Dutch plenipotentiaries' dispatch of 24 February 1824

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tagsevent, correspondence, diplomacy, colonial, anglo-dutch, treaty
aliases24 February 1824 dispatch, Dutch plenipotentiaries dispatch 24 February 1824, Londensche depêche 24 February 1824

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The Dutch plenipotentiaries’ dispatch of 24 February 1824 — referred to by P. H. Van der Kemp as the Londensche depêche of 24 February 1824 — was the despatch sent by the Dutch plenipotentiaries Fagel and Falck from London to the Netherlands government, three days after their dispatch of 21 February 1824, reporting on the British wishes that had arisen at the eleventh hour in the treaty negotiations and proposing to meet them, not by inserting further articles in the treaty itself, but by a separate nota or declaration to be handed to the British plenipotentiaries at the time of signature. The dispatch thus marks the moment at which the device of the annexed declaration — the form by which the fateful Acheh reservation would enter the treaty of 17 March 1824 — was first proposed by the Dutch plenipotentiaries. Van der Kemp regards the proposal as a “ruinous thought” (heillooze gedachte) from which all the subsequent difficulties of Dutch policy on Sumatra would flow.

Background

The disclosure on 23 February 1824 of the 1819 Acheh convention by the British plenipotentiaries Canning and Wynn (see Raising of the Acheh treaty in London negotiations) had been reported to The Hague in the dispatch of 21 February 1824. In addition to the Acheh question, the British plenipotentiaries had raised other eleventh-hour objections — concerns about the conduct of Dutch agents in the archipelago and demands for an express disavowal of Raffles’s conduct — which could not easily be accommodated within the articles of the treaty already agreed.

The dispatch

In their dispatch of 24 February 1824, the Dutch plenipotentiaries reported on the British wishes and proposed the device of the annexed declaration:

“As to what is equitable in these various proposals, we are inclined to believe that it can be met and satisfied by means of a nota or declaration, to be handed to the British plenipotentiaries at the signing of the treaty. Their Excellencies feel themselves that the taking up or treating of such questions by articles in an open treaty is attended with difficulty.”

The dispatch thus proposed to meet the British wishes, not by altering the text of the treaty, but by annexing to it a separate declaration that would have “the same force as the treaty itself” between the parties. Van der Kemp stresses that this device was the Dutch plenipotentiaries’ own; it was not demanded by the British.

Van der Kemp’s critique

Van der Kemp’s commentary on the dispatch of 24 February 1824 is severe. “It must be deeply regretted”, he writes, “that our plenipotentiaries took this road.” He makes four points.

First, the Dutch plenipotentiaries had already accepted several provisions in the treaty itself that were turned against Dutch interests and in which “only the form of reciprocity was observed.” If they had wished to insert further provisions securing the Dutch authority against abuse of trust by English executive officers, the British would have rejected such proposals — yet here were the Dutch accepting a whole document that had no other tendency than to guarantee England against wrongdoing on the Dutch side.

Second, the proposed declaration would not be “a sharply formulated set of articles, but a broad narrative” to which, nevertheless, “the same force as the treaty itself” would be accorded between the parties.

Third, the Dutch plenipotentiaries’ defence — that “all those matters could not well be said in an open treaty” — was unconvincing. If the declaration was meant to be secret, “it appears from nothing that secrecy was required, and it was by no means observed, since the exchanged papers soon became part of the public domain.” Indeed the notas were soon published in the collections of Van Hogendorp, Elout, de Waal, de Sturler, Meinsma and others.

Fourth, the device placed the British in the position of the demanding party and the Dutch in that of the yielding party. The British were thereby given the opportunity to set out their wishes and opinions “much more broadly and otherwise than would originally have been in the intention, even in some respects perhaps in the design, of our plenipotentiaries” — indeed, in some respects directly contrary to what the Dutch plenipotentiaries had originally and to the end so strongly maintained.

Consequences

The proposal of 24 February 1824 was accepted, and the British nota and the Dutch counter-nota on Acheh were exchanged at the time of signature. The Dutch counter-nota went beyond what the King’s verbal authorisation of 13 February 1824 had warranted, declaring unconditionally that the Netherlands would “regulate its relations with Acheh in such a manner that this State, without losing anything of its independence, should offer to navigators and traders that permanent safety, which could not exist except through the moderate exercise of European influence.” This gratuitous declaration of Acheh’s independence — not required by the treaty and not warranted by the King’s instructions — would, in Van der Kemp’s analysis, paralyse Dutch policy on Sumatra for nearly half a century. It was invoked by Governor Fullerton of Penang in his minute of 21 March 1825 and his Pinang Nota of 1825 as a bar to the assertion of Dutch authority on Sumatra’s East Coast, and would not be undone until the Sumatra Treaty of 1871.

See Also

Source

Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.

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