Tidore — a sultanate in the Moluccas (Maluku) — is the polity whose mid-17th-century submission to the Dutch supplied the legal-historical fiction by which the Netherlands claimed sovereignty over the entire western New Guinea half of the archipelago. The fiction is, in the Vermeulen retrospective, the type-specimen of the Dutch colonial doctrine of fictieve — fictitious — sovereignty.
The 17th-century submission
When, in the mid-17th century, the sultan of Tidore submitted to the Dutch, the Dutch considered that his entire territory had come under Dutch sovereignty and, for convenience, treated as part of that territory “het land der Papoea’s en de omliggende eilanden” — the land of the Papuans and the surrounding islands. The fiction was the legal basis on which, in 1828, the Netherlands took formal possession of Nieuw Guinea as far as the 141st meridian.
The Nieuw Guinea possession of 1828
In 1828 the Dutch took possession of Nieuw Guinea — where, until that moment, only a few scattered Dutch settlements had been attempted — as far as the 141st meridian. The act of possession consisted, in practice, of placing flags or arms-boards (“vlaggen of wapenborden”) here and there along the coast as a token of Dutch supremacy. According to Van Kol (s.d.), citing an unidentified source, these tokens were “tamelijk goed gespaard door de inboorlingen” — fairly well spared by the natives — because the natives entertained a superstitious fear of the images of the unknown animals (the Dutch lions) depicted on them.
Significance for Atjeh
Tidore’s relevance to Atjeh is twofold. First, the Tidore submission is the type-specimen of the kind of broad sovereignty-claim that the Netherlands also asserted over the Atjeh sultanate after the Sumatra-tractaat ([[1871)|Sumatra-tractaat]] of 1871. Second, the Vermeulen comparison between Nieuw Guinea and Atjeh — both territories of “fictief” Dutch authority — is the analytical frame within which the Atjeh-oorlog ([[1873-1904)|Atjeh-oorlog]] is, in the Vermeulen retrospective, to be understood.
See Also
Source
Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland van 1849 tot 1901, by Mr W. J. van Welderen baron Rengers, 4th rev. ed., Vol. IV: Oost-Indië 1891-1918 by Dr W. H. Vermeulen (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955), p. 267.