Sumatra’s East Coast (Dutch: Sumatra’s Oostkust; in the British correspondence “the East Coast of Sumatra” or simply “the Eastcoast”; fully Gouvernement Sumatra’s Oostkust) was a Dutch colonial administrative unit on the eastern coast of Sumatra. In the early-nineteenth-century usage of P. H. van der Kemp, it was the long stretch of littoral states lying along the Strait of Malacca opposite Penang and Malacca — the chain of small Malay polities running from the Achehnese dependencies of Pedir and Telok Semawé south-eastward through Deli, Langkat, Siak, Kampar, Jambi and the adjacent districts. Although formally part of Sumatra, this coast was in the early nineteenth century politically distinct from Acheh itself and constituted, in Van der Kemp’s phrase, a constellation of “petty states” with which the Penang and Singapore merchants carried on a direct and growing trade.
Its head bore the title of Gouverneur (Governor), the same elevated rank held by the head of Atjeh and Dependencies and of Celebes and Dependencies — distinguishing these three territories from the Residencies on Java, whose heads were called Residents.
A Penang commercial sphere
The commercial connection between the East Coast and Penang is one of the running themes of Van der Kemp’s article. When the pretender Syf fled Acheh in 1820 he sailed along “Sumatra’s Oostkust” in the colonial schooner Wilhelmina before the crew mutinied; the survivors were interned by Syf at Pasangan and Telok Semawé. The Penang government’s interest in the coast was frankly mercantile. Governor Fullerton observed in his minute of 21 March 1825 that “the success of the chiefs” in establishing their independence “opened all the ports on the coast”, and that the more ports open, the greater the competition among sellers and the better the prices for British trade; hence Penang’s settled policy was to resist any European — that is, Dutch — interference that “would be of event much to be deplored”.
The Dutch supremacy question
After the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824) of 17 March 1824 the question whether Dutch “suprematie over Sumatra” extended to the East Coast became acute. By Article 2 of the treaty, differential duties were permitted in dependencies of either power; by Article 3, they were forbidden in independent native states. The reservation of Acheh’s independence therefore, as Fullerton at once perceived, blocked the Dutch from passing from Article 3 to Article 2 against the petty states of the coast, since those states were traditionally Achehnese dependencies. The coast accordingly became, throughout the 1820s, the principal theatre of the Anglo-Dutch “paper war” which Van der Kemp anatomises in his sixth and seventh sections.
The Said Akil affair
The most striking episode was the protracted Said Akil affair at Deli. The third son of the Penang trader Said Hussein, Said Akil married a daughter of the Sultan of Deli and, on his father-in-law’s death, installed himself in 1826 as Raja Mooda of Deli, plundering traders and provoking complaints not only from the Shahbandar of Deli but from the neighbouring traders of Batu Bara and the Sultan of Acheh. The episode illustrated both the impotence of the Penang government to control its own subjects and the Achehnese claim that Deli was an Achehnese dependency under the protective clause of the Acheh treaty of 1819.
The Bellona mission
In 1827 the Commissioner-General Du Bus at Batavia resolved to send the frigate Bellona to the East Coast, both to revive the trade of Riouw and to undercut the Singapore salt market by delivering Java salt at thirty rupees the coyan instead of seventy. John Prince, late Resident of Singapore, warned Penang from Batavia in November 1827; Fullerton replied with his minute of 16 March 1828 and a circular of 21 May 1828 addressed to nine of the coastal chiefs, assuring them of free trade at Malacca. He had already, on 7 February 1828, written to the Sultan of Siak from Singapore; the Sultan’s reply of 4 June 1828 was cordial. Thus the East Coast became, in the years immediately after the treaty of 1824, a kind of test-case for the whole Anglo-Dutch settlement in the Eastern Archipelago.
Account from Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas (1926) — Sumatra’s East Coast
The atlas references Sumatra’s East Coast in several contexts that illuminate the territory’s development by 1926:
Governance
The government of “Sumatra’s Oostkust, Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden en Celebes en Onderhoorigheden” is noted as one of the three territorial divisions whose head held the title of Gouverneur rather than Resident.
Railway
In the transport chapter, the atlas groups Atjeh and Sumatra’s East Coast together: “In Atjeh en Deli (Sumatra’s Oostkust) treft men een belangrijk spoorwegnet aan, dat naar gelang van de behoefte wordt uitgebreid.” (In Atjeh and Deli [Sumatra’s East Coast] one encounters an important railway network, which is being extended in accordance with needs.)
