China appears as a foreign power in many Achehnese romances, typically as the great antagonist who tries to kidnap the hero’s princess. The king of China is a stock villain: in Malem Diwa, ‘the king of China has waged a successful war against Nata and carried off the beautiful lady in a crystal chest’; Malem Diwa sails for China, is swallowed by a whale, and cast on shore in Java. In the Hikayat Banta Beuransah, the king of China tries to kidnap Beuransah’s wife. In the Hikayat Gumba Meuih, ‘the wedded happiness of this heroine, as of so many others in Achehnese hikayats is assailed by the king of China.’ In the Hikayat Muhamat Napiah, ‘Yadib and his allies, among whom were the kings of China, Abyssinia, etc., also brought their armies thither.’ The sadati dialogue: ‘go and tender your services for hire to the Emperor of China. This king of the unbelievers is my friend who forges artillery, the Emperor of China.‘
Account from Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 — China
China, under the Qing dynasty in the early nineteenth century, was the great commercial destination of the British country trade in Asia and a constant point of reference in any calculation about the strategic value of the Malay archipelago. In P. H. van der Kemp’s narrative of the Aceh agreement of 1819, China figures in three distinct but related ways: as the destination of the China trade whose free navigation through the Strait of Malacca the British sought to secure; as the market for the produce of Sumatra’s east coast that fed the Singapore entrepôt; and, more prosaically, as the supposed destination of one Carnegy, a Malacca official whose career Van der Kemp treats with characteristic tartness.
The first and most strategic role of China is set out in Van der Kemp’s opening pages. The British concern with Acheh, he explains, arose from the danger that “de Nederlanders er toe zouden komen om den China-weg te monopoliseeren” — that the Dutch might come to monopolise the China route. Governor-General Lord Moira, he records, was “warm voor den onbelemmerden China-handel” — a warm advocate of the unhindered China trade — and so regarded an Aceh commission as urgently necessary. The reasoning was straightforward: the sea-lane from India to China ran through the Strait of Malacca, past the Malay Peninsula and the northern tip of Sumatra; any European power controlling the ports at either end of the Strait could in principle choke off the trade, and Acheh was the most commanding position on the Sumatran side. Hence the British decision, taken in Calcutta in January 1819, to dispatch a commission to Aceh “in time to establish our political influence to the exclusion of that of the Dutch or other foreign nations.”
China’s second appearance in the narrative comes in the commercial dispatch of John Prince of 1827 quoted by Van der Kemp. Prince enumerated the imports into Singapore from the Sumatran east coast — coffee, pepper, “an immense quantity of rattans, for the China Market, wax and gold dust.” The China market was, in other words, the ultimate destination of a substantial share of the produce that flowed through Singapore; the entrepôt’s prosperity depended on Chinese demand for Southeast Asian raw materials. Any Dutch attempt to divert the Sumatran trade away from Singapore — for instance, by redirecting it through Riouw — would have struck at this China-bound commerce.
The third, more colourful reference to China comes in one of Van der Kemp’s footnotes. Carnegy, a Malacca official whose wife had been forced to flee Malacca because of a murder affair, “heette te zijn” — was said to be — “op reis naar China.” Van der Kemp refers the reader to his earlier Malakka-Riouw treatise for the sordid details. The episode is a reminder that the China trade was, for the British officials stationed in the Strait of Malacca, not only a strategic abstraction but a personal and professional preoccupation: it was the route along which careers were made, secrets were kept and excuses were offered.
The China trade was thus the silent protagonist of much of the diplomatic correspondence Van der Kemp preserves. The Aceh agreement of 1819 was concluded, in significant part, to keep the China route open; the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 divided the archipelago in such a way that the British retained command of the northern approach to the Strait; and the long paper war of the late 1820s over the Sumatran east coast was fought, in part, because that coast’s produce fed the China market through Singapore.
Account from DLP-84-Atjeh — Chinese junks and the early trade in pepper and gold
The DLP-84-Atjeh pamphlet records that China was a major East Asian empire whose maritime trade routes passed through the Strait of Malacca and the waters of Acheh. From the early Common Era, Chinese junks sailed to the Acehnese coast, exchanging silk, porcelain and other luxury goods for pepper and gold. The strategic position of Acheh on the route to China made it a frequent stop for vessels seeking to resupply before the long voyage across the Indian Ocean. This interaction contributed to the economic prosperity of the sultanate and heightened European interest in controlling the trade corridor.
See Also
- Acheh
- Hikayat Gumba Meuih
- Java
- Malem Diwa
- Nata
- Singapore
- Siam
- Sumatra’s East Coast
- Riouw
- Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819
- Strait of Malacca
- Aceh War
- Malacca (Malakka)
- Pepper trade
- Chinese junks
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.
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, pp. 2-3.