Kedah is a Malay state on the western side of the Malay Peninsula, facing the Straits of Malacca. In The Achehnese Vol. I, Kedah is invoked chiefly as a point of comparison for Achehnese institutions, especially for the territorial meaning of the Arabic word mukim and for the vocabulary of rice-cultivation.
The Word Mukim in Kedah and Acheh
Snouck Hurgronje, having observed that the Achehnese have distorted the original Arabic meaning of mukim (a person who settles or resides) into a territorial designation for a parish-like subdivision, notes that “this word has in Kedah the same modified meaning as in Acheh.” The source he cites is T. J. Newbold’s British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca (II: 20). The further observation, that in Kedah each mukim consisted originally of at least 44 families, is “a clear indication of the original intent of this territorial subdivision” — namely, to provide the requisite congregation of forty adult males for the Friday service, with a margin for absentees.
Sawah and Ladang: The Vocabulary of Rice-Fields
In a translator’s footnote to the agricultural chapter, the word sawah is glossed as the Malay term for irrigated rice-fields used in the southern parts of the Peninsula — Johor, Malacca etc. — and also in Java. “In Penang, Province Wellesley, Kedah etc. the word is bladang.” The contrast between sawah and ladang (the latter denoting unirrigated, swidden fields) is a basic dichotomy of Malay rice-cultivation; its survival in Acheh under slightly different terms shows how the agrarian vocabulary of the Peninsula shaded into that of northern Sumatra.
Account from Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 — Kedah
Kedah (Dutch and older English Quedah) is a Malay sultanate occupying the north-western corner of the Malay Peninsula, around the estuary of the Kedah River and the adjacent plain facing the Strait of Malacca. Its sultan was historically the overlord of the adjacent islands of Pulo Pinang (Penang) and the mainland fortress of Kuala Kedah, and its proximity to the great trade route through the Strait made it a strategic player in the politics of the region. In P. H. van der Kemp’s narrative, Kedah appears at the very origin of the British stake on the peninsula — the 1786 cession of Penang — and again, more obliquely, in the wideranging correspondence that attended the Aceh agreement of 1819.
Van der Kemp’s opening pages place Kedah at the root of the British involvement in northern Sumatra and the Strait. He notes that in 1786 Captain Francis Light, considering a British settlement, “achtte hij Atjeh goede geschikter dan Atjeh voorkwam” — found Pulo Pinang more suitable than Acheh — and so, “bij een verdrag met den radja van Quedah voor eene pachtsom van 10.000 dollars het eiland aan Groot-Britannië werd afgestaan.” The cession of Penang by the raja of Kedah in return for an annual payment of ten thousand Spanish dollars was, in Van der Kemp’s account, the practical alternative the British chose to a direct establishment at Aceh — an alternative that, in turn, kept Aceh itself within the British field of vision across the next half-century.
Van der Kemp reproduces the original cession document, in which the raja of Quedah informs the Governor-General of Bengal that “captain Light Deva Rajah came here and informed us that our friend requested Pulo Penang,” and that he had thereupon granted the island “to plant the Honble Company’s English flag.” The cession was signed “on the 20th day of the Moon Shaval, in the year 1199 Regira” — that is, in 1786. The document is reproduced because it was the precedent on which later British conduct in the Strait rested: it showed that the British model for expansion in the region was through treaties with Malay rulers for specific pieces of territory, rather than through conquest.
Kedah’s own subsequent history was more troubled. The sultanate was invaded by Siam in 1821, in punishment for Kedah’s failure to send the bunga mas tribute; the sultan took refuge in Penang and sought British assistance against the Siamese, but the British — bound by their own arrangements with Siam — declined to intervene. Van der Kemp’s text touches on this broader Malay-Siamese entanglement only obliquely. In one of the appendix letters, the writer observes that “I am not in favour of the present understanding with the Siamese Government as it regards the affairs of Achin but of Kedah and «c” — a fragmentary reference that captures how closely, in the minds of British officials, the politics of Aceh, Kedah and Siam were entwined.
The 1786 Kedah-Penang arrangement thus stands at the head of a chain of events that led, by a circuitous route, to the British mission to Aceh in 1819 and the Aceh agreement that Van der Kemp’s article analyses. Without Kedah’s cession of Penang, the British would have had no forward base from which Raffles and Coombs could have been dispatched to Aceh; and without Aceh, in turn, the treaty of 1824 would have looked very different.
Account from Stapel’s De Koloniën (1931)
Kedah (Dutch: Queda) was the tin-rich Malay sultanate on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, lying north of Perak, whose tin trade was the subject of a series of Compagnie treaties beginning on 11 July 1642 and whose recurrent outrages against Compagnie merchants in 1658 and after made it one of the most troublesome of the Tin Quartiers. In Dr. F. W. Stapel’s Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland Kedah is one of the three principal Tinkwartieren and the place where the Compagnie’s trade policy most consistently collided with the politics of Siam, which claimed suzerainty over it.
