R. Ibbetson

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R. Ibbetson was a British East India Company official who served as Government Secretary at Penang in the early 1820s and subsequently rose to be Governor of that presidency. In Van der Kemp’s article he is principally significant as the author of the dispatch of 25 February 1824 to George Swinton, Government Secretary at Calcutta, in which the Penang government proposed decisive, even coercive, British military intervention in Acheh.

The Penang Secretaryship

As Government Secretary, Ibbetson was the channel through which the Penang council’s correspondence with the Supreme Government at Calcutta passed. He appears repeatedly in the documentation that Van der Kemp excerpted from the Roosegaarde Bisschop collection. He served under Governor Phillips and continued under Governor Fullerton, with whom he sat as a member of council. As one of the two council members who concurred in Fullerton’s minute on Acheh of 21 March 1825 on 7 April 1825 (the other being W. A. Clubley), he is to be counted among the architects of the Penang government’s post-[[Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824|London-treaty] Sumatran policy.

The Dispatch of 25 February 1824

Ibbetson’s most important single contribution to the Achehnese record is the dispatch he signed on 25 February 1824 and addressed to George Swinton at Calcutta. The extract printed as Appendix 8 of Van der Kemp’s article opens by referring to a letter of 11 November 1820 in which the Penang government had already urged the taking of military measures for Acheh. Affairs, Ibbetson now wrote, had «arrived at that crisis when decisive and even coercive measures» alone could prove beneficial to the Company’s interests. Pecuniary assistance and military stores had been afforded in 1819 by the agents of the Governor-General «with the view of securing to the legitimate house of Acheen its sovereignty»; but temporising measures were now unavailing. The Government Secretary proposed that the British should either establish the legitimate heir by force, or relinquish all further interference in Achehnese affairs. He further observed that any alliance between the Dutch and a faction of the Achinese would be «prejudicial to the British interests», and submitted the whole subject to the wisdom of the Supreme Government.

The British-Indian government did not act upon Ibbetson’s proposal — partly because, in the interval, the English diplomacy at London had succeeded in shifting the burden of policing the Achehnese waters onto the Netherlands India government without exacting any corresponding advantage. The dispatch is nonetheless important as evidence that, on the spot, the Penang authorities were prepared to contemplate open intervention even after the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824) had been signed.

Later Career

Ibbetson subsequently became Governor of Penang. His «missions» («zendingen van Ibbetson») to Sumatra’s East Coast are referred to by Van der Kemp in connection with a passage of the Pinang Nota that the historian had printed in an earlier article in the same journal. He is otherwise mentioned by John Anderson in connection with the Sartorius mission and the broader Penang record.

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.

R. Ibbetson was a British East India Company official who served as Government Secretary at Penang in the early 1820s and subsequently rose to be Governor of that presidency. In Van der Kemp’s article he is principally significant as the author of the dispatch of 25 February 1824 to George Swinton, Government Secretary at Calcutta, in which the Penang government proposed decisive, even coercive, British military intervention in Acheh.

The Penang Secretaryship

As Government Secretary, Ibbetson was the channel through which the Penang council’s correspondence with the Supreme Government at Calcutta passed. He appears repeatedly in the documentation that Van der Kemp excerpted from the Roosegaarde Bisschop collection. He served under Governor Phillips and continued under Governor Fullerton, with whom he sat as a member of council. As one of the two council members who concurred in Fullerton’s minute on Acheh of 21 March 1825 on 7 April 1825 (the other being W. A. Clubley), he is to be counted among the architects of the Penang government’s post-[[Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824|London-treaty] Sumatran policy.

The Dispatch of 25 February 1824

Ibbetson’s most important single contribution to the Achehnese record is the dispatch he signed on 25 February 1824 and addressed to George Swinton at Calcutta. The extract printed as Appendix 8 of Van der Kemp’s article opens by referring to a letter of 11 November 1820 in which the Penang government had already urged the taking of military measures for Acheh. Affairs, Ibbetson now wrote, had «arrived at that crisis when decisive and even coercive measures» alone could prove beneficial to the Company’s interests. Pecuniary assistance and military stores had been afforded in 1819 by the agents of the Governor-General «with the view of securing to the legitimate house of Acheen its sovereignty»; but temporising measures were now unavailing. The Government Secretary proposed that the British should either establish the legitimate heir by force, or relinquish all further interference in Achehnese affairs. He further observed that any alliance between the Dutch and a faction of the Achinese would be «prejudicial to the British interests», and submitted the whole subject to the wisdom of the Supreme Government.

The British-Indian government did not act upon Ibbetson’s proposal — partly because, in the interval, the English diplomacy at London had succeeded in shifting the burden of policing the Achehnese waters onto the Netherlands India government without exacting any corresponding advantage. The dispatch is nonetheless important as evidence that, on the spot, the Penang authorities were prepared to contemplate open intervention even after the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824) had been signed.

Later Career

Ibbetson subsequently became Governor of Penang. His «missions» («zendingen van Ibbetson») to Sumatra’s East Coast are referred to by Van der Kemp in connection with a passage of the Pinang Nota that the historian had printed in an earlier article in the same journal. He is otherwise mentioned by John Anderson in connection with the Sartorius mission and the broader Penang record.

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.

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