The year 1769 is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey of the Outer Possessions, the year in which the East Coast statelets — Langkat, Deli, Serdang and the smaller polities — “knew themselves again to be free” of the Atjehnese overlordship that had been imposed by Sultan Iskander Moeda’s Oostkust-veldtocht in the early seventeenth century. The recovery of independence in 1769 was, however, short-lived: within a few years the statelets were forced, “door het wapengeweld van Ismail en Said Ali” — “by the armed force of Ismail and Said Ali” — to acknowledge Siak rather than Atjeh as their overlord.
Events
- Recovery of independence by the East Coast statelets from the Atjehnese overlordship. The Encyclopaedisch Bureau records: “In 1769 wisten zij zich echter weder van deze overheersching los te maken” — “In 1769, however, they knew themselves again to be free of this overlordship.”
Significance
The year 1769 is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s survey, the chronological watershed between the long Atjehnese overlordship of the East Coast and the brief period of East Coast independence that would, within a few years, be terminated by the imposition of the Siak overlordship. The year 1769 thus closes the long Atjehnese century on the East Coast — the century that had begun with Sultan Iskander Moeda’s campaign — and opens the short interregnum that would, in turn, be succeeded by the Siak overlordship of Ismail and Said Ali.
The Encyclopaedisch Bureau does not record the immediate occasion of the 1769 recovery of independence. Its placement of the event in the long narrative of the Atjehnese-Siak succession on the East Coast suggests, however, that the recovery was a consequence of the broader decay of Atjehnese power in the late eighteenth century — the same decay that would, in the early nineteenth century, produce the 1854 reimposition of Atjehnese overlordship as a deliberate act of revanchism rather than a continuation of an unbroken tradition.
See Also
- atjehsche-overheersing-der-noordelijke-kuststaatjes
- sultan-iskander-moeda’s-oostkust-veldtocht
- Sultan Ismail of Siak
- Sultan Said Ali
- Acheh
- Siak
- Langkat
- Deli
- Serdang
- 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. 104. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark LS.08781.