In Hikayat Pha Suasa: ‘The king of Siam, who has been driven from his territory by the raja of China, flies to Parisi, where he embraces Islam and invokes the help of Pha Suasa’s army.‘
Account from Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 — Siam
Siam (modern Thailand) was, in the early nineteenth century, the dominant mainland Southeast Asian kingdom, with its capital at Bangkok under the Chakri dynasty. Its political and economic influence extended southwards through the Malay Peninsula — over which it claimed a loose suzerainty marked by the triennial bunga mas (golden flower) tribute from the northern Malay sultanates of Kedah, Patani and Perlis — and its trade with the British settlements on the Strait of Malacca was a significant element of the regional economy. In the diplomatic record assembled by P. H. van der Kemp, Siam appears as a trading partner whose salt and other commodities fed the Singapore market, and whose interests could be hurt by Dutch commercial counter-measures on the east coast of Sumatra.
The principal mention comes in the dispatch of John Prince, the former Resident of Singapore, dated Batavia 29 November 1827, which Van der Kemp reproduces in full. Prince had heard that the Netherlands Government intended to send the frigate Bellona to the east coast of Sumatra “with the object of inducing the natives to discontinue the purchase of salt from us, and to take it from Rhio where it is to be delivered at as low a rate.” Summing up the trade at risk, he enumerated the imports into Singapore from the Sumatran east coast — coffee, pepper, rattans, wax and gold dust — “which are bartered for nearly ½ foo Coyans of Siam salt, a quantity of Java tobacco and the manufactures of Western India and Europe.” Siam salt, in other words, was a key commodity in the triangular trade that linked Bangkok, Singapore and the Sumatran east coast.
Prince warned that any Dutch success in diverting Sumatran trade away from Singapore would have knock-on effects on the British position with Siam. “Should the Dutch succeed in restraining the merchants on the East coast of Sumatra from buying salt at Singapore,” he wrote, “considerable inconvenience and reduction will arise in our trade with Siam, from whence it is solely imported.” Other articles — sugar, rice, oil — would suffer proportionately. The dispatch is preserved because it illustrates how the paper war between Britain and the Netherlands over the East Coast, which had begun with the Aceh agreement of 1819 and continued through the treaty of 1824, was fought out in commercial terms throughout the late 1820s.
Siam’s wider entanglement in the politics of the Strait is also visible in the Anglo-Achehnese correspondence. In one of the appendix letters, a writer reflects that he is “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 but telling reference to the way in which British officials in the Strait linked the questions of Acheh, Kedah and Siam in a single frame. Siam’s claims to suzerainty over Kedah and the northern Malay sultanates, and its intermittent pressure on Acheh, made it a permanent factor in any British or Dutch calculation about the northern approach to the Strait of Malacca. Van der Kemp does not pursue the Siamese thread in detail, but the references he preserves show that the paper war over Acheh was never a purely bilateral Anglo-Dutch matter: Bangkok’s interest was always in the background.
See Also
- China
- Hikayat Pha Suasa
- Parisi
- Singapore
- Kedah
- Riouw
- Sumatra’s East Coast
- Acheh
- Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Country whose pinang was rated higher than Aceh’s; also barred from cattle export to Penang due to contagious cattle disease, opening the door for Aceh cattle.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. —.
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. II, 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.
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. —.