The Atjehsche verovering van Gasip — the Acehnese conquest of the kingdom of Gasip — was the early-sixteenth-century military campaign by which the Atjehsche rijk overran and destroyed the once-powerful Sumatran kingdom of Gasip, which had stretched from the lower Siak River deep into the southern interior of Sumatra as far as the legendary Minangkabau kingdom of Pagarroejoeng. The conquest, recorded in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions as a defining event in the pre-colonial history of Sumatra’s East Coast, was carried out with the help of the orang-Pandan — the inhabitants of the Petalangan country — and was followed by the forcible removal of the Gasip princes to Atjeh, leaving the conquered realm to dissolve into the federation of small independent landschapjes that the upper-Siak Tapoeng federations would later become.
Background: the realm of Gasip
Before the rise of the Sultanate of Siak the lower-Siak region had been dominated by the kingdom of Gasip, which the Encyclopaedisch Bureau describes as having stretched far beyond the later sultanate’s boundaries and to have bordered, in the deep interior, on the mythical Minangkabau kingdom of Pagarroejoeng. The Bureau notes that “nog moeten in het oerwoud langs de Soengei Gasip overblijfselen van den kraton zijn te vinden” — “remnants of the kraton must still be found in the primeval forest along the Soengei Gasip” — and that “er onder de Siaksche hoofden enkelen zijn, die den oorsprong hunner kabesaran’s (rijks-orna mentee) terugbrengen tot dat rijk” — “there are among the Siak chiefs some who trace the origin of their kabesaran (regal ornaments) back to that realm.” Gasip was thus remembered as the legitimate predecessor-state of Siak, even after its destruction.
The conquest
In the early years of the sixteenth century the Atjehsche rijk, described by the Bureau as “the jealous Atjehsche rijk” — het naijverige Atjehsche rijk — went to war with Gasip and overthrew it. The campaign was not an Atjehnese undertaking alone: the Atjehers operated in alliance with the orang-Pandan, the inhabitants of the Petalangan country, whose collaboration gave the campaign its inter-ethnic character. The Bureau records the outcome with stark brevity: “Toen de Atjehers, met behulp van de orang-Pandan (de bewoners der Petalangan) Gasip overweldigd hadden, voerden zij de vorsten gevankelijk mede naar Atjeh en lieten het verwoeste rijk achter ten prooi aan ontbinding” — “When the Atjehers, with the help of the orang-Pandan (the inhabitants of the Petalangan), had overwhelmed Gasip, they led the princes away captive to Atjeh and left the destroyed realm to the prey of dissolution.”
Consequences for the East Coast
The destruction of Gasip opened the lower Siak to a new contender. “Hiervan maakte de Sultan van Djohore gebruik om zich aan de monding der Siak-rivier te vestigen” — “Of this the Sultan of Djohore made use to establish himself at the mouth of the Siak river” — and Djohorese influence henceforth overshadowed the coast, with the inland reverting to a loose federation of independent small landschapjes. The Atjehnese victory thus indirectly produced two of the central features of the pre-colonial East Coast: the Djohorese bridgehead at Sabah Aoer (governed by a sjahbandar on the Sultan of Djohore’s behalf) and the inland federation of the Tapoeng country (upper-Siak). Both arrangements, the Bureau notes, served the Sultan of Djohore’s strategic purpose of controlling the great trade route between Pagarroejoeng and Malakka along the Siak and upper-Kampar rivers.
Place in the long Atjeh–East Coast relationship
The conquest of Gasip is the earliest of the Atjehnese interventions on Sumatra’s East Coast recorded in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey. It anticipates, by more than a century, the better-known campaigns of Sultan Iskander Moeda of Atjeh along the same coast, and the later Atjehsche overlordship of the northern coastal statelets of Langkat, Deli and Serdang. The pattern established at Gasip — Atjehnese military force co-operating with interior peoples, the deportation of defeated princes, and the dissolution of the conquered polity into smaller fragments — would be repeated under Iskander Moeda and again, in altered form, when the Atjehers destroyed the Batak realm of Aroe.
See Also
- Acheh
- rijk Gasip
- orang-Pandan
- Petalangan
- Siak
- Djohor
- Tapoeng-streken
- Pagarroejoeng
- Sultan Iskander Muda
- atjehsche-vernietiging-van-het-batakrijk-aroe-(c-1589)
- atjehsche-overheersing-der-noordelijke-kuststaatjes
- sultan-iskander-moeda’s-oostkust-veldtocht
- Sumatra’s East Coast
- 1509
- 1511
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. 102–103. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.