malays of Djohore, just as after the destruction of the realm of Gasip, made use of the confused situation to occupy the coastal regions (river mouths) and thereby to acquire a great economic preponderance over the interior.” The pattern established after the conquest of Gasip was thus repeated: Atjehnese seizure of the most northerly districts, Djohorese occupation of the river-mouths further south, and a general dispossession of the Bataks, who were “steeds meer teruggedrongen naar het binnenland, vanwaar zij vroeger uitgezwermi waren naar de kust” — “driven ever further back into the interior, from which they had earlier swarmed out to the coast.”
Consequences
The Atjehnese invasion of Tamiang and Northern Langkat had two long-term consequences. First, it produced the demographic pattern that the Bureau later describes for the Karo Doesoens of Langkat, Deli and Serdang: a Batak population driven into the hills, leaving the coastal plain to Malay and Atjehnese incomers. Second, it established the institution of the Atjehnese vertegenwoordiger — the resident representative of the Sultan — that would later be invoked by the Atjehnese sultanate in support of its claims to overlordship over the entire northern coast.
Significance
The invasion of Tamiang and Northern Langkat is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, the moment at which the Atjehnese presence on the East Coast shifts from military incursion to formal administration. The institution of the vertegenwoordiger transforms the Atjehnese role from that of an outside conqueror to that of a resident sovereign, and prepares the institutional ground for the later, more comprehensive Atjehnese overlordship that would be imposed by Iskander Moeda’s Oostkust-veldtocht.
See Also
- Acheh
- Tamiang
- Langkat
- rijk Aroe
- Batak
- Djohor
- atjehsche-verovering-van-gasip-(begin-16e-eeuw)
- atjehsche-vernietiging-van-het-batakrijk-aroe-(c-1589)
- atjehsche-overheersing-der-noordelijke-kuststaatjes
- sultan-iskander-moeda’s-oostkust-veldtocht
- atjeh-as-opperheer-in-langkat-deli-serdang-(1854)
- Sumatra’s East Coast
- 1589
Source
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Afl. 3: Oostkust van Sumatra. Eerste Stuk, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1918), pp. 116–117. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.