Thomas Best was an English sea-captain and envoy of the East India Company who, in 1613, visited the court of Sultan Iskandar Muda in Atjeh during the Atjeh bloeitijdperk ([[1607-1636)|bloeitijdperk]] (golden age) of the sultanate, and whose journal preserves one of the earliest European eyewitness descriptions of court spectacle at Koetaradja — including a celebrated passage on the buffalo fight staged in his honour. Best’s visit is recorded in his journal, edited and published by William Foster as The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East Indies, 1612-14 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1934), and is cited in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (drawing in turn on Kreemer’s own *Atjeh*, vol. I, p. 192) as the principal first-hand account of buffalo-fights as a courtly entertainment in Acheh.
The 1613 visit to Sultan Iskandar Muda
Best’s visit fell within the long reign of Sultan Iskandar Muda (r. 1607–1636), whom Kreemer describes as the “Roi soleil” of the Atjehse vorsten — a ruler whose court, in the Dutch scholar’s evocative phrase, exhibited a “pracht en praal” (splendour and pomp) that “would have bordered on the marvellous.” Best, received as English envoy, was honoured with a great festival of which the central moment was an elephant tournament. As Kreemer summarises the journal: “Eén der hoofdmomenten daarvan was een toernooi van olifanten” — one of the chief moments of the festival was a tournament of elephants. The elephants, however, were not the only fighting animals on display. Best’s journal records the entry of the buffaloes into the spectacle in a passage that Kreemer quotes verbatim in its original English:
“After them came buffelos, a beast verie fierce and stronge, which maid a worthie feight and gave greatt content to the spectators.” The quotation is significant both as an early English attestation of the word “buffalo” in an East Indian context, and as evidence that the buffalo-fight — known elsewhere in the archipelago as a village pastime — had been elevated at the Atjeh court into a spectacle of state, paired with elephant-baiting and staged before a foreign envoy. Kreemer introduces the passage with the observation that the village buffalo-fights of more recent times in Atjeh “waren een zwakke weerklank uit het bloeitijdperk van Atjeh’s verleden” — a faint echo from the golden age of Atjeh’s past.
Significance
Best’s journal matters for the encyclopedia of Acheh history on three counts. First, it fixes the court buffalo-fight as an institution of the Atjeh bloeitijdperk ([[1607-1636)|Atjeh bloeitijdperk]] under Sultan Iskandar Muda, rather than merely a village amusement of later centuries. Second, it establishes that buffaloes and elephants were both used as vechtdieren (fighting animals) at the Atjeh court — a pairing that points to the cosmopolitan reach of Atjeh’s courtly culture in this period, when the sultanate’s military, commercial and diplomatic horizons extended across the Indian Ocean. Third, Best’s embassy is itself a document of the early-seventeenth-century Anglo-Atjehnese diplomatic relationship, which would later be retraced and contextualised by Van der Kemp in his studies of the Raffles’ Acheh treaty of [[1819|1819 Raffles agreement]] and of the eighteenth-century correspondence between the Atjeh sultans and the British in Bengal.
Sources
The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East Indies, 1612-14, edited by William Foster (London: Hakluyt Society, 1934), p. 168.
De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), p. 84. Atjèh, by J. Kreemer, vol. I (1922), p. 192.
See Also
- Atjeh bloeitijdperk ([[1607-1636)]]
- Banda Acheh
- Court buffalo-fight at Sultan Iskandar Muda’s court ([[1613)]]
- Kreemer’s Atjeh (1922-23)
- Kreemer’s De Karbouw (1956)
- Sultan Iskandar Muda
- Thomas Best’s visit to Atjeh ([[1613)]]
- [[William Foster]
Thomas Best was an English sea-captain and envoy of the East India Company who, in 1613, visited the court of Sultan Iskandar Muda in Atjeh during the Atjeh bloeitijdperk ([[1607-1636)|bloeitijdperk]] (golden age) of the sultanate, and whose journal preserves one of the earliest European eyewitness descriptions of court spectacle at Koetaradja — including a celebrated passage on the buffalo fight staged in his honour. Best’s visit is recorded in his journal, edited and published by William Foster as The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East Indies, 1612-14 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1934), and is cited in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (drawing in turn on Kreemer’s own *Atjeh*, vol. I, p. 192) as the principal first-hand account of buffalo-fights as a courtly entertainment in Acheh.
The 1613 visit to Sultan Iskandar Muda
Best’s visit fell within the long reign of Sultan Iskandar Muda (r. 1607–1636), whom Kreemer describes as the “Roi soleil” of the Atjehse vorsten — a ruler whose court, in the Dutch scholar’s evocative phrase, exhibited a “pracht en praal” (splendour and pomp) that “would have bordered on the marvellous.” Best, received as English envoy, was honoured with a great festival of which the central moment was an elephant tournament. As Kreemer summarises the journal: “Eén der hoofdmomenten daarvan was een toernooi van olifanten” — one of the chief moments of the festival was a tournament of elephants. The elephants, however, were not the only fighting animals on display. Best’s journal records the entry of the buffaloes into the spectacle in a passage that Kreemer quotes verbatim in its original English:
“After them came buffelos, a beast verie fierce and stronge, which maid a worthie feight and gave greatt content to the spectators.” The quotation is significant both as an early English attestation of the word “buffalo” in an East Indian context, and as evidence that the buffalo-fight — known elsewhere in the archipelago as a village pastime — had been elevated at the Atjeh court into a spectacle of state, paired with elephant-baiting and staged before a foreign envoy. Kreemer introduces the passage with the observation that the village buffalo-fights of more recent times in Atjeh “waren een zwakke weerklank uit het bloeitijdperk van Atjeh’s verleden” — a faint echo from the golden age of Atjeh’s past.
Significance
Best’s journal matters for the encyclopedia of Acheh history on three counts. First, it fixes the court buffalo-fight as an institution of the Atjeh bloeitijdperk ([[1607-1636)|Atjeh bloeitijdperk]] under Sultan Iskandar Muda, rather than merely a village amusement of later centuries. Second, it establishes that buffaloes and elephants were both used as vechtdieren (fighting animals) at the Atjeh court — a pairing that points to the cosmopolitan reach of Atjeh’s courtly culture in this period, when the sultanate’s military, commercial and diplomatic horizons extended across the Indian Ocean. Third, Best’s embassy is itself a document of the early-seventeenth-century Anglo-Atjehnese diplomatic relationship, which would later be retraced and contextualised by Van der Kemp in his studies of the Raffles’ Acheh treaty of [[1819|1819 Raffles agreement]] and of the eighteenth-century correspondence between the Atjeh sultans and the British in Bengal.
Sources
The Voyage of Thomas Best to the East Indies, 1612-14, edited by William Foster (London: Hakluyt Society, 1934), p. 168.
De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), p. 84. Atjèh, by J. Kreemer, vol. I (1922), p. 192.