Raja Akil of Sukadana (also rendered Radja Akil in the older Dutch orthography, and identified by Van der Kemp as the Siaksche Raja Akil — “the Siak Raja Akil”) was a 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. He is not to be confused with the comparatively obscure Said Akil (Syed Akil), the third son of the rich Penang merchant Syed Hussein, whose intrigues at Deli occupy a much larger place in the surviving British correspondence of the period.
Confusion with Said Akil
The risk of confusion between the two Akils is real enough for Van der Kemp to pause and warn his readers explicitly. After tracing the Deli adventure of Said Akil through a considerable body of letters preserved in the Bishton collection at Penang, Van der Kemp interrupts himself:
“The reader should not, however, confuse the comparatively unimportant person of Said Akil with that other Akil who, in the same years, played a weighty role in our [Dutch] history — the Siak crown pretender Radja Akil, of whom the professor Pieter Johannes Veth gave an attractive biography in Borneo’s Westerafdeling, vol. II, p. 150 ff., and who in 1828 became prince of Sukadana on Borneo; see also the note on p. 162 of Netscher’s Djohor en Siak.”
The point of the warning is plain: the two men were contemporaries; they shared a name; and both were involved in the convoluted dynastic politics of east Sumatra in the 1820s. But where Said Akil was a Penang-based Arab whose ambitions seldom rose beyond the office of Raja Mooda of Deli, Raja Akil was a Malay prince of the Siak royal house whose career intersected directly with Dutch policy on the east coast of Sumatra.
Sources
Van der Kemp’s authority for Raja Akil’s career is the Leiden professor P. J. Veth, who devoted a “biography at once attractive and complete” to him in the second volume of his Borneo’s Westerafdeling (pp. 150 ff.). Veth had earlier treated Achehnese affairs in his Atchin en zijne betrekkingen tot Nederland (1873), which Van der Kemp also cites. The supplementary reference is to Netscher’s Djohor en Siak, in which the Siak side of Raja Akil’s career is set in the context of the dynastic history of the Siak Sultanate. The cross-reference is given as “the note on p. 162” of Netscher.
Significance
The career of Raja Akil is, in Van der Kemp’s framing, one of the half-parallel incidents of east-Sumatran history that the reader has to keep distinct. Raja Akil’s trajectory from Siak crown pretender to Borneo prince, between roughly 1824 and 1828, belongs to the same diplomatic landscape as the treaty of 1824 and the Raffles-Coombs mission to Acheh, even though he himself had no direct part in those negotiations. His career illustrates the fluidity of the Malay political world on the eve of the Dutch extension of control over the east coast — a world in which a Siak pretender might rise to be prince of Sukadana and in which a Penang Arab might briefly seize the government of Deli.
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.
Raja Akil of Sukadana (also rendered Radja Akil in the older Dutch orthography, and identified by Van der Kemp as the Siaksche Raja Akil — “the Siak Raja Akil”) was a 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. He is not to be confused with the comparatively obscure Said Akil (Syed Akil), the third son of the rich Penang merchant Syed Hussein, whose intrigues at Deli occupy a much larger place in the surviving British correspondence of the period.
Confusion with Said Akil
The risk of confusion between the two Akils is real enough for Van der Kemp to pause and warn his readers explicitly. After tracing the Deli adventure of Said Akil through a considerable body of letters preserved in the Bishton collection at Penang, Van der Kemp interrupts himself:
“The reader should not, however, confuse the comparatively unimportant person of Said Akil with that other Akil who, in the same years, played a weighty role in our [Dutch] history — the Siak crown pretender Radja Akil, of whom the professor Pieter Johannes Veth gave an attractive biography in Borneo’s Westerafdeling, vol. II, p. 150 ff., and who in 1828 became prince of Sukadana on Borneo; see also the note on p. 162 of Netscher’s Djohor en Siak.”
The point of the warning is plain: the two men were contemporaries; they shared a name; and both were involved in the convoluted dynastic politics of east Sumatra in the 1820s. But where Said Akil was a Penang-based Arab whose ambitions seldom rose beyond the office of Raja Mooda of Deli, Raja Akil was a Malay prince of the Siak royal house whose career intersected directly with Dutch policy on the east coast of Sumatra.
Sources
Van der Kemp’s authority for Raja Akil’s career is the Leiden professor P. J. Veth, who devoted a “biography at once attractive and complete” to him in the second volume of his Borneo’s Westerafdeling (pp. 150 ff.). Veth had earlier treated Achehnese affairs in his Atchin en zijne betrekkingen tot Nederland (1873), which Van der Kemp also cites. The supplementary reference is to Netscher’s Djohor en Siak, in which the Siak side of Raja Akil’s career is set in the context of the dynastic history of the Siak Sultanate. The cross-reference is given as “the note on p. 162” of Netscher.
Significance
The career of Raja Akil is, in Van der Kemp’s framing, one of the half-parallel incidents of east-Sumatran history that the reader has to keep distinct. Raja Akil’s trajectory from Siak crown pretender to Borneo prince, between roughly 1824 and 1828, belongs to the same diplomatic landscape as the treaty of 1824 and the Raffles-Coombs mission to Acheh, even though he himself had no direct part in those negotiations. His career illustrates the fluidity of the Malay political world on the eve of the Dutch extension of control over the east coast — a world in which a Siak pretender might rise to be prince of Sukadana and in which a Penang Arab might briefly seize the government of Deli.
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.