Raising of the Acheh treaty in London negotiations

Properties2
tagsevent, diplomacy, colonial, anglo-dutch, treaty, correspondence
aliasesAcheh treaty raised in London 23 February 1824, disclosure of the 1819 Acheh convention, Acheh disclosure of February 1824

7 min read

The raising of the Acheh treaty in the London negotiations of 23 February 1824 was the surprise disclosure by the British plenipotentiaries Canning and Wynn of the existence of the 1819 British-Acheh convention concluded by Raffles, at the very moment when the first draft of the Anglo-Dutch treaty had already been agreed and was awaiting only the formality of royal authorisation. The disclosure triggered a rapid sequence of diplomatic moves — the dispatch of 21 February 1824 (reporting the disclosure to The Hague), the dispatch of 24 February 1824 (proposing to meet the British wishes by nota rather than by treaty articles), and the eventual annexation of a Dutch declaration guaranteeing the independence of Acheh to the definitive treaty of 17 March 1824. In Van der Kemp’s analysis, the raising of the Acheh treaty is the central episode of his study, since it was here that the casual handling of an “innocent” reservation produced the clause that would paralyse Dutch policy on Sumatra for nearly half a century.

The state of the negotiations

By mid-February 1824 the Dutch plenipotentiaries Fagel and Falck had reached agreement with their British counterparts Canning and Wynn on a draft convention revising the treaty of 13 August 1814. The draft, dated 1 February 1824 (see First draft of 1824 Anglo-Dutch treaty), contained no provision concerning Acheh — a fact on which Van der Kemp lays great emphasis: “During the entire course of the negotiations this point was not brought forward with a single word; the plenipotentiaries of neither party seemed to know of it.” The draft had been entrusted to Captain Elout for personal conveyance to The Hague.

While the captain was on the point of departure, the British plenipotentiaries “unexpectedly came to tell” the Dutch that there was, after all, a British treaty with Acheh — that of April 1819 concluded by Raffles — and that they “would gladly see it maintained.” It was, they assured the Dutch, “nothing in particular, nothing else than a promise of Acheh to grant hospitality and assistance to British ships in case of shipwreck.” This was the same colouring that the London administration of the East India Company would later seek to impose on the convention in its instructions to the British plenipotentiaries.

The King’s verbal authorisation

Captain Elout returned to The Hague with the new incident and laid it before the King. On 13 February 1824 the King’s authorisation of 13 February 1824 was issued, verbally allowing the Dutch plenipotentiaries to consent to a reservation concerning Acheh — “if it is true that the treaty has for its object only hospitality and assistance to stranded ships and shipwrecked mariners.” Van der Kemp notes that this verbal instruction was given “without one of the plenipotentiaries having read the Acheh treaty itself.”

The disclosure of 23 February 1824

On Captain Elout’s return to London, the British plenipotentiaries “brought the Acheh treaty to the table” on 23 February 1824. The “venerable assembly was, on the reading of it, surprised”, for the convention was “by no means so innocent as originally supposed.” Raffles had secured in it the recognition of British sovereignty (or at least of British protection) over Acheh — article 6 in particular excluded other Europeans and Americans from residence in the country and bound the sultan to make no treaty without British consent. “This would not do.”

The disclosure thus transformed the diplomatic situation. The conditional authorisation of 13 February — predicated on the assumption that the 1819 convention was a mere engagement for hospitality — was no longer applicable; yet the Dutch plenipotentiaries did not refer the matter back to The Hague, but proceeded to negotiate the Acheh reservation on the spot. The British now proposed that the 1819 convention be modified “by a simple arrangement for the hospitable reception of British ships and subjects in the port of Acheh”; and they expressed the hope that the Dutch government would take measures to secure those of its provisions “favourable to the general interests of Europeans established in the Eastern seas.”

The Dutch reaction

In their dispatch of 21 February 1824 — a date that, Van der Kemp notes, must be a slip for a later date, since the disclosure was on 23 February — the Dutch plenipotentiaries reported that “the treaty concluded in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles has been read and mutually recognised as incompatible with the new state of affairs, and as not susceptible of express maintenance.” They also reported the British concern that, “should the sultans of Acheh be left to themselves, the United States of America, or earlier, will seek to establish themselves with them, and get a footing for a settlement which, in case of war, would be to the great detriment of British navigation.” The “readiest means of averting this evil”, the Dutch plenipotentiaries declared, “appears to be that the Netherlands undertake to stipulate with those of Acheh that they will never admit any establishment of a foreign power.”

In their dispatch of 24 February 1824, the Dutch plenipotentiaries proposed to meet the British wishes, not by inserting further articles in the treaty itself, but by a separate nota or declaration to be handed to the British plenipotentiaries at the time of signature. This proposal — born, in Van der Kemp’s reading, of “the ruinous thought” of completing the treaty by a side-declaration — produced the Dutch declaration of February–March 1824 guaranteeing the independence of Acheh that was annexed to the treaty of 17 March 1824.

Significance

The raising of the Acheh treaty on 23 February 1824 is, in Van der Kemp’s analysis, the moment at which the Dutch plenipotentiaries lost control of the negotiations. Instead of insisting on the unconditional application of article 9 of the draft — which absolutely excluded British treaties with native states on Sumatra — they allowed themselves to be drawn into a separate declaration guaranteeing Acheh’s independence, on the false assumption that the 1819 convention was a mere engagement for hospitality. The British, having obtained this declaration, were thereafter able to invoke it as a bar to the assertion of Dutch authority on the East Coast of Sumatra — a use to which Governor Fullerton of Penang would put it within months, in his minute of 21 March 1825 and his Pinang Nota of 1825.

Van der Kemp also stresses a technical point: the British justification for raising the Acheh convention — that article 6 conflicted with article 3 of the new treaty, prohibiting unequal commercial duties — 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. The proper article would have been article 9, which absolutely excluded British treaties with native states on Sumatra. The British plenipotentiaries, Van der Kemp suggests, did not press article 9 because it would have been too obvious that the 1819 convention had to be abandoned altogether — a result they were unwilling to accept.

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.

Graph View

Backlinks