Sultan of Atjeh (1589-1604)

Properties2
tagsperson, sultan, achehnese, precolonial, 16th-century, 17th-century, atjeh, trade, diplomacy
aliasesAla'uddin Ri'ayat Shah Sayyid al-Mukammil, Sultan Ala'uddin of Atjeh, Sultan of Achin 1599, Sultan of Atjeh (Houtman era), Sultan Mukammil, Alauddin Riayat Shah ibn Firman Shah

13 min read

The Sultan of Atjeh (1589-1604) — the Achehnese ruler who received Cornelis de Houtman in 1599, Paulus van Caerden in 1600, the Middelburgsche Compagnie in 1601, James Lancaster in 1602 and Joris van Spilbergen later that year, and who played the European rivals against each other in the years when the Dutch, English and French first appeared together on the Sumatran pepper coast — is the central Achehnese figure of Johan van der Woude’s chapter “Atjeh. Djohor. Malaka.” in his Van der Woude (1948). He is conventionally identified as Ala’uddin Ri’ayat Shah Sayyid al-Mukammil, who reigned from 1589 to 1604 and under whose rule the sultanate of Atjeh reached one of its early-modern peaks of commercial and diplomatic activity with the northern European powers.

The European rivals and the sultan’s balancing policy

The sultan inherited, and continued, a long-standing policy of playing the Portuguese at Malaka off against the rulers of Djohor, while Atjeh itself sought to draw the Mohammedan trade of the straits into its own hands. Van der Woude frames the sultan’s conduct toward the newcomers as the same tactic applied to a wider field of competitors. When Cornelis de Houtman appeared in Atjeh on 24 June 1599, the sultan received him “welwillend”, offered him a gift as a token of good will and gave him leave to trade; a house was assigned to the Dutch on shore. The Portuguese factor at Atjeh, Affonso Vicenti — a Malaka-based Portuguese resident whose business was to influence the sultan against any new competitor — turned the sultan against the Dutch by proposing that Atjeh should attack the ships. The sultan accepted the proposal, and on 11 September 1599 the ambush took place in which Cornelis de Houtman was killed and Frederik de Houtman taken prisoner.

The sultan’s subsequent conduct shows the same calculating stance. When a Portuguese fleet under André Furtado de Mendonça appeared off Atjeh in 1601, the sultan — already angered by Portuguese intrigues to obtain his strongest fort — refused to be bullied, allowed his gunners to fire on a Portuguese ship that was making prizes of Arab vessels, and disarmed and imprisoned the crew. Van der Woude observes that the sultan “waakte er voor de Portugeezen tot vijanden te maken”, and that his attitude softened toward the Dutch prisoners as soon as the new Middelburgsche Compagnie fleet arrived and Portuguese power visibly waned.

Treaties and counter-treaties (1600-1602)

The sultan’s negotiations with the Dutch oscillated between generosity and treachery. With Paulus van Caerden, who appeared on 21 September 1600, the sultan at first freed the survivors of the Houtman affair, including Hans Decker, then signed a contract on 28 December 1600 granting the Dutch a preferential right to the new pepper harvest. When Van Caerden, alarmed by reports that the sultan planned an attack, seized pepper from Arab junks at anchor on 12 January 1601, the sultan answered with cannon fire from the fort and the treaty threatened to collapse. The sultan simultaneously pursued a parallel diplomacy: he refused to surrender the Dutch prisoners in exchange for a ship, and demanded an advance payment for the contracted delivery. Van Caerden’s unilateral action — condemned by the Zeeland merchants Gerard le Roy and Laurens Bicker in 1601 as exceeding his commission — was repaired only by the sultan’s willingness to release Frederik de Houtman without ransom when the Zeeland fleet arrived.

When the Middelburgsche Compagnie fleet under Hans Huybrecht Tonneman arrived on 23 August 1601 bearing a letter from Prince Maurits, the sultan received the Zeelanders solemnly, accepted gifts in money and merchandise, and “liet Frederik de Houtman de boeien afnemen, die hij acht maanden lang had gedragen”. The sultan then dispatched his own embassy to Prince Maurits — the Atjeh embassy to Prince Maurits of 1601 — which Van der Woude, citing Huigh de Groot, treats as a turning-point in Atjeh-Dutch relations. The sultan permitted two Zeeland commiezen and three assistants to settle on shore at a lodge named “Zeelant”, and even gave them leave to send two of their number to Cambay with his letters of favour to open trade with Guzerat.

