In January 1903, the young pretender-Sultan Muhammad Dawot Shah, who had held court at Keumala since childhood, renounced his claim to the Acehnese throne and submitted unconditionally to the Dutch government, an event generally regarded as marking the formal end of large-scale organized resistance in the Aceh War.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Submission of Tuanku Muhamat Dawot
The submission of Tuanku Muhamat Dawot to the Dutch Government in January 1903 brought to a symbolic close the political life of the pretender-sultanate of Acheh. Tuanku (Sultan Alaeddin) Muhamat Dawot Shah, who in 1878 as a child had been proclaimed Pretender-Sultan after the loss of the Dalam, surrendered almost without exception along with the chiefs of dependent states, the members of the Sultan’s family, and thousands of refugees who then came back to their gampongs under the authority of Government. The portrait which faces page 10 of The Achehnese bears the laconic caption: “Tuanku Muhamat Dawot. Pretender to the Sultanate 1878–1902. Submitted to the Dutch Government January 1903.”
The nonentity-Sultan
Snouck Hurgronje’s diagnosis of the situation, formed in 1891–1892 and confirmed by the events of the next decade, had included the proposition that Tuanku Muhamat Dawot, who had been made Sultan as a child, however much he enjoyed the homage mingled with fear that natives are apt to give to the descendants of their tyrants, was a nonentity in a political sense and was in a position neither to do the Dutch much harm nor to give them any serious assistance in the pacification of the country. When Sultan Mahmut Shah died shortly after the loss of the Dalam, it had not been thought necessary even in so perilous a crisis to select from among the candidates for the succession a man before all things; they contented themselves with a child, and though his guardian Tuanku Asem (Hashim) was a man of royal blood most bitterly hostile to the Dutch Government, even he preferred to watch the contest with interest from a distance rather than himself to take a serious share in it.
The wandering court at Keumala
The fugitive “court” found a safe place of refuge in Kuta Keumala, which became the seat of the sultanate and the chancery from which the sarakatas with the ninefold seal continued to issue to uleebalangs on both sides of the Dutch “linie”. But the Sultan had no troops, only a handful of personal followers; Keumala itself, the seat of the sultanate, had to be subdued by force in the first instance by the royal family. The pretender was at length compelled, owing to a quarrel with the local chiefs, to break up his “court” at Keumala and to settle first in one place and then in another. For the last three years (1896–1899), i.e. since the Dutch began to deal seriously with the government of Great Acheh and the subjugation of its dependencies, the pretender was obliged to lead a wandering life, seeking safety by constantly shifting his abode and finding his asylum as a rule in the North-coast districts.
The end of the old pirate-state
Under General Van Heutsz the Dutch abandoned the concentration scheme and turned to the active subjugation of the country through lightly equipped native troops under European officers, operating in small detachments against the guerrilla bands of the ulamas. In less than six years, Van Heutsz made such progress that even the most sceptical had to admit that the beginning of the end had come. The traitor Uma and numbers of adventurers, fanatical leaders and guerilla chiefs perished; the chiefs of dependent states, the members of the Sultan’s family, and finally their head himself — Tuanku Muhamat Dawot — submitted almost without exception. The continuance of the revolt was henceforth censured by all chiefs of mark except a limited number of universally respected religious leaders.
Significance
The submission was, in a sense, only a formal act, since the Pretender-Sultan had long been a nonentity politically; yet as the public extinction of the institution around which the resistance had rallied, it was an event of the first importance. The royal name survived only on the seals and the sarakatas already issued; the political future of Acheh lay no longer with the wandering descendants of its old sultans, but with the Dutch civil administration, the hereditary uleebalangs, and the still-resisting ulamas.
See Also
- Muhammad Dawot Shah
- Aceh War
- Keumala
- Tuanku Muhamat Dawot
- Subjugation of Keumala
- Governor Van Heutsz
- Acheh War
- Dutch policy of ‘concentration’
- Sarakata with chab sikureu’eng
- Snouck Hurgronje’s Acheh Mission
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.