Kluang was the western boundary point of Great Acheh, forming the western anchor of the line that bounded the Acehnese heartland. C. Snouck Hurgronje states that the kernel of the kingdom was bounded by a line extending from Kluang on the west to Krueng Raya on the North Coast, passing through Reueng-reueng, Pancha, and Janthoe.
Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Kluang
Kluang is a locality on the western boundary of Great Acheh, named by Snouck Hurgronje as the westernmost point of the conventional Achehnese boundary-line of the kernel of the kingdom. Kluang (Achehnese Kluang, also Klua’) is a locality on the west coast of Acheh named by Snouck Hurgronje as the western terminus of the boundary line by which the Achehnese themselves circumscribe the kernel of the kingdom. The reference occurs in the opening geographical chapter of The Achehnese Vol. I.
The Boundary of Great Acheh
In the introductory chapter on the country and the people, Snouck observes that the Achehnese use the name Acheh in two senses: a wider sense, embracing the whole of the Achehnese coast and the interior of the northern tip of Sumatra; and a more restricted sense, the territory which they describe as Acheh proper, or which the Europeans are wont to term Great Acheh. “This kernel of the kingdom, which has supplied the outlying districts with a considerable portion of their inhabitants, and has constantly striven to exercise more or less dominion over them, is according to the Achehnese idea bounded by a line extending from Kluang on the West, to Krueng Raya on the North Coast, and passing through Reueng-reueng, Pancha and Janthoe.”
The five points named — Kluang, Reueng-reueng, Pancha, Janthoe, Krueng Raya — define the conventional south-eastern and eastern boundary of Great Acheh, the kernel of the Sultanate. Kluang is the westernmost of these points, and its inclusion in the boundary-list fixes it as the recognised landmark at which the western limit of the three sagis was conventionally drawn.
The Topography of the West Coast
The western limit of Great Acheh runs along the West Coast of the Achehnese territory, the long stretch of surf-beaten shore which faces the Indian Ocean. The West Coast was, in Snouck’s account, one of the principal dependencies of the Sultanate; its inhabitants were in many cases of mixed Achehnese descent, and its chiefs were, in the late nineteenth century, among the most exposed of the Achehnese dependencies to Dutch military pressure. The choice of Kluang as the western landmark of Great Acheh is thus consistent with the broader topographical fact: it marks the point at which the territory of the three sagis gave way to the West Coast dependencies.
The West Coast in the Acheh War
The West Coast, of which Kluang marks the conventional northern limit, was one of the principal theatres of the Acheh War. The same chapter of The Achehnese which records the boundary-line of Great Acheh also describes the gradual Dutch advance into the West Coast dependencies, and the policy of “concentration” by which the Dutch, for a time, attempted to confine their effective occupation to a fortified linie around the capital. The mention of Kluang in the boundary-list is the more significant in that it fixes the conventional limit beyond which the Achehnese kernel was held to extend; the West Coast, beyond Kluang, was dependency rather than kernel, and its loss or gain was, in Achehnese political thought, a less momentous matter than the loss of territory within the three sagis.
The Conventional Nature of the Boundary
Snouck is at pains to insist that the Achehnese boundary of Great Acheh is conventional rather than fixed. The line is drawn “according to the Achehnese idea,” and the points named in the list are landmarks rather than a surveyed frontier. The boundary was, in the late nineteenth century, the subject of constant negotiation between the sultan and the outlying chiefs; the inclusion of Kluang in the list fixes it as one of the recognised landmarks of the kingdom, but does not imply that it was the seat of an administrative boundary in the European sense.
See Also
- Great Acheh
- Krueng Raya
- Aceh Sultanate
- Janthoe
- West Coast
- XXII Mukims
- XXV Mukims
- XXVI Mukims
- Sultanate of Acheh
- Acheh War
- Reueng-reueng
- Pancha
- West Coast (of Acheh)
- Acheh proper
Source
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. Chapter I, § 1, p. 1.