1629 was the year of Atjeh’s great naval attack on Malakka — the expedition sent by sultan Iskandar Muda of Atjeh against Portuguese Malakka, ending in the total defeat of the Acehnese fleet by the Portuguese admiral Botelho. In Dr. F. W. Stapel’s Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland it is the high-water mark of Acehnese naval power in the Straits and the moment at which the Compagnie briefly hoped to see its two rivals exhaust each other.
The Compagnie’s strategic hope
The Compagnie “saw with much pleasure that Iskandar Muda in 1629 sent a great fleet against Malakka; nothing could be so welcome to her as that Atjeh and the Portuguese should exhaust each other in a mutual struggle” (Met veel genoegen zag de Compagnie ook, dat Iskander Moeda in 1629 een groote vloot op Malakka afzond; niets kon haar zoo welkom zijn, dan dat Atjeh en de Portugeezen elkaar in een onderlingen strijd uitputten).
The defeat
“The Atjehers were however totally defeated by the Portuguese admiral Botelho” (De Atjehers werden echter door den Portugeeschen admiraal Botelho totaal verslagen). The phrase totaal verslagen — totally defeated — indicates that the Acehnese fleet was effectively destroyed as a fighting force.
Consequences
The 1629 disaster broke the back of Acehnese naval power in the Straits. Iskandar Muda would never again be able to threaten Malakka directly, and the burden of confronting Portuguese Malacca fell henceforth on the Compagnie alone. The Compagnie took up that burden systematically: from 1633 the Malaccan waterway was “more closely watched” — a fleet of six to eight ships regularly blockaded the city — and by 1636 the G.G. and Councillors could report in their New Year’s letter that Malaccan trade had strongly decreased while Batavia’s “increased correspondingly” (gelijcks accresseert). By 1639 Malakka was “almost brought to the utmost extremity” (byna in d’uyterste extremiteyt gebracht), and the 1640–1641 siege that finally took the city for the Compagnie could proceed without serious Acehnese help.
Significance
1629 is the high-water mark of Acehnese naval power in the Straits and the moment at which the Compagnie inherited the anti-Portuguese role alone. It is also one of the preconditions of the Painansch Contract era: an Atjeh unable to project naval power beyond its own coasts was an Atjeh the Compagnie could safely confront on the Westkust.
See Also
- Atjeh’s attack on Malakka (1629)
- Iskandar Muda of Atjeh
- Admiral Botelho
- Malakka
- Straits of Malacca
- Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
- 1633
- 1636
- 1639
- 1640
- 1641
Source
De Koloniën, by Dr. F. W. Stapel, in Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), kaart 19, blz. 25 (tekst bij blad 2: De Archipel en het Maleische Schiereiland in 1650).