The Treaty of 1857 with the Sultan of Atjèh — in Kreemer’s history, the diplomatic agreement concluded in 1857 between the Netherlands-Indian government and the Sultan of Atjèh, negotiated by the governor of Soematra’s Westkust (identified by Kreemer as Van Swieten, the same officer who would later command the second Atjèh expedition of 1873–1874) — was the first formal treaty between the Dutch and the Atjèhnese sultanate since the London treaty of 1824. Its Article 7 designated the governor of the West Coast as the Dutch government’s representative for all Atjèh-related affairs.
The negotiation
Kreemer situates the treaty at the end of the flag-visit episode. After the hostile reception of the war-brig De Haai in 1855 and the Sultan’s double-dealing reception of a larger ship in 1856, the Sultan “had nu om toenadering gevraagd en aan onze zijde haastte men zich aan zijn verlangen gevolg te geven. Zoo werd aan den gouverneur der Westkust in 1857 opgedragen zich naar Atjèh te begeven, om met den Soeltan over een tractaat te onderhandelen en hem een brief en geschenken van den Gouverneur-Generaal te overhandigen. Hoewel de houding van den Soeltan bij de onderhandeling in vele opzichten te wenschen overliet, werd het tractaat ten slotte toch tot stand gebracht” — “had now asked for a rapprochement, and on our side one hastened to comply with his desire. Thus the governor of the West Coast was instructed in 1857 to proceed to Atjèh, to negotiate a treaty with the Sultan and to deliver to him a letter and gifts from the Governor-General. Although the Sultan’s bearing during the negotiation left much to be desired in many respects, the treaty was in the end nevertheless concluded.”
Kreemer notes that the treaty is printed as Bijlage III in De Klerck’s De Atjèh-oorlog, and that the voyage of generaal Van Swieten is described in F. Q. Hoffman’s Verhaal der Expeditie van 1857 (1873).
The failure of the treaty
“Nooit echter is van het tractaat van 1857 eenig nut, hoe gering ook, ondervonden. Integendeel na dit tractaat nam Atjèh meer en meer een vijandige houding tegenover ons aan en bleek de ‘bestendige vrede, vriendschap en goede verstandhouding’, waarvan het tractaat sprak, een doode letter te zijn” — “Never, however, was any benefit, however slight, derived from the treaty of 1857. On the contrary, after this treaty Atjèh assumed more and more a hostile attitude towards us, and the ‘perpetual peace, friendship and good understanding’ of which the treaty spoke proved to be a dead letter.”
Significance
The treaty of 1857 is, in Kreemer’s narrative, the high-water mark of Dutch treaty-diplomacy with Atjèh — and its failure is the proof that treaty-diplomacy could not substitute for territorial control. The designation of the West Coast governor as the Dutch point-of-contact (Article 7) foreshadows the administrative structure that would later govern the Gouvernement Atjèh en Onderhoorigheden. The treaty’s life as a “dead letter” reproduces, at the diplomatic level, the same pattern of Dutch acquiescence that characterised the entire 1824–1873 period, and prepares the argument that only the abrogation of the 1824 framework — achieved by the Sumatra-tractaat of 1871 — could open the way to a forceful Atjèh policy.
See Also
- Acheh
- Generaal van Swieten
- De Haai flag visit (1855)
- Causes of the Atjèh-oorlog (Kreemer’s account)
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824
- Sumatra Treaty of 1871
- E. B. Kielstra
- Sumatra’s West Coast
- 1857
- 1873
Source
Atjèh. Algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en onderhoorigheden, door J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut. Eerste Deel. Leiden: N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill, 1922. Hoofdstuk I, B (“Periode 1824—1873. Oorzaken van den Atjèh-oorlog”), blz. 11, n. 4. Citing F. Q. Hoffman, Verhaal der Expeditie van 1857 (1873), and E. S. de Klerck, De Atjèh-oorlog, dl. I, Bijl. III.