The Siak tractate of 1 February 1858 — the political contract by which Sultan Tongkoe Ismail of Siak formally ceded his realm to the Nederlandsch-Indisch Gouvernement — was, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions, the foundational diplomatic instrument by which the Dutch colonial state acquired formal sovereignty over the Siak sultanate and its dependencies, including — at the northern limit — the East Coast statelets up to the Tamiang River. The tractate was the formal sequel to the Dutch intervention against the British adventurer Wilson in Siak, and it served, in the Bureau’s account, as the legal basis for the 1862 Langkat appeal to Siak and for the Netscher mission of the same year.
Background: the Wilson adventure and the Dutch intervention
The tractate of 1858 was the diplomatic culmination of a long crisis in the Siak sultanate. The Bureau records that Sultan Tongkoe Ismail — having failed to obtain British assistance against his internal opponents from the authorities at Singapore, who refused on account of the treaty of 1824 — turned, “met meer succes” — “with more success” — to the Netherlands-Indies Government. He had earlier secured the services of the British adventurer Wilson to put down an internal revolt, but Wilson had soon quarrelled with the Sultan and had nearly succeeded in driving the entire royal house out of Siak. The Dutch intervention against Wilson was thus the immediate prelude to the tractate.
The tractate
The Bureau records the tractate in a single, dense sentence: “Met onze krachtige hulp werden de opstandelingen onderworpen en Wilson verjaagd, waarna Tongkoe Ismail bij tractaat van 1 February 1858 zijn land aan het Gouvernement opdroeg, dat hem zijne rechten, ook op de Onderhoorigheden (tot de Tamiangrivier), waarborgde” — “With our powerful help the rebels were subdued and Wilson driven out, whereupon Tongkoe Ismail, by tractate of 1 February 1858, ceded his land to the Government, which guaranteed to him his rights, also over the Dependencies (as far as the Tamiang River).”
The tractate thus has three operative features. First, Siak was ceded to the Government — zijn land aan het Gouvernement opdroeg — a formal act of sovereignty transfer. Second, the Sultan’s rights — including his rights over the East Coast Dependencies — were guaranteed by the Government. Third, the geographical extent of those Dependencies was defined, at the northern limit, by the Tamiang River — fixing the northern boundary of the Siak sphere at the Tamiang valley.
The “Onderhorigheden tot de Tamiangrivier”
The Bureau’s specification of the Tamiangrivier as the northern limit of the Siak Dependencies is, in the long perspective of the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, the most consequential feature of the tractate. The Tamiang boundary would, in 1878, be the basis of the transfer of Langkat’s rights over Tamiang to the Government; in 1908, it would be the basis of the attachment of Tamiang to the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. The Tamiang boundary was thus, in the Bureau’s framing, the diplomatic hinge on which the long process of detaching the East Coast from the Siak sphere and attaching the northern portion to Atjeh would turn.
The tractate as legal basis for the 1862 Langkat appeal
The 1858 tractate was also the legal basis of the 1862 appeal of the Radja of Langkat to Siak. The Bureau records that the Radja of Langkat, “de onderdrukking door Atjeh moede” — “weary of the oppression by Atjeh” — turned in 1862 to Sultan Tongkoe Ismail of Siak “om door diens erkenning de hulp van het N. I. Gouvern. tegen Atjeh te verkrijgen” — “to obtain, through Siak’s recognition, the help of the Netherlands-Indies Government against Atjeh.” The Dutch guarantee of Siak’s rights over the Dependencies (up to the Tamiangrivier), embodied in the 1858 tractate, was thus the legal instrument by which the Langkat appeal unlocked Dutch protection.
Significance
The 1858 tractate is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, the diplomatic foundation of the Dutch East Coast state. It transfers Siak from a Siak sphere of influence to the Dutch colonial state; it fixes the Tamiangrivier as the northern limit of the Siak Dependencies (and hence of the Dutch sphere); and it provides the legal basis for the 1862 Langkat appeal that would, within four years, extinguish Atjehnese overlordship over the East Coast. The tractate is thus the hinge between the pre-colonial Atjehnese overlordship of the East Coast and the colonial era of Dutch effective authority.
Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)
The Dutch treaty with the Sultan of Siak of 1858 — by which that ruler placed his realm, which had formerly belonged to Atjeh but had loosened itself from it since 1705, with all his dependencies “strekkende tot de Tamiangrivier” (“stretching to the Tamiang river”) under Netherlands supremacy — called forth the Atjehnese Sultan’s sudden memory of his lapsed claims, and with it the chain of incidents that led toward the Acheh War.
The contract and the Atjehnese reaction
“‘t Ging goed… tot 1858!” — the treaty of 1857, concluded by General J. van Swieten with Sultan Ibrahim Mansur, had worked well until 1858, when the Netherlands Indian Government concluded a contract with the Sultan of Siak. And then it was, writes author Joh. Langhout, that the Sultan of Atjeh suddenly remembered that he could assert his claims — lapsed already more than a century before — upon Siak and Dependencies. “Aanspraken, die natuurlijk onzerzijds niet werden erkend” (“Claims which naturally were not recognized on our side”).
Consequences
The consequence was several utterances of a less good understanding, among them a firing by the Atjehnese upon Batoe Baroe, and as second consequence a Dutch expedition in 1865 to the North-East coast, which brought order, but no improvement of the disposition of the inhabitants of the Atjehnese border states.
See Also
- Siak
- Tongkoe Ismail
- Wilson
- Tamiang
- Langkat
- Deli
- Serdang
- Asahan
- Netscher
- langkat-appeal-to-siak-against-atjeh-(1862)
- dutch-marine-expulsion-of-atjehers-from-langkat-(1866)
- 1878 Langkat–Tamiang transfer
- atjeh-as-opperheer-in-langkat-deli-serdang-(1854)
- atjehsche-overheersing-der-noordelijke-kuststaatjes
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
- Singapore
- 1854
- 1858
- 1862
- 1866
- 1878
- 1908
- Treaty of 1857 with the Sultan of Atjeh
- Dutch expedition to the North-East Coast of Sumatra (1865)
- Sultan Ibrahim Mansur
- Acheh War
Source
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Afl. 3: Oostkust van Sumatra. Eerste Stuk, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1918), p. 114. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 17–18.