Bintan (Dutch Bintang) is the largest island of the Riau archipelago, lying south-east of Singapore across the Singapore Strait. Its principal town, Tanjung Pinang, served for centuries as the seat of the Sultanate of Riouw-Lingga, the successor polity of the Johor Empire, and the island was therefore a major centre of Malay political and literary culture. Although only briefly mentioned in P. H. van der Kemp’s study of the Aceh agreement of 1819, Bintan appears in the decisive clause of the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 that fixed the colonial geography of the southern approaches to Singapore.
Van der Kemp quotes article 12 of the treaty verbatim. After the first paragraph, in which the Netherlands renounced its claims to Singapore, comes the British counter-obligation: “Daarentegen belooft Zijne Groot-Brittannische Majesteit, dat geen Britsch kantoor zal worden opgerigt op de Carimons-eilanden, of op de eilanden Battam, Bintang, Lingen of op eenig der andere eilanden, liggende ten zuiden van Sinkapoer, en dat met derzelven Opperhoofden geene tractaten, onder Britsch gezag, gesloten zullen worden.” Bintan, Batam (Battam) and Lingga (Lingen) were thus explicitly named as off-limits to British settlement and treaty-making.
The naming of Bintan in the treaty reflects the island’s strategic weight. Tanjung Pinang had been the seat of the Bugis-VOC-era polity and was the place where the Dutch Resident of Riouw resided. The sultan’s court at Penyengat, a short distance from Tanjung Pinang, was a focal point of Malay letters and Islamic learning throughout the nineteenth century. To have allowed the British to establish themselves on Bintan would have been to give them control of the very centre of Malay political authority in the archipelago. The treaty of 1824 closed off that possibility and confirmed the sultanate of Riouw-Lingga — and with it Bintan — as a Dutch dependency.
Although Van der Kemp does not elaborate on the island, his text makes plain that the chain of islands running from the Carimons through Batam, Bintan and Lingga south of Singapore formed, in British eyes, a single strategic continuum. The founding of Singapore in January 1819 by Raffles and Farquhar had been intended in part as a British counter to Dutch control of Riouw and Bintan; the treaty of 1824 ratified that counter in international law while explicitly recognising Bintan as Dutch.
See Also
- Riouw
- Lingga
- Batam
- Karimon Islands
- Singapore
- Treaty of London (1824)
- Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819
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.