Instructions of 31 August 1824

Properties2
tagsevent, correspondence, colonial, anglo-dutch, treaty
aliasesIndische instructiën 31 August 1824, Dutch instructions to the Indian government 31 August 1824, Instructions of 31 August 1824 to the Indies

5 min read

The instructions of 31 August 1824 — referred to by P. H. Van der Kemp as the Indische instructiën of 31 August 1824 — were the instructions issued by the Netherlands government to the Indian government at Batavia regarding the execution of the recently ratified Anglo-Dutch treaty of 17 March 1824. Drafted under minister Elout’s supervision and advised upon by Falck on 6 August 1824, the instructions incorporated — without examination — the British (and Van der Kemp would say, false) interpretation of article 6 of the 1819 Acheh convention as excluding the trade of other European powers and Americans from Acheh. The instructions thus perpetuated, at the level of executive government, the misunderstanding that had entered the treaty of 17 March 1824 by the back door of the annexed notas; and they were followed by the Dutch colonial historians — including Professor Lauts and Smulders — who repeated the error in their accounts of the treaty.

Background

After the ratification of the treaty of 17 March 1824, the Netherlands government had to communicate the new arrangements to its Indian government at Batavia. The instructions for this purpose were drawn up under the supervision of minister Elout (whose advice of 12 February 1824 had already influenced the form of the treaty), and were submitted for advice to Falck, who on 6 August 1824 returned them without objection. The instructions were issued on 31 August 1824.

The misinterpretation of article 6

The most important feature of the instructions, for Van der Kemp’s purpose, is their treatment of the 1819 Acheh convention. The British nota annexed to the treaty of 17 March 1824 had declared that the 1819 convention was incompatible with article 3 of the new treaty (prohibiting unequal commercial duties), and that the British plenipotentiaries “would gladly see it modified by a simple arrangement for the hospitable reception of British ships and subjects in the port of Acheh.” The Dutch counter-nota, in turn, had declared that the Netherlands would respect the independence of Acheh.

Minister Elout, in his Pro Memorie on the instructions, repeated the British interpretation that the 1819 convention had “excluded the trade of other European powers and the Americans from Acheh” — an interpretation that, as Van der Kemp demonstrates at length, was incorrect. Article 6 of the 1819 convention prohibited residence, not trade. It was therefore not in conflict with article 3 of the new treaty (prohibiting unequal commercial duties), but with article 9 (absolutely excluding British treaties with native states on Sumatra). The Dutch plenipotentiaries at London had allowed themselves to be drawn into a discussion on the wrong article, and the instructions of 31 August 1824 perpetuated the error.

Falck, in advising on the instructions on 6 August 1824, “without of course contesting it”, accepted the misinterpretation. The instructions of 31 August 1824 thus contained, in their treatment of the 1819 convention, an error that would be reproduced by the Dutch colonial historians for the next half-century.

The historians’ repetition

Van der Kemp notes that the misinterpretation was repeated by the Dutch historians of the colonial period. Professor G. Lauts asked: “Had not Raffles and Coombs, in the self-concluded treaty with the sultan of Acheen of the 22nd of Grass-month 1819, article 6, excluded the trade of that kingdom from all other European powers and the Americans?” — to which Van der Kemp replies: “By no means; nor was it self-concluded.” Smulders, in his otherwise good dissertation on the treaty of 1824, read the article in the same erroneous sense. The instructions of 31 August 1824 thus became the channel through which the British misrepresentation of the 1819 convention passed into the Dutch historical canon.

Significance

The instructions of 31 August 1824 are significant in Van der Kemp’s analysis as the document by which the misunderstanding of the 1819 Acheh convention — introduced at London in February–March 1824 by the British plenipotentiaries and accepted, without examination, by the Dutch plenipotentiaries — was transmitted to the Indian government and so to the colonial historians. They thus form one of the links in the chain of documents by which the Acheh reservation, “smuggled into the treaty without Elout’s scrutiny”, was transformed from a diplomatic incident into a settled interpretation of the treaty of 17 March 1824 — an interpretation that, Van der Kemp argues, paralysed Dutch policy on Sumatra for nearly half a century and contributed directly to the long Aceh conflict of the late nineteenth century.

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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