Commissioner-General Du Bus

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tagsperson, dutch-official, commissioner-general
aliasesDu Bus, commissaris-generaal Du Bus, Leonard Pierre Joseph du Bus de Gisignies

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Commissioner-General Du Bus — Leonard Pierre Joseph, Baron du Bus de Gisignies — served as commissaris-generaal (Commissioner-General) of the Netherlands Indies in the late 1820s. In P. H. van der Kemp’s 1900 article he is mentioned in a single, but historically significant, passage: it was Du Bus who, in 1827, formed the plan to send the frigate Bellona to Sumatra’s East Coast in order to encourage the native chiefs to trade with Riouw rather than with the British at Singapore. The episode anticipates by half a century the colonial-policy contest that would culminate in the Sumatra Treaty of 1871.

The 1827 Bellona Project

Van der Kemp introduces Du Bus through the report of the former resident of Singapore, John Prince, who at the end of 1827 found himself at Batavia. There he learned “that Commissioner-General Du Bus had the intention of sending the warship Bellona to Sumatra’s East Coast, in order to encourage the chiefs there to trade with Riouw.” Prince thereupon wrote to the government at Penang on 29 November 1827, in the dispatch that Van der Kemp prints as Bijlage 11. The mission, as Prince described it, was “to induce the natives to discontinue the purchase of salt from us, and to take it from Rhio where it is to be delivered at as low a rate as it can be got at the former place.” The scheme was the practical Dutch reply to the salt-price competition that had become the chief instrument of commercial policy in the region since the treaty of 1824.

The Bellona Mission

Prince warned the Penang government that “the appearance of a ship of that description carrying such a commission may make an impression on the natives of the several ports of Siak, Kampar, Jambi &c., unfavourable to the commercial interests of Singapore, inasmuch as they may be intimidated into a compliance with the views of the Netherlands Government and grant through fear what their interests and better reason would otherwise condemn.” The mission of the Bellona accordingly became a flashpoint in the Anglo-Dutch commercial rivalry of the late 1820s; its outcomes are analysed in Fullerton’s celebrated minute on Acheh of March 1825 and in his Pinang Nota of the same year.

Du Bus in Context

Du Bus held the office of Commissioner-General at a moment when the Dutch colonial administration was navigating between two imperatives: the obligations imposed by the treaty of 1824, under which the Netherlands was to enjoy a free hand on Sumatra while Britain enjoyed the same on the Malay peninsula, and the financial stringency imposed by the Java War of 1825–1830. The Bellona project — a comparatively inexpensive naval demonstration in support of a commercial policy — is characteristic of the kind of initiative a Commissioner-General could undertake while the regular military budget was consumed by the war in Java. It is also one of the immediate provocations of the Pinang Nota in which Fullerton set out, with such remarkable prescience, the British reading of the 1824 treaty.

See Also

Source

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.

Commissioner-General Du Bus — Leonard Pierre Joseph, Baron du Bus de Gisignies — served as commissaris-generaal (Commissioner-General) of the Netherlands Indies in the late 1820s. In P. H. van der Kemp’s 1900 article he is mentioned in a single, but historically significant, passage: it was Du Bus who, in 1827, formed the plan to send the frigate Bellona to Sumatra’s East Coast in order to encourage the native chiefs to trade with Riouw rather than with the British at Singapore. The episode anticipates by half a century the colonial-policy contest that would culminate in the Sumatra Treaty of 1871.

The 1827 Bellona Project

Van der Kemp introduces Du Bus through the report of the former resident of Singapore, John Prince, who at the end of 1827 found himself at Batavia. There he learned “that Commissioner-General Du Bus had the intention of sending the warship Bellona to Sumatra’s East Coast, in order to encourage the chiefs there to trade with Riouw.” Prince thereupon wrote to the government at Penang on 29 November 1827, in the dispatch that Van der Kemp prints as Bijlage 11. The mission, as Prince described it, was “to induce the natives to discontinue the purchase of salt from us, and to take it from Rhio where it is to be delivered at as low a rate as it can be got at the former place.” The scheme was the practical Dutch reply to the salt-price competition that had become the chief instrument of commercial policy in the region since the treaty of 1824.

The Bellona Mission

Prince warned the Penang government that “the appearance of a ship of that description carrying such a commission may make an impression on the natives of the several ports of Siak, Kampar, Jambi &c., unfavourable to the commercial interests of Singapore, inasmuch as they may be intimidated into a compliance with the views of the Netherlands Government and grant through fear what their interests and better reason would otherwise condemn.” The mission of the Bellona accordingly became a flashpoint in the Anglo-Dutch commercial rivalry of the late 1820s; its outcomes are analysed in Fullerton’s celebrated minute on Acheh of March 1825 and in his Pinang Nota of the same year.

Du Bus in Context

Du Bus held the office of Commissioner-General at a moment when the Dutch colonial administration was navigating between two imperatives: the obligations imposed by the treaty of 1824, under which the Netherlands was to enjoy a free hand on Sumatra while Britain enjoyed the same on the Malay peninsula, and the financial stringency imposed by the Java War of 1825–1830. The Bellona project — a comparatively inexpensive naval demonstration in support of a commercial policy — is characteristic of the kind of initiative a Commissioner-General could undertake while the regular military budget was consumed by the war in Java. It is also one of the immediate provocations of the Pinang Nota in which Fullerton set out, with such remarkable prescience, the British reading of the 1824 treaty.

See Also

Source

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.

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