1759

The year 1759 is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions, the year of the destruction of the Dutch East India Company (the Oost-Indische Compagnie) post at Poelau Gontong on the Siak River by the Siak Sultan Raja Moehamad. The destruction — recorded by the Bureau as the act that ended the first Dutch commercial presence on the Siak River — was, in the Bureau’s framing, the immediate occasion of the long series of Dutch interventions in the Siak succession that would, in the 1760s, transform the Siak sultanate from an independent polity into a Dutch client state.

Events

• The destruction of the Poelau Gontong post by Raja Moehamad. The Encyclopaedisch Bureau records: “Waarschijnlijk oorzaak van het verraad van 1759, was onoordeelkundig optreden der Compagnie’s gevolmachtigden, toen dezelfde R. Moehamad den geheelen post liet uitmoorden.” The Bureau’s attribution of the destruction to “onjudicious conduct of the Compagnie’s envoys” — onoordeelkundig optreden der Compagnie’s gevolmachtigden — is the principal explanation recorded for the Siak sultan’s act.
• The Dutch support for Raja Alam against Raja Ismail. The Encyclopaedisch Bureau records: “Het afloopen van die post in 1759 had tengevolge dat de Compagnie steun verleende aan den eerst met haar hulp van den troon verdreven Radja Alam, den tegenstander van den in 1759 heerschenden sultan Radja Moehamad.”

Significance

The year 1759 is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, the chronological anchor of the long Dutch intervention in the Siak succession that would, in the 1760s, transform the Siak sultanate from an independent polity into a Dutch client state. The destruction of the Poelau Gontong post was the immediate occasion of the Dutch intervention; the subsequent Dutch support for Raja Alam against Raja Ismail (and the Dutch-backed conquest of Pelalawan in 1761) was the first act of the Dutch-Siak alliance that would, in turn, prepare the ground for the Siak overlordship of the East Coast statelets under Ismail and Said Ali.

The year 1759 is also, in the longer perspective, the chronological prelude to the 1779 restoration of Raja Ismail to the Siak throne — the political event that inaugurates the Siak sultanate’s brief late-eighteenth-century zenith. The Dutch intervention of the 1760s — undertaken against Ismail — would, within two decades, be reversed by Ismail’s own restoration, and the Siak sultanate would, under Ismail and Said Ali, impose its own overlordship over the East Coast statelets.

See Also

• Sultan Ismail of Siak
• Raja Alam
• Raja Moehamad
• Poelau Gontong
• Siak
• Pelalawan
• Acheh
• atjehsche-overheersing-der-noordelijke-kuststaatjes
• Timeline of Aceh History

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).

De Nederlanders in Siak en Djohore, by E. Netscher, in Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap, XXXV (1870).