Nisero affair (1883–1885)

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tagsevent, maritime, political, colonial, atjeh-oorlog, 19th-century, british, dutch, atjehnese, westkust, diplomatic, aceh-war, 1884, 1885, diplomatic-incident, tenom, nisero, laging-tobias, naval, achehnese, diplomacy, military
aliasesNisero-quaestie, the Nisero question, the wreck of the Nisero, the Teunöm hostage crisis, the Panga affair, Nisero question, Nisero incident, the Nisero affair, de treurige Nisero-quaestie, Nisero-quaesties, Nisero affair (November 1883 – September 1884), Nisero affair, Nisero-kwestie, Wreck of the Nisero, Nisero captivity, Tenom Nisero affair, Stranding of the Nisero, Nisero kwestie, Teunom affair

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The Nisero affair of 1883–1885 — in Kreemer’s history, the Nisero-quaestie — was the international incident provoked by the wreck of the English ship Nisero in November 1883 off Panga, in the territory of Teunöm on Atjèh’s Westkust, the seizure and plunder of the ship and the imprisonment of its crew by the Radja of Teunöm, and the protracted Dutch–British–Atjèhnese negotiations for the crew’s release. The affair, in Kreemer’s account, brought the Netherlands to the brink of international complications with Britain, exposed the limits of Dutch authority on the Westkust, and produced — through the disastrous employment of Teukoe Oema as a Dutch agent — the conversion of Oema from uncertain ally to irreconcilable enemy. In Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract De onderwerping van Atjeh, the Nisero-quaestie — de treurige Nisero-quaestie — is cited as one of the events of the 1884–1885 policy context that exposed Dutch weakness on the Atjehnese coast and that the Atjehnese drew on when they concluded that the Dutch would prove “weder spoedig te zwak” — too weak again — to carry the Concentratie and the rigorous blokkade through.

The wreck and the seizure

“Het Engelsche schip Nisero strandde in November 1883 voor Panga, in het gebied van Teunöm op Atjèh’s Westkust. De bemanning werd door den Radja van Teunöm gevankelijk medegevoerd en het schip uitgeplunderd. Tegenover onzen aandrang tot uitlevering van het scheepsvolk stelde de Radja zulke overdreven eischen, dat ons bestuur daarin niet kon treden. Vooral was dit het geval, toen een Engelsch oorlogsschip Pegasus in de wateren van Atjèh verscheen, daar de Radja er openlijk voor uitkwam, dat hij door zijn hooge eischen ons in oorlog met Engeland wikkelen wilde” — “The English ship Nisero stranded in November 1883 off Panga, in the territory of Teunöm on Atjèh’s West Coast. The crew was taken captive by the Radja of Teunöm and the ship plundered. Against our demand for the delivery of the ship’s people, the Radja set such exaggerated demands that our administration could not enter into them. This was especially the case when an English warship Pegasus appeared in the waters of Atjèh, for the Radja openly declared that he wished, by his high demands, to embroil us in war with England.”

The British intervention

The British commander of the Pegasus received orders from the British supreme authority to proceed to Teunöm and directly press the Radja for the release of the prisoners. The Atjèh governor — “zich niet verhelende, dat deze opdracht kwalijk overeen te brengen was met de volkenrechtelijke gebruiken” — “not unaware that this assignment was difficult to reconcile with the usages of international law” — nevertheless supported the proposed step, both to avoid difficulties with the British government and to avoid the reproach that not everything had been done or endured on our side for the liberation of the prisoners. “Toen ook deze onderhandelingen mislukten, werd door ons den 4en Januari een expeditie naar Teunöm gezonden; maar ook deze tuchtiging leidde niet tot de bevrijding der gevangenen, die inmiddels verder in het binnenland waren vervoerd” — “When these negotiations also failed, an expedition was sent to Teunöm on 4 January; but this chastisement also did not lead to the liberation of the prisoners, who had in the meantime been transported further inland.”

The Maxwell mission

The mission of Mr. Maxwell, member of the colonial council at Singapore, to make a further direct attempt at the liberation of the prisoners, also failed. “De eischen van den Radja waren zóó hoog, dat van inwilliging geen sprake kon zijn” — “The Radja’s demands were so high that of compliance there could be no question.”

