The year 1717 is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions, the year of Radja Ketjil’s conquest of the throne of Djohore. The conquest — by which Radja Ketjil, having already seized Siak from Djohore, made himself master of the Djohorese throne — was, in the Bureau’s framing, the political event that briefly united Siak and Djohore under a single ruler, before Radja Ketjil’s rapid loss of the Djohore throne and his consolidation of an independent Sultanate of Siak.

Events

  • Radja Ketjil’s conquest of the throne of Djohore. The Encyclopaedisch Bureau records: “Met behulp van den vorst van Pagarroejoeng veroverde hij eerst Siak en maakte zich daarna zelfs meester van den troon van Djohore (1717).”
  • Radja Ketjil’s loss of the Djohore throne and consolidation of an independent Sultanate of Siak. The Encyclopaedisch Bureau records: “Deze laatste verloor Radja Ketjil echter spoedig weer, doch in Siak wist hij zich te handhaven, zoodat dit sedert dien tijd onafhankelijk was van het rijk Djohore.”

Significance

The year 1717 is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, the chronological hinge between the long Djohorese presence at the mouth of the Siak River (which had begun in the early sixteenth century, after the Atjehnese destruction of Gasip) and the independent Sultanate of Siak that would, in turn, impose its own overlordship over the East Coast statelets under Ismail and Said Ali. The year 1717 thus closes the long Djohorese-Atjehnese arrangement at the Siak River mouth and inaugurates the independent Sultanate of Siak — the political entity that would, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, become the principal rival of Atjeh for the East Coast overlordship.

See Also

Source

De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Afl. 3: Oostkust van Sumatra. Eerste Stuk, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1918), p. 103. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.

Nota omtrent het Rijk van Siak, by H. A. Hijmans van Anrooy, in Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, dl. XXX (1885).