Captain Francis Light (c. 1740 – 1794) was the British sea-captain and country-trader who, in 1786, founded the British settlement of Pulau Pinang on behalf of the East India Company, and who figures in The Achehnese as one of the earliest European observers to grasp the practical impossibility of establishing a secure European settlement on the Achehnese coast. His warning, recorded in correspondence with the Governor-General of Bengal in the same year that Warren Hastings received a discourteous letter from the Sultan of Acheh, proved prophetic of every subsequent attempt — British and Dutch alike — to deal with Acheh by ordinary diplomatic or commercial means.
Light’s advice to his superiors was that “a settlement at Pulau Pinang possessed greater advantages than one on the Achehnese coast”. His description of Acheh, quoted at length by Snouck Hurgronje in the Introduction to The Achehnese, is one of the classic European appraisals of the country’s situation before the colonial wars. “Acheen”, he wrote, “is a good road but no place of security against an enemy there. The country is fertile beyond description and very populous. The inhabitants rigid and superstitious Mohammedans, sullen, fickle and treacherous. To form a settlement there of safety and advantage, a force sufficient to subdue all the chiefs would be necessary”.
The last phrase is the heart of Light’s assessment. He recognised that the difficulty of Acheh lay not in its military strength — for the country was “hopelessly divided against itself” — but in the very absence of central authority, which meant that no treaty with a Sultan could bind the countless miniature states under chiefs whose power depended on personal energy, and who were “generally in a state of warfare with their neighbours unless in peace and alliance with them for the joint perpetration of their national offences”. The foreigner wronged in Achehnese waters “sought vainly for some authority that might redress his wrongs”.
Snouck treats Light, together with James Price and (later) Robert Fullerton of Penang, as having “grasped the situation in its most literal sense” half a century before the Dutch. “Truly Francis Light and James Price, whom we have already quoted, had grasped the situation in its most literal sense. It was necessary ‘to subdue all the chiefs’, and their name was legion!” Only as guerillas against guerillas, Snouck continues, by using the most lightly equipped native troops under the leadership of first-rate European officers, could the work be done — a prescription that anticipates the very tactics later imposed on the Dutch by Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz and General van der Heijden.
Light’s decision to settle Penang rather than Acheh thus deflected British ambitions away from the northern tip of Sumatra, and left the problem of Achehnese disorder to be re-discovered by the Dutch in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. His forecast of 1873 was, in effect, fulfilled.
See Also
- James Price
- Warren Hastings
- Governor R. Fullerton
- Penang
- Pulau Pinang
- Bengal
- Acheh
- Achehnese War
- Treaty of Quedah (Penang cession, 1786)
- Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Warren Hastings
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Captain Coombs’ first Acheh mission (1817-1818)
Sources
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
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.
Assessment of Acheh in 1786
In the same year 1786 in which the Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Warren Hastings was sent to the Governor-General of Bengal, Light turned his attention to the establishment of a settlement on Pulo Pinang, the island he judged “more suitable than Acheh”. Writing to the Governor-General of Bengal on 15 February 1786, he acknowledged that Acheh possessed a good harbour, that the country was extraordinarily fertile and populous, but that its inhabitants were “rigid and superstitious Mohammedans, sullen, fickle and treacherous”, so that the formation of a settlement “of safety and advantage” would require a force sufficient to subdue all the chiefs. He therefore advised against Acheh as a base. As Van der Kemp records his judgement, Acheh was “a good road, but no place of security against an enemy there”.
Light’s preference for Penang over Acheen was expressed in the oft-quoted phrase: “I prefer Penang to the port of Acheen as being more healthy and entire free from that oppression, war and confusion which however distressed and at length driven out every European nation who has attempted to settle there.” This assessment carried weight in later British policy discussions: when Raffles, Coombs and Bannerman confronted the Acheh question in 1819, they did so against a long background in which Light’s verdict had inclined British governments to look to Penang rather than to Acheh for a permanent station.
Foundation of Penang
Through a treaty with the Raja of Quedah, concluded for a rental sum of 10,000 dollars, Light secured the cession of Pulo Pinang to Great Britain. In the wording of the Quedah ruler’s letter to the Governor-General of Bengal, “Captain Light Deva Rajah” was the officer “who came here and informed us that our friend requested Pulo Penang”; the Raja accordingly instructed “our akeel and friend Captain Deva Rajah” to plant the Honourable Company’s English flag upon the island. The grant, dated 20 Shaval 1199 of the Hegira, became the legal foundation of British Penang, and the Treaty of Quedah remained the constitutional basis of the settlement down to the period treated by Van der Kemp.
Legacy in the Acheh Question
Van der Kemp treats Light’s choice of Penang over Acheh as decisive for everything that followed. The early years of Penang were difficult, and at moments the abandonment of the island was even considered, yet the idea of a settlement at Acheh was never resumed. Instead, the Penang government was charged with the supervision of Achehnese affairs, a function which produced the chain of missions by Captain Canning in 1814, Coombs in 1817–1818, and finally the Raffles-Coombs Commission of 1819. Light’s strategic preference thus determined both the location of British power in the Straits and the form which British relations with Acheh would take: a Penang-based oversight rather than direct occupation.
Light died at Penang in October 1794, but his creation endured. By the time of Lord Moira’s dispatch of the Acheh commission in 1819, Penang was already the established base from which that commission operated, and from which Raffles subsequently broke away to establish Singapore.
