The Strait of Halakka — Dutch Straat Halakka — is the strait that separates the island of Pulau Weh from the northern tip of Sumatra, and forms one of the two sea passages by which shipping may pass between the Strait of Malacca and the Indian Ocean to the north of Atjeh. The strait is named in the Dutch pamphlet literature of the Atjeh War as a waterway of strategic and commercial importance, and is the subject of the map of the theatre of war that accompanied the Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk by Een Ooggetuige in the 1880s.
Navigation and trade
The Strait of Halakka lies to the north of the Atjehnese mainland, between the coast and Pulau Weh. Its use as a shipping passage gave it an importance in the nineteenth-century debate on the sea approaches to the archipelago, since ships bound for the Far East from Europe — after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 — could pass through the Strait of Halakka rather than through the Strait of Malacca itself, and could thereby shorten the passage. The author of the Beschouwingen argued that ships bound for Australia could pass more easily through the Strait of Halakka than through the Strait of Malacca, and that a properly lighted and buoyed approach to the Atjehnese coast would make the strait a natural station for world shipping.
Coastal lights
The *Kaart van het Oorlogstooneel, de Vaarwaters en vereischte Kustlichten voor den Wereldhandel* — “Map of the Theatre of War, the Waterways and required Coastal Lights for World Trade” — that accompanied the Beschouwingen set out the waterways around Atjeh, including the Strait of Halakka, and the positions at which coastal lights (kustlichten) were held to be needed for the safe navigation of those waterways. The map’s argument for the lighting of the strait was part of the author’s wider argument that Atjeh, properly developed, could serve as a station for world trade on the great sea-route between Suez and the Far East.
Significance
The Strait of Halakka is significant within the AcehWiki corpus as a waterway whose strategic and commercial importance was argued in the contemporary Dutch pamphlet literature of the Atjeh War. The strait’s relation to the northern tip of Sumatra and to the island of Pulau Weh — which would later become the site of the free port of Sabang — places it at the centre of the nineteenth-century Dutch debate on the sea approaches to the archipelago.
See Also
- Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk
- Kaart van het Oorlogstooneel
- Een Ooggetuige
- Sabang
- Strand Malaka (Strait of Malacca)
- Aceh War
- 1880s
Source
Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk, door Een Ooggetuige, met een Kaart van het Oorlogstooneel, de Vaarwaters en vereischte Kustlichten voor den Wereldhandel (Rotterdam: Van Meurs & Stufkens, [c. 1880s]). Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, shelfmark 1830 C17 2611 / 1830 0947 8285.