Deli

Properties2
tagsplace, sultanate, coast, region, sumatra, colonial, economy, plantations
aliasesDelli, Delhi, Dellie, Deli sultanate

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Deli (Dutch and English Deli, also Delli, Dellie; in one British translation misspelt “Delhi”) was a small Malay sultanate on Sumatra’s East Coast, south of Langkat and north of Batu Bara. Although nominally a dependency of Acheh, Deli enjoyed practical independence by the early nineteenth century and carried on an extensive trade with the British settlement at Penang. It is the most fully treated of the East Coast states in Van der Kemp’s article, on account of the long and embarrassing Said Akil affair.

A dependency of Acheh

In the Acheh treaty of 1819 — concluded at Pedir on 22 April 1819 between Raffles, Coombs and sultan Djohor — Article 1 (apparently) bound the contracting parties to support each other, and Deli was understood to be among the Achehnese dependencies thus placed under British protection. When the Achehnese pretender Syf retired to Telok Semawé and the Three Sagis ruled in fact at the capital, the East Coast states — Deli among them — drifted into practical autonomy; but the formal dependency was remembered whenever it suited the sultan’s purposes. Van der Kemp treats this as one of the ironies of the treaty of 1819, which became a “dead letter” in everything except the Achehnese sultan’s recourse to its clauses when complaining of British conduct.

Said Akil’s marriage and usurpation

In 1824 the third son of the wealthy Penang Arab Said Hussein, Said Akil, “verloofde, of destijds getrouwd was met eene dochter van den sultan van Deli”, and took up residence on the East Coast. On the death of his father-in-law, the old sultan was succeeded by a son of fourteen or sixteen; Said Akil — brother-in-law of the new Raja — claimed the post of Raja Mooda (younger prince or deputy), and in 1826 fitted out an armed expedition from Penang to seize the government of Deli. Governor Phillips’s translator John Anderson wrote on 11 April 1826 requiring Akil to desist; Akil answered that he came only to fetch his “luisterrijke wijze” wife, and was allowed to proceed.

The Sultan of Acheh’s complaint

Once installed, Akil plundered the traders of Deli. The Sultan of Acheh, Alaeddin Mohammed Shah, complained to the governor of Penang on 13 October 1826 in the “gewone Atjeheesche wijze” that Deli was a dependency of Acheh and that the treaty of 1819 bound the Company to support the sultan against his enemies — a somewhat rich appeal, as Van der Kemp drily notes, from a sultan whom Panglima Polim had installed and whom the treaty itself had not enabled to exercise any real authority. Anderson again wrote to Akil on 2 November 1826 requiring his return; the request was “doof ooren gepredikt”.

The Shahbandar’s appeal; Ibbetson’s intervention

In early 1828 the Shahbandar of Deli wrote directly to the governor of Penang begging deliverance from the “roover” who had seized the government, murdered trade, and plundered the traders of neighbouring Batu Bara as well. Governor Fullerton replied to the sultan on 27 August 1828 that the British government wished only to see peaceful trade; the Bengal government, on being informed, replied on 24 October 1828 that the manner in which Penang had borne itself met with its full approval. Akil himself, in a letter of 7 August 1828, protested that he merely wished to recover some 60,000 dollars owed to him in Deli and would then return quietly to Penang — a self-defence which Van der Kemp treats with the contempt it merits.

Place in the wider argument

The Deli episode serves Van der Kemp’s larger purpose in two ways. First, it illustrates the utter uselessness of the Acheh treaty of 1819 as an instrument of British policy: the sultan of Acheh, who had never been in a position to fulfil any of its stipulations, was reduced to invoking its Article 1 against the proceedings of a British subject whom the Penang government could not or would not control. Second, it shows why the British government, while formally renouncing political interference on Sumatra after 1824, continued to maintain intimate, if informal, relations with the petty East Coast states. The Deli correspondence, together with the Siak correspondence of 1828 and the Bellona affair, is printed by Van der Kemp in his Appendices to show the consistent British policy of treating the East Coast as a commercial preserve.

Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)

Lamster recorded that “the connection of the Atjeh tramway with Deli was established”; the correspondent of the Nieuwe Courant wrote in 1914 that “in a couple of months Kota Radja will be in direct rail connection with the Deli plantation district.” A redactor of the Deli Courant of Medan visited Atjeh in 1916 and described in ten articles, Atjeh in Vogelvlucht, a country wholly at rest and in flower.

See Also

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.

Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XIII, XVI.

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