Timmerman Thyssen was the Dutch Governor of Malacca in the years immediately following the restoration of the Dutch East Indies administration under Governor-General Van der Capellen. He figures prominently in P. H. van der Kemp’s 1900 article as the Dutch official whose post at Malacca — ceded to the Netherlands by Britain under the treaty of 1814 and handed over by Major Farquhar in 1818 — placed him on the very fault line of Anglo-Dutch rivalry in the Malay Archipelago. His correspondence with rear-admiral Wolterbeek at Batavia is one of the principal primary sources printed in Van der Kemp’s appendices.
Reporting on Raffles’ Movements
Thyssen’s earliest letter quoted in the article is dated 11 November 1818, addressed to Wolterbeek immediately after the surrender of Malacca by Farquhar. “The English gentlemen are all still here,” he wrote, “the Major still hopes to take possession of the Karimon Islands; at Pulo Pinang it seems to be a settled plan to take possession of them and of the kingdom of Acheh on Sumatra.” He added that he had believed himself protected by Wolterbeek’s recent Riouw treaty against any further English establishments in those waters — a hope soon to be disappointed by Raffles’s founding of Singapore in January 1819. Thyssen’s intelligence reached Wolterbeek again on 5 December 1818 in a confidential letter communicating rumours of British plans for an attack on Malacca; he believed they could be withstood, partly thanks to the four thousand men under the commies Kraal.
The 16 March 1819 Letter (Bijlage 4)
The longest of Thyssen’s communications printed by Van der Kemp is his private letter to Wolterbeek dated 16 March 1819 (Bijlage 4, printed on pages 220–222). It opens with the weary admission that “from my previous letters Your Excellency has already learned what Mr. Raffles is doing in these quarters; there has now again been nothing fresh come in which I with regret have to acquaint my worthy friend.” He reports in detail the disquieting rumours brought by one “Carnegy” — apparently a Penang-based informant — of two ships with three hundred troops destined for the Karimons, and of Raffles’ intention to sail with three or four hundred men for Acheh. A postscript of 18 March, written after the arrival of Captain Robson, reversed the alarm: the supposed armament had in fact been ships bound from Penang by way of Bencoolen to provision Raffles, who could not obtain from Governor Bannerman what he wanted and had therefore supplied himself from his own government.
The Wilhelmina Mutiny
It was Thyssen who, on 1 September 1819, communicated to Wolterbeek the news of the Wilhelmina mutiny: “the good Bouwens has been cut down by his own people off Acheh, murdered with his children, and his wife thrown alive into the sea.” Wolterbeek’s reply of 17 September is preserved in the same appendix. Thyssen’s report forms the first Dutch notice of a tragedy that was to embroil Dutch, British, and Achehnese authorities for years.
The Lucas Mission and After
On 20 January 1821, by order of Batavia, Thyssen addressed a missive to the government at Penang demanding the stolen money and the surrender of the mutineers still held by Syf at Telok Semawé. The dispatch was carried by the man-of-war Irene under commandant-kolonel E. Lucas. This exchange initiated the so-called paper war over the Wilhelmina affair — a triangular correspondence between Malacca, Penang, and Telok Semawé that ended, as Van der Kemp remarks, only when the Dutch ship returned without achieving its purpose. Thyssen’s role was that of the Dutch official on the spot, providing the documentary foundation for Batavia’s protests and for the eventual intervention of Colonel Lucas.
Character and Reputation
Van der Kemp paints Thyssen as a beleaguered but vigilant governor. In one passage Thyssen complains that, in his post at Malacca, “I daily meet with unpleasantnesses; the people are not straightforward”; he specifically denounces the harbourmaster Carnegy as a hypocrite. These confidential asides reached Governor-General Van der Capellen, who replied from Buitenzorg on 9 January 1819 that “the conduct of some officials at Malacca I have learned with displeasure. T. must stand firm.” Van der Kemp leaves the reader with the pointed question whether Van der Capellen himself always lived up to that maxim.
See Also
- Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek
- Kraal
- Godert Alexander Gerard Philip van der Capellen
- Colonel E. Lucas
- Lieutenant Marx Bouwens
- Sultan Saif ul-Alum
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Major William Farquhar
- Wilhelmina mutiny and murder of Bouwens
- Lucas mission to Telok Semawé (February 1821)
- Paper war
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.