The Sultan of Deli
The atlas depicts “Het paleis van den Sultan van Deli te Medan-Deli, Sumatra’s Oostkust” and notes that the direct territory of the Sultan of Deli consisted of a small area in the north-western corner of Deli and a strip of land along the coast. Deli was a self-governing territory (zelfbesturend landschap) within the Government of Sumatra’s East Coast.
Significance for Acheh
The parallel development of Atjeh and Sumatra’s East Coast — both as governorships, both with expanding railway networks — reflects the broader colonial strategy of developing infrastructure in the Buitengewesten following the abandonment of the Onthoudingspolitiek. The Deli railway served the plantation economy, while the Atjeh railway served both military-security and economic purposes, but both represented the integration of formerly independent or semi-independent territories into the colonial transport network. The atlas’s pairing of the two governments in 1926 is a symbolic recognition of the success of the post-pacification colonial order across the whole of northern Sumatra.
Account from DLP-84-Atjeh — S.O.K. as Acheh’s Economic Gravitational Centre in the 1930s
The DLP-84-Atjeh source (Part 5 of 5, drawn from the Centrale Boekerij Kon. Inst. v.d. Tropen, Amsterdam) frames Sumatra’s East Coast as the dominant plantation and commercial economy on the island of Sumatra in the early twentieth century, serving as the primary economic partner and gravitational centre for Acheh. By the 1930s, Acheh was increasingly orienting its trade and economy toward S.O.K. The port of Belawan functioned as the largest “Acheh harbour” (Dutch: Atjehhaven), handling over one-third of Acheh’s imports and one-quarter of its exports.
The economic disparity between the two regions was stark. European commercial enterprises (Dutch: ondernemingen) meant far less for Acheh than they did for S.O.K.: only 8.1% of employed persons in Acheh worked in corporate-enterprise service (Dutch: ondernemingsdienst), compared to 45% in S.O.K. This highlighted the heavy concentration of plantation and industrial capital in Sumatra’s East Coast relative to the more subsistence-oriented economy of Acheh. The figures, drawn from the colonial statistics of 1935, registered the asymmetry that had become structural to the northern Sumatran economy by the late-colonial period.
Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)
Aan de Noordkust bestond voor de rijst een goede en gemakkelijke afvoergelegenheid naar Sumatra’s Oostkust, waar altijd rijst-tekort was, Swart said in explaining his interest in the sawah culture of Pidië. The proximity of the plantation country was one reason why the east coast of Atjeh was the first part of the province to attract estate enterprise after 1910.
See Also
- Sumatra
- Sumatra’s West Coast
- Deli
- Langkat
- Siak
- Kampar
- Jambi
- Batu Bara
- Tanah Putih
- Balah
- Panei
- Palembang
- Bellona mission to Sumatra’s East Coast (1827-1828)
- Fullerton’s minute on Acheh (21 March 1825)
- Said Akil’s Deli adventure (1824-1828)
- Robert Fullerton
- Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Aceh Railway
- Buitengewesten
- Kota Radja
- Onthoudingspolitiek
- Volkslectuur
- Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas (1926)
- 1820
- 1824
- 1825
- 1826
- 1827
- 1828
- 1926
- 1930s
- 1935
- Belawan
- Medan
- Acheh
- H. N. A. Swart
- General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh (1943)
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Atjeh
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Adjacent Dutch colony with extremely fertile cultuurgebied. Aceh’s east-coast cultures were modeled after and compared to this. Imports rice; market for Aceh rice, coffee, etc. Its rubber/palm oilindustries provided the model.gewest; main market for Aceh cattle (60-85% of Medan abattoir supply from Aceh), rice, kapok, potatoes, etc.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 177, 189, 190, 192, 194, 198, 201, 208, 210.
Source
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.
Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas met korte beschrijvingen, uitgegeven door Volkslectuur, Weltevreden, Java. Weltevreden: G. Kolff & Co., January 1926. Chapter III (Gezagvoering), p. 54; Chapter IX (Verkeer), p. 168.
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf (Part 5 of 5), p. 16. Centrale Boekerij Kon. Inst. v.d. Tropen, Amsterdam.
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XIII.
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. 177, 189, 190, 192, 194, 198, 201, 208, 210.