Mohammed Aroef was the radja of Singkel on the western coast of Sumatra who in 1838, when Dutch warships went out to extend Dutch power at Baros, Tapoes and Singkel, appealed to the Dutch to leave him to live on in peace. His words were quoted by H. van Kol in the Tweede Kamer on 16 November 1897 as an illustration of the character of Dutch expansion at the expense of Atjeh and its dependencies.
The appeal of 1838
Van Kol related that in 1838 warships went out to extend Dutch power in Baros, Tapoes and Singkel. The radja of Singkel, Mohammed Aroef, requested to be left to live on in rest, for — in the words attributed to him — “wij zijn een vrij volk en doen niemand kwaad” — we are a free people and do no one harm (we are a free people and do no one harm). He also found it “zeer onbillijk, zich eens anders goed toe te eigenen, alleen omdat men meer geld en meer volk voor den oorlog heeft” — most unjust, to appropriate another’s property merely because one has more money and more people for war (most unjust to appropriate another’s property merely because one has more money and more people for war).
But to an appeal to right and equity, Van Kol said, the Dutch government remained deaf: Baros was occupied in 1839 and Singkel in 1840.
Aftermath
In 1848 the Acehnese attempted to retake Singkel from the Dutch but were not strong enough for it. Fighting occurred in 1848–1849 and again in 1851, and a treaty was concluded with Troemon in order to make it independent of Atjeh — that is, in Van Kol’s characterisation, to raise it in revolt against its liege lord. A further expedition was sent to Singkel in 1865.
Significance
Mohammed Aroef’s appeal is one of the few indigenous voices from the western dependencies of Atjeh preserved verbatim in the Dutch parliamentary record of the war. Van Kol used it, alongside the passage from Kielstra’s Beschrijving van den Atjeh-oorlog, to establish that the Atjeh-oorlog of 1873 was the culmination of a half-century of Dutch encroachment rather than a response to Acehnese aggression.
See Also
- Singkel
- Baros
- Tapoes
- Troemon
- H. van Kol
- Van Kol’s refutation of the causes of the Atjeh-oorlog (1897)
- 1838
- 1839
- 1840
Source
Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, p. 8.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898 (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.