Timmerman Thyssen was the Dutch Governor of Malacca in the years immediately following the restoration of the Dutch East Indies administration under Governor-General Van der Capellen. He figures prominently in P. H. van der Kemp’s 1900 article as the Dutch official whose post at Malacca — ceded to the Netherlands by Britain under the treaty of 1814 and handed over by Major Farquhar in 1818 — placed him on the very fault line of Anglo-Dutch rivalry in the Malay Archipelago. His correspondence with rear-admiral Wolterbeek at Batavia is one of the principal primary sources printed in Van der Kemp’s appendices.
Reporting on Raffles’ Movements
Thyssen’s earliest letter quoted in the article is dated 11 November 1818, addressed to Wolterbeek immediately after the surrender of Malacca by Farquhar. “The English gentlemen are all still here,” he wrote, “the Major still hopes to take possession of the Karimon Islands; at Pulo Pinang it seems to be a settled plan to take possession of them and of the kingdom of Acheh on Sumatra.” He added that he had believed himself protected by Wolterbeek’s recent Riouw treaty against any further English establishments in those waters — a hope soon to be disappointed by Raffles’s founding of Singapore in January 1819. Thyssen’s intelligence reached Wolterbeek again on 5 December 1818 in a confidential letter communicating rumours of British plans for an attack on Malacca; he believed they could be withstood, partly thanks to the four thousand men under the commies Kraal.
The 16 March 1819 Letter (Bijlage 4)
The longest of Thyssen’s communications printed by Van der Kemp is his private letter to Wolterbeek dated 16 March 1819 (Bijlage 4, printed on pages 220–222). It opens with the weary admission that “from my previous letters Your Excellency has already learned what Mr. Raffles is doing in these quarters; there has now again been nothing fresh come in which I with regret have to acquaint my worthy friend.” He reports in detail the disquieting rumours brought by one “Carnegy” — apparently a Penang-based informant — of two ships with three hundred troops destined for the Karimons, and of Raffles’ intention to sail with three or four hundred men for Acheh. A postscript of 18 March, written after the arrival of Captain Robson, reversed the alarm: the supposed armament had in fact been ships bound from Penang by way of Bencoolen to provision Raffles, who could not obtain from Governor Bannerman what he wanted and had therefore supplied himself from his own government.
The Wilhelmina Mutiny
It was Thyssen who, on 1 September 1819, communicated to Wolterbeek the news of the Wilhelmina mutiny: “the good Bouwens has been cut down by his own people off Acheh, murdered with his children, and his wife thrown alive into the sea.” Wolterbeek’s reply of 17 September is preserved in the same appendix. Thyssen’s report forms the first Dutch notice of a tragedy that was to embroil Dutch, British, and Achehnese authorities for years.
The Lucas Mission and After
On 20 January 1821, by order of Batavia, Thyssen addressed a missive to the government at Penang demanding the stolen money and the surrender of the mutineers still held by Syf at Telok Semawé. The dispatch was carried by the man-of-war Irene under commandant-kolonel E. Lucas. This exchange initiated the so-called paper war over the Wilhelmina affair — a triangular correspondence between Malacca, Penang, and Telok Semawé that ended, as Van der Kemp remarks, only when the Dutch ship returned without achieving its purpose. Thyssen’s role was that of the Dutch official on the spot, providing the documentary foundation for Batavia’s protests and for the eventual intervention of Colonel Lucas.
Character and Reputation
Van der Kemp paints Thyssen as a beleaguered but vigilant governor. In one passage Thyssen complains that, in his post at Malacca, “I daily meet with unpleasantnesses; the people are not straightforward”; he specifically denounces the harbourmaster Carnegy as a hypocrite. These confidential asides reached Governor-General Van der Capellen, who replied from Buitenzorg on 9 January 1819 that “the conduct of some officials at Malacca I have learned with displeasure. T. must stand firm.” Van der Kemp leaves the reader with the pointed question whether Van der Capellen himself always lived up to that maxim.
See Also
- Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek
- Kraal
- Godert Alexander Gerard Philip van der Capellen
- Colonel E. Lucas
- Lieutenant Marx Bouwens
- Sultan Saif ul-Alum
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Major William Farquhar
- Wilhelmina mutiny and murder of Bouwens
- Lucas mission to Telok Semawé (February 1821)
- Paper war
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.