The Fullerton memorandum of 1825 — a despatch from Governor R. Fullerton of Penang on the impracticability of establishing European influence over Acheh — is cited by C. Snouck Hurgronje at the opening of The Achehnese as one of the more percipient European assessments of the Achehnese problem in the years preceding the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824. Together with the Hastings letter incident of 1786 and the testimony of Captain Francis Light, it served to define the British view of Acheh that Holland inherited when it took over responsibility for the security of trade in that country.
The Memorandum
Fullerton wrote, in the passage quoted by Snouck Hurgronje:
“With respect to the future establishment of European influence over Acheen, it may be observed that such an arrangement on our part was long considered a desirable object, but it has been found utterly impracticable without employing a large military force to overawe the inhabitants.”
The memorandum thus placed on official record a conclusion which the British East India Company had been forced to draw from more than a generation of fruitless negotiation with the sultans of Acheh. The despatch formed part of the correspondence that accompanied and followed the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824, by which the Dutch Government, with what Snouck Hurgronje calls “great lack of foresight,” entered into a treaty guaranteeing the security of trade and shipping in Acheh while simultaneously stipulating that it would respect the independence of the country — a stipulation which rendered its undertaking impossible to carry out.
Context
Fullerton’s memorandum was not the first but the most authoritative statement of the British view. As early as 1786, Captain Francis Light had written to the Governor-General of Bengal that Acheh was “a good road but no place of security against an enemy there,” and that to form a settlement there of safety and advantage “a force sufficient to subdue all the chiefs would be necessary.” In the same spirit, James Price had written to the chairman of the Company in London that he preferred Penang to the port of Acheen “as being more healthy and entirely free from that oppression, war and confusion which have ever distressed and at length driven out every European nation who has attempted to settle there.” Fullerton, writing in the year after the Treaty of 1824, thus merely reaffirmed what had been British doctrine for a generation.
Legacy
The memorandum would in time be confirmed by the Dutch themselves. “The British experience of 1786” — that to effect the security of trade and shipping in Acheh it would be absolutely necessary “to subdue all the chiefs” and “to overawe the inhabitants” — “was now, after a long struggle, to be acquired by the Dutch as well.” When the first Dutch expedition of 1873 ended in failure and the death of General Köhler, the prophecy of the Fullerton memorandum was at last fulfilled. Half a century of complaints of robberies and murders of European and American traders by the Achehnese had finally driven the Dutch to the same conclusion that Fullerton had reached in 1825: that no treaty with the sultan could be effective without a military force capable of subduing the chiefs of the country.
See Also
- Hastings letter incident
- First Dutch attack on Acheh
- Treaty of 1824
- Treaty of 1871
- Acheh War
- Prince of Wales Island
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.