Fullerton's minute on Acheh (21 March 1825)

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tagsevent, correspondence, colonial, anglo-dutch, diplomacy
aliasesFullerton's Nota 1825, Pinang minute of 1825, Fullerton's minute of 21 March 1825, Pinang Nota 1825

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Fullerton’s minute on Acheh of 21 March 1825 is the most important single British policy document on Acheh in the years immediately following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824. It was written by Governor Robert Fullerton of Penang for the Bengal government, concurred in by his councillors W. A. Clubley and R. Ibbetson on 7 April 1825, and is printed in part as Appendix 10 in Van der Kemp’s study. The minute declared the Treaty of Pedir (1819) a “dead letter” and outlined, with remarkable prescience, the dangers that Dutch supremacy on Sumatra would pose to British commerce.

The minute was prepared in response to a Bengal inquiry of 28 January 1825, itself prompted by the London dispatch of 4 August 1824 transmitting the ratified text of the Treaty of London. The Court of Directors had observed that “the treaty concluded by Sir Stamford Raffles and Major Coombs never were carried into effect”, that King Jauhar Alum had “never recovered his lost authority in the slightest degree”, and that the treaty “may truly be said to have been a dead letter from the day it was signed”. Calcutta now invited the Penang government to state what measures might be desirable for attaining the limited commercial objects contemplated by the London convention.

Fullerton began by confirming, from the records and from inquiries conducted by the Malay translator among the principal merchants trading with Acheh, that the haven chiefs along the Sumatran coast had effectively rendered themselves independent of the central authority. This was, in his view, a positive development for British trade: the more ports open, the greater the competition among sellers, and the lower the prices for British shipping. He therefore concluded that “no specific commercial arrangement is at the present required”. The sultan’s authority being a nullity, no fresh treaty with him could be of any use.

The most influential part of the minute, however, was its analysis of the dangers of Dutch supremacy. Fullerton acknowledged that, under articles 9 and 10 of the Treaty of London, Britain had abandoned all political interference on Sumatra, and that the Netherlands therefore enjoyed “the right of making treaties and forming settlements on the island of Sumatra”. He warned, however, that Dutch engagement in Achehnese affairs — for example by supporting one of the contending parties in a future disputed succession — would permit them to set up commercial stations at the principal sea ports, hoist their own colours, and impose duties under article 2 of the treaty, with the result that British trade would be excluded in practice though not in form. He referred explicitly to a recorded Dutch offer of 200 men to support Jauhar Alum’s authority, an offer that had been declined only because the sultan had hoped for British assistance. “The present occupier of the throne is not the legitimate heir”, Fullerton warned; a disputed succession would probably ensue when the Queen-Mother’s ward came of age, and if the Dutch took part on either side the country, whoever might be nominal king, would in reality be under their complete control.

The minute concluded by outlining the only means of counteraction afforded by the treaty: the careful enforcement of article 6, which forbade the establishment of new offices without European permission, and of the Dutch promise — recorded in the notes exchanged at London — to respect Acheh’s independence. Fullerton’s strategic argument, in Van der Kemp’s interpretation, became the programme of British Sumatra policy for the next half-century: Britain would cite article 3 of the 1824 treaty — which forbade unequal duties in independent states — to obstruct any Dutch attempt to consolidate Sumatra; and she would lean on the Dutch guarantee of Achehnese independence, extracted almost by accident at London, to prevent the application of article 2 to the Achehnese ports. The “Pinang Nota” of 1825 thus became the foundational text of the paper war between the two colonial powers over Sumatra, repeatedly invoked by Baud, Fransen van de Putte, and others in later decades. The eventual Sumatra Treaty of 1871 — by which Britain finally released the Netherlands from the Acheh obligation — was, in this sense, the unwinding of the position Fullerton had defined in 1825.

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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