The Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Warren Hastings of 7 November 1786 — known in Dutch as the sultansbrief 7 November 1786 — was the celebrated and insulting reply sent by Sultan Alaeddin Muhammad Shah of Acheh (referred to in the letter as “sultan Munson, son of sultan Ziemul Abudeen,” Van der Kemp’s note identifying him as the same sultan known to Veth as Alaoe’d-din Mahmoed Shah Djohan) to Governor-General Warren Hastings of Bengal. The letter is reproduced in full as Appendix 1 of Van der Kemp’s article, and is invoked in the opening pages as proof that European relations with Acheh had, throughout the eighteenth century, been “either very loose or very strained.”
Circumstances
The immediate occasion of the letter was the arrival at Acheh of the British ship under Captain Steven (the same Captain Hobbs mentioned in the text having previously been mortally wounded by a “classy” from Java at Tringano). The Sultan had earlier requested, through Mr. John Bird, 300 small muskets conformable to a pattern he had sent. The muskets delivered proved worthless, and the Sultan returned them with the letter now under consideration.
The Letter
After the usual compliments — “God grant you long life and preserve you from the distresses of the world” — the Sultan observed that he was “very desirous of this interview and of a lasting friendship with the English.” He had sent an answer by Captain Hobbs, who had died at Tringano after being wounded. The Sultan had then consulted Captain Canning and Mr. Phillips about the disposal of Captain Hobbs’s effects, and they had unanimously desired him to deliver them to Mr. John Bird. He then came to the heart of the matter:
“The muskets which you sent me, as mentioned in your letter, from not being worth anything, I have returned, and request in future you will send me such as may be useful, or I do not want any, though I ask you for 300 small muskets agreeable to a muster I send by Mr. John Bird after the death of Captain Hobbs.”
The Sultan further complained that Mr. John Bird had sold certain articles intended for Java (not Bengal) and had taken goods in exchange from the Sultan himself, occasioning a loss of 3,891 koors. He concluded: “My sole intention and desire is to maintain a friendship with you, and that you may continue to write me letters. I request you will fix on some one to send to me; you are doubtless so that I may ask him about all matters.”
Significance
Van der Kemp cites the letter as a measure of the contempt in which the Achenese court held even so powerful a British figure as Warren Hastings. The brutal directness of the message — if the Governor-General proposed to send more worthless goods, he had better not bother — set the tone for Anglo-Achehnese relations in the decades that followed. Captain Francis Light’s contemporaneous conclusion (15 February 1786) that Acheh was unsuitable for a British settlement, and the consequent cession of Penang by the Raja of Quedah in the same year, must be read against this background. The supervision of Achehnese affairs would, nevertheless, be specifically entrusted to the government of Pinang, and the civil war of 1802–1819 would draw the British back into Achehnese politics, producing the Canning mission of 1814, the Coombs mission of 1817–18, and ultimately the treaty of 22 April 1819.
See Also
- Warren Hastings
- Sultan Alaeddin Muhammad Shah of Acheh
- Captain Francis Light
- Captain Hobbs
- Captain Glass
- Captain Thomas
- John Bird
- Captain Canning
- W. E. Phillips
- Captain Steven
- Treaty of Quedah (Penang cession, 1786)
- Acheh
- Penang
- Tringano
- Java
- Acheh succession dispute (1802-1819)
- Treaty of Pedir (1819)
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.