Ajerbangis (modern Air Bangis) was a coastal locality on the West Coast of Sumatra south of Padang, which appears in Dr. F. W. Stapel’s Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland as a station of the Atjehsche Jorrendayyers and as a post the Compagnie repeatedly abandoned and re-established through the eighteenth century.
The 1693 Jorrendayyer presence
After the consolidation of the Painansch Contract system, the small Atjehsche traders known as Jorrendayyers continued to operate on the Westkust and the off-shore islands. Stapel records their presence at three named places: “At Ajerbangis, Singkel, Nias they came” (Te Ajerbangis, Singkel, Nias kwamen ze). The geography of the Jorrendayyers — Ajerbangis (south of Padang), Singkel (north of Baros), and Nias (the off-shore island) — defines the edges of the Compagnie’s Westkust system, where its authority was weakest.
The eighteenth-century abandonment and re-establishment
Through the eighteenth century Ajerbangis was repeatedly abandoned and re-established as a Compagnie post. Stapel records that in the 1740s, after the Westkust war of 1740, “Priaman was restored in 1743 after the war on the West Coast of 1740, and at Ajerhadji a fortification with four points was built, provided with 12 cannon and 28 military” (Priaman werd in 1743 na den oorlog op de Westkust van 1740 weer hersteld, en te Ajerhadji een sterkte met vier punten gebouwd, voorzien van 12 kanonnen en 28 militairen). The reference to Ajerhadji rather than Ajerbangis in this passage is one of the small textual ambiguities of Stapel’s narrative; the two places are related and may be the same.
In 1741 “at Ajerhadji the lodge returned to its old place” (Te Ajerhadji kwam in 1741 de loge weer op de oude plaats).
In the 1770s “Priaman, Baros and Ajerbangis one let loose in the seventies” (Priaman, Baros en Ajerbangis liet men los in de zeventiger jaren). The abandonment of Ajerbangis in the 1770s is part of the Compagnie’s general late-eighteenth-century Westkust retrenchment.
The 1777 garrison
The 1777 Westkust military establishment — the detailed statement of the Compagnie’s Westkust military dispositions in the late eighteenth century — does not include Ajerbangis. The listed posts are Padang, Poeloe Chinco and Ajerhadji. The omission confirms that Ajerbangis was no longer a garrisoned post by the late 1770s.
Significance
Ajerbangis is a place whose repeated abandonment and re-establishment defines the limits of the Compagnie’s Westkust authority. The Painansch Contract system gave the Compagnie nominal sovereignty along the entire Westkust from Singkel to Sillebar, but the Compagnie could maintain garrisons only at a handful of stations. Ajerbangis, lying south of the Padang headquarters and exposed to Jorrendayyer infiltration from the south, was the place most consistently abandoned when the Compagnie retrenched.
The Ajerbangis story is also part of the larger history of the Compagnie’s Westkust trade police. The persistent presence of Atjehsche traders at Ajerbangis through the eighteenth century is the operational proof that the Compagnie’s monopoly, however complete on the treaty paper, was porous at the edges.
See Also
- Atjehsche Jorrendayyers
- Painansch Contract
- Padang
- Singkel
- Nias
- Ajerhadji
- Baros
- Priaman
- Westkust van Sumatra
- Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
- 1693
- 1741
- 1743
- 1777
Source
De Koloniën, by Dr. F. W. Stapel, in Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), kaart 19, blz. 3–4 (tekst bij blad 5: De Compagnie in den Archipel na 1684 tot 1791 — Sumatra).