The Tommegong of Singapore (in Van der Kemp’s Dutch spelling, Tommegong of Sincapour; modern spelling: the Temenggong of Singapore) was the Malay chief of Singapore whose naval dispositions in March 1819 attracted the anxious attention of the Dutch authorities in the region. He is mentioned in a private letter from Governor Timmerman Thyssen of Malacca to Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek at Batavia, dated 16 March 1819, preserved as Bijlage IV to Van der Kemp’s article. The Temenggong is reported to have had at sea “nine well-armed pengojabja” — large Malay war-boats — which Thyssen believed were not so much cruising for plunder as watching for dispatches expected with a certain Santa Maria, otherwise known as Teunes.
Historical identity
The Tommegong of Singapore at this date is generally identified with Temenggong Abdul Rahman, the Malay chief who, together with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor, had only weeks before — in early February 1819 — granted Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles permission to establish a British trading settlement on Singapore. Raffles’s founding of Singapore in February 1819 thus forms the immediate backdrop to Thyssen’s report of March. The Temenggong’s “nine well-armed pengojabja” should be read in this context: the new British settlement was barely a month old, relations between the Malay chiefs and the incoming British were still fluid, and Dutch intelligence was naturally alive to any movement of armed Malay craft in the Straits.
The Wolterbeek–Thyssen correspondence
Thyssen’s letter to Wolterbeek was written at a moment of acute Dutch anxiety about Raffles’s movements in the region. The governor had been told by the harbour-master Carnegy — a figure whose loyalty Thyssen himself distrusted — that two ships with three hundred troops had sailed from Penang bound for the Carrimons, with the intention of taking possession of those islands, and that Raffles was preparing to follow with three more ships and four hundred men, ostensibly for Acheh. Thyssen did not believe the Acheh report; he suspected Raffles would instead join his friends at the Carrimons and attempt an attack on Lingga. It is in this atmosphere of rumour and counter-rumour that the Tommegong’s war-boats enter the report: their presence at sea was taken as a sign that the Singapore chief was himself mobilising, perhaps in concert with the British, perhaps only to intercept the dispatches carried by Teunes.
The dispatch question
The most curious element in Thyssen’s report is the suggestion that the Tommegong’s boats were watching not for plunder but for “the dispatches which with Santa Maria (alias Teunes) were expected.” Van der Kemp does not explain whose dispatches these were, nor why a Malay chief should be intercepting them. The likeliest reading is that Teunes — a pirate-cum-courier whose alias “Santa Maria” suggests a Christian (Indo-Portuguese) origin — was carrying correspondence between Dutch posts, perhaps between Malacca and Batavia or between Malacca and Riau, and that the Tommegong, now aligned with the newly arrived British, was seeking to seize or inspect those dispatches. Whether he succeeded is not recorded in Van der Kemp’s text.
Significance
The Tommegong of Singapore is a minor figure in Van der Kemp’s narrative, but his appearance in the Thyssen–Wolterbeek correspondence illustrates the dense interconnection of British, Dutch, and Malay actors in the Straits during the spring of 1819. Within weeks of Raffles’s landing, the Malay chief of Singapore was already being drawn into the broader Anglo-Dutch rivalry — his war-boats a small but visible piece on the chessboard that would, five years later, be settled (temporarily) by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London of 1824.
See Also
- Teunes
- Timmerman Thyssen
- Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek
- Singapore
- Founding of Singapore
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Karimon Islands
- Lingga
- Carnegy
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 Tommegong of Singapore (in Van der Kemp’s Dutch spelling, Tommegong of Sincapour; modern spelling: the Temenggong of Singapore) was the Malay chief of Singapore whose naval dispositions in March 1819 attracted the anxious attention of the Dutch authorities in the region. He is mentioned in a private letter from Governor Timmerman Thyssen of Malacca to Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek at Batavia, dated 16 March 1819, preserved as Bijlage IV to Van der Kemp’s article. The Temenggong is reported to have had at sea “nine well-armed pengojabja” — large Malay war-boats — which Thyssen believed were not so much cruising for plunder as watching for dispatches expected with a certain Santa Maria, otherwise known as Teunes.
Historical identity
The Tommegong of Singapore at this date is generally identified with Temenggong Abdul Rahman, the Malay chief who, together with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor, had only weeks before — in early February 1819 — granted Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles permission to establish a British trading settlement on Singapore. Raffles’s founding of Singapore in February 1819 thus forms the immediate backdrop to Thyssen’s report of March. The Temenggong’s “nine well-armed pengojabja” should be read in this context: the new British settlement was barely a month old, relations between the Malay chiefs and the incoming British were still fluid, and Dutch intelligence was naturally alive to any movement of armed Malay craft in the Straits.
The Wolterbeek–Thyssen correspondence
Thyssen’s letter to Wolterbeek was written at a moment of acute Dutch anxiety about Raffles’s movements in the region. The governor had been told by the harbour-master Carnegy — a figure whose loyalty Thyssen himself distrusted — that two ships with three hundred troops had sailed from Penang bound for the Carrimons, with the intention of taking possession of those islands, and that Raffles was preparing to follow with three more ships and four hundred men, ostensibly for Acheh. Thyssen did not believe the Acheh report; he suspected Raffles would instead join his friends at the Carrimons and attempt an attack on Lingga. It is in this atmosphere of rumour and counter-rumour that the Tommegong’s war-boats enter the report: their presence at sea was taken as a sign that the Singapore chief was himself mobilising, perhaps in concert with the British, perhaps only to intercept the dispatches carried by Teunes.
The dispatch question
The most curious element in Thyssen’s report is the suggestion that the Tommegong’s boats were watching not for plunder but for “the dispatches which with Santa Maria (alias Teunes) were expected.” Van der Kemp does not explain whose dispatches these were, nor why a Malay chief should be intercepting them. The likeliest reading is that Teunes — a pirate-cum-courier whose alias “Santa Maria” suggests a Christian (Indo-Portuguese) origin — was carrying correspondence between Dutch posts, perhaps between Malacca and Batavia or between Malacca and Riau, and that the Tommegong, now aligned with the newly arrived British, was seeking to seize or inspect those dispatches. Whether he succeeded is not recorded in Van der Kemp’s text.
Significance
The Tommegong of Singapore is a minor figure in Van der Kemp’s narrative, but his appearance in the Thyssen–Wolterbeek correspondence illustrates the dense interconnection of British, Dutch, and Malay actors in the Straits during the spring of 1819. Within weeks of Raffles’s landing, the Malay chief of Singapore was already being drawn into the broader Anglo-Dutch rivalry — his war-boats a small but visible piece on the chessboard that would, five years later, be settled (temporarily) by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London of 1824.
See Also
- Teunes
- Timmerman Thyssen
- Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek
- Singapore
- Founding of Singapore
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Karimon Islands
- Lingga
- Carnegy
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.