Robert Fullerton was a British East India Company official who served as Governor of [[Penang]] (Prince of Wales’ Island) in the mid-1820s, in succession to W. E. Phillips. He is significant in the Achehnese record for two major minutes on Sumatran affairs — the minute on Acheh of 21 March 1825 and the minute of 16 March 1828 on the projected Dutch *Bellona* mission — as well as for his letter to the Sultan of Siak of 7 February 1828 and his circular to nine Siak chiefs of 21 May 1828. The 1825 minute, in which Fullerton declared that any attempt to establish European influence at Acheh without «completely subjugating the country» had proved «utterly impracticable», was quoted at length by Snouck Hurgronje in the Introduction to The Achehnese as evidence that the difficulties encountered by the Dutch in the Achehnese War were not the product of Dutch incompetence alone, but were inherent in the political and social condition of Acheh itself.
Governorship and the Acheh Question
Fullerton took up the governorship at a moment when the Acheh treaty of 1819 was already an acknowledged dead letter. By the London dispatch of 4 August 1824 the Court of Directors had observed that Jauhar Alum had never possessed effective authority and that the treaty might «even now be fairly considered as a dead letter», while the Bengal inquiry to Penang of 28 January 1825 had requested the Penang government’s advice on the possibility of replacing it with a purely commercial arrangement. Fullerton’s reply, dated 21 March 1825 and concurred in by his council members W. A. Clubley and R. Ibbetson on 7 April, is printed as Appendix 10 of Van der Kemp’s article. In it Fullerton observed that any attempt to establish European influence at Acheh without «completely subjugating the country» had proved «utterly impracticable», and warned that the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824) placed the petty states of Deli, Langkat and Siak — which carried on an extensive trade with Penang — at the mercy of any Dutch interference authorised by Article 2 of the treaty.
The judgment echoed and amplified the warning given nearly four decades earlier by Captain Francis Light, who in 1786 had pointed out to the Governor-General of Bengal that the Achehnese were «rigid and superstitious Mohammedans, sullen, fickle and treacherous», and that a force sufficient to subdue all the chiefs would be necessary before any settlement of safety and advantage could be formed. Fullerton’s statement belongs to the same body of British experience as the contemporaneous correspondence surrounding the treaty made with Acheh by Raffles in 1819 and the subsequent dealings with Johor Allum as would-be King of Acheen. The British had come to realise that the country had no central authority capable of guaranteeing the security of foreign trade, and that European nations attempting to settle there had always been driven out by the «oppression, war and confusion» prevailing on the Achehnese coast. The conclusion embodied in Fullerton’s memorandum was shortly afterwards overtaken by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, under which Great Britain withdrew from direct interference in Achehnese affairs and left the question of trade security in Dutch hands. The Dutch, however, were slow to profit from the British lesson: it was only after decades of fruitless treaties and the disasters of 1873 that they too came round, under General van der Heyden and later Van Heutsz, to the conviction which Fullerton had expressed in 1825.
The Said Akil Affair
Fullerton was governor during the latter part of Said Akil’s adventure at Deli. After the Sultan of Deli had written to Penang on 27 August 1824 complaining of Akil’s behaviour and invoking the Acheh treaty of 1819 (under which Deli was, he alleged, a dependency of Acheh), the Shahbandar of Deli wrote again in February 1828 begging Fullerton to deliver the country from the «robber». Fullerton, after consulting the Malay translator John Anderson, addressed a letter of 27 August 1828 to the Sultan, declaring that Penang «could not countenance any interference in the affairs of other countries by one of our own subjects» and that Said Akil, having proceeded to Deli contrary to the injunctions of the Penang government, was «placed without the protection of the British Government». The Bengal government, by dispatch of 24 October 1828, approved the measures Fullerton had taken.
The Bellona Minute and the Siak Correspondence
In late 1827 Fullerton learned, through the former Singapore resident John Prince at Batavia, that Commissioner-General Du Bus proposed to send the frigate Bellona to the ports of Sumatra’s East Coast in order to induce the chiefs to take their salt from Riouw rather than from Singapore. In his minute of 16 March 1828 Fullerton observed that the Dutch would certainly use the exclusive right they claimed under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824) «to the full extent of their means», and that «the political influence so established will be rendered entirely subservient to the promotion of their own trade and deterioration of ours». To counter the design he had already, on 7 February 1828, addressed a letter from Singapore to the Sultan of Siak expressing British anxiety to continue and promote the growing trade between Siak and the Straits settlements; and on 21 May 1828 he issued a circular to nine Siak chiefs offering reciprocal freedom from duties and inviting their merchants to resort to Malacca. The Sultan of Siak’s reply acknowledged receipt of the presents sent with Fullerton’s letter and expressed his «ten times as great» anxiety to preserve the friendly relations between Siak and the British settlements.
Assessment
Van der Kemp treats Fullerton as the most clearsighted of the British officials who succeeded Raffles in the Sumatran correspondence. The historian prints Fullerton’s minutes in extenso precisely because they afford, in his view, the most candid English exposition of the dangers to which the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 had exposed Netherlands India’s commercial rivals on Sumatra. Snouck Hurgronje’s recourse to Fullerton’s 1825 memorandum, eighty years later in the Introduction to The Achehnese, was of the same character: Fullerton’s words stand as documentary evidence that the obstacles the Dutch encountered in the Acheh War were not the product of Dutch incompetence alone, but were inherent in the political and social condition of Acheh itself. The judgment of 1825 was thus to remain, throughout the long Achehnese war, both the earliest and the most candid European diagnosis of the country’s resistance to exterior authority.
See Also
- W. E. Phillips
- R. Ibbetson
- W. A. Clubley
- John Anderson
- John Prince
- Commissioner-General Du Bus
- Said Akil
- Sultan of Deli
- Shahbandar of Deli
- Sultan of Siak
- Captain Francis Light
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Jauhar Alum
- Acheh treaty of 1819
- Raffles Treaty with Acheh
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824
- Fullerton’s minute on Acheh (21 March 1825)
- Fullerton memorandum
- Bellona mission to Sumatra’s East Coast (1827-1828)
- Fullerton’s circular to nine Siak chiefs
- Fullerton’s letter to Sultan of Siak (7 February 1828)
- Pinang Nota (1825)
- Dutch Salt Price Reduction
- Dead letter
- General van der Heyden
- Governor Van Heutsz
- Acheh War
- Acheh
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
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.