John Macpherson (1745–1821) was a British East India Company official who served as interim Governor-General of Bengal from 1785 to 1786, between the governor-generalships of Warren Hastings and Lord Cornwallis. In the Achehnese record he appears only as the addressee of a letter from the Raja of Tringano (Trengganu) dated 24 February 1787, in which the Malay ruler invoked Macpherson’s friendship against the Dutch.
The Tringganu Letter of 24 February 1787
Van der Kemp mentions Macpherson in a footnote to the Acheh sultan’s letter to Warren Hastings of 7 November 1786, which is printed as Appendix 1 of his article. The footnote, expanding on the death of Captain Hobbs at Tringano, observes that in the Roosegaarde Bisschop collection «also lies a letter from the prince of Tringano to the Governor-General at Calcutta John Macpherson dd. 24 February 1787 in which he invokes his friendship against the Hollanders». The letter is itself evidence that, in the immediate aftermath of the Quedah treaty of 1786 and the establishment of British influence at Penang, the rulers of the Malay Peninsula were already looking to Calcutta for protection against what they regarded as Dutch hostility — a configuration of interests that would, three decades later, underlie the Raffles-Coombs commission and the Acheh treaty of 1819.
Significance
Macpherson’s role in the Achehnese record is purely incidental; the letter from Tringganu reached him as the acting head of the Bengal government during the interval between Hastings’s departure and Cornwallis’s arrival, and there is no evidence that he acted upon it. The mention is included by Van der Kemp as part of the early documentation of European–Achehnese–Malay relations from which the 1819 episode grew.
See Also
- Warren Hastings
- Lord Moira
- Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Warren Hastings
- Captain Hobbs
- Captain Steven
- Raja of Trengganu
- Tringano
- Bengal
- Calcutta
- Treaty of Quedah (Penang cession, 1786)
- Captain Canning’s mission to Acheh (1814)
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.
John Macpherson (1745–1821) was a British East India Company official who served as interim Governor-General of Bengal from 1785 to 1786, between the governor-generalships of Warren Hastings and Lord Cornwallis. In the Achehnese record he appears only as the addressee of a letter from the Raja of Tringano (Trengganu) dated 24 February 1787, in which the Malay ruler invoked Macpherson’s friendship against the Dutch.
The Tringganu Letter of 24 February 1787
Van der Kemp mentions Macpherson in a footnote to the Acheh sultan’s letter to Warren Hastings of 7 November 1786, which is printed as Appendix 1 of his article. The footnote, expanding on the death of Captain Hobbs at Tringano, observes that in the Roosegaarde Bisschop collection «also lies a letter from the prince of Tringano to the Governor-General at Calcutta John Macpherson dd. 24 February 1787 in which he invokes his friendship against the Hollanders». The letter is itself evidence that, in the immediate aftermath of the Quedah treaty of 1786 and the establishment of British influence at Penang, the rulers of the Malay Peninsula were already looking to Calcutta for protection against what they regarded as Dutch hostility — a configuration of interests that would, three decades later, underlie the Raffles-Coombs commission and the Acheh treaty of 1819.
Significance
Macpherson’s role in the Achehnese record is purely incidental; the letter from Tringganu reached him as the acting head of the Bengal government during the interval between Hastings’s departure and Cornwallis’s arrival, and there is no evidence that he acted upon it. The mention is included by Van der Kemp as part of the early documentation of European–Achehnese–Malay relations from which the 1819 episode grew.
See Also
- Warren Hastings
- Lord Moira
- Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Warren Hastings
- Captain Hobbs
- Captain Steven
- Raja of Trengganu
- Tringano
- Bengal
- Calcutta
- Treaty of Quedah (Penang cession, 1786)
- Captain Canning’s mission to Acheh (1814)
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.