The employment of Teukoe Oema and the slaughter of the boat-rowers

The governor of Atjèh then sought to achieve the goal with the help of Teukoe Oema. “Hiertoe werd deze den 3en juli 1884 met 32 volgelingen ingescheept; toen hij met zijn volk aan land werd gezet, werden de sloeproeiers plotseling met den klewang aangevallen en op twee na allen vermoord. Oema maakte zich meester van de wapens en munitie, welke in de sloep aanwezig waren en deed zich sedert weder als een onzer ijverigste vijanden kennen” — “For this purpose he was shipped on 3 July 1884 with 32 followers; when he and his people were put ashore, the boat-rowers were suddenly attacked with the klewang and all but two murdered. Oema took possession of the weapons and ammunition that were in the boat, and from then on made himself known as one of our most zealous enemies.” See Teukoe Oema.

The resolution

“The Engelsche Regeering, waarschijnlijk overtuigd van onze onmacht, bood nu hare bemiddeling aan, om te trachten niet alleen de loslating van de schipbreukelingen van de Nisero, maar in het algemeen ook de beëindiging van den oorlogstoestand in Atjèh te verkrijgen. Deze bemiddeling werd door de Nederlandsche Regeering niet aangenomen, doch de verder gevoerde onderhandelingen leidden tot de slotsom, dat namens de beide regeeringen, aan den Radja van Teunöm een gemeenschappelijke eisch werd gesteld tot uitlevering der gevangenen. Met het overbrengen van dezen eisch werden de gouverneur Laging Tobias en de heer Maxwell belast. Eindelijk gaf de Radja toe. Tegen een losgeld van ƒ100.000 werden de gevangenen uitgeleverd en de sluiting der havens van Teunöm opgeheven” — “The English government, probably convinced of our impotence, now offered its mediation, to attempt not only the release of the Nisero’s shipwrecked crew but in general also the ending of the war-state in Atjèh. This mediation was not accepted by the Netherlands government, but the subsequent negotiations led to the conclusion that, on behalf of both governments, a joint demand was made on the Radja of Teunöm for the delivery of the prisoners. The governor Laging Tobias and Mr. Maxwell were charged with conveying this demand. At last the Radja yielded. For a ransom of ƒ100,000 the prisoners were delivered and the closure of the harbours of Teunöm was lifted.”

Account from De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893) — the Nisero-quaestie as diagnostic event

Van Heutsz cites the Nisero-quaestie in the 1893 tract as one of the events of the 1884–1885 policy context that, in his diagnosis, had taught the Atjehnese to expect the colony’s collapse. The catalogue is set out in the historical movement of the tract, in the chapter on the cajoleering-decade of 1884–1886; the Nisero-quaestie appears there alongside the Concentratie and the Demmeni besluit of 13 October 1884 as one of the events that, taken together, “onze zwakheid maar al te zichtbaar” — made our weakness all too visible. Van Heutsz’s text records the catalogue and the inference the Atjehnese drew from it:

“Ook in de treurige Nisero-quaestie was onze zwakheid maar al te zichtbaar geweest”.

The Atjehnese inference, Van Heutsz continues, was that the Dutch would prove “weder spoedig te zwak” — too weak again — to carry the rigorous blokkade through, and that they had “het nut hadden leeren inzien te trekken uit Nisero-quaesties” — they had learned to appreciate the advantage to be drawn from Nisero-quaesties. The plural — Nisero-quaesties — is the operative form: the Nisero-quaestie of 1884–1885 was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, not a singular event but a type of event — the type of diplomatic incident in which the Dutch, confronted with a foreign power’s claim on an Atjehnese coastal statelet, would prove too weak to enforce their own sovereignty and would, in the event, retreat. The Atjehnese had, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, learned to provoke such incidents and to draw political advantage from the Dutch inability to manage them.

