Anthony van Voorst was the Compagnie’s opperhoofd der Westkust (chief of trade on the West Coast of Sumatra) whose arrest, together with all his officials, by the sultane of Atjeh in 1656 was the immediate trigger of the 1656 blockade crisis and the 1659 peace that closed it. In Dr. F. W. Stapel’s Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland he is the Dutch official whose person became the political instrument of the sultane’s response to the Compagnie’s coercive trade policy.
The 1656 arrest
The Compagnie’s decision in 1656 to blockade Atjeh’s coasts — taken in response to the Atjehsche governors’ persistent violation of the Truytman treaties of November 1649 — produced, instead of Acehnese submission, a sharp sovereign reprisal. “This action had however an opposite effect, for instead of being intimidated by it, the sultane had the chief of the Compagnie’s trade on the West Coast, Anthony van Voorst, with all his officials arrested, and laid hands at the same time on the ‘effects’ of the Compagnie at Atjeh and on the West Coast” (Dit optreden had evenwel een averechtsche uitwerking, want in plaats van zich daardoor te laten intimideeren, liet de sultane het opperhoofd van ‘s Compagnies handel op de Westkust, Anthony van Voorst, met al zijn ambtenaren in arrest nemen, en legde tevens beslag op de ‘effecten’ der Compagnie te Atjeh en aan de Westkust).
The arrest had three components.
Persons. Van Voorst himself, with all his officials, was placed under arrest.
Compagnie effects at Atjeh. The Compagnie’s goods and funds at Atjeh itself were seized.
Compagnie effects on the West Coast. The Compagnie’s goods and funds on the Westkust — the entire apparatus of the pepper and camphor trade — were likewise seized.
Consequences
The arrest galvanised Batavia. In preparing a forceful response the Hooge Regeering now also decided to enter into “the already repeatedly directed request of the Menangkabau chiefs ‘that we should bind ourselves to defend them against the Atchinders, both by water and by land’” (dat wy ons souden verbinden haar tegens d’Atchinders te defenderen, soo te water als te lande). A first expedition in 1657 achieved nothing; a second had enough success to bring Atjeh to the negotiating table.
The peace of 5 October 1659, negotiated through the deputation of Jacob de Keyser and Balthasar Bort, provided “that the Compagnie would receive compensation for the damage suffered in the arrest of her people and goods” (De Compagnie zou vergoeding krijgen voor de geleden schade bij het arresteeren van haar menschen en goederen). The Van Voorst affair was thus officially settled by the 1659 treaty.
Significance
The arrest of Van Voorst is one of the most striking acts of sovereign resistance in the entire Dutch-Acehnese relationship. The sultane’s choice to respond to a Dutch blockade not with armed counter-force but with the seizure of the persons and goods of the Compagnie’s representatives is a textbook case of asymmetrical reprisal: the Compagnie could blockade Atjeh’s coasts but could not easily extract its people once seized, and the sultane knew it.
The episode also marks the definitive end of the Truytman policy of co-operation. After 1656 the Compagnie ceased to treat the sultane as a partner whose good will could be won by tact, and began to treat her as a sovereign to be coerced. The Painansch Contract of 1663 — by which the Menangkabau chiefs of the Westkust placed themselves under Compagnie protection, in defiance of Atjeh’s claims to suzerainty — is the direct political fruit of the Van Voorst crisis.
See Also
- Sultana of Atjeh (Taj ul-Alam)
- Blockade of Atjeh (1656)
- Treaty of Atjeh-VOC (5 October 1659)
- Treaty of Atjeh-VOC (November 1649)
- Jacob de Keyser
- Balthasar Bort
- Jan van Groenewegen
- Painansch Contract
- Menangkabau
- Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
- Westkust van Sumatra
- 1656
- 1657
- 1659
Source
De Koloniën, by Dr. F. W. Stapel, in Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), kaart 19, blz. 14–15 (tekst bij blad 4: Atjeh en de Westkust van Sumatra in 1684).