Pieter Soury's mission to Atjeh (1641)

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tagsevent, diplomacy, voc, dutch, atjehnese, 17th-century
aliasesSoury's embassy to Atjeh, Atjeh embassy of 1641, Pieter Soury's Atjeh mission, Soury's Atjeh embassy, Het gezantschap van Soury naar Atjeh (1641)

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Pieter Soury’s mission to Atjeh of 1641–1642 was the embassy dispatched by the Hooge Regeering (High Government) at Batavia and entrusted to Commissaris Pieter Soury — its Secretaris the young Jan van Riebeeck — to congratulate the Sultana of Atjeh on her accession after the death of Sultan Iskander Tsani in 1641, and to deliver the late Sultan’s outstanding order of jewels. It is the central Atjeh episode in Godee Molsbergen’s Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, and one of the most fully documented European diplomatic missions to the Atjeh court in the seventeenth century.

Background: the death of Iskander Tsani and the queen’s accession

When Sultan Iskander Tsani died in 1641, the Rijksgrooten (great officers of the realm) chose his widow as his successor. The same widow, at about forty years of age, “wilde … een Nederlander tot Prinsgemaal verheffen” — wished to elevate a Dutchman to the rank of prince-consort — a proposal over which both the Rijksgrooten and the Hooge Regeering at Batavia placed their veto. She became Sultana in her own right under the title Sultan — “Sultane beteekent slechts eerste vrouw van een Sultan,” Godee Molsbergen insists — and opened the long era of female rule in seventeenth-century Atjeh.

Atjeh, the year before, had cooperated with the VOC and Djohor to drive the Portuguese from Malakka. The Company had a lodge in Atjeh — an Opperhoofd with eight assistants — and held from the late Sultan the exclusive right to trade on Sumatra’s Westkust, where pepper was the principal product.

Charges of the embassy

The mission had a twofold charge:

  1. To congratulate the new Sultana on behalf of the Company on her accession, formally delivering a missive (letter) of the Gouverneur-Generaal and the Raden (Councillors).
  2. To deliver the goods ordered by the late Sultan Iskander Tsani — among them a gold-enameled beteldoos (betel-box) and gold rings — together with a parcel of diamonds ordered the previous year through Justus Schouten.

Soury was further instructed to be careful about the sale of the jewels. The stones had been cut to Atjehsche mode (Atjeh-style) and set in Holland to the Sultan’s design; this cut and setting “in andere Indische kwartieren niet gewild waren” — were not wanted in any other quarter of the Indies — so the consignment “moesten ze per sé in Atjeh geplaatst worden, wilde de Compagnie er geen strop aan hebben” — had to be placed in Atjeh, or the Company would have a noose (i.e. a loss) on its hands.

Composition of the legation

The six-man legation comprised:

The party was seen off at Batavia by the extra-ordinaris Raad van Indië Joan Maetsuycker and by Justus Schouten, whose own earlier visit to Atjeh had been the moment of the jewel-order.

Journey via Malakka and arrival

The legation travelled via Malakka — newly captured from the Portuguese — and reached the Atjeh river, where it was greeted by the Dutch Opperhoofd and by the voornaamste eunuch (chief eunuch) of the Sultana together with the Sabandaar (harbour-master), who brought the tjap or passport required to come ashore. High Atjeh officials were given, according to rank, a number of pieces of armozijn (a black silk cloth from Ormuz) as gifts, and the Sultana sent fruit to welcome the legation. When Atjeh envoys who had come back from Batavia disembarked, the guns thundered in their honour — a courtesy answered from the shore.

The Atjeh town described in this report was a city of bamboo houses — only a few of stone — all raised six feet off the ground on account of the bandjirs (floods), without a surrounding wall. On its two market-places Indians, Arabs, Chinese and Malays, drawn by low import duties, sold their wares. Temples, pagodas, royal palaces, gardens with the tomb-shrines of dead sultans, fountains and waterworks struck the Europeans “door hun vreemde schoonheid” — by their strange beauty.

The English rival

In the lodge, the legation learned that an English ship lay in the roadstead bearing handsome gifts for the Sultana — chests of glass-blown trees, birds, and other animals, and especially a costly jewel-casket. The English aim was to persuade the Sultana to grant the English Company permission to make Atjeh its headquarters for trade on the Indian mainland. The Englishmen spoke Portuguese well enough to be understood.

The chief eunuch then came personally to inspect whether the goods ordered the previous year — when Schouten had been in Atjeh — had been delivered according to specification. Satisfied, Soury handed the consignment over, receiving in return a magnificent horse, a cow and a buffalo from the Sultana. The Sultana fixed 1 July 1641 for the solemn hand-over of the missive.

The audience of 1 July 1641

The full ceremonial of the audience is described under Atjehsche ambassade ceremony (1 July 1641). Its highlights include:

  • A great elephant procession: fifty-five Moorish koelies (porters), spread out at large intervals for greater display, walked in procession behind the colossal beast that carried the missive in a golden dish.
  • The six Dutchmen walked in stately tread: Soury, Compostel, Willemz, Riebeeck, and two Onderkooplieden. “Een ernstige groep … de gezichten strakgetrokken onder den indruk van de plechtigheid, wetend dat het minste verzuim of gebrek aan decorum zou worden opgemerkt door Atjehers, Engelschen, Mooren en anderen, die de Compagnie geen goed hart toedroegen en haar succes misgunden.”
  • The Sultana came outside the palace to greet the ambassador in spite of the rainy weather — “een buitengewone eer, nooit tevoren aan iemand bewezen.”
  • The Sultana’s gift to the legation of an Atjehsch gewaad with three golden rings on the collar, “zooals nog nimmer tevoren aan een ambassade was gezonden.” Compostel alone did not receive one — presumably because the Sultana did not consider him part of the embassy.
  • The Sultana offered Soury her own golden beteldoos to prepare a sirih-quid; the other gentlemen used a silver box. The Dutchmen sat shoeless in Atjeh dress chewing sirih, “tot eer en voordeel van de Edele Compagnie.”

