Gigiëng was the landscape and small federation of the Pidië region of Atjeh whose radja signed the first act of submission of the war years on 20 April 1874, and which from 1890 devoted itself so successfully to rice cultivation that it became the granary of the federation Pidië and could even spare rice for Groot-Atjeh.
The submission of 1874
During the blockade of the Atjehnese coast the Government circulated its first trade proclamation; whether it moved the Radja of Gigiëng to sign his act of submission, author Joh. Langhout leaves undecided. The submission was accomplished on 20 April 1874, when, in the presence of a great multitude, the Dutch flag was hoisted on the passar at Gigiëng, the Radja received an act of recognition and confirmation, and the Government paid him 10,000 rijksdaalders. The Netherlands Government kept its promise and permitted trade with Gigiëng immediately, and very soon a great number of trading vessels were cleared at Penang for this part of Atjeh.
The rice granary of Pidië
Especially in the federation Gighen the population devoted itself from 1890 to rice culture — “zóó zelfs, dat die streek de voorraadschuur van rijst werd voor de federatie Pidië en bovendien nog rijst kon afstaan voor Groot-Atjeh” (“so much even that this tract became the store-shed of rice for the federation Pidië, and moreover could spare rice for Groot-Atjeh”). The North Coast sawahs in general produced enough for the population’s need even while the tract remained closed to the coasting trade in the early 1890s.
Account from H. F. Meijer (1883) — the breach of 19 August 1876
Meijer’s Chapter VIII tells how Gigiëng — the state that by its submission had shown how to undo the blockade’s pressure by diplomacy — proved, in the year of the Habib’s return, also the first prince’s state of the coast to break its handwriting. Its prince Toengkoe Bintara Kamangan (Potjoet Osman Bintara) lived in continuous hostility with the prince of Pidir, mostly, the Dutch thought, from disputes upon claims of territory and the levying of the taxes at the mouth which his river shared with the Pidir river; war and blockade had made the state a great source of supply for the war party.
In July 1876 three independent witnesses — Radja Mangkoeta, the moekim head Toekoe Imam of Gigiëng and the Dutch agent at Penang, Lavino — gave the Dutch certainty that the prince had invited the heads of his realm to collect money for the prang sabil and had himself gone to fight in the XXII Moekims, after dismissing the friendly market master Toekoe Moeda Rajat for the hostile Toekoe Hasjim. On 19 August the steamship Marnix came on the roadstead with the proclamation of the civil and military commander: the friendship was ended and the harbours of the state closed to trade, and the Dutch flag flying at the capital since 1874 was hauled down. The breach lasted two years and put life into the attacks on the Dutch fortification at Segli by the state’s people and by Toekoe di Tiroe’s band from Pidir, ending — in 1878 — in the prince’s second submission after the expedition from Groot-Atjeh.
See Also
Source
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 28–29, 65.