The first draft of the 1824 Anglo-Dutch treaty — referred to by P. H. Van der Kemp as the ontwerp-conventie of 1 February 1824 — was the preliminary draft of the treaty of 17 March 1824, drawn up by the Dutch plenipotentiaries Fagel and Falck after prolonged negotiations with their British counterparts Canning and Wynn over the financial and territorial disputes inherited from the treaty of 13 August 1814. The draft was approved by both parties but, because it contained articles (notably articles 10, 11 and 12) that exceeded the Dutch plenipotentiaries’ instructions, was referred to The Hague for the King’s authorisation. The draft is chiefly significant in Van der Kemp’s study for two things: the absence of any provision concerning Acheh, and the inclusion of the reciprocal shipping articles at Tapanoeli and Anjer that provoked Elout’s critical advice of 12 February 1824.
Background
By the close of 1823 the long-running disputes between Britain and the Netherlands over the execution of the treaty of 1814 — chiefly concerning the valuation of the Dutch factories in Hindostan, the status of Singapore and the Malay Peninsula, and the financial settlements still outstanding — had reached a decisive phase. The Dutch plenipotentiaries had been instructed to seek an unambiguous recognition of Dutch supremacy over Sumatra in exchange for the surrender of Dutch factories in Hindostan, of Malacca, and of all claims to Singapore. After long discussion, the parties found themselves able to agree on the substance, and the result was the draft convention of 1 February 1824.
Articles 10, 11 and 12
The draft convention contained, in articles 10, 11 and 12, three provisions of considerable importance for the future of Dutch-British relations in the archipelago. Article 10 provided that the bay of Tapanoeli (included in the cession of Bengkulu to the Netherlands) should at all times be open and accessible to ships under the British flag, and that during their stay there they should be treated on the same footing as the ships of His Netherlands Majesty. Article 11 bound the Netherlands to command that British ships putting in at the point of Anjer on Java should be received in the friendliest manner and supplied with refreshments and necessaries, “as well as the ships under the Dutch flag.” Article 12 contained reciprocal provisions.
Van der Kemp considered these articles the most objectionable feature of the draft. Either they were innocent, in which case they need not have been included; or they had the broader significance that the British would later claim for them, in which case they were dangerous. In either case they were, in his view, out of place in a treaty whose single object was to allocate to each party its own well-defined sphere of influence. They would later form the principal target of Elout’s advice of 12 February 1824.
The absence of an Acheh provision
A striking feature of the first draft, on which Van der Kemp lays great emphasis, is the absence of any provision concerning Acheh. Throughout the entire course of the negotiations on the first draft, “this point was not brought forward with a single word”; neither side’s plenipotentiaries seemed to know of the existence of the Acheh convention of 1819 concluded by Raffles. Van der Kemp suggests that neither Canning nor Wynn was aware of the 1819 convention; it was the London administration of the East India Company that later “unexpectedly drew the attention” of the British plenipotentiaries to the convention, after the draft was already approved by both parties and only the formality of royal authorisation remained.
The draft’s silence on Acheh is thus of capital importance: it shows that, when the negotiations began, the Acheh question was not considered by either side to be a substantive obstacle to the treaty. The sudden raising of the Acheh treaty on 23 February 1824, after the first draft had been agreed, was an ex post facto complication that, in Van der Kemp’s view, the Dutch plenipotentiaries mishandled — with the consequence that an entirely new clause on Acheh was added to the treaty by nota, with results that paralysed Dutch policy on Sumatra for the next half-century.
The reference to The Hague
Because the first draft contained articles 10, 11 and 12, and other provisions, that exceeded the Dutch plenipotentiaries’ instructions, it could not be signed without the King’s authorisation. To facilitate the reference, the Dutch plenipotentiaries entrusted the draft to Captain Elout (son of the minister Elout of Finance, formerly Commissioner-General), who was to carry it personally to The Hague. While the captain was on the point of departure, the British plenipotentiaries made their surprise disclosure of the 1819 Acheh convention — a disclosure that triggered the King’s authorisation of 13 February 1824, the renewed negotiations of late February, and ultimately the awkward Acheh clause of the definitive treaty of 17 March 1824.
See Also
- Anton Reinhard Falck
- Hendrik Fagel
- Elout
- Captain Elout
- George Canning
- Charles Watkin Williams Wynn
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1814)
- Fagel-Elout negotiations (August 1820)
- Concept-convention of 24 July 1820
- Elout’s advice of 12 February 1824
- King’s authorization of 13 February 1824
- Raising of the Acheh treaty in London negotiations
- Treaty of Pedir (1819)
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- 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.