Langkat’s appeal to Siak against Atjeh (1862) was the formal request, made in 1862 by the Radja of Langkat to Sultan Tongkoe Ismail of Siak, for an act of Siak recognition that would unlock the protection of the Nederlandsch-Indisch Gouvernement against Atjehnese oppression. Recorded by the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions as the immediate occasion for the Dutch intervention that extinguished Atjehnese overlordship over the East Coast, the appeal is the moment at which the East Coast statelets — formally Siak dependencies, in fact Atjehnese tributaries since 1854 — turned back to Siak and the Dutch as their protectors against Atjeh.
Background: the Atjehnese overlordship since 1854
The appeal of 1862 was made against the background of the 1854 reimposition of Atjehnese overlordship. The Bureau records that Serdang, Deli and Langkat — having freed themselves from Siak’s influence in the decay of the Siak sultanate after Sultan Said Ali’s death in 1821 — had been forced, since 1854, to admit the overlordship of Atjeh. The Atjehnese overlordship was not a light burden; the Radja of Langkat was, the Bureau records, “de onderdrukking door Atjeh moede” — “weary of the oppression by Atjeh.” His appeal to Siak was a deliberate strategic move: by securing Siak’s formal recognition of Langkat’s status as a Siak dependency, he would unlock the protection of the Netherlands-Indies Government, which had formally guaranteed Siak’s overlordship over the East Coast statelets in the Siak tractate of 1 February [[1858]].
The appeal
The Bureau records the appeal in a single, dense sentence: “In dat jaar wendde de Radja van Langkat, de onderdrukking door Atjeh moede, zich tot zijn vroegeren opperheer Siak, om door diens erkenning de hulp van het N. I. Gouvern. tegen Atjeh te verkrijgen” — “In that year 1862 the Radja of Langkat, weary of the oppression by Atjeh, turned to his former overlord Siak, in order, through Siak’s recognition, to obtain the help of the Netherlands-Indies Government against Atjeh.”
The appeal was thus a triple-stranded instrument: an act of submission to Siak (formally re-establishing the Siak overlordship that had lapsed in practice); an act of deference to Sultan Tongkoe Ismail of Siak personally (whose intercession with the Netherlands-Indies Government was the immediate channel of Dutch protection); and an act of appeal to the Nederlandsch-Indisch Gouvernement (whose guarantee of Siak’s overlordship in the Siak tractate of 1858 was the legal basis on which Dutch protection could now be claimed).
The Dutch response: the Netscher mission
The response of the Netherlands-Indies Government was rapid. “Hierna werd, op aandrang van Tongkoe Ismail van Siak, door het Gouvernement ten slotte aan den resident Netscher van Riouw, waaronder Siak toen nog ressorteerde, in 1862 opgedragen, meer aanrakingen te zoeken met de verschillende hoofden der in het Siak-tractaat als onderhoorigheden van Siak genoemde staatjes, teneinde deze te bewegen tot eene erkenning van die onderhoorigheid” — “Hereafter, at the insistence of Tongkoe Ismail of Siak, the Government finally instructed Resident Netscher of Riouw — under whose jurisdiction Siak then still fell — in 1862 to seek more contacts with the various chiefs of the statelets named in the Siak tractate as dependencies of Siak, in order to persuade them to an acknowledgement of that dependency.”
The Netscher mission of 1862 was thus the direct sequel to the Langkat appeal. The statelets of Deli, Serdang, Langkat and several smaller polities signed acts of recognition of Siak’s overlordship; Asahan refused, and was reduced by armed force in 1865. In 1866 a Dutch naval intervention ended the “vexaties der Atjehers in het Langkatsche” — “the vexations of the Atjehers in the Langkat territory” — and drove the Atjehers back into their own territory.
Significance
The 1862 appeal is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, the diplomatic turning-point of the nineteenth-century East Coast. It is the moment at which the East Coast statelets, formally Siak dependencies, in fact Atjehnese tributaries, were transferred — by their own act of appeal — from the Atjehnese to the Dutch sphere. The appeal thus closes the 1854 reimposition of Atjehnese overlordship and opens the sequence of Dutch interventions — the Netscher mission of 1862, the naval expulsion of the Atjehers in 1866, the 1878 transfer of Langkat’s Tamiang rights — by which the East Coast was finally absorbed into the colonial state. The appeal is also, in the longer perspective, the immediate prelude to the Atjeh-oorlog of 1873: the loss of its East Coast tributaries was one of the principal grievances of the Sultan of Atjeh in the breakdown of Dutch-Atjehnese relations.
See Also
- Acheh
- Langkat
- Siak
- Tongkoe Ismail
- Netscher
- Riouw en Onderhoorigheden
- Deli
- Serdang
- Asahan
- atjeh-as-opperheer-in-langkat-deli-serdang-(1854)
- atjehsche-overheersing-der-noordelijke-kuststaatjes
- dutch-marine-expulsion-of-atjehers-from-langkat-(1866)
- Siak tractate of 1 February 1858
- Aceh War
- 1854
- 1858
- 1862
- 1865
- 1866
Source
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Afl. 3: Oostkust van Sumatra. Eerste Stuk, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1918), p. 114. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.