The Nisero-quaestie and the policy debate of 1884-1885

The Nisero-quaestie was, in the chronology of the 1893 tract, contemporaneous with the Concentratiebesluit of 19 August 1884 and the Staatsblad No. 105 of 1884 rigoureuse blokkade. The incident was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, part of the policy context of the 1884–1885 crisis — the context in which the metropolitan opperbestuur imposed the Concentratie on the colony over the objections of Gouverneur Laging Tobias, resident Scherer and assistent-resident van Langen, and in which the colony’s own civil-administrative authorities warned that “een dergelijk vertoon van zwakheid, ten zeerste zou schaden aan het Nederlandsch gezag” — such a display of weakness would greatly harm the Dutch authority. The Nisero-quaestie was, in this context, the empirical proof the colony’s civil-administrative authorities had warned against: the Dutch, confronted with the diplomatic incident, had exhibited the very weakness the Concentratie was, in the metropolitan reading, designed to conceal.

The Nisero-quaestie also coincided with the Demmeni besluit of 13 October 1884 — the hybrid half sluiting / half scheepvaartregeling that Van Heutsz denounces as the worst of both worlds — and with the Staatsblad No. 85 of 1885 repeal of the Staatsblad No. 105 of 1884 rigoureuse blokkade. The Dutch, having prescribed the rigorous blokkade in 1884, declined to apply it, and the Nisero-quaestie was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, one of the events that exposed the gap between the prescription and the application.

The Nisero-quaestie settlement and the Westkust harbour

The Nisero-quaestie was, in Van Heutsz’s later policy-prescription, the diplomatic fact that bound the Dutch to keep a Westkust harbour open that he otherwise wished to close. In the policy-prescription half of the 1893 tract, where Van Heutsz works through the four-point plan Scherer had set out in his lecture of 20 January 1891 to the Indisch Genootschap, he notes that Telok Kroet — the Westkust harbour Scherer had proposed as one of his four open ports of the Westkust — had, by the Nisero-quaestie settlement, to remain open:

“Wel moet dit open blijven voor den algemeenen handel ingevolge de overeenkomst bij de Nisero-quaestie, maar dit doet niets ter zake … eene vestiging moet er toch niet komen”.

The Nisero-quaestie settlement had, in other words, bound the Dutch by an international agreement to keep Telok Kroet open to general trade; Van Heutsz concedes the obligation but argues that it “niets ter zake” — nothing to the point — does, since the obligation to keep the harbour open does not oblige the Dutch to establish a vestiging — a settlement — there. The argument is the operational expression of Van Heutsz’s general principle: that the scheepvaartregeling he prescribed required the Dutch to retain only those ports that were necessary for the contrôle op handel en scheepvaart, and that the Nisero-quaestie settlement’s obligation to keep Telok Kroet open to general trade did not oblige the Dutch to convert that obligation into a Dutch vestiging.

Significance

The Nisero affair is, in Kreemer’s narrative, the moment at which the Netherlands’ inability to police its own Atjèhnese territory was exposed to an international audience. The Radja of Teunöm’s open intention to embroil the Dutch with the British, the failure of the Dutch punitive expedition of 4 January 1884, the failure of the Maxwell mission, and the conversion of Teukoe Oema from ally to enemy — all of these revealed the hollowness of Dutch authority outside the concentrated line. The eventual resolution — a joint Anglo-Dutch demand backed by a ƒ100,000 ransom — was a diplomatic victory only in the narrowest sense; it confirmed that the Dutch could not act in Atjèh without British cooperation, and that the Atjèhnese chiefs could play the European powers against each other.

In Van Heutsz’s 1893 diagnosis, the Nisero-quaestie was, additionally, one of the events of the 1884–1885 policy context that “onze zwakheid maar al te zichtbaar” — made our weakness all too visible — and that taught the Atjehnese to expect the colony’s collapse and to “het nut hadden leeren inzien te trekken uit Nisero-quaesties” — to appreciate the advantage to be drawn from Nisero-quaesties. It was contemporaneous with the Concentratiebesluit of 19 August 1884 and the Staatsblad No. 105 of 1884 rigoureuse blokkade, and was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, part of the same 1884 Concentratie and blokkade debate that produced the Demmeni wankelen and the Staatsblad No. 85 of 1885 repeal. The Nisero-quaestie settlement had bound the Dutch, by an international agreement, to keep Telok Kroet open to general trade — an obligation Van Heutsz concedes in the policy-prescription half of the 1893 tract, while arguing that the obligation does not require the Dutch to establish a vestiging there. The Nisero-quaestie is, in Van Heutsz’s narrative, the type-event of the diplomatic incident the Atjehnese had learned to provoke, and the empirical warrant for the 1893 prescription’s insistence on a marine-enforced closure that would prevent such incidents from recurring.

Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)

The Nisero affair of 10 November 1883 – 10 September 1884 was the stranding of the English steamer Nisero on the West Coast of Atjeh, the ten-month captivity of her crew in the hands of the Radja of Teunom, and the tangled Anglo-Dutch negotiations — pepper debts, a military expedition, absurd free-trade demands, and the treachery of Teukoe Oemar — that preceded their release against a ransom of f 100,000.

The stranding

In the night of 10 to 11 November 1883 the English steamship Nisero, commanded by Captain Woodhouse and coming with a cargo of sugar from Soerabaja destined for Suez, stranded before Koela Panga on the West Coast of Atjeh: attempting upon Poelò Breuëh to take in coal in stormy weather, the ship ran aground by the mouth of the Panga river. The crew was forced to disembark and, once ashore, met from the population a very ungracious treatment, culminating in their imprisonment by the Radja of Teunom and the plundering of the stranded steamer.

First demands

Immediately after the event became known at Koeta Radja, the assistant-resident concerned was furnished by the Governor of Atjeh with the necessary instructions. The Radja of Teunom answered in writing to the first demand for the prisoners’ release that he was prepared to grant their freedom when care was taken that a certain pepper merchant at Penang — who still owed the Radja a fairly large sum for sold and delivered pepper — should fulfil his obligations. That demand, with which in the interest of the prisoners reckoning had to be kept, was raised higher when the English warship Pegasus appeared in the Atjeh waters to gather intelligence about the compatriots, and the English side showed great activity to effect the prisoners’ liberation: the Radja came out openly with it, that by making higher demands he hoped to involve the Dutch in a war with England.

The expedition of Colonel Demmeni

With the consent of the Dutch Government — which wished to avoid everything that could draw the reproach that not everything had been done or suffered to promote the liberation — a military expedition was fitted out, which steamed from Oelèë Lheue to Teunom on 4 January 1884 under the command of Colonel H. Demmeni, while on the English side the Pegasus steamed up to Teunom. When the ultimatum to the Radja remained unanswered, hostilities were opened; an exemplary chastisement of the Radja followed; the coast was kept closed to a wide distance for all import and export, the fishery was impeded, and by Dutch warships was fired on everything that came within their reach. But the Radja remained indifferent, and to the delivery of the prisoners it did not come — not even when Mr. Maxwell, member of the colonial council at Singapore, brought over on the Pegasus, personally negotiated with the Radja, who made demands “which by everyone without distinction were called ridiculous”, one of them: general free trade under guarantee of England — with naturally as first object the import of weapons and ammunition.

Teukoe Oemar’s mediation and treachery

Then the Dutch government accepted the help of some native chiefs who offered their mediation, among whom “the almost notorious Teukoe Oemar” — of whose sincerity doubt had existed already at his submission in the preceding year. T. Oemar departed for Lambeusoë to negotiate with the Radja of Teunom; he and his retinue were rowed ashore in two trips in a sloop manned by 1 mandoer and 8 other natives. Hardly had the sloop landed the crew the second time ashore when T. Oemar fell upon the men with the klewang: only one of the rowers remained unhurt and reached the ship wounded; the others left their lives in the attack, and the rifles and ammunition were made booty by T. Oemar, who now went over again to the resistance. “Ook deze zending met een onverwacht resultaat, mislukte” — “Also this mission, with an unexpected result, miscarried.”

Settlement and release

The prisoners were set free only after the Governor of Atjeh in person, P. F. Laging Tobias, together with Mr. Maxwell, had again negotiated with the Radja — with the determination inter alia that to the person who brought the prisoners back a sum of f 100,000 would be paid, that the harbours would again be opened for trade, and that the closing of the surrounding statelets would be lifted. At last, on 10 September 1884, the prisoners were delivered up, after having been in the hands of the Radja for almost a year. Whether the event contributed to the Government’s decision of the same month to end separate civil government in Atjeh — the civil experiment closed on 13 September 1884 — Langhout leaves in the middle: three days after the prisoners’ release Governor Laging Tobias was honourably relieved and Colonel Demmeni accepted the administration as Civil and Military Governor.

