The Said Akil’s Deli adventure of 1824–1828 — referred to by Van der Kemp as the Deli affair — was the four-year attempt by Said Akil (Syed Akil), third son of the Penang trader Said Hussein and younger brother of the Achehnese pretender Syf, to make himself master of the East-Coast Sumatran state of Deli. Married to a daughter of the Sultan of Deli c. 1824 and adopted by the Sultan as a son, Said Akil returned after his father-in-law’s death, raised a force from Penang, and installed himself as Raja Mooda (deputy ruler) over the young successor. He then plundered the country and its traders until a chorus of complaints from the Shahbandar of Deli, the Sultan of Acheh and the traders of Batu Bara forced the British government of Penang to read him out of its protection in 1828. The episode is preserved in the Binkhorst collection of correspondence printed by P. H. Van der Kemp.
Marriage and adoption (1824)
About 1824 Said Akil became engaged, or was married, to a daughter of the Sultan of Deli. The Sultan himself announced the adoption in his letter to Governor [[Robert Fullerton|Fullerton of 27 August 1824]] (Van der Kemp’s Appendix 6), begging at the same time for British help against the in-pressing Padries (Rinchis) and reminding the British of the friendship that had existed with the late Governor Phillips. The marriage thus brought Akil into the Deli royal house as son-in-law and adoptive son, opening the way to his later usurpation.
Raising of a force and the “Raja Mooda” (1826)
When his father-in-law died, he was succeeded by “an insignificant boy of 14 to 16 years”. Said Akil, “as brother-in-law”, considered that he might profit from the situation, and in 1826 he fitted out “a fairly considerable force” at Penang to go to Deli and play the master. The Penang government, through its Malay translator John Anderson, warned him by letter of 11 April 1826 that he must leave Deli alone; but when Akil replied that his expedition had no other aim than to fetch his Deli wife “in a glorious manner”, the government let him depart. The young Sultan, the correspondence drily notes, “seemed to take this rather well”, sending back a polite acknowledgement dated 25 June 1826.
Disorder and complaints (October 1826 – early 1828)
Once established at Deli, Akil made himself master of the government. The Sultan of Acheh complained in a brusque letter of 13 October 1826 to the Governor of Penang that this was a violation of the Acheh treaty of 1819 (article 1 was probably meant), since Deli was a dependency of Acheh and was now being endangered by a subject of the British government. Anderson again wrote, on 2 November 1826, asking Akil to return to Penang “with as little delay as possible”, but this was talking to deaf ears.
By early 1828 the Shahbandar of Deli was writing to the Governor of Penang begging him to “deliver the land from the robber Said Akil”, describing how all the traders’ property had been plundered by Akil, how traders at Batu Bara had been ruined, and how the chiefs of Batu Bara were about to seek satisfaction by force. Anderson wrote again on 7 February 1828 requiring Akil to abstain from all interference and to return to his former residence at Penang as a “peaceable British subject.” The young Sultan (presumably writing under Akil’s dictation) replied that it was all lies and slander; Akil himself wrote on 7 August 1828 that he was doing nobody any harm and was only waiting to collect some 60,000 dollars owed to him before returning to Penang.
Removal by British pressure (1828)
Governor Fullerton finally wrote to the young Sultan on 27 August 1828 that the numerous complaints against Akil had given rise to the admonitions, and that the British government, “wishing nothing else than to see quiet trade”, could not countenance the doings of one of its own subjects in another country. Akil was informed that, having proceeded to Deli contrary to the injunctions of the government of Prince of Wales Island, he was placed without the protection of the British Government in the event of his infringing the laws or injuring the inhabitants of that country. The Bengal government, on being informed, approved the Penang government’s conduct by dispatch of 24 October 1828.
With this final intervention Akil’s Deli adventure came to an end. Van der Kemp warns the reader not to confuse this comparatively insignificant personage with the contemporaneous crown pretender Sukadana on Borneo, whose career was described by Professor Veth. The episode is illustrative of the looseness of British control over its Malay subjects and of the practical impotence of the Acheh treaty of 1819 in securing order on Sumatra’s East Coast — a region now falling within the Dutch sphere under the treaty of 17 March 1824 but effectively unpoliced by either power.
See Also
- Said Akil
- Said Hussein
- Sultan of Deli
- Shahbandar of Deli
- Sultan Alaeddin Muhammad Shah of Acheh
- Robert Fullerton
- John Anderson
- W. E. Phillips
- Sultan of Deli’s letter to Penang
- Padri War on Sumatra’s East Coast
- Acheh treaty of 1819
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
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.