Tongkoe Ismail — Sultan of Siak from 1827 — was, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions, the Siak sultan under whose long reign the Siak overlordship of the East Coast statelets definitively decayed, and the sultan who, by appealing to the Nederlandsch-Indisch Gouvernement for assistance against the British adventurer Wilson and against the reimposition of Atjehnese overlordship over Langkat, Deli and Serdang, set in motion the chain of events by which the Siak sultanate was ceded to the Dutch and the East Coast statelets were absorbed into the colonial state.
Background: the decay of Siak under Said Ali
The Bureau’s account of Tongkoe Ismail’s reign opens with the decay of Siak under his predecessor Sultan Said Ali. The Bureau records that, after Said Ali’s death in 1821, the Siak sultanate was riven by “voortdurende binnenlandsche twisten” — “continuous internal disputes” — and that the Siak overlordship of the East Coast statelets — established in the late eighteenth century by the armed force of Ismail and Said Ali — rapidly declined. The accession of Tongkoe Ismail in 1827 accelerated the decline: “Vooral sedert het optreden van Sultan Tongkoe Ismail, in 1827, nam Siaks macht af en waren de Noordelijke Onderhoorigheden weldra inderdaad geheel onafhankelijk” — “Especially after the accession of Sultan Tongkoe Ismail, in 1827, Siak’s power declined and the Northern Onderhoorigheden were soon in fact entirely independent.”
The abandonment of the galar exchange
The decay of Siak’s power under Tongkoe Ismail was, the Bureau records, registered institutionally in the abandonment of the old ceremonial exchange of galars — the titles of recognition that the East Coast sultans had once received from the hands of the Sultan of Siak. The Bureau records: “zelfs de vroegere gewoonte, dat de vorsten dier landschappen bij hunne troonsbestijging hun ‘galar’ bij wijze van erkenning uit de handen van den Sultan van Siak gingen ontvangen, werd verwaarloosd” — “even the former custom, that the princes of those lands, on their accession to the throne, went to receive their galar from the hands of the Sultan of Siak by way of recognition, was neglected.” In place of the old arrangement, the princes of the statelets who already held a Siak galar now issued such recognitions to newly acceding princes themselves. The ceremonial acknowledgement of Siak’s overlordship had, by the middle of the nineteenth century, been replaced by the mutual recognition of the East Coast princes.
The Wilson adventure
Tongkoe Ismail’s effort to restore Siak’s authority over the East Coast statelets led him, the Bureau records, to enlist the services of the British adventurer Wilson. “Om een einde te maken aan de binnenlandsche onlusten en tevens de Onderhoorigheden weder onder zijn gezag terug te brengen, verzekerde Tongkoe Ismail zich van den hulp van een Engelschen avonturier, Wilson, die echter weldra oneenigheid met den Sultan kreeg zelfs, dat het niet veel scheelde, of hij was erin geslaagd het geheele vorstenhuis uit Siak te verdrijven” — “To put an end to the internal unrest and at the same time to bring the Dependencies back under his authority, Tongkoe Ismail secured the help of a British adventurer, Wilson, who, however, soon quarrelled with the Sultan — so much so that it nearly succeeded in driving the entire royal house out of Siak.”
The Wilson adventure brought Tongkoe Ismail to the verge of ruin. Having failed to obtain British assistance from the authorities at Singapore — “met het oog op het bekende tractaat van 1824 met Nederland” — “in view of the well-known treaty of 1824 with the Netherlands” — Tongkoe Ismail turned, “met meer succes” — “with more success” — to the Netherlands-Indies Government.