The “translation” audience and Portuguese clarification

The following day the chief eunuch summoned the legation to the house of the Opperbisschop (high priest) to “translate” the missive — although it had already been rendered into Malay. The silent purpose was to extract clarification on points obscure to the Sultana’s council: how Portugal in 1640 had been freed from Spain, was no longer the Republic’s mortal enemy, and why the Republic had concluded a ten-year truce with Portugal the following year. The Portuguese nobleman Francisco de Souza de Castro was at that time a prisoner in Atjeh.

The “maidens as ransom” request

At an audience attended by the Panglima’s of Pedir and Deli and many other Atjeh nobles, the chiefs asked whether the Dutch had brought “Portugeesche jonge dochterkens” — Portuguese maidens — to be delivered as losprijs (ransom), as they had previously requested. Soury answered that there were none to be had at Batavia; that the ships had lain seven days at Malakka but could obtain none there either. His instructions had recommended him to add that the sending of maidens was tegen onze wet en religie — against our law and religion — but when the two Atjeh ambassadors who had travelled back with him confirmed what he had said, he omitted that declaration. See Maagden als losprijs.

The pleasure-garden feast of 14 July 1641

On 14 July 1641 the Sultana invited the legation to her lusthof (pleasure-garden), magnificently situated against the mountainside, where water from two caves formed a great pond stocked with thousands of carp; the banks were spread with costly carpets. Seven meals were served in golden dishes in the Atjeh manner. The Sultana commanded songs in honour of Iskander Muda, and the Atjeh nobles marvelled at her special friendliness to the Dutch. The song moved the hearers to tears. After the meals, Javanese, Siamese and Moorish musicians and dancers entertained the company, and all the guests bathed in the pond. When the slendang (shoulder-cloth) was offered to Soury, he gave a royal gift in money “to show that he knew the world.” See Atjehsche ambassade ceremony (1 July 1641).

Strikingly, this encomium of Iskander Muda was paired with complete silence over the recently-deceased Sultan Iskander Tsani: “Over den pas overleden Sultan, een Pahangschen prins, sprak men nooit en deed alsof hij nooit aan de regeering was geweest” — Of the recently-deceased Sultan, a Pahang prince, one never spoke; one acted as if he had never reigned.

The jewel negotiations

The most protracted business of the embassy was the disposal of the late Sultan’s outstanding jewel-order. The consignment had been cut to Atjehsche mode and set in Holland; “dit slijpsel en deze zetting in andere Indische kwartieren niet gewild waren” — this cut and setting were not wanted in any other quarter of the Indies — so the consignment had to be placed in Atjeh, or the Company would have a loss on its hands.

The Sultana already had many jewels, and female vanity could not be played upon, since jewels were not women’s wear in Atjeh. Soury therefore took another path. To win the Rijksgrooten (whose consent was required for the purchase) to a friendly disposition, many visits were paid and many a gift delivered at their houses by the Secretaris Jan van Riebeeck. The Sultana was not liable for the order placed by her late husband, and the treasury would not authorise the 15,000 tayl (= 5,000 guilders) it would have cost. After long haggling a price was agreed for the greater part of the parcel, but for the future the import of jewels by the Company was forbidden in Atjeh. In later years the Bewindhebbers (Directors) again tried to sell jewels in Atjeh, in vain; the stones had to be sent back to Holland, and the whole order produced “een leelijken schadepost” — an ugly loss.

The Company could not forget Iskander Tsani, the besteller of the parcel, “maar de Atjehsche edelen hun Sultan” — but the Atjeh nobles [could not so easily forget] their Sultan.

Departure and aftermath

On 26 November 1641 Soury and his secretary sailed via Malakka back to Batavia. Van Riebeeck took up his place again on the General Secretariat as Assistent, but only for a few months: the Atjeh journey brought him promotion to Onderkoopman. From there his career moved toward the founding of the Cape Colony.

Significance

Soury’s mission is the high-point of Dutch-Atjeh diplomatic ceremony in the early VOC period — a choreographed encounter between a queen who had wanted a Dutch prince-consort and a Company that preferred to keep its presents and its distance. The embassy’s record, preserved through Jan van Riebeeck’s secretarial hand, is one of the most detailed European descriptions of the Atjeh court at the moment of transition from the warrior-sultans to the long era of female rule. For Riebeeck personally the mission was the making of his early career, and the apprenticeship in flexible diplomacy that he would carry to the Cape.

See Also

Source

Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, by Dr. E. C. Godee Molsbergen, Oud-Hoogleeraar, Landsarchivaris te Batavia (Amsterdam: N.V. Swets & Zeitlinger Boekhandel en Uitgevers Mij., 1932), chapters XI–XII (“Atjehsche ambassade. Inlandsche feesten. Maagden als losprijs”; “Juweelenhandel. Heeren Zeventien. Familieregeering”), pp. 39–47 of the numbered-letter sequence.

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