Balah was a small Malay district on Sumatra’s East Coast, enumerated by Van der Kemp among the petty states which in 1824 had already been reduced to subjection by the Padris. The name is preserved in the historical record chiefly through the letter of the Sultan of Deli to the governor of Penang, printed by Van der Kemp as Appendix 6 to his article.
In the Sultan of Deli’s letter of 1824
The sole mention of Balah occurs in Appendix 6, where Van der Kemp prints the letter of 27 August 1824 from the Sultan of Deli to the new governor of Penang, Fullerton. The sultan reported that the Padris — the religious reformers then devastating the interior of Sumatra — had “determined to attack all the different states and render them tributary” and to impose their peculiar laws on the coast. “Many countries”, the sultan wrote, “have already been reduced to subjection and rendered tributary, amongst the rest are Tanah Putih, Balah and Panei, and they have now expressed their determination to attack Batu Bara and Delli”. The sultan declared that he would himself proceed to Batu Bara if hostilities broke out, and requested British assistance in resisting the Padri advance.
Place in the wider argument
Balah’s appearance in the Sultan of Deli’s letter is brief but characteristic. Van der Kemp prints the letter not for its information about Balah in particular, but as part of his larger documentation of the state of affairs on Sumatra’s East Coast in the years immediately following the treaty of 1824. The letter shows that the East Coast states — including Deli, Batu Bara, Tanah Putih, Balah and Panei — were already gravely disturbed by the Padri war, and that the British government at Penang was being appealed to as the natural protector of the coast. This practical dependence on Penang, even after the formal renunciation of British political establishments on Sumatra, is one of the main pieces of evidence which Van der Kemp adduces for his thesis that the British government, while disclaiming political authority, continued to treat the East Coast as a commercial preserve.
See Also
- Sumatra’s East Coast
- Sumatra
- Tanah Putih
- Panei
- Batu Bara
- Deli
- Sultan of Deli’s letter to Penang
- Robert Fullerton
- Padri War on Sumatra’s East Coast
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
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.