Lodewijk Willem Carel Gerard Nicolaas Netscher was a Dutch colonial administrator and historian whose published work on the Malay states became a standard reference for late-nineteenth-century scholars of the archipelago, including Van der Kemp. He is best remembered for his monograph Djohor en Siak — cited by Van der Kemp as Netscher’s „Djohor en Siak” — which appeared in the bulletin of the colonial Institute and remains a principal source for the nineteenth-century history of the Siak Sultanate in east Sumatra.
”Djohor en Siak”
Van der Kemp cites Netscher in a passage devoted to disentangling two contemporaries who happened to share the name Akil and who are easily confused. One is the comparatively obscure Said Akil (Syed Akil), third son of the rich Penang merchant Syed Hussein, who in 1826 intrigued his way into the office of Raja Mooda of Deli. The other is the far more consequential Raja Akil of Sukadana — the Siak crown pretender who, after years of importance in the political life of east Sumatra, ended his career in 1828 as prince of Sukadana on Borneo.
To distinguish the two, Van der Kemp directs the reader to two biographical sources. For Raja Akil the principal authority is Professor P. J. Veth, who devoted an attractive life-sketch to him in Borneo’s Westerafdeling (vol. II, pp. 150 ff.); the supplementary reference is to Netscher’s Djohor en Siak, where the same figure is treated in the context of Siak dynastic history. The cross-reference appears in Van der Kemp’s note on page 30 of his article.
Significance for Acheh studies
Netscher’s importance for the present article is that of an authoritative source on the Siak sultanate, whose internal feuds and relations with Acheh, the Dutch and the British at Penang form part of the wider diplomatic picture of northern Sumatra in the early nineteenth century. By citing him alongside Veth, Van der Kemp draws on the most up-to-date Dutch scholarship available in 1900 for the dynastic history of a region that the 1824 treaty had partitioned into British and Dutch spheres of influence. As with Levyssohn Norman, Hoek, De Sturler and Jeekel, Netscher’s work belongs to that body of late-nineteenth-century Dutch colonial historiography that supplied the scaffolding for Van der Kemp’s own archival researches.
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.
Lodewijk Willem Carel Gerard Nicolaas Netscher was a Dutch colonial administrator and historian whose published work on the Malay states became a standard reference for late-nineteenth-century scholars of the archipelago, including Van der Kemp. He is best remembered for his monograph Djohor en Siak — cited by Van der Kemp as Netscher’s „Djohor en Siak” — which appeared in the bulletin of the colonial Institute and remains a principal source for the nineteenth-century history of the Siak Sultanate in east Sumatra.
”Djohor en Siak”
Van der Kemp cites Netscher in a passage devoted to disentangling two contemporaries who happened to share the name Akil and who are easily confused. One is the comparatively obscure Said Akil (Syed Akil), third son of the rich Penang merchant Syed Hussein, who in 1826 intrigued his way into the office of Raja Mooda of Deli. The other is the far more consequential Raja Akil of Sukadana — the Siak crown pretender who, after years of importance in the political life of east Sumatra, ended his career in 1828 as prince of Sukadana on Borneo.
To distinguish the two, Van der Kemp directs the reader to two biographical sources. For Raja Akil the principal authority is Professor P. J. Veth, who devoted an attractive life-sketch to him in Borneo’s Westerafdeling (vol. II, pp. 150 ff.); the supplementary reference is to Netscher’s Djohor en Siak, where the same figure is treated in the context of Siak dynastic history. The cross-reference appears in Van der Kemp’s note on page 30 of his article.
Significance for Acheh studies
Netscher’s importance for the present article is that of an authoritative source on the Siak sultanate, whose internal feuds and relations with Acheh, the Dutch and the British at Penang form part of the wider diplomatic picture of northern Sumatra in the early nineteenth century. By citing him alongside Veth, Van der Kemp draws on the most up-to-date Dutch scholarship available in 1900 for the dynastic history of a region that the 1824 treaty had partitioned into British and Dutch spheres of influence. As with Levyssohn Norman, Hoek, De Sturler and Jeekel, Netscher’s work belongs to that body of late-nineteenth-century Dutch colonial historiography that supplied the scaffolding for Van der Kemp’s own archival researches.
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.