Syf’s pension at Penang was an arrangement by which the Bengal government, in July 1820, granted the Achehnese pretender Saif ul-Alum (Syf) a monthly pension of 500 dollars, charged to the account of Sultan Jauhar Alum, on which Syf lived at Penang in quiet semi-retirement until his death. The arrangement is one of the small but characteristic episodes by which, in Van der Kemp’s narrative, the British government attempted to manage the consequences of the Treaty of Pedir (1819) without incurring the cost of military intervention in Acheh itself.
The grant was made immediately after Syf’s flight to Calcutta in early 1820, during which he had plundered a junk and twelve praus on his way to Bengal. The Calcutta judges, declining to convict him on the ground that he “had acted as a sovereign”, released him unpunished; and the government, evidently anxious to be rid of him on any terms, conferred the pension. He returned to Penang on 21 July 1820 and settled down there.
The choice of Jauhar Alum as the nominal debtor was, of course, fanciful. The sultan had never been able to give effect to any of the stipulations of the Treaty of Pedir of 22 April 1819, and the supremacy of Panglima Polim at the capital, combined with the three Sagis’ refusal in December 1822 to recognise him, had reduced him to impotence. The Bengal report of 7 October 1820 to London observed of the pension that it had been charged to the sultan, “but there is no prospect of its being realised from him”. The pension was therefore in practice a British charge.
The arrangement was, however, attended by some embarrassment. At one moment Syf’s life at Penang was made unpleasant by an interpellation about his old offences — not from the English but from the Dutch side, the Batavia government being anxious to call him to account for his share in the plunder of the Wilhelmina’s mutineers. The result was the Lucas mission of February 1821 and the long Anglo-Dutch “paper war” that followed. Syf himself, however, was sheltered by the British government at Penang, and the matter was eventually dropped. He lived out his days on his pension, a curious relic of the Raffles–Coombs commission and of the abortive 1819 treaty.
See Also
- Sultan Saif ul-Alum
- Sultan Jauhar Alum
- Syf’s flight to Calcutta
- Lucas mission to Telok Semawé (February 1821)
- Wilhelmina mutiny and murder of Bouwens
- Treaty of Pedir (1819)
- Panglima Polim’s supremacy at Acheh
- Three Sagis’ letter to Penang (4 December 1822)
- Raffles-Coombs Acheh Commission (1819)
- Penang
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.