The sultan and the English (1602)

With the arrival of James Lancaster on 5 June 1602 with four English ships, the sultan extended the same balancing policy to a third European power. Van der Woude records Lancaster’s reception: the sultan received him “met veel eerbetoon in een plechtige audiëntie”, regaled him with a banquet, feasts and dances, and exchanged gifts that were transported in procession by richly caparisoned elephants. The sultan praised Queen Elizabeth as “a princesse of great noblenesse, for fame speaketh so much of her”. He granted Lancaster leave to trade, but Lancaster found the prices far higher than his pilot John Davis had led him to expect and lacked capital for a full cargo. The sultan was shrewdly co-operative in keeping Lancaster’s arrival secret from the Portuguese at Malaka. When Lancaster proposed to ambush the annual Portuguese carrack from the Koromandel coast, the sultan supported the plan, and Lancaster, Joris van Spilbergen and the Dutch crews together captured the carrack on 3 October 1602 in the Strait of Malaka — a feat Van der Woude treats as the first major joint Anglo-Dutch naval operation in the East Indies, made possible by the sultan’s good offices.

The sultan’s religious and strategic posture

The sultan’s repeated pressure on Frederik de Houtman to convert to Islam — “die niet afliet hem te pressen Mohammedaan te worden” — is recorded by Van der Woude as one of the few direct glimpses we get of the sultan’s personal religious disposition. Strategically, the sultan’s aim was constant: to keep Atjeh’s pepper trade open to the highest bidder, to deny Malaka its monopoly, and to recover the wingewest of Aru from Djohor. The 1587 peace between Atjeh and the Portuguese had transferred Aru to Djohor; the sultan’s hostility to Djohor and his parallel hostility to the Portuguese defined his European policy. He neither became a Dutch ally nor a Portuguese client, and his court became the chief theatre in which the rivalry of the northern European companies was first played out.

Significance

The Sultan of Atjeh (1589-1604) is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the central indigenous figure of the opening Dutch-Atjeh chapter. His reign spans the entire arc from the Houtman brothers’ visit of 1599 through the Atjeh embassy of 1601 to the Anglo-Dutch joint capture of the Portuguese carrack of 1602 — the foundational decade of Atjeh-northern-European relations. Van der Woude treats his policy as the model instance of the Achehnese court’s commercial statecraft: a small but powerful Islamic sultanate, sitting at the northern mouth of the Strait of Malaka, extracting maximum advantage from the simultaneous appearance of three European trading nations and refusing to commit to any of them. This precedent would shape every subsequent phase of Atjeh-European diplomacy down to the Atjeh-oorlog of 1873–1903.

See Also

Source

Coen, Koopman van Heeren Zeventien. Geschiedenis van den Hollandshen Handel in Indië (1598-1614), by Johan van der Woude (Amsterdam: C.V. Uitgeverij v/h C. De Boer Jr., 1948), Hoofdstuk V “Voorgangers, Hollanders en mededingers tot 1614. Atjeh. Djohor. Malaka.” (pp. 108-140).

The Sultan of Atjeh (1589-1604) — the Achehnese ruler who received Cornelis de Houtman in 1599, Paulus van Caerden in 1600, the Middelburgsche Compagnie in 1601, James Lancaster in 1602 and Joris van Spilbergen later that year, and who played the European rivals against each other in the years when the Dutch, English and French first appeared together on the Sumatran pepper coast — is the central Achehnese figure of Johan van der Woude’s chapter “Atjeh. Djohor. Malaka.” in his Van der Woude (1948). He is conventionally identified as Ala’uddin Ri’ayat Shah Sayyid al-Mukammil, who reigned from 1589 to 1604 and under whose rule the sultanate of Atjeh reached one of its early-modern peaks of commercial and diplomatic activity with the northern European powers.

The European rivals and the sultan’s balancing policy

The sultan inherited, and continued, a long-standing policy of playing the Portuguese at Malaka off against the rulers of Djohor, while Atjeh itself sought to draw the Mohammedan trade of the straits into its own hands. Van der Woude frames the sultan’s conduct toward the newcomers as the same tactic applied to a wider field of competitors. When Cornelis de Houtman appeared in Atjeh on 24 June 1599, the sultan received him “welwillend”, offered him a gift as a token of good will and gave him leave to trade; a house was assigned to the Dutch on shore. The Portuguese factor at Atjeh, Affonso Vicenti — a Malaka-based Portuguese resident whose business was to influence the sultan against any new competitor — turned the sultan against the Dutch by proposing that Atjeh should attack the ships. The sultan accepted the proposal, and on 11 September 1599 the ambush took place in which Cornelis de Houtman was killed and Frederik de Houtman taken prisoner.

The sultan’s subsequent conduct shows the same calculating stance. When a Portuguese fleet under André Furtado de Mendonça appeared off Atjeh in 1601, the sultan — already angered by Portuguese intrigues to obtain his strongest fort — refused to be bullied, allowed his gunners to fire on a Portuguese ship that was making prizes of Arab vessels, and disarmed and imprisoned the crew. Van der Woude observes that the sultan “waakte er voor de Portugeezen tot vijanden te maken”, and that his attitude softened toward the Dutch prisoners as soon as the new Middelburgsche Compagnie fleet arrived and Portuguese power visibly waned.

