The VOC-Minangkabau treaty and the founding of the Padang depot of 1664 was the East India Company’s forcible answer to the Atjehnese violations of the trade monopoly conceded in 1651: the occupation of Indrapoera, Padang and Tikoe, a treaty of exclusive trade with the Minangkabauers, and the establishment under Jacob Cau of the Company’s head depot for the Dutch trade on the West Coast of Sumatra — maintained thereafter against repeated Atjehnese attacks, in one of which Commissaris Gruys and 130 men lost their lives.
Occupation and exclusive trade
The trade monopoly which the Company had obtained under the treaty ending the blockade of 1651 — with half of the tin yield of Perak — was continually broken by the Atjehnese; when at last the notion “monopoly” had apparently wholly fallen away, the Company acted. It occupied Indrapoera, Padang and Tikoe, and concluded with the Minangkabauers on the West Coast of Sumatra a treaty of exclusive trade (alleen-handel), of which the consequence was that in 1664 Jacob Cau could lay in at Padang the head depot for the Dutch trade.
Atjehnese attacks
Here the Hollanders knew how to maintain themselves, writes author Joh. Langhout, notwithstanding the many attacks which the Atjehnese undertook upon their settlement; it was in one of those fights that the Dutch commissaris Gruys “with 130 men had to leave his life”. The amicable relation with the Minangkabau country and the fortified Padang position turned the pepper trade of the West Coast durably toward the Dutch settlements, while Atjeh itself, “even as of old, was tormented by internal feuds for more than a century and a half”, a prey to chiefs and princes who exploited the population ever more, while sea-robbery and plundering again ran high — the long decline within Atjeh’s “zelfbestuur” that preceded the interventions of the nineteenth century.
See Also
- Jacob Cau
- Murder of the Hollanders and blockade of Atjeh (1651)
- Sultanah Safiatuddin
- Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
- Sea robbery on the Atjeh coast
Source
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), p. 15.