Balthasar Bort was the Compagnie’s commissioner who, together with Jacob de Keyser, conducted the Atjeh negotiation that produced the peace of 5 October 1659 with the sultane of Atjeh, and who then, on his return voyage along the West Coast of Sumatra, concluded new commercial treaties with the chiefs of Sillebar, Indrapera and Padang in the presence of a representative of the sultane. In Dr. F. W. Stapel’s Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland he is the commissioner whose work bridges the 1659 Atjeh peace and the consolidation of Dutch factories on the Westkust that would lead, four years later, to the Painansch Contract.
The 1659 Atjeh deputation
The 1656 blockade and the arrest of Anthony van Voorst had produced, by 1657–1659, an Acehnese desire to negotiate. “With the envoys a deputation under Jacob de Keyser and Balthasar Bort then travelled to Atjeh, and obtained on 5 October the ratification by the sultane” (Met de gezanten trok nu een deputatie onder Jacob de Keyser en Balthasar Bort naar Atjeh, en verkreeg den 5den October de ratificatie door de sultane).
The peace of 5 October 1659 had three principal elements: Compagnie compensation for the Van Voorst affair; Westkust monopoly re-confirming the Truytman formula; and the re-establishment of a lodge (loge) at Atjeh itself. A separate regulation covered Perak: half of the tin to Atjeh, half to the Compagnie.
The Westkust treaties
After Atjeh, Bort sailed along the Westkust. “On his journey along the West Coast commissioner Bort, in the presence of a representative of the sultane, concluded new trade treaties with the chiefs of Sillebar — which did not stand under Atjeh, but under the sultan of Bantam — Indrapera and Padang” (Op zijn reis langs de Westkust sloot commissaris Bort, in het bijzijn van een vertegenwoordiger der sultane, nieuwe handelsverdragen met de hoofden van Sillebar — die niet onder Atjeh, maar onder den sultan van Bantam stond — Indrapera en Padang).
The diplomatic form is striking. Bort is negotiating Westkust treaties in the presence of a representative of the sultane — that is, formally under Atjeh’s suzerainty. The Compagnie is not yet repudiating the sultane’s authority; it is, in 1659, working through her. The sultane’s representative is the visible token of the co-operative relationship that the 1659 peace had just restored.
On the two last-named places — Indrapera and Padang — offices (kantoren) were established. The Compagnie was now physically present at Indrapoera and Padang as well as at Tikoe and Priaman (the four pepper ports of the Schouten treaty of 1641).
Significance
Bort’s Westkust work of 1659 is the last Dutch expansion on the Westkust undertaken in concert with Atjeh. Within three years Jan van Groenewegen was conducting the secret Menangkabau negotiations that would produce the Painansch Contract of 6 July 1663, and within four years the Compagnie was at war with the Atjehsche governors of the Westkust. The Bort mission of 1659 thus marks the close of the co-operative phase of Dutch Westkust expansion.
The presence of the sultane’s representative at the Indrapoera and Padang treaty signings is also the last formal acknowledgement by the Compagnie of Atjeh’s sovereignty on the Westkust. The Painansch Contract would repudiate it; the Padang Conference of 1680 would reverse it; but in October 1659 Bort was still operating within an Acehnese framework.
See Also
- Jacob de Keyser
- Sultana of Atjeh (Taj ul-Alam)
- Treaty of Atjeh-VOC (5 October 1659)
- Blockade of Atjeh (1656)
- Arrest of Anthony van Voorst
- Anthony van Voorst
- Treaty of Atjeh-VOC (November 1649)
- Treaty of Atjeh-VOC (15 February 1641)
- Painansch Contract
- Jan van Groenewegen
- Indrapoera
- Padang
- Silebar
- Sultan of Bantam
- Perak
- Westkust van Sumatra
- Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
- 5 October
- 1659
Source
De Koloniën, by Dr. F. W. Stapel, in Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), kaart 19, blz. 15 (tekst bij blad 4: Atjeh en de Westkust van Sumatra in 1684).