The Sartorius mission to Acheh was the attempt by the British authorities at Penang to send Mr. Sartorius of the civil service to the Achehnese capital, in the years immediately following the Treaty of Pedir (1819), in order to conciliate the chiefs of the country, obtain their adhesion to the ratified treaty, and persuade them to offer their allegiance to Jauhar Alum. Van der Kemp introduces the mission through a passage of Anderson and through the minute of Governor W. E. Phillips of 7 November 1823, in which the London government’s verdict on the mission is recorded.
The Mission
According to Anderson (whose account Van der Kemp cites), Mr. Sartorius was sent to Acheh with the ratified treaty and with a letter directed to the king, “to conciliate the chiefs of the country,” and to “persuade them to offer their allegiance to Jauhar Alum, whose title as lawful sovereign the British Government recognised.” The chiefs of Acheh — the elders, the learned men and the warriors — had, as Sartorius was informed, met at the festival of the last fast, come to a unanimous resolution, and entreated his pardon for their refusal. They had no intention, in other words, of accepting Jauhar Alum as their sultan.
London’s Verdict
The mission, like the rest of the Raffles-Coombs settlement, came under review by the Court of Directors in London. In his minute of 7 November 1823 Governor Phillips of Penang recorded that the Honorable Court had viewed Mr. Sartorius’s mission to Acheh “kindly,” and that they approved of his proceedings — but they had “since confined our interference in the affairs of our ally, Johor Allum Shah, to a representation to the Supreme Government of our views and sentiments regarding the state of his country.” Phillips assured the Court that, “as long as the Honorable Court may superintend the affairs in this quarter,” he would “scrupulously abstain from forming any more political relations with the native states likely to affect our relations with the Dutch without the previous sanction and approbation of Government,” and would persevere in the course of policy of which they declared their cordial support.
The London government, in short, had had enough. The treaty of 1819 had been a dead letter; Jauhar Alum had never recovered his authority; the Raffles-Coombs commission had achieved nothing on the ground; and the Sartorius mission had only confirmed the determination of the Achehnese chiefs to recognise neither Jauhar Alum nor any other British nominee. Phillips’s minute marks the moment at which the Bengal and Penang governments formally abandoned the policy of active intervention in Achehnese affairs that Raffles had inaugurated.
Significance
Van der Kemp cites the Sartorius mission to underline two of his recurring themes. The first is the practical worthlessness of the treaty of 1819: a mission despatched to obtain the adhesion of the chiefs to a treaty already ratified could not even obtain a hearing, and the chiefs — so Sartorius was told — had unanimously refused. The second is the restraint imposed by London on its own servants: from 1823 onwards the Bengal and Penang governments abstained from new political relations with the native states, and confined themselves to representing their views to the Supreme Government. This self-denying ordinance — together with the contemporary proposal of R. Ibbetson of 25 February 1824 for British intervention in Acheh (see Ibbetson’s intervention proposal) — marks the British retreat from the forward policy of 1819 which prepared the ground for the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824.
See Also
- Sartorius
- W. E. Phillips
- John Anderson
- Acheh treaty of 1819
- Raffles-Coombs Acheh commission
- Sultan Jauhar Alum
- Three Sagis
- Ibbetson’s intervention proposal
- R. Ibbetson
- Captain Coombs
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Penang
- Acheh
- Dead letter
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.