Jacob de Keyser was the Compagnie’s deputatie-officer who, together with Balthasar Bort, conducted the Atjeh negotiation that produced the peace of 5 October 1659 between the sultane of Atjeh and the Compagnie. In Dr. F. W. Stapel’s Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland he is the diplomat who, alongside Bort, formalised the end of the 1656 blockade crisis and obtained the ratification of the sultane.
The 1659 deputation
The 1656 blockade and the arrest of Anthony van Voorst had produced, by 1657–1659, an Acehnese desire to negotiate. “Atjeh sent an embassy to Batavia, to discuss there a new treaty of peace and friendship, on which one agreed on 20 June 1659” (Atjeh een gezantschap naar Batavia zond, om daar een nieuw verdrag van vrede en vriendschap te bespreken, waarover men het 20 Juni 1659 eens werd).
With the Atjehsche envoys, Batavia then sent a deputation to Atjeh to obtain the sultane’s ratification. “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 treaty
The peace of 5 October 1659 had three principal elements:
Compensation. “The Compagnie would receive compensation for the damage suffered in the arrest of her people and goods” — i.e., compensation for the Van Voorst affair.
Westkust monopoly. “On the West Coast trade was to be carried on only by Atjehers and the Compagnie” — i.e., re-confirmation of the Truytman formula.
Lodge at Atjeh. “The latter would re-establish a lodge (loge) at Atjeh” — the Compagnie’s resident, withdrawn after the 1623 closure, was to be reinstated.
A separate regulation covered Perak: half of the tin to Atjeh, half to the Compagnie, at 30 reals the bar (rising to 32½ once Dutch arrears were satisfied).
Significance
De Keyser’s role, with Bort, is to bring the 1656–1659 crisis to a formal close. The 1659 peace is the last great co-operative settlement between the sultane and the Compagnie: within four years the Compagnie was in secret negotiation with the Menangkabau chiefs through Jan van Groenewegen, negotiations that produced the Painansch Contract of 6 July 1663 and effectively dismantled the Atjehsche sovereignty that the 1659 treaty had just confirmed.
De Keyser and Bort are therefore the diplomats who closed one phase — the 1656–1659 coercion crisis — at the very moment the next phase — the 1662–1663 defection of the Menangkabau — was opening. Their treaty is the hinge between the two.
See Also
- Balthasar Bort
- 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)
- Painansch Contract
- Jan van Groenewegen
- Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
- 20 June
- 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).