Sultan of Siak

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tagsperson, sultan, malay
aliasessultan of Siack, Siak Sultan

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The Sultan of Siak (also written sultan of Siack) was the ruler of the east-coast Sumatran state of Siak in the late 1820s. He is known to history chiefly through the correspondence exchanged with Governor Fullerton of Penang in 1828, preserved in the Roosegaarde Bisschop collection and printed by Van der Kemp as part of the Bellona correspondence. The exchange is the principal documentary evidence of the British attempt to maintain the confidence of the east-coast Malay chiefs in the face of Dutch commercial expansion after the treaty of 17 March 1824.

Background: the Dutch Bellona mission and British anxiety

In late 1827 the Netherlands Commissioner-General Du Bus at Batavia formed the plan of sending the frigate Bellona to Sumatra’s East Coast — to Siak, Kampar, Jambi and elsewhere — in order to encourage the native chiefs to enter into commercial relations with Riouw and to discontinue the purchase of salt from Singapore. The retired resident of Singapore, John Prince, then at Batavia, reported this design to the Penang government by letter of 29 November 1827 (printed by Van der Kemp as Appendix 11), warning that the Dutch might “intimidate the natives into a compliance” with their views on salt and that the political influence thus established would be “rendered entirely subservient to the promotion of their own trade and deterioration of ours”.

Governor Fullerton replied by minute of 16 March 1828 that he had already addressed a letter to the chiefs of Siak expressing “our anxiety to continue and promote the growing trade between that State and our settlements on the Malay side of the Straits and particularly with Malacca”. He undertook to address similar letters to all the chiefs of the east coast with whom Penang carried on trade.

The Sultan’s letter from Fullerton (7 February 1828)

The letter that Fullerton had already sent to the Sultan of Siak was dated Singapore, 7 February 1828. After the announcement that Malacca was now permanently under the British government, Fullerton noted with satisfaction “that the trade between Siak and Prince of Wales Island, Malacca and Singapore is much increasing to the mutual advantage of all these countries”. He expressed the continued desire “to keep up amicable relations with Siack and all the States on the Eastcoast of Sumatra, and to extend the trade and commercial communication between them and the several British settlements in the Straits of Malacca”. A similar letter was at the same time addressed, on Penang’s orders, by the translator John Anderson to the pangeran of Siak.

The Sultan’s reply (4 June 1828)

The Sultan’s reply — translated from the Malay and dated 21 Dulkaida, corresponding to 4 June 1828 — is a document of considerable interest. He acknowledged receipt of the presents and expressed gratification “that the three countries of Pulo Penang, Singapore and Malacca, have been finally secured under the Government of the English Company”. He reciprocated Fullerton’s professions of friendship and added a personal note:

“I am ten times as anxious as my friend can be to preserve them [our friendly relations], for I have lately succeeded my younger brother, who has been afflicted with sickness and has lost his understanding, which rendered him quite incapable of business.”

This passage establishes a succession in the Siak sultanate: the present Sultan had recently succeeded a younger brother who had become incapacitated. He closed the letter with courteous compliments but “many compliments” alone, having “nothing to offer as a token of my friendship”. The exchange was followed by Fullerton’s circular of 21 May 1828 to nine Siak chiefs, by which the Penang government broadened its diplomatic effort across Sumatra’s East Coast.

Place in Van der Kemp’s argument

Van der Kemp adduces the Siak correspondence as evidence of the British government’s design — already foreshadowed in Fullerton’s minute of 21 March 1825 — to maintain a British sphere of commercial influence on Sumatra’s East Coast in spite of the treaty of 1824, by which the Netherlands had been recognised as the sole European power competent to make political treaties on Sumatra. The Sultan of Siak, in his courteous reply, is thus a small but visible figure in the long Anglo-Dutch rivalry over Sumatra that culminated in the Sumatra Treaty of 1871.

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.

The Sultan of Siak (also written sultan of Siack) was the ruler of the east-coast Sumatran state of Siak in the late 1820s. He is known to history chiefly through the correspondence exchanged with Governor Fullerton of Penang in 1828, preserved in the Roosegaarde Bisschop collection and printed by Van der Kemp as part of the Bellona correspondence. The exchange is the principal documentary evidence of the British attempt to maintain the confidence of the east-coast Malay chiefs in the face of Dutch commercial expansion after the treaty of 17 March 1824.

Background: the Dutch Bellona mission and British anxiety

In late 1827 the Netherlands Commissioner-General Du Bus at Batavia formed the plan of sending the frigate Bellona to Sumatra’s East Coast — to Siak, Kampar, Jambi and elsewhere — in order to encourage the native chiefs to enter into commercial relations with Riouw and to discontinue the purchase of salt from Singapore. The retired resident of Singapore, John Prince, then at Batavia, reported this design to the Penang government by letter of 29 November 1827 (printed by Van der Kemp as Appendix 11), warning that the Dutch might “intimidate the natives into a compliance” with their views on salt and that the political influence thus established would be “rendered entirely subservient to the promotion of their own trade and deterioration of ours”.

Governor Fullerton replied by minute of 16 March 1828 that he had already addressed a letter to the chiefs of Siak expressing “our anxiety to continue and promote the growing trade between that State and our settlements on the Malay side of the Straits and particularly with Malacca”. He undertook to address similar letters to all the chiefs of the east coast with whom Penang carried on trade.

The Sultan’s letter from Fullerton (7 February 1828)

The letter that Fullerton had already sent to the Sultan of Siak was dated Singapore, 7 February 1828. After the announcement that Malacca was now permanently under the British government, Fullerton noted with satisfaction “that the trade between Siak and Prince of Wales Island, Malacca and Singapore is much increasing to the mutual advantage of all these countries”. He expressed the continued desire “to keep up amicable relations with Siack and all the States on the Eastcoast of Sumatra, and to extend the trade and commercial communication between them and the several British settlements in the Straits of Malacca”. A similar letter was at the same time addressed, on Penang’s orders, by the translator John Anderson to the pangeran of Siak.

The Sultan’s reply (4 June 1828)

The Sultan’s reply — translated from the Malay and dated 21 Dulkaida, corresponding to 4 June 1828 — is a document of considerable interest. He acknowledged receipt of the presents and expressed gratification “that the three countries of Pulo Penang, Singapore and Malacca, have been finally secured under the Government of the English Company”. He reciprocated Fullerton’s professions of friendship and added a personal note:

“I am ten times as anxious as my friend can be to preserve them [our friendly relations], for I have lately succeeded my younger brother, who has been afflicted with sickness and has lost his understanding, which rendered him quite incapable of business.”

This passage establishes a succession in the Siak sultanate: the present Sultan had recently succeeded a younger brother who had become incapacitated. He closed the letter with courteous compliments but “many compliments” alone, having “nothing to offer as a token of my friendship”. The exchange was followed by Fullerton’s circular of 21 May 1828 to nine Siak chiefs, by which the Penang government broadened its diplomatic effort across Sumatra’s East Coast.

Place in Van der Kemp’s argument

Van der Kemp adduces the Siak correspondence as evidence of the British government’s design — already foreshadowed in Fullerton’s minute of 21 March 1825 — to maintain a British sphere of commercial influence on Sumatra’s East Coast in spite of the treaty of 1824, by which the Netherlands had been recognised as the sole European power competent to make political treaties on Sumatra. The Sultan of Siak, in his courteous reply, is thus a small but visible figure in the long Anglo-Dutch rivalry over Sumatra that culminated in the Sumatra Treaty of 1871.

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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