The 1642 treaty
The conquest of Malacca on 14 January 1641 opened the peninsula to Compagnie policy. On 11 July 1642 a treaty was concluded between the Compagnie and the king of Kedah (Queda) by which “the first received right to at least half of the tin there won and imported, to that end might establish an office under a merchant, and might demand a Dutch passport from all seafarers” (de eerste recht kreeg op minstens de helft van het daar gewonnen en aangevoerde tin, daartoe een kantoor onder een koopman mocht vestigen, en van alle zeevarenden een Nederlandschen pas eischen).
The leak via Perak
The Kedah treaty, like those with Oedjong Salang (18 March 1643, renewed 27 October 1643) and Bangeri (1 January 1645), leaked. “Despite all these contracts, [Voorindische] merchants nevertheless managed to carry off much tin, mostly via Perak, which stood under Atjeh” (Ondanks al deze contracten wisten Voorindische kooplieden niettemin veel tin weg te halen, meest via Perak, dat onder Atjeh stond).
On 3 July 1647 the G.G. and Councillors, on the advice of the Governor of Malacca, resolved “to close the harbours of the Tinkwartieren for all foreign merchants” (de havens der tinkwartieren voor alle vreemde kooplieden te sluiten).
The 1658 outrage
The 15 August 1650 Atjeh-Perak treaty was followed by the 1651 Perak outrage, and the 1659 peace was preceded by the 1658 Kedah outrage. “On the north of Perak situated Kedah one experienced in 1658 similar difficulties. During the loading of tin in a Compagnie ship an over-running took place, whereby the lodge was plundered and 9 of the Compagnie’s servants found death” (Op het ten Noorden van Perak gelegen Kedah ondervond men in 1658 gelijke moeielijkheden. Tijdens het laden van tin in een Compagnies-schip had een overrompeling plaats, waarbij de loge werd geplunderd en 9 van ‘s Compagnies dienaren den dood vonden).
The Compagnie responded by blockading the river of Kedah. “All native vessels which transported tin from the Kedahsche lands were stopped, and the tin taken out against payment” (Alle inheemsche vaartuigen, welke tin uit de Kedahsche landen vervoerden, werden aangehouden, en het tin tegen betaling er uit genomen).
The 1666 and after
The Kedah chiefs later requested the restoration of the Netherlands office, “on the promise of peaceful trade” (onder belofte van vreedzamen handel). “Those of Kedah did some years later a similar request” (die van Kedah deden eenige jaren later een soortgelijk verzoek). But the Compagnie did not accede to either request. “The Compagnie went on neither of both those requests; well did it let the named places be regularly visited by her ships, but to the restoration of a permanent office she did not think anymore” (Doch de Compagnie ging op geen van beide die verzoeken in; wel liet zij de genoemde plaatsen geregeld door hare schepen aandoen, doch aan herstel van een permanent kantoor dacht zij niet meer).
The pattern of Kedah relations through the 1660s and 1670s is one of intermittent trade police. “Some times Netherlands sloops were assaulted in the Peraksche or Kedahsche river, whereon then again some time a blockade followed” (Eenige malen werden Nederlandsche sloepen in de Peraksche of Kedahsche rivier overvallen, waarop dan weer eenigen tijd een blokkade volgde).
Significance
Kedah is one of the three principal Tinkwartieren and the place where the Compagnie’s trade policy most consistently collided with the politics of Siam. Siam’s claims over Kedah — together with its suzerainty over Oedjong Salang — made the Compagnie’s peninsular tin policy inseparable from its relations with the Siamese court at Ayutthaya. The 1658 Kedah outrage is also one of the two great tin-quarter outrages (the other being the simultaneous Oedjong Salang rising) that consumed the Compagnie’s Malacca governors in the late 1650s and produced the 1659 peace with the sultane of Atjeh.
See Also
- Malay Peninsula
- Straits of Malacca
- Province Wellesley
- Penang
- Johor
- Malacca
- Newbold
- Acheh
- Siam
- Bengal
- Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819
- Tinkwartieren
- Perak
- Oedjong Salang
- Bangeri
- Malakka
- Treaty of Atjeh-Perak (15 August 1650)
- Treaty of Atjeh-VOC (5 October 1659)
- Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
- 11 July
- 3 July
- 1642
- 1658
Sources
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.
De Koloniën, by Dr. F. W. Stapel, in Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), kaart 19, blz. 26–27, 64–65 (tekst bij de bladen 2 en 3: De Archipel en het Maleische Schiereiland in 1650, Malakka en het Maleische Schiereiland).