The Fagel-Elout negotiations of August 1820 — referred to by P. H. Van der Kemp as the August 1820 nota exchange — were the diplomatic exchanges conducted in London on 4 August 1820 between the British plenipotentiaries Lord Castlereagh and Canning and the Dutch plenipotentiaries Fagel and Falck (assisted by Elout) over the unresolved commercial and territorial disputes left by the treaty of 13 August 1814. Although the negotiations did not at the time result in a new treaty, they produced two pieces of diplomatic correspondence that would later be revived — and, in Van der Kemp’s argument, distorted — by the British plenipotentiaries during the negotiations of 1824. The most important of these was the Dutch declaration that the Netherlands government had no design to seek “either political supremacy or commercial monopoly in the Eastern Archipelago.”
Background
The treaty of 13 August 1814 had restored to the Netherlands the colonial possessions seized by Britain during the Napoleonic wars, but had left a number of commercial and financial disputes unresolved. These disputes — chiefly concerning the valuation and compensation for Dutch factories in Hindostan, the status of Singapore and the Malay Peninsula, and the reciprocal treatment of shipping — were referred, by the Convention of 24 January 1817, to the decision of the European governments. By 1820 the British government, increasingly irritated by the slow execution of the 1814 treaty and by the alleged misconduct of Dutch agents in the archipelago, pressed for a revision.
The exchange of 4 August 1820
The Dutch plenipotentiaries Fagel and Falck met with their British counterparts Lord Castlereagh and Canning in London. After discussion, the British plenipotentiaries drew up minutes (“by way of protocol”) recording the Dutch declaration: “It has been ascertained, on the other hand, that the Government of the Netherlands distinctly and solemnly disclaim any design on their part to aim either at political supremacy or at commercial monopoly in the Eastern Archipelago.” The Dutch plenipotentiaries, in reply, did not echo this declaration about the future; they confined themselves to a statement about the past: “Les soussignés se trouvent heureux de pouvoir assurer de leur côté Messieurs les Plénipotentiaires Britanniques que le Gouvernement des Pays-Bas dans l’Inde, après la reprise de ses possessions dans cette partie du monde, n’a fait aucune démarche tendant à un commerce exclusif, ou à se procurer une suprématie quelconque aux dépens d’autres nations” — that is, that the Netherlands government, since the resumption of its possessions, had made no step towards exclusive commerce or supremacy “at the expense of other nations”, which is something else again.
Van der Kemp emphasises the difference. The British formulation referred to intentions for the future; the Dutch formulation referred to conduct in the past. The Dutch moreover added the qualifier “at the expense of other nations [that might have rights]” — a reservation that allowed them, in their own view, to claim a free hand within their own sphere. When, four years later, the British would again invoke this declaration in the negotiations of 1824, the formula would be transposed from a Dutch reply about the past into a Dutch undertaking for the future — a transformation Van der Kemp considered a falsification of the diplomatic record.
The concept-convention of 24 July 1820
The negotiations of August 1820 had been preceded by a Dutch concept-convention of 24 July 1820, in which article 1 expressly disavowed the conduct of Raffles and his subordinates and recognised Dutch rights in the archipelago. The concept-convention came to nothing at the time, “everything remained in consideration”; but its existence, like that of the August 1820 notas, was later revived in the 1824 negotiations to provide diplomatic ammunition for the British side.
Significance
Van der Kemp presents the August 1820 exchange as a study in the ambiguity of diplomatic language and in the dangers of leaving disputed questions undecided. The British minutes of the exchange, however innocuous in their original form, would later be exhumed in 1824 and used — particularly in the raising of the Acheh treaty of 23 February 1824 — as if they bore the force of a treaty. Van der Kemp stresses that, since the 1820 negotiations had not resulted in any agreement, “those pieces had by no means the force of a treaty, intended to operate for the future”; and he contrasts the cautious Dutch reply of August 1820 with the bold British invocation of 1824.
The Fagel-Elout negotiations thus form a connecting link between the treaty of 1814, the convention of 1817, and the treaty of 1824. They show that the suzerainty question — the question whether the Netherlands would enjoy “supremacy” in the Eastern Archipelago, or merely the possession of certain defined territories — was already a live issue in 1820, four years before the London treaty would force the Dutch to choose.
See Also
- Anton Reinhard Falck
- Hendrik Fagel
- Elout
- George Canning
- Concept-convention of 24 July 1820
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1814)
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
- Convention of 24 January 1817
- Raising of the Acheh treaty in London negotiations
- Suzerainty question
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
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.