Captain Francis Light (c. 1740 – 1794) was the British sea-captain and country-trader who, in 1786, founded the British settlement of Pulau Pinang on behalf of the East India Company, and who figures in The Achehnese as one of the earliest European observers to grasp the practical impossibility of establishing a secure European settlement on the Achehnese coast. His warning, recorded in correspondence with the Governor-General of Bengal in the same year that Warren Hastings received a discourteous letter from the Sultan of Acheh, proved prophetic of every subsequent attempt — British and Dutch alike — to deal with Acheh by ordinary diplomatic or commercial means.
Light’s advice to his superiors was that “a settlement at Pulau Pinang possessed greater advantages than one on the Achehnese coast”. His description of Acheh, quoted at length by Snouck Hurgronje in the Introduction to The Achehnese, is one of the classic European appraisals of the country’s situation before the colonial wars. “Acheen”, he wrote, “is a good road but no place of security against an enemy there. The country is fertile beyond description and very populous. The inhabitants rigid and superstitious Mohammedans, sullen, fickle and treacherous. To form a settlement there of safety and advantage, a force sufficient to subdue all the chiefs would be necessary”.
The last phrase is the heart of Light’s assessment. He recognised that the difficulty of Acheh lay not in its military strength — for the country was “hopelessly divided against itself” — but in the very absence of central authority, which meant that no treaty with a Sultan could bind the countless miniature states under chiefs whose power depended on personal energy, and who were “generally in a state of warfare with their neighbours unless in peace and alliance with them for the joint perpetration of their national offences”. The foreigner wronged in Achehnese waters “sought vainly for some authority that might redress his wrongs”.
Snouck treats Light, together with James Price and (later) Robert Fullerton of Penang, as having “grasped the situation in its most literal sense” half a century before the Dutch. “Truly Francis Light and James Price, whom we have already quoted, had grasped the situation in its most literal sense. It was necessary ‘to subdue all the chiefs’, and their name was legion!” Only as guerillas against guerillas, Snouck continues, by using the most lightly equipped native troops under the leadership of first-rate European officers, could the work be done — a prescription that anticipates the very tactics later imposed on the Dutch by Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz and General van der Heijden.
Light’s decision to settle Penang rather than Acheh thus deflected British ambitions away from the northern tip of Sumatra, and left the problem of Achehnese disorder to be re-discovered by the Dutch in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. His forecast of 1873 was, in effect, fulfilled.
See Also
- James Price
- Warren Hastings
- Governor R. Fullerton
- Penang
- Pulau Pinang
- Bengal
- Acheh
- Achehnese War
- Treaty of Quedah (Penang cession, 1786)
- Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Warren Hastings
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Captain Coombs’ first Acheh mission (1817-1818)
Sources
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
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.
Assessment of Acheh in 1786
In the same year 1786 in which the Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Warren Hastings was sent to the Governor-General of Bengal, Light turned his attention to the establishment of a settlement on Pulo Pinang, the island he judged “more suitable than Acheh”. Writing to the Governor-General of Bengal on 15 February 1786, he acknowledged that Acheh possessed a good harbour, that the country was extraordinarily fertile and populous, but that its inhabitants were “rigid and superstitious Mohammedans, sullen, fickle and treacherous”, so that the formation of a settlement “of safety and advantage” would require a force sufficient to subdue all the chiefs. He therefore advised against Acheh as a base. As Van der Kemp records his judgement, Acheh was “a good road, but no place of security against an enemy there”.
Light’s preference for Penang over Acheen was expressed in the oft-quoted phrase: “I prefer Penang to the port of Acheen as being more healthy and entire free from that oppression, war and confusion which however distressed and at length driven out every European nation who has attempted to settle there.” This assessment carried weight in later British policy discussions: when Raffles, Coombs and Bannerman confronted the Acheh question in 1819, they did so against a long background in which Light’s verdict had inclined British governments to look to Penang rather than to Acheh for a permanent station.
Foundation of Penang
Through a treaty with the Raja of Quedah, concluded for a rental sum of 10,000 dollars, Light secured the cession of Pulo Pinang to Great Britain. In the wording of the Quedah ruler’s letter to the Governor-General of Bengal, “Captain Light Deva Rajah” was the officer “who came here and informed us that our friend requested Pulo Penang”; the Raja accordingly instructed “our akeel and friend Captain Deva Rajah” to plant the Honourable Company’s English flag upon the island. The grant, dated 20 Shaval 1199 of the Hegira, became the legal foundation of British Penang, and the Treaty of Quedah remained the constitutional basis of the settlement down to the period treated by Van der Kemp.
Legacy in the Acheh Question
Van der Kemp treats Light’s choice of Penang over Acheh as decisive for everything that followed. The early years of Penang were difficult, and at moments the abandonment of the island was even considered, yet the idea of a settlement at Acheh was never resumed. Instead, the Penang government was charged with the supervision of Achehnese affairs, a function which produced the chain of missions by Captain Canning in 1814, Coombs in 1817–1818, and finally the Raffles-Coombs Commission of 1819. Light’s strategic preference thus determined both the location of British power in the Straits and the form which British relations with Acheh would take: a Penang-based oversight rather than direct occupation.
Light died at Penang in October 1794, but his creation endured. By the time of Lord Moira’s dispatch of the Acheh commission in 1819, Penang was already the established base from which that commission operated, and from which Raffles subsequently broke away to establish Singapore.