The Siak tractate of 1858
The Dutch intervention against Wilson was the immediate prelude to the Siak tractate of 1 February 1858. The Bureau records: “Met onze krachtige hulp werden de opstandelingen onderworpen en Wilson verjaagd, waarna Tongkoe Ismail bij tractaat van 1 February 1858 zijn land aan het Gouvernement opdroeg, dat hem zijne rechten, ook op de Onderhoorigheden (tot de Tamiangrivier), waarborgde” — “With our powerful help the rebels were subdued and Wilson driven out, whereupon Tongkoe Ismail, by tractate of 1 February 1858, ceded his land to the Government, which guaranteed to him his rights, also over the Dependencies (as far as the Tamiang River).” The 1858 tractate was, in the Bureau’s framing, the act by which Tongkoe Ismail exchanged Siak’s independence for Dutch protection — and, in the same stroke, transferred Siak’s residual claims over the East Coast Dependencies to the Dutch colonial state.
The 1862 Langkat appeal and the Netscher mission
Tongkoe Ismail’s role in the 1862 Langkat appeal to Siak was, the Bureau records, decisive. The Radja of Langkat, “de onderdrukking door Atjeh moede” — “weary of the oppression by Atjeh” — turned to Tongkoe Ismail for an act of Siak recognition that would unlock the protection of the Nederlandsch-Indisch Gouvernement. The Bureau records: “Hierna werd, op aandrang van Tongkoe Ismail van Siak, door het Gouvernement ten slotte aan den resident Netscher van Riouw, waaronder Siak toen nog ressorteerde, in 1862 opgedragen, meer aanrakingen te zoeken met de verschillende hoofden der in het Siak-tractaat als onderhoorigheden van Siak genoemde staatjes, teneinde deze te bewegen tot eene erkenning van die onderhoorigheid” — “Hereafter, at the insistence of Tongkoe Ismail of Siak, the Government finally instructed Resident Netscher of Riouw — under whose jurisdiction Siak then still fell — in 1862 to seek more contacts with the various chiefs of the statelets named in the Siak tractate as dependencies of Siak, in order to persuade them to an acknowledgement of that dependency.”
Tongkoe Ismail thus appears, in the Bureau’s account, as the indispensable intermediary between the East Coast statelets and the Dutch colonial state — the Siak sultan whose intercession unlocked Dutch protection and whose residual claims underwrote the legal basis of the Dutch East Coast administration.
Significance
Tongkoe Ismail is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, the central figure of the mid-nineteenth-century Siak-East Coast crisis. His long reign (from 1827 to his death, apparently in the 1860s or early 1870s) spans the decay of the Siak overlordship, the 1854 reimposition of Atjehnese overlordship, the Wilson adventure, the 1858 cession of Siak to the Dutch, and the 1862 Langkat appeal that extinguished Atjehnese overlordship over the East Coast. His reign thus closes the pre-colonial Atjehnese overlordship of the East Coast and opens the colonial era of Dutch effective authority.
Sources
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Afl. 3: Oostkust van Sumatra. Eerste Stuk, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1918), pp. 103–104. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.
Nota omtrent het Rijk van Siak, by H. A. Hijmans van Anrooy, in Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, dl. XXX (1885).
De Nederlanders in Siak en Djohore, by E. Netscher, in Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap, XXXV (1870).
See Also
- Siak
- Wilson
- Sultan Said Ali
- Sultan Ismail of Siak
- Netscher
- Radja of Langkat
- Acheh
- Tamiang
- Singapore
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
- atjeh-as-opperheer-in-langkat-deli-serdang-(1854)
- langkat-appeal-to-siak-against-atjeh-(1862)
- dutch-marine-expulsion-of-atjehers-from-langkat-(1866)
- Siak tractate of 1 February 1858
- atjehsche-overheersing-der-noordelijke-kuststaatjes
- 1821
- 1827
- 1854
- 1858
- 1862
- Tongkoe Ismail
- Raja Alam
- Raja Moehamad
- Radja Ketjil
- Pelalawan
- Poelau Gontong
- Djohor
- rijk Gasip
- 1759
- 1760
- 1761
- 1769
- 1779
Source
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Afl. 3: Oostkust van Sumatra. Eerste Stuk, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1918), pp. 104, 114. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.
Nota omtrent het Rijk van Siak, by H. A. Hijmans van Anrooy, in Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, dl. XXX (1885).