The Raja of Trengganu (in Van der Kemp’s Dutch spelling, vorst van Trengano) was the Malay ruler of the east-coast state of Tringano who, on 24 February 1787, addressed a letter to John Macpherson, the interim Governor-General of Bengal, invoking the latter’s friendship against the Dutch. The letter is preserved among the documents noted by Van der Kemp in a footnote to Bijlage I of his article — the appendix reproducing the letter of the Sultan of Acheh to Warren Hastings of 7 November 1786 — and it provides a small but pointed piece of evidence for the diplomatic activity of the Malay states in the years immediately following the British acquisition of Penang.
Context
The Trengganu letter belongs to the same documentary milieu as the Achehnese despatch of November 1786, in which Sultan Ziemul Abudeen’s son “Sultan Munson” corresponded with Warren Hastings. Both letters were preserved together in the collection Van der Kemp used (the “Bisschop collection”), and both reflect an active Malay interest in securing British friendship at a moment when the Dutch were still a formidable presence in the eastern archipelago. In Van der Kemp’s footnote the Trengganu letter is summarised in a single phrase: the Raja “invokes [Macpherson’s] friendship against the Hollanders.” The wording suggests that the Raja’s chief concern was Dutch commercial or naval pressure on his state, and that he hoped, through Macpherson, to obtain British countervailing support.
Significance of the addressee
The choice of John Macpherson as addressee is itself notable. Macpherson served as interim Governor-General of Bengal in 1785–1786 and into 1787, following the departure of Warren Hastings and before the arrival of Lord Cornwallis. A letter of 24 February 1787 thus falls squarely within his brief tenure. The fact that a Malay ruler as distant from Calcutta as the Raja of Trengganu should write directly to the interim Governor-General indicates that the British presence at Penang — barely a year old — had already begun to function as a channel through which Malay rulers communicated with the Supreme Government in Bengal. The settlement at Penang, founded by the treaty with the Raja of Quedah in 1786, was thus already becoming, as Van der Kemp notes of Achehnese affairs, a British listening-post for the whole region.
Connection to the Acheh correspondence
The Trengganu letter also intersects with the Achehnese correspondence through the tragic figure of Captain Hobbs. The Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Hastings recounts that Hobbs, having been entrusted with the sultan’s earlier reply, was wounded off Tringano by a “classy from Java” and died there after five or six days. It is unclear whether the Raja of Trengganu’s letter to Macpherson was prompted by the same episode or by the broader hostilities in the region; but the geographical coincidence — Tringano being both the place of Hobbs’s death and the polity writing to Macpherson only months later — underlines how small and interconnected was the world of British country-trade captains, Malay rulers, and Dutch rivals in the Straits during the late 1780s.
See Also
- John Macpherson
- Tringano
- Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Warren Hastings
- Sultan Ziemul Abudeen
- Warren Hastings
- Penang
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.
The Raja of Trengganu (in Van der Kemp’s Dutch spelling, vorst van Trengano) was the Malay ruler of the east-coast state of Tringano who, on 24 February 1787, addressed a letter to John Macpherson, the interim Governor-General of Bengal, invoking the latter’s friendship against the Dutch. The letter is preserved among the documents noted by Van der Kemp in a footnote to Bijlage I of his article — the appendix reproducing the letter of the Sultan of Acheh to Warren Hastings of 7 November 1786 — and it provides a small but pointed piece of evidence for the diplomatic activity of the Malay states in the years immediately following the British acquisition of Penang.
Context
The Trengganu letter belongs to the same documentary milieu as the Achehnese despatch of November 1786, in which Sultan Ziemul Abudeen’s son “Sultan Munson” corresponded with Warren Hastings. Both letters were preserved together in the collection Van der Kemp used (the “Bisschop collection”), and both reflect an active Malay interest in securing British friendship at a moment when the Dutch were still a formidable presence in the eastern archipelago. In Van der Kemp’s footnote the Trengganu letter is summarised in a single phrase: the Raja “invokes [Macpherson’s] friendship against the Hollanders.” The wording suggests that the Raja’s chief concern was Dutch commercial or naval pressure on his state, and that he hoped, through Macpherson, to obtain British countervailing support.
Significance of the addressee
The choice of John Macpherson as addressee is itself notable. Macpherson served as interim Governor-General of Bengal in 1785–1786 and into 1787, following the departure of Warren Hastings and before the arrival of Lord Cornwallis. A letter of 24 February 1787 thus falls squarely within his brief tenure. The fact that a Malay ruler as distant from Calcutta as the Raja of Trengganu should write directly to the interim Governor-General indicates that the British presence at Penang — barely a year old — had already begun to function as a channel through which Malay rulers communicated with the Supreme Government in Bengal. The settlement at Penang, founded by the treaty with the Raja of Quedah in 1786, was thus already becoming, as Van der Kemp notes of Achehnese affairs, a British listening-post for the whole region.
Connection to the Acheh correspondence
The Trengganu letter also intersects with the Achehnese correspondence through the tragic figure of Captain Hobbs. The Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Hastings recounts that Hobbs, having been entrusted with the sultan’s earlier reply, was wounded off Tringano by a “classy from Java” and died there after five or six days. It is unclear whether the Raja of Trengganu’s letter to Macpherson was prompted by the same episode or by the broader hostilities in the region; but the geographical coincidence — Tringano being both the place of Hobbs’s death and the polity writing to Macpherson only months later — underlines how small and interconnected was the world of British country-trade captains, Malay rulers, and Dutch rivals in the Straits during the late 1780s.
See Also
- John Macpherson
- Tringano
- Sultan of Acheh’s letter to Warren Hastings
- Sultan Ziemul Abudeen
- Warren Hastings
- Penang
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.