Significance

For Langhout the affair “kept the year 1883 as a rapjaar” in Atjeh’s history and completed the discomfiture of the first civil government. It showed the exposure of European shipping to unsubjected chiefs on the coasts of the Dependencies, the delicacy of Anglo-Dutch coexistence in Atjehnese waters despite the free hand conceded by the Treaty of 1871, and the first great stage upon which Teukoe Oemar proved his unreliability — ten years before his pardon of 1893 and his greater defection of 1896.

Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)

Verstege names the Nisero question “de noodlottige, die, in strijd met veler wensch, den waren toestand op Atjeh zoo duidelijk aan het licht bracht” (“the fatal question which, contrary to many wishes, brought the true state of Atjeh so clearly to light”), and the direct occasion why the concentration came to execution (see Concentration decision (16-17 June 1884)). The pamphlet contributes to the English side the following reliefs: the prophecy of the admiral-member Fabius of 17 April 1874 — that the annexation would end by making the Dutch, when English subjects were murdered in Atjeh, answerable before England, or by England’s action itself — came home in 1884 “in zake de Tenomquaestie, die ons, behalve veel geld, ook zoovele vernederingen heeft gekost, dat wij bij die herinnering nog het schaamrood op onze wang moeten voelen” (“in the Tenom affair, which has cost us, besides much money, also so many humiliations, that at the recollection we must still feel the blush on our cheek”); the joy with which the Dutch respectable press welcomed the so-called “joint action” with England is corrected with the warning that England would then have charged double for the war costs, and would have received, as an equivalent, the cession of the so favourably situated Poeloe Waai (Poelo Weh) — “on which at that very time France and Russia had drawn the attention of our government for the laying down of coal depots, to be in that respect independent of England” — which would have taken away the fear of the Straits English for the future of Penang and Singapore; since, Verstege believes in August 1884, Poeloe Waai therefore had been actually occupied by the Dutch. The same English mediator who had then told the Dutch, as every impartial mind must interpret the annexation of 1874, “dat wil, òf het land moesten veroveren òf terugtrekken” (“that is, that they must either conquer the land or withdraw”), “has missed no occasion to do us discredit, to show his hostility, his contempt for us as clearly as possible” — that was Mr. Maxwell, in whom the English government placed complete confidence, and whose reward followed: “the English peerage” in the year before the pamphlet (so 1885), while the Penang Chinese Koh Thian Poh at the end of 1885, with great ceremony, received a golden watch from the Queen for his services in the Tenom question, and the staatssecretaris Sir Julian Pauncefote — known to the Dutch side as the principal leader of the Tenom negotiations — got the Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (see also Sir Frederick Weld’s return to Penang and Maxwell’s projected removal to Penang at the same moment, on pp. 93-94).

See Also

Sources

Atjèh. Algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en onderhoorigheden, door J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut. Eerste Deel. Leiden: N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill, 1922. Hoofdstuk I, C (“Atjèh-oorlog (1873—1910)”), Vijfde tijdvak, blz. 24–25. Citing E. B. Kielstra, Atjèh onder het bestuur van den Gouverneur Laging Tobias, p. 520 vg. en 541 vg., and K. F. H. van Langen in De Ind. Gids 1884 dl. II p. 239 vg.

De onderwerping van Atjeh, door J. B. van Heutsz, Majoor der Infanterie, gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders Van Cleef; Batavia: G. Kolff en Co., 1893, esp. pp. 38, 77. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt. De Atjeh-Oorlog: Kort Overzicht van Oorsprong, Verloop en Gevolg, door J. A. Kruijt. ‘s-Gravenhage: Loman & Funke, 1896. Chapter VIII, “Achteruitgang onder de Civiele Gouverneurs Pruijs van der Hoeven en Laging Tobias, van April 1881 tot September 1884.” OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-101-De_Atjeh_oorlog_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, p. 44.

Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 54–58.

Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 32-34, 79-80, 86-87, 93. OCR: DLP-158.

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