The submission and banishment of the pretender-Sultan — the signing of the short declaration by the pretender-sultan Toeankoe Moehamad Dawot under Governor Johannes van Heutsz (1898–1904), on the pledge that he would never be banished, and the breaking of that pledge when his relations with a foreign power came to light — was, for author Joh. Langhout, the central disappointment of Van Heutsz’s governorship: “in die verwachting is Van Heutsz teleurgesteld” (“in that expectation Van Heutsz was disappointed”).
The submission and the promise
On the submission of the pretender-sultan Van Heutsz apparently set much store; later it became clear that he expected too much of it — particularly a mass-submission of other resistance-chiefs which would immediately follow. When it was once known that the pretender-sultan was found prepared to sign the short declaration, Van Heutsz used several efforts to hasten the submission — against the advice of Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, “on whose compass in other cases he always sailed”. Notwithstanding that Snouck most strongly dissuaded the giving of assurances and the making of promises toward the pretender-sultan, Van Heutsz went so far as to assent to the condition that, after his submission, the pretender-sultan should never be banished from Atjeh.
The disappointment
The expectation was not fulfilled. Very soon it appeared that the pretender-sultan used all efforts to withdraw himself from Van Heutsz’s command to bring the still hostile chiefs toward the Dutch government by peaceable means, “but equally that the sultan even missed every understanding of power over these chiefs!” — a fact which must indeed have been for Van Heutsz a disillusion; he had expected much, too much, of that submission.
The broken word and the exile
The promise that the submitted pretender would never be banished from Atjeh was one which Van Heutsz, “eenigen tijd later als gouverneur-generaal niet langer kon nakomen” (“some time later, as Governor-General, could no longer keep”), when it came to light that the sultan entered into relations with a foreign power, in which he asked the question “whether it had no opportunity to wrest the government of Atjeh from the Netherlands!”. “Toen moest verbanning van den ontrouwen vorst volgen” — “Then the banishment of the faithless prince had to follow.” When Governor H. N. A. Swart later obtained the return of the Atjehnese exiles whose residence in the province had been forbidden under article 47 R.R., there remained explicitly excluded: “de ex-pretendent soeltan, Toeankoe Moehamad Dawot en zijn zoon Toeankoe Ibrahim” (see Toeankoe Moehamad Dawot).
See Also
Source
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 81–82, 98.