Raffles-Coombs Acheh Commission (1819)

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tagsevent, mission, diplomacy, colonial, anglo-dutch, acheh
aliasesAcheh commissie 1819, Acheh-commissie, Acheen Mission, Raffles-Coombs Acheh Commission

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The Raffles-Coombs Acheh Commission of 1819 was the joint British commission dispatched from Calcutta in early 1819 to negotiate a political and commercial treaty with the sultan of Acheh, to settle the long-running Acheh succession dispute, and to forestall suspected Dutch intrigues on the north coast of Sumatra. It was composed of Raffles, lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen, and Captain Coombs of the Bengal establishment, with Raffles as senior commissioner enjoying a casting vote. The commission’s work culminated in the Treaty of Pedir (1819) of 22 April 1819, but the undertaking was marked throughout by acute personal dissension between the two commissioners, by disputes with Governor Bannerman of Penang, and by Raffles’s unauthorised diversion to the Karimon Islands — which led, indirectly, to the founding of Singapore.

Origin and Instructions

The commission originated in the early months of 1818, when reports reached Calcutta of Dutch activity in the archipelago and of the anarchy prevailing in Acheh. Coombs’s first Acheh mission of late 1817 – February 1818 had concluded that the pretender Syf was the recognised sultan; Raffles, writing from Bencoolen, insisted that the rightful ruler was the elder Sultan Jauhar Alum at Pedir and that the Dutch were negotiating with him. The Bengal government under Lord Moira — alarmed by the rejection of Farquhar at Pontianak by Van Boekholz and by the destruction of Farquhar’s treaty at Lingga by Wolterbeek — determined to send a commission. In its despatch to London of 14 January 1819 the Calcutta government explained that it hoped “in time to establish our political influence in Acheh to the exclusion of that of the Dutch or other foreign nations.”

The commissioners were instructed: (1) to prevent future misunderstanding; (2) to secure free navigation of the Straits of Malacca and uninterrupted commercial intercourse with the northern coast of Sumatra; and (3) “to ascertain whether the party of the old king Jowhar 001 Alum or that of the new king Syf 001 Mum predominated in the state; and to negotiate with the ruling party whichever it might be.” Should doubt remain, the commission was to return to Bengal for further orders; to minimise that risk, Raffles was given a casting vote.

The Karimon Detour

The commission was barely constituted before Raffles threw it into confusion. On 19 January 1819 Farquhar wrote from Malacca to propose a joint inspection of the Karimon Islands as a site for a British settlement. Raffles accepted without informing either Bannerman or Coombs, abruptly sailed from Penang, and — having taken with him the artillery detachment that Bannerman believed was destined for Acheh — only belatedly dispatched the Minto to Pedir under Lieutenant Criddle to inform Sultan Jauhar Alum of the commission’s approach. This Karimon detour resulted in the founding of Singapore but provoked bitter complaints from Bannerman and Coombs, and was the subject of Raffles’s lengthy defence in his letter to the government secretary at Calcutta of 30 September 1819.

Seven Weeks at Banda Acheh

The commission anchored off Banda Acheh on 14 March [[1819]]. There was no sultan at the capital: authority was, as the Bengal government reported to London, “exercised in name by the council of the Sagis, but in reality by Panglima Polem with his adherents.” The three Sagis — the chiefs of the XXII, XXV and XXVI Mukims — were the traditional guardians of the sultanate. The commission sent a circular summoning the chiefs to a conference; Polim replied from the XXII Mukims that the meeting would take place in eight days and that, until then, the commissioners were not to land.

Although the prohibition extended only to the commission as a body, the receptions the commissioners met with when they did land were, in Van der Kemp’s words, “extremely uncivil” — corresponding closely to the insulting reception later reported by the crew of the Wilhelmina (22–24 June 1819). The populace began to throw up fortifications at the mouth of the Acheh River, of which the commission complained to Polim. When Polim at last appeared and took up residence in the palace, the Bengal government concluded that he alone was the actual ruler, that Sultan Jauhar Alum was not acknowledged at all, and that Syf at Telok Semawé was merely a tool in the hands of the parties.

The Paper War

By this time the divisions within the commission itself had erupted. Raffles’s earlier investigations had confirmed him in the view that Jauhar Alum should be recognised; Coombs held with equal force that the sultan recognised by the Sagis was Syf. Worse, Coombs had been designated to remain at Acheh as British resident and was now disappointed of his post. The two men, sitting side by side on the same ship, engaged in what Raffles himself — in a letter to Sir Robert Harry Inglis of 12 June 1819 — called a paper war that “actually occupies above a thousand pages of the Company’s largest sized paper.” Eventually Coombs came round to Raffles’s opinion, and the commission sailed for Pedir.

Conclusion at Pedir

At Pedir the commission was received by Sultan Jauhar Alum, and the treaty of 22 April 1819 was signed. Arms and a draft for 100,000 rupees were handed to the sultan; the commission then proceeded to Telok Semawé to demand that Syf renounce his claims, which he did in a submission as worthless as the treaty itself. The Bengal government, in its report to London of 7 October 1820, expressed its dissatisfaction: it was well enough that Syf had been dropped, but to furnish arms and money in return for nothing but evil promises seemed indefensible. Raffles’s own self-congratulation Van der Kemp characterises as pure exaggeration: nothing had been gained, and the commission might as well have stayed at home. Yet the treaty it produced would, five years later in London, supply the pretext for the Acheh declaration annexed to the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 17 March 1824 — and so, in Van der Kemp’s argument, condemn the Netherlands to half a century of impotence on Sumatra.

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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