The advice of 12 February 1824 of Minister Elout — referred to by P. H. Van der Kemp as Elout’s nota of 12 February 1824 — was the lengthy memorandum addressed by the Netherlands Minister of Finance, Elout (formerly Commissioner-General, and at the time also acting as chief adviser on colonial and foreign affairs), to King William I on the first draft of the Anglo-Dutch treaty that had been brought from London by his son, Captain Elout. In strong and well-reasoned terms, the advice warned the King against articles 10, 11 and 12 of the draft convention — the provisions for reciprocal treatment of British shipping at Tapanoeli and Anjer — as sources of future disputes, and urged that, rather than grant “permanent rights, however trifling in the first instance,” the Netherlands should rather pay the £100,000 demanded by Britain and “do the whole business with a sum of money.” The advice was accepted by the King, with the result that articles 10–12 of the draft were modified before signature; but, as Van der Kemp stresses, Elout was not at the same time consulted on the Acheh reservation — an omission Van der Kemp finds “especially strange” since his own son was the bearer of the Acheh disclosure.
Background
By the close of 1823 the Dutch plenipotentiaries Fagel and Falck had reached agreement with the British plenipotentiaries Canning and Wynn on a draft convention revising the treaty of 13 August 1814. The draft, dated 1 February 1824 (see First draft of 1824 Anglo-Dutch treaty), contained, in addition to the principal cessions and the article 9 recognition of Dutch supremacy over Sumatra, three reciprocal provisions on shipping — articles 10, 11 and 12 — that exceeded the Dutch plenipotentiaries’ instructions and required the King’s authorisation.
The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs was at the time without a head; it was provisionally administered by the diplomat Reinhold, who candidly admitted in a letter of 6 February 1824 to Elout that he did “not consider himself competent to judge of matters of over-sea interests, which are naturally entirely foreign to me.” The Ministry of Colonies was likewise without a head, since Falck was himself at London. For these reasons all the papers of the London negotiators were submitted for advice to Elout, although he was the departmental chief of Finance; and so it was that the draft brought by his son Captain Elout came into his hands.
The advice
In a broad memorandum dated 12 February 1824, Elout set out his views. His disapproval of articles 10, 11 and 12 was “serious and entirely correct.” He warned against the saving of one million guilders (the price of conceding “permanent rights, however trifling in the first instance”), since the possibility of new disputes might arise “perhaps from the slightest and least foreseen circumstances.” “The friendly reception at Anjer”, he argued, “is so much in the spirit of our government that it cannot or will not be refused. To give a right to it, however, is to bring trouble upon oneself; for an ungracious ship’s captain complains once, and that too without reason, and there is a point of quarrel between the two Governments. Experience teaches that this is no far-fetched supposition.” The bay of Tapanoeli, he similarly argued, was open to all for service; nobody should be excluded; but the provision that British and Dutch ships should be treated “on the same footing” invited contestation. Elout closed with the insistence that “the three named articles contain so many and such great objections, that one does not hesitate to advise Your Majesty to do the whole business rather with a sum of money — even if it be the sum demanded — than to grant by treaty any special and permanent privileges, which one fears may well be contested from more than one side.”
The King’s acceptance and the Acheh omission
The King followed Elout’s “all-round sensible advice” and ordered articles 10–12 modified before signature. But, Van der Kemp observes, Elout was not at the same time apprised of the Acheh incident that his son had also brought from London — the British disclosure of the 1819 Acheh convention. “However strange it seems to me, especially since the minister’s own son was the messenger of it, I must assume that his advice was not asked upon it.” Had Elout’s advice been sought, Van der Kemp argues, it would “presumably have been adverse, on precisely the grounds he urged against Tapanoeli and Anjer — namely, that such provisions give rise only to disputes.” Elout would also have pointed out that, under article 9 of the draft convention, the protection of stranded sailors on the coast of Acheh could be adequately secured by the Dutch themselves, and that no separate reservation was required.
The omission is, in Van der Kemp’s reading, the more culpable because Elout had expressly warned in his advice that “it is moreover necessary that a clause be inserted by which all interference of the English in Sumatra is excluded, just as that of the Netherlands in the Malaccan peninsula.” The King’s authorisation of 13 February 1824, issued on the day after Elout’s advice, authorised the Dutch plenipotentiaries to consent to the British request for an Acheh reservation — without any such consultation.
Significance
Elout’s advice of 12 February 1824 is, in Van der Kemp’s view, one of the most sensible state papers produced during the negotiations. It correctly identified the dangers inherent in articles 10–12 of the draft, and its counsel was accepted. The fact that Elout’s strictures were not applied to the Acheh reservation — which was, in Van der Kemp’s analysis, vulnerable on the very same grounds — is the central grievance of Van der Kemp’s study. The Acheh clause, smuggled into the treaty without Elout’s scrutiny, would within a year be 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.
See Also
- Elout
- Captain Elout
- Reinhold
- Anton Reinhard Falck
- Hendrik Fagel
- First draft of 1824 Anglo-Dutch treaty
- King’s authorization of 13 February 1824
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
- Raising of the Acheh treaty in London negotiations
- Treaty of Pedir (1819)
- Fullerton’s minute on Acheh (21 March 1825)
- Pinang Nota (1825)
- Sphere of influence
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.