Lavino was the Dutch political agent (politieke agent) at Penang during the Aceh War, the colonial government’s listening post opposite the Atjehnese community on that island, and the source of several of the most important pieces of intelligence of 1876.
The year 1876
About mid-March 1876 Lavino reported to the civil and military commander in Atjeh that the Arab Habib Abdoer Rachman ben Zahir — lately a member of the notorious Council of Eight (Raad van achten) at Penang — had escaped the island despite all the precautions of the British police and of the agent himself, disguised as a sailor aboard a coasting schooner, and had landed on the north coast of Sumatra. The warning, confirmed by the Radja of Edi besar, let the Dutch command follow the Habib’s triumphal journey to the focus of the resistance in Groot-Atjeh.
In July 1876 reports of the same zealous agent at Penang contributed, with the statements of the Pidir head Radja Mangkoeta and of Toekoe Imam of Gigiëng, to the certainty that Toengkoe Bintara Kamangan, prince of Gigiëng, had secretly gone over to the war party — the conviction behind the breach of 19 August.
His reports are preserved by H. F. Meijer in Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876 (1883).
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege names Lavino — “onzen agent voor de Atjehsche aangelegenheden, den Heer LAVINO, (thans Consul-Generaal te Singapore)” (“our agent for the Atjehsche affairs, Mr. Lavino, now Consul-General at Singapore”) — as the Dutch party to the meeting of 20 May 1875 held at the residence of the Lieutenant-Governor of Penang and in his presence, at which Habib Abdoerrachman el Zahir offered to go to Groot-Atjeh to obtain from the chiefs a mandate for negotiations in which Toeankoe Daoed’s elevation to Sultan and the Habib’s regency were to form the foundation — the project which the Indian government put aside entirely (see Herstel van het sultanaat). The meeting is noted from Kielstra’s lecture of December 1883.
See Also
- Habib Abdoerrachman el Zahir
- Cancellation of friendship with Gigiëng (19 August 1876)
- Penang
- Guerilla warfare in Groot-Atjeh
Source
Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876, door H. F. Meijer (Breda: P. B. Nieuwenhuijs, 1883), chapter VII, p. 152, chapter VIII, p. 279.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), p. 97 note. OCR: DLP-158.