Treaties and counter-treaties (1600-1602)

The sultan’s negotiations with the Dutch oscillated between generosity and treachery. With Paulus van Caerden, who appeared on 21 September 1600, the sultan at first freed the survivors of the Houtman affair, including Hans Decker, then signed a contract on 28 December 1600 granting the Dutch a preferential right to the new pepper harvest. When Van Caerden, alarmed by reports that the sultan planned an attack, seized pepper from Arab junks at anchor on 12 January 1601, the sultan answered with cannon fire from the fort and the treaty threatened to collapse. The sultan simultaneously pursued a parallel diplomacy: he refused to surrender the Dutch prisoners in exchange for a ship, and demanded an advance payment for the contracted delivery. Van Caerden’s unilateral action — condemned by the Zeeland merchants Gerard le Roy and Laurens Bicker in 1601 as exceeding his commission — was repaired only by the sultan’s willingness to release Frederik de Houtman without ransom when the Zeeland fleet arrived.

When the Middelburgsche Compagnie fleet under Hans Huybrecht Tonneman arrived on 23 August 1601 bearing a letter from Prince Maurits, the sultan received the Zeelanders solemnly, accepted gifts in money and merchandise, and “liet Frederik de Houtman de boeien afnemen, die hij acht maanden lang had gedragen”. The sultan then dispatched his own embassy to Prince Maurits — the Atjeh embassy to Prince Maurits of 1601 — which Van der Woude, citing Huigh de Groot, treats as a turning-point in Atjeh-Dutch relations. The sultan permitted two Zeeland commiezen and three assistants to settle on shore at a lodge named “Zeelant”, and even gave them leave to send two of their number to Cambay with his letters of favour to open trade with Guzerat.

The sultan and the English (1602)

With the arrival of James Lancaster on 5 June 1602 with four English ships, the sultan extended the same balancing policy to a third European power. Van der Woude records Lancaster’s reception: the sultan received him “met veel eerbetoon in een plechtige audiëntie”, regaled him with a banquet, feasts and dances, and exchanged gifts that were transported in procession by richly caparisoned elephants. The sultan praised Queen Elizabeth as “a princesse of great noblenesse, for fame speaketh so much of her”. He granted Lancaster leave to trade, but Lancaster found the prices far higher than his pilot John Davis had led him to expect and lacked capital for a full cargo. The sultan was shrewdly co-operative in keeping Lancaster’s arrival secret from the Portuguese at Malaka. When Lancaster proposed to ambush the annual Portuguese carrack from the Koromandel coast, the sultan supported the plan, and Lancaster, Joris van Spilbergen and the Dutch crews together captured the carrack on 3 October 1602 in the Strait of Malaka — a feat Van der Woude treats as the first major joint Anglo-Dutch naval operation in the East Indies, made possible by the sultan’s good offices.

The sultan’s religious and strategic posture

The sultan’s repeated pressure on Frederik de Houtman to convert to Islam — “die niet afliet hem te pressen Mohammedaan te worden” — is recorded by Van der Woude as one of the few direct glimpses we get of the sultan’s personal religious disposition. Strategically, the sultan’s aim was constant: to keep Atjeh’s pepper trade open to the highest bidder, to deny Malaka its monopoly, and to recover the wingewest of Aru from Djohor. The 1587 peace between Atjeh and the Portuguese had transferred Aru to Djohor; the sultan’s hostility to Djohor and his parallel hostility to the Portuguese defined his European policy. He neither became a Dutch ally nor a Portuguese client, and his court became the chief theatre in which the rivalry of the northern European companies was first played out.

Significance

The Sultan of Atjeh (1589-1604) is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the central indigenous figure of the opening Dutch-Atjeh chapter. His reign spans the entire arc from the Houtman brothers’ visit of 1599 through the Atjeh embassy of 1601 to the Anglo-Dutch joint capture of the Portuguese carrack of 1602 — the foundational decade of Atjeh-northern-European relations. Van der Woude treats his policy as the model instance of the Achehnese court’s commercial statecraft: a small but powerful Islamic sultanate, sitting at the northern mouth of the Strait of Malaka, extracting maximum advantage from the simultaneous appearance of three European trading nations and refusing to commit to any of them. This precedent would shape every subsequent phase of Atjeh-European diplomacy down to the Atjeh-oorlog of 1873–1903.

See Also

Source

Coen, Koopman van Heeren Zeventien. Geschiedenis van den Hollandshen Handel in Indië (1598-1614), by Johan van der Woude (Amsterdam: C.V. Uitgeverij v/h C. De Boer Jr., 1948), Hoofdstuk V “Voorgangers, Hollanders en mededingers tot 1614. Atjeh. Djohor. Malaka.” (pp. 108-140).

Graph View

Backlinks