The year 1623 marked the final lifting of the VOC trading post at Aceh by the Dutch East India Company, after it had been re-established in 1620. After this year, the Company maintained only a single assistant in Aceh, effectively ending its permanent presence in the sultanate. The decision was likely influenced by ongoing difficulties with Sultan Iskander Moeda.
Aceh Context
The lifting of the factorij in 1623 reflected the Company’s assessment that a permanent post was not viable due to the sultan’s hostile treatment. This did not, however, mean an end to all contact. The Company continued to send ships and envoys, leading to the significant treaties of 1641 and later. The decision in 1623 set the pattern for the next several decades: diplomacy rather than a fixed presence.
Account from Over Maleise Literatuur (1947) — 1623
In Hooykaas’s survey of Malay literature, the year 1623 is the year of the death of the Sultan of Johor — Abdoellah Masajat Sjah, the former Radja ‘Abdoellāh who had commissioned the Sadjarah Malajoe in 1612 — on Great-Tambēlan, after a long exile driven by the 1615 Atjehnese attack on Batoe Sawar.
The Death of the Auctor Intellectualis of the Sadjarah Malajoe
The Sultan — Abdoellah Masajat Sjah — had been driven from Batoe Sawar by the 1615 Atjehnese attack, and had wandered as “een opgejaagd hert” (a hunted deer) — to Bintan in 1615, to Lingga in 1618, and finally to Great-Tambēlan, where he died around May 1623. Hooykaas notes the pathos of the Sultan’s end: “Zó droevig eindigde de auctor intellectualis der SM” (Thus sadly ended the auctor intellectualis of the SM) — the man who had commissioned the Sadjarah Malajoe in 1612.
The Malay Chronicles’ Silence
The Malay chronicles, Hooykaas notes, “vergeten hem geheel” (forget him entirely) — a fact the more surprising because the Sultan “dan toch de dynastie voortzette in de Sultans 11 en 12, misschien ook 14” (after all continued the dynasty in the Sultans 11 and 12, perhaps also 14). The Malay chronicles’ silence on the Sultan’s death in 1623 is, in Hooykaas’s reading, part of the broader diplomatic silence of the Sadjarah Malajoe on the worst of the Atjehnese attacks — the silence of a courtier writing under the eye of a vassal-of-Atjeh sultan.
The Third Atjehnese Attack (early 1623)
The Sultan’s death on Great-Tambēlan in 1623 was the direct result of a third Atjehnese attack — the third sent by Sultan Iskandar Muda against the wandering Johor court. “In begin 1623 door een Atjehse vloot verdreven, en sterft ca. Mei 1623 op Groot-Tambēlan” (In early 1623, driven out by an Atjehnese fleet, and dies around May 1623 on Great-Tambēlan). The 1623 attack thus completes the Atjehnese destruction of the Johor court that had begun with the 1613 and 1615 attacks on Batoe Sawar.
Source: Over Maleise Literatuur, by Dr. C. Hooykaas, Hoogleraarte Batavia; Tweede Druk (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1947), appendix III (“De Vorsten van Malakka en Djohor”), p. 276; chapter 11 (“Geschiedschrijving in het Maleis”), pp. 96-98.
See Also
- VOC trading post at Aceh
- Sultan Iskandar Muda
- 1616
- 1620
- Aceh
- Batoe Sawar
- Sadjarah Malajoe
- Over Maleise Literatuur (1947)
- Dr. C. Hooykaas
- 1612
- 1613
- 1615
Sources
Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland: De Archipel en het Maleische Schiereiland in 1619 – Idem in 1650 – De Compagnie buiten den Archipel in 1650, by Dr. F. W. Stapel (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1928), pp. 16, 30. Over Maleise Literatuur, by Dr. C. Hooykaas, Hoogleraarte Batavia; Tweede Druk (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1947).