Van Boekholz (also spelled Van Boeckholz in Van der Kemp’s text) was a Dutch commissioner in the Netherlands Indies who is best remembered for having turned away the British officer Major Farquhar from Pontianak on the west coast of Borneo in the closing months of 1818. Although a minor figure in P. H. van der Kemp’s 1900 narrative, his action at Pontianak is one of the four immediate provocations that, together with Wolterbeek’s destruction of Farquhar’s treaty with Riouw, drove Raffles to seek a British counter-stroke in the Malay region — and so contributed, indirectly, to the founding of Singapore and to the Acheh commission of 1819.
The Pontianak Incident
Van der Kemp introduces Van Boekholz in a single sentence, but a loaded one. The context is Raffles’ alarm, late in 1818, at what he perceived as the systematic Dutch recovery of their old possessions in the archipelago: “To him the news reached that Resident Farquhar had been repulsed on Borneo’s west coast by Van Boekholz, and that Farquhar’s Riouw treaty had been cancelled by Wolterbeek.” The passage makes clear that the Pontianak rebuff and the Riouw cancellation were, in Raffles’ mind, twin evidences of a Dutch determination to close the archipelago to British enterprise. The Calcutta government accordingly wrote to London on 14 January 1819 hoping “that we may be in time to establish our political influence at Acheh to the exclusion of that of the Dutch or other foreign powers.”
Farquhar’s Antecedents
Farquhar was at this time the British Resident at Malacca and had recently returned from a tour of the Karimon Islands, Lingga, and west Borneo. As Van der Kemp notes, “might he at Pontianak have been shown the door by our commissioner Van Boeckholz, at Lingga he had succeeded in concluding a contract with the sultan.” Farquhar’s mixed fortunes — expulsion at Pontianak, success at Lingga — convinced him of the strategic possibilities of the Karimon group, a judgement that he communicated by letter to Raffles on the afternoon of 19 January 1819, just as the lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen was preparing to leave Penang for the Acheh mission. It was that letter which triggered Raffles’ sudden detour to the Karimon Islands and, ultimately, the founding of Singapore.
Van Boekholz’s Larger Significance
Although Van Boekholz appears in the article only as the author of Farquhar’s repulse, the incident itself is one of the keys to understanding the chain of events that produced the Acheh treaty of 1819. Van der Kemp’s argument is that Dutch firmness at Pontianak and Riouw, far from deterring Raffles, drove him to seek a free hand elsewhere — at Pedir in the first instance and at Singapore in the second. Van Boekholz thus occupies, in the article’s interpretation, a small but decisive place in the chain leading to the British establishments in Sumatra’s north and in the Malay peninsula.
See Also
- Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek
- Major William Farquhar
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Pontianak
- Borneo
- Riouw
- Treaty of Pedir (1819)
- Raffles’ detour to Karimon Islands
- Founding of Singapore
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.
Van Boekholz (also spelled Van Boeckholz in Van der Kemp’s text) was a Dutch commissioner in the Netherlands Indies who is best remembered for having turned away the British officer Major Farquhar from Pontianak on the west coast of Borneo in the closing months of 1818. Although a minor figure in P. H. van der Kemp’s 1900 narrative, his action at Pontianak is one of the four immediate provocations that, together with Wolterbeek’s destruction of Farquhar’s treaty with Riouw, drove Raffles to seek a British counter-stroke in the Malay region — and so contributed, indirectly, to the founding of Singapore and to the Acheh commission of 1819.
The Pontianak Incident
Van der Kemp introduces Van Boekholz in a single sentence, but a loaded one. The context is Raffles’ alarm, late in 1818, at what he perceived as the systematic Dutch recovery of their old possessions in the archipelago: “To him the news reached that Resident Farquhar had been repulsed on Borneo’s west coast by Van Boekholz, and that Farquhar’s Riouw treaty had been cancelled by Wolterbeek.” The passage makes clear that the Pontianak rebuff and the Riouw cancellation were, in Raffles’ mind, twin evidences of a Dutch determination to close the archipelago to British enterprise. The Calcutta government accordingly wrote to London on 14 January 1819 hoping “that we may be in time to establish our political influence at Acheh to the exclusion of that of the Dutch or other foreign powers.”
Farquhar’s Antecedents
Farquhar was at this time the British Resident at Malacca and had recently returned from a tour of the Karimon Islands, Lingga, and west Borneo. As Van der Kemp notes, “might he at Pontianak have been shown the door by our commissioner Van Boeckholz, at Lingga he had succeeded in concluding a contract with the sultan.” Farquhar’s mixed fortunes — expulsion at Pontianak, success at Lingga — convinced him of the strategic possibilities of the Karimon group, a judgement that he communicated by letter to Raffles on the afternoon of 19 January 1819, just as the lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen was preparing to leave Penang for the Acheh mission. It was that letter which triggered Raffles’ sudden detour to the Karimon Islands and, ultimately, the founding of Singapore.
Van Boekholz’s Larger Significance
Although Van Boekholz appears in the article only as the author of Farquhar’s repulse, the incident itself is one of the keys to understanding the chain of events that produced the Acheh treaty of 1819. Van der Kemp’s argument is that Dutch firmness at Pontianak and Riouw, far from deterring Raffles, drove him to seek a free hand elsewhere — at Pedir in the first instance and at Singapore in the second. Van Boekholz thus occupies, in the article’s interpretation, a small but decisive place in the chain leading to the British establishments in Sumatra’s north and in the Malay peninsula.
See Also
- Schout-bij-nacht Wolterbeek
- Major William Farquhar
- Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
- Pontianak
- Borneo
- Riouw
- Treaty of Pedir (1819)
- Raffles’ detour to Karimon Islands
- Founding of Singapore
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.