Penang

Referenced in the sadati dialogue: ‘My desire, brothers, is to go to Pulo Pinang (Penang).’ The Hok Canton was a ship ‘belonging to Chinese traders in Penang, trading to Acheh under Dutch colours.’ After the ransom affair following the Hok Canton Incident, Achehnese who had been involved found their way to Singapore and Penang. Penang thus served as both a trading partner and a place of refuge for Achehnese connected to the events of the holy war against the Dutch.

Penang (also Pinang, formerly Prince of Wales Island) was a British Straits Settlement on the northwest coast of the Malay Peninsula, where — as R.J. Wilkinson noted in his translator’s note to The Achehnese — the English Government had adopted the word mukim to designate the minor subdivisions of a district for administrative purposes. In Penang and Province Wellesley, the word had the same modified meaning as in Acheh, and in its stricter sense corresponded almost exactly to the English word “parish.”

This linguistic adoption is significant as evidence of the close administrative and cultural ties between the British Straits Settlements and the Acehnese-Malay world.

Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Penang

Penang (also Pulau Pinang) is the British Straits Settlement — an island and port off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula — that appears in The Achehnese Vol. I as the chief foreign commercial destination of the Achehnese, and as a recurring point of comparison in matters of Malay vocabulary and popular superstition. Captain Francis Light had pointed out to the Governor-General of Bengal, as early as 1786, that a settlement at Pulau Pinang possessed greater advantages than the port of Acheh: “I prefer Penang to the Port of Acheen,” he wrote, “as being more healthy and entirely free from that oppression, lucre and confusion which have ever distressed and at length driven out every [European] attempt to settle there.”

In commercial life, Penang is the place to which Achehnese dollars (piastres) are taken by traders to buy goods, yielding them in that port a profitable premium varying between 1 and 5 per cent — 4 per cent being reckoned as the average premium or basi, as the Achehnese call it. The moneylender who advances capital to the trader for a Penang voyage bases his contract on the rate of basi prevailing when the loan is made; the rate can always be easily ascertained from the traders or seafaring people who have last come over from Penang. The trader runs very little risk, as the rate seldom falls much in the time required for the voyage, and he at once proceeds to change his money on arrival. This method of raising money is called meudua basi (“dividing the basi”); worse still, the name of lending in consideration of a part or the whole of the basi is sometimes used simply as a euphemism for ordinary usury, without any money-changing or journeys to Penang. The dollars thus exported find their way back to Acheh in exchange for pepper and betel-nuts.

In matters of language and administrative usage, Penang supplies several Malay terms that have crossed into Achehnese. The word mukim, in its stricter sense, corresponds almost exactly to the English word “parish”; in Penang and Province Wellesley the English Government adopted the word to designate the minor subdivisions of a district for administrative purposes. Sawah, the Malay word for irrigated rice-fields used in the southern parts of the Peninsula (Johor, Malacca etc.) and in Java, gives way in Penang, Province Wellesley, Kedah etc. — as in Acheh — to blang. Titi, a dialectic variation of titian (“a bridge”), is the word for “bridge” in the Malay of the northern part of the Peninsula; in Malacca and Singapore it is jambatan. Longtang, meaning “interval” in the Javanese month-names, curiously enough means “a narrow drain or ditch” in the Malay of Singapore and (by extension) of Penang.

In religious superstition, Penang is associated with the cult of Tuan Meurasab (the saint of Nagore). Penang Mohammedans have a superstition that articles of value vowed to this saint, if thrown into the sea at Penang, will be washed up in a few months’ time close to his shrine at Nagore on the Coromandel coast. Hewn tombstones are now largely imported from Penang for use in Achehnese cemeteries, replacing the porous and easily worked stone from Pulo Batee (Stone Island) opposite Ulee Lheue that was formerly employed. Penang (also called Pulau Pinang) was, in the period described by The Achehnese, a British Straits Settlement — an island and town off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula which served the Achehnese both as their chief emporium of foreign trade and as the principal British political alternative to a settlement in Acheh itself. It had been founded in 1786 by Captain Francis Light, whose own preference for Penang over the port of Acheh set the tone of British policy for the next half-century. “I prefer Penang to the Port of Acheen,” wrote James Price to the Chairman of the East India Company in London, “as being more healthy and entirely free from that oppression, war and confusion which have ever distressed and at length driven out every European nation who has attempted to settle there.” Governor R. Fullerton added, in 1825, that European influence over Acheh had been “found utterly impracticable without employing a large military force to overawe the inhabitants.”

Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Pulau Pinang

Pulau Pinang (Penang, also styled Prince of Wales Island in the early British records) is the island off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula which, in 1786, was selected by Captain Francis Light as the site of a British settlement in preference to a station on the Achehnese coast. The Achehnese introduces Pulau Pinang at the very outset of its account of European relations with Acheh, since the choice of Penang over Acheh fixed the political geography of the northern Straits for the next century and indirectly shaped the conditions under which the Dutch war against Acheh was eventually fought.

In that same year 1786, Warren Hastings received from the then Sultan “a discourteous letter in reply to an expression of goodwill”, and Captain Francis Light pointed out to the Governor-General of Bengal that “a settlement at Pulau Pinang possessed greater advantages than one on the Achehnese coast.” Light’s memorandum, quoted by Snouck Hurgronje, runs: “Acheen is a good road but no place of security against an enemy there. The country is fertile beyond description and very populous. The inhabitants rigid and superstitious Mohammedans, sullen, fickle and treacherous. To form a settlement there of safety and advantage, a force sufficient to subdue all the chiefs would be necessary.” In the same spirit wrote James Price to the chairman of the Company in London: “I prefer Penang to the Port of Acheen as being more healthy and entirely free from that oppression …”.

The Achehnese themselves, in the same chapter, are said to have placed the eastern boundary of their kingdom in Sumatra at Tamiang on the East Coast, and the western at Baros, while Great Acheh proper was the kernel of the kingdom. Pulau Pinang is mentioned in Vol. I chiefly as the locus from which British observations of Achehnese affairs were made, and as a place of residence for the translator O’Sullivan of the English edition.

In a later footnote the translator remarks that “Penang Mohammedans have a superstition that articles of value vowed to Tuan Meurasab if thrown into the sea at Penang will be washed up in a few months’ time close to the shrine at Nagore” on the Coromandel coast — a popular belief linking the island to the cult of that southern Indian saint. The word mukim, Snouck Hurgronje adds, has been adopted by “the English Government” in Penang and Province Wellesley “to designate the minor subdivisions of a district for administrative purposes,” though in its stricter Achehnese sense it corresponds rather to a group of villages grouped around a central mosque. The English government of Pulau Pinang thus preserved, in colonial administrative vocabulary, a legacy of the Achehnese political geography it had replaced.

Account from Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 — Penang

Penang (Dutch Pinang; Malay Pulo Pinang; officially, in the early nineteenth century, Prince of Wales Island) is an island off the west coast of the Malay Peninsula which in 1786 was ceded to the British East India Company by the Raja of Quedah and became, for nearly half a century, the principal British settlement east of Bengal and the political and commercial base from which the relations with Acheh were conducted. Van der Kemp’s article is, in no small part, the history of how the government of Penang came to be drawn into the Achehnese succession dispute, and of how its differences with Raffles over the conduct of that dispute conditioned the Acheh treaty of 1819.

Foundation

In the same year 1786 in which the Achehnese sultan Sultan Munson addressed his dismissive letter to Warren Hastings, Captain Francis Light “Deva Rajah” concluded with the Raja of Quedah an agreement ceding Pulo Penang to the British for an annual rent of 10,000 dollars. Light, as Van der Kemp records, judged Penang “more healthy and entire free from that oppression, war and confusion which however distressed and at length driven out every European nation who has attempted to settle” at Acheh. The superintendence of political relations over Acheh was from the outset entrusted to the government of Penang, and the early years of the new settlement were “eene lijdensgeschiedenis” — a passion story — during which the idea of abandoning the island for some other station was repeatedly canvassed, though always rejected.

The succession dispute and the Raffles–Coombs commission

By the time Sultan Jauhar Alum had been driven to Pedir and Syf to Telok Semawé, Penang was deeply involved in the Achehnese succession. The Penang-based merchant Said Hussein had equipped the expedition that placed his son Syf on the throne in 1815, and the government of the island had to decide which of the rival claimants to recognise. Captain Coombs’s first mission of 1817–1818 concluded that Syf was the recognised sultan, a view that brought Coombs and Governor Bannerman into direct conflict with Raffles of Bencoolen, who favoured Jauhar Alum. The joint commission was organised from Penang in early 1819; the proceedings opened there with disputes over troops, artillery and the order of ports to be visited, and culminated in Raffles’s sudden departure on the Karimon detour — the foundation of Singapore — without a word of farewell to either Bannerman or Coombs.

