Bengal

Properties2
tagsplace, foreign, region, india, british-india
aliasesBengal Presidency, Province of Bengal, Bengalis, Bengalen, British Bengal, Presidency of Bengal

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Bengal — the British Indian presidency whose capital at Calcutta was the seat of the Governor-General — appears in The Achehnese Vol. I as the metropolitan address to which British relations with Acheh were reported, and as the source of a folk comparison embedded in Achehnese demonology.

The Governor-General of Bengal and Acheh

In 1786 Warren Hastings, then Governor-General of Bengal, received from the Sultan of Acheh a discourteous letter in reply to an expression of goodwill. In that same year, Captain Francis Light pointed out to the Governor-General of Bengal that a settlement at Penang possessed greater advantages than one on the Achehnese coast. Light’s report — “Acheen is a good road but no place of security against an enemy there. The country is fertile beyond description and very populous. The inhabitants rigid and superstitious Mohammedans, sullen, fickle and treacherous. To form a settlement there of safety and advantage, a force sufficient to subdue all the chiefs would be necessary” — was sent from the Straits to the Bengal Presidency, as was James Price’s letter of the same tenor. The Chairman of the East India Company wrote in turn to Bengal on the 4th of August 1824 concerning the pretensions of “Johor Allum as king of Acheen.” Thus the diplomatic channel for early British relations with Acheh ran through the Governor-General of Bengal.

The Bengali in Achehnese Folk Imagination

In the chapter on Achehnese demonology, Snouck Hurgronje notes that the biō, the “bogey man” with which Achehnese children are frightened, has a terrifying aspect that “is compared with that of the Bengalis with their gigantic turbans.” The Bengali — a figure presumably familiar in the markets and ports of nineteenth-century Acheh, where Indian Muslim traders were a common sight — thus furnished the Achehnese with a stock image of the marvellous and the alarming. More dangerous than this last-named class of ghosts, the author adds, are the wraiths of persons who have met their deaths by violence, but the biō’s terrifying aspect draws explicitly on the figure of the Bengali.

Account from Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 — Bengal

Bengal (Dutch Bengalen) was the British Indian presidency whose Governor-General at Calcutta was responsible, throughout the events narrated in P. H. van der Kemp’s Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, for Britain’s political relations with Acheh. The Bengal government dispatched the Acheh commission of 1819; ratified (or, in the event, suffered) the treaty of Pedir; and, after the treaty of London of 1824, pronounced that treaty a dead letter.

Hastings, Light and the eighteenth-century background

The earliest Acheh–Bengal contact that Van der Kemp records is the rebuff administered to Warren Hastings — “gouverneur-generaal van Bengalen” — by the Sultan of Acheh’s letter of 7 November 1786. Hastings had sent muskets “conformable to the model transmitted”; the sultan returned them as worthless and requested “that in future you will send me such as may be useful, or I do not want any.” In that same year Captain Francis Light reported to the Governor-General of Bengal on the relative merits of Acheh and Pulo Pinang, preferring the latter as “more healthy and entire free from that oppression, war and confusion” which had driven every European nation from Acheh. The Raja of Quedah formally ceded Pinang to “the governor-general of Bengalen” through Light, in a letter preserved in Van der Kemp’s first appendix. A letter from the Raja of Trengano to Governor-General John Macpherson of 24 February 1787 is also mentioned, invoking his friendship against the Dutch.

Moira, Raffles and the Acheh commission

When Raffles arrived from Benkoelen in the British-Indian capital, “the Bengal government” — meaning Lord Moira and Council — agreed to dispatch a commission to Acheh to exclude the Dutch. Raffles had promised Sultan Djohor “the help of the Bengal government”; the government’s letter to London of 14 January 1819 (cited by Van der Kemp) is the formal record of the decision. The Bengal government gave the commissioners (Raffles and Coombs) instructions, but “incomplete” ones, in Van der Kemp’s judgement; the dispute over whether Raffles had received additional verbal orders from the Governor-General was the subject of his formal denial, dated Calcutta 31 December 1819. Article 9 of the treaty of 22 April 1819 required ratification by the Governor-General of Bengal within six months, though the treaty was to take effect immediately.

Recognition of the treaty as a “dead letter”

After the treaty of 17 March 1824 the London Court of Directors wrote to Bengal (4 August 1824) noting that the Acheh treaty had never been anything but a dead letter. The Bengal government, by its missive of 28 January 1825 (Van der Kemp’s Bijlage 9, in effect), asked Penang for advice, itself recognising the treaty as such: Sultan Djohor had never been able to enforce its provisions, his death in 1823 had deepened the divisions in his house, and the three Sagis with the Queen-Mother were now in command. Governor Fullerton thereupon composed his minute of 21 March 1825 for the Bengal government. The Ibbetson dispatch of 25 February 1824 was sent from Penang to the governmental secretary at Calcutta.

Bengal as a Dutch bargaining counter

In the diplomatic exchanges preceding the 1824 treaty, Bengal (in the broader sense of “the Dutch possessions in Bengal”) figured as a Dutch asset to be ceded. Falck and Fagel had agreed already in 1814 on the worthlessness of the Hindostan factories; Commissioner-General Elout in February 1817 recommended taking Benkoelen in exchange for them. Van der Kemp records Falck’s later view “that, even if one gave up the Netherlands possessions in Bengalen,” commerce could still be desired in the same regions where territorial possession was considered a burden. The British-Indian officials of Bengal, for their part, “urged upon our officials there how much wiser it would be to give up the factories for a compensation in the Archipelago,” and it was by this route that Bencoolen, with Fort Marlborough, finally passed to the Dutch under article 10 of the 1824 treaty.

See Also

Source

The Achehnese, Vol. I, 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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