The Atjehsche vernietiging van het Batakrijk Aroe — the Acehnese destruction of the Batak realm of Aroe — was, according to the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions, the late-sixteenth-century cataclysm by which the Atjehers shattered the great Batak kingdom of Aroe that had once extended along the Strait of Malakka from the present cultivation district of the East Coast of Sumatra south-eastward into what is now south-eastern Atjeh. Placed by the Bureau “probably” in 1589 — “waarschijnlijk 1589 door de Atjehers vernietigd” — the destruction of Aroe was the second of the great Atjehnese interventions on the East Coast recorded by the Bureau, and was followed by an Atjehnese invasion of Tamiang and Noordelijk Langkat, and by a recognition of Atjehnese influence — “voluntary or forced” — as far inland as the Northern Karo high plateau.
The Batak realm of Aroe
Before the rise of the Sultanate of Siak the East Coast of Sumatra had been divided between two great realms. In the south stretched the powerful kingdom of Gasip, which the Atjehers had destroyed in the early sixteenth century. In the north, the Bataks had not only held the interior but, as the Bureau records, “de grenzen van hun groote Batak-rijk Aroe uitbreidden langs de straat van Malaka tot in Z. O. Atjeh” — “the borders of their great Batak realm of Aroe extended along the Strait of Malakka into south-eastern Atjeh.” The Batak realm of Aroe was thus the predecessor-state of the later coastal sultanates of Langkat, Deli and Serdang, and its destruction opened the East Coast to a series of foreign invasions and resettlements.
The destruction
The Encyclopaedisch Bureau records the destruction laconically, noting that the Batakrijk Aroe — which it had described a few lines earlier as a great realm reaching into south-eastern Atjeh — “volgens de sage, waarschijnlijk 1589 door de Atjehers vernietigd werd” — “according to the saga, was probably destroyed by the Atjehers in 1589.” The attribution to “saga” (sage) signals the Bureau’s acknowledgement that the date rests on traditional Batak memory rather than on a dated contemporary chronicle, and the qualifier “probably” (waarschijnlijk) is the Bureau’s hedge on the precision of the year.
The destruction was followed, the Bureau continues, by a recognition of Atjehnese influence “in dien tijd, vrijwillig of gedwongen, erkend” — “in that time, voluntarily or forced, recognised” — “tot in het gebied der Noordelijke hoogvlakte” — “as far as the territory of the Northern high plateau” (i.e. the Karo hoogvlakte). The Bataks were increasingly driven back into the interior; the coastal plain, which they had once inhabited and from which they had once “ausgewermt” — swarmed outward — was now taken over by the invaders.
The Atjehsche invasion of Tamiang and Northern Langkat
The destruction of Aroe was immediately followed by an Atjehnese move into the most northerly coastal districts. “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 an Atjehnese vertegenwoordiger — a resident representative of the Sultan of Atjeh — in Tamiang and northern Langkat is, in the Bureau’s account, the first formal imposition of Atjehnese sovereignty on the East Coast south of the Atjehnese border. The parallel process further south, where the Maleiers of Djohore took over the coastal river-mouths, completed the dispossession of the Bataks.
Consequences
The destruction of Aroe had three long-term consequences for the East Coast. First, it produced the demographic pattern that the Bureau describes for the Karo Doesoens: a Batak population driven into the hills, leaving the coastal plain to Malay and Atjehnese incomers. Second, it established the precedent of Atjehnese vertegenwoordigers — resident representatives — governing stretches of the East Coast on behalf of the Sultan of Atjeh, a precedent that would later be invoked in the 19th-century Atjehnese claims to overlordship over Langkat, Deli and Serdang. Third, it left a memory of Atjehnese power in the institutions of the inland Bataks: the Karo-Batak radja berempat — the “four-princes” institution that the Atjehsche viervorsten-systeem imposed on the Karo hoogvlakte — is, the Bureau notes, attributed by Karo tradition to the period of Atjehnese supremacy.
Significance
The destruction of Aroe is the second of the great Atjehnese interventions on the East Coast recorded in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, and the immediate prelude to the Atjehnese seizure of Tamiang and Northern Langkat. It marks the moment at which the Atjehsche rijk’s reach along the Strait of Malakka extended, in effect if not yet in formal sovereignty, from its own borders as far south as the Asahan River. The Bureau’s placement of the event “probably in 1589” makes it a chronological anchor for the long century of Atjehnese East Coast dominance that would be consolidated under Sultan Iskander Moeda and only shaken off — briefly — in 1769.
See Also
- Acheh
- rijk Aroe
- Batak
- Batak-Karo
- Tamiang
- Langkat
- atjehsche-verovering-van-gasip-(begin-16e-eeuw)
- atjehsche-invasie-in-tamiang-en-noordelijk-langkat-(c-1589)
- atjehsche-overheersing-der-noordelijke-kuststaatjes
- sultan-iskander-moeda’s-oostkust-veldtocht
- atjehsche-viervorsten-systeem
- radja berempat
- Straits of Malacca
- 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, 174. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.