Batu Bara

Properties2
tagsplace, sacred-site, foreign-land, coast, region
aliasesEast Coast of Sumatra, Batoe Bara, Batoe Bhara, Batu-Bara, Batubara, Batoebara

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A province on the East Coast of Sumatra. In the Hikayat Pochut Muhamat, Pochut Muhamat ‘announced his fixed intention of withdrawing to Batu Bara, a province on the East Coast of Sumatra, whose inhabitants were the greatest enemies or the most intractable subjects of Jeumaloy, and there making preparations for war, unless his brothers either themselves set their hands to the work or enabled him, the youngest, to do so, by supplying him with the necessary funds.‘

Account from Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 — Batu Bara

Batu Bara (Dutch Batoe Bara; in one Achehnese letter rendered Batoe Bhara) was a Malay district on Sumatra’s East Coast, lying immediately to the south of Deli and forming, with the neighbouring petty states, part of the chain of ports which carried on an extensive trade with the British settlements at Penang and, after 1819, Singapore. Together with Deli, Langkat, Siak, Kampar, Jambi, Tanah Putih, Balah and Panei, Batu Bara is enumerated by Van der Kemp among the East Coast states whose commerce Penang was anxious to preserve from Dutch interference after the treaty of 1824.

The Padri threat of 1824

The most substantial mention of Batu Bara in Van der Kemp’s article comes in Appendix 6, where he 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 already reduced Tanah Putih, Balah and Panei to subjection, and had now “expressed their determination to attack Batu Bara and Delli”. The sultan declared: “When they do attempt to carry their threats into execution we shall endeavour to oppose them with all our might and I shall proceed to Batu Bara myself if hostilities commence”. The letter, addressed to Fullerton, requested assistance from the British and warned that if the East Coast states were ruined, Penang would suffer in turn.

Plundered by Said Akil

A few years later Batu Bara appears again in the Said Akil affair. When the Shahbandar of Deli wrote to the governor of Penang in early 1828 complaining of the depredations of Said Akil, he reported that “all the traders therefore from Batoe Bhara, who have been plundered by Syed Akil, have requested the assistance of the chiefs at Batoe Bara, and if satisfaction is not obtained from thence they will perhaps submit their complaint to you and request justice”. The passage shows the close commercial solidarity of the East Coast ports: the traders of Batu Bara, having been plundered at Deli, applied first to their own chiefs, and only failing that, to the British authority at Penang.

Place in the wider argument

Although Batu Bara is mentioned in Van der Kemp’s article only incidentally, it figures prominently in the documentation he adduces as evidence of two related propositions. First, the East Coast states — though formally dependencies of Acheh under the Acheh treaty of 1819 — were in practice independent polities, exposed both to internal religious upheaval (the Padri war) and to the depredations of freebooters such as Said Akil. Second, the British government at Penang, while disclaiming any political authority over them, exercised a kind of supervisory commercial jurisdiction which the Dutch, after 1824, increasingly resented. Both elements are central to Van der Kemp’s analysis of the suzerainty question that emerged between the two powers over Sumatra.

See Also

Source

The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.

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.

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