Penang’s governor, Bannerman, died on 8 August 1819 — the Death of Bannerman — and was succeeded by W. E. Phillips. Under Phillips the island’s government continued to nurse the Acheh treaty of 1819, sending circulars to the mukims and receiving the defiant letter of 4 December 1822. It was also at Penang that the ex-sultan Syf lived out his days on his pension (the Syf’s pension at Penang), and from Penang that John Anderson conducted the lengthy correspondence with the Sultan of Deli and Said Akil that marks the Said Akil’s Deli adventure (1824-1828).

The Wilhelmina and Lucas affairs

The Wilhelmina affair and the Lucas mission showed Penang in a less heroic light. The island’s government, when appealed to by the Dutch governor of Malacca Timmerman Thyssen, declined to permit Colonel Lucas to proceed against Telok Semawé, reasoning that Syf had exercised sovereign authority there and that the port would be “the last to acknowledge” Sultan Jauhar Alum. The island’s secretary Clubley formally refused a fresh examination; the Dutch Irene returned empty. Van der Kemp treats this as a typical episode of the “paper war” between the British and Dutch settlements in the Malay world.

Strategic position after 1824

After the treaty of London of 17 March 1824, which exchanged Malacca for Benkoelen and ceded Singapore to Britain, Penang retained its supervisory role over the northern Sumatran coast. Fullerton’s minute of 21 March 1825 on the Acheh situation — the Fullerton’s minute on Acheh (21 March 1825) — was drawn up for the Bengal government at Penang. The island’s trade benefited from the disintegration of central authority in Acheh: as Fullerton observed, the more ports were independent of the sultan, the more the trade of Penang flourished. The Pinang Nota (1825) and the Dutch Salt Price Reduction of the late 1820s show Penang’s continuing preoccupation with the commerce of Sumatra’s East Coast and with the competition of Singapore itself, which under John Prince and Fullerton rapidly eclipsed the older settlement.

Nineteenth-Century Historiography & Campaign Analysis

Arms Trade and Diplomacy in 1872-1873

Following the Anglo-Dutch Sumatra Treaty of 1871, Aceh’s royal court dispatched envoys to Penang to purchase munitions. As General G. G. Booms documented in his 1875 treatise, between August 1872 and early 1873, Acehnese merchants imported over 15,000 rifles and vast stores of gunpowder from Penang to arm Coastal Fortifications in Aceh.

During the Aceh War, Penang also served as an international telegraph station where Dutch dispatches, including the General van Swieten War Telegrams, were transmitted to Europe and Batavia (Telegraph Communication in the Aceh War).

Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu

British port in Straits Settlements; principal export market for Aceh products; refuge for rich Acehnese during Aceh war from where war was financed; has Consulate-General which sent price telegrams; trial shipments of cattle and goats began 1936British trade port; main trade partner of Atjeh beforeblockade. Source of imported war matériel for the Atjeh war party.Raad van Achten’ (Council of Eight) of Acehnese notables was formed to represent Acehnese interests abroad.

Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 86, 194, 284, 322, 395.

Source

Over de eerste expeditie tegen Atjeh: Een antwoord aan Generaal de Stuers, G. G. Booms, ‘s-Gravenhage: A. van Hoogstraten & Zoon, 1875, pp. 8-11; Atjeh gedurende de tweede expeditie en later, Een Oud Officier, Batavia: Ogilvie & Co., 1876, pp. 6-10.

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.

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, § 6, footnote p. 81.

Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 86, 194, 284, 322, 395.

tags	place, british, british-settlement, capital, coast, colonial, colony, commercial-center, foreign, island, islands, port, settlement, straits-settlements
aliases	British Penang, George Town Penang, Penang, Penang Island, Pinang, Poeloe Pinang, Prince of Wales Island, Prince of Wales' Island, Pulau Penang, Pulau Pinang, Pulo Penang, Pulo Pinang

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