Gunboats,
Garrisons and Guerrillas
By
the 18th century, the decline in world demand for pepper had
deprived the rulers of sports such as Aceh and Palembang of the means to
dominate their hinterlands. The biggest economic powers in Sumatra were now
European-the Dutch established their headquarters at Padang in 1663, and the British
at Bengkulu in 1685. Each became a center of rival networks of trade along the
west coast, but they were militarily
vulnerable. Local Sumatrans drove the British out in 1719 and held Bengkulu for
many years. These lonely European outpost also attracted the attention of the
French. Admiral Comte d’Estaing occupied Bengkulu for several months in 1760;
Admiral Linois pillaged the fort and town in 1803. Dutch Padang was equally
vulnerable, falling to the British in 1781-1784 and 1795-1816, and to a French
privateer for two months in 1793. During this period Dutch influence was
virtually eliminated from Sumatra.
British officials of the Bengkulu
administration were the first to give detailed accounts of the Batak interior
of northern Sumatra (Holloway and Miller, 1772), and the island of Nias (Jack
and Prince, 1819). Raffles himself visited the Minangkabau capital of
Pagarruyung in 1818. A great opponent of slavery, Raffles was nevertheless
enthusiastic about Nias-“the finest people, without exception, that I have yet
met with in the East.” He was outraged that the island was a major supplier of
slaves to Aceh, the Dutch and the French colonies, and even to the British
settlements in Bengkulu and Pinang. Raffles proclaimed British sovereignty over
the island in 1820, but this was disallowed by London.
Pepper,
coffee and tin
A
new phase of commercial expansion affected Sumatra from about 1780. British and
Tamil traders came from India, British and Chinese traders arrived from the new
British port at Penang (founded 1786), and Americans from Salem, Providence and
New London. The Americans found willing pepper suppliers in local chiefs on the
west coast between Sibolga and Meulabuh, a frontier region beyond the reach of
Acehnese authority in the north and the English Company in the south. More than
5,000 tons year were exported from this
region alone in the early 19th century, primarily by Americans. In
the Minangkabau area, cassia (a substitute for cinnamon), gambir (used for
tanning leather), and from 1790, coffee, became attractive new crops. At the
beginning of the 18th century, Chinese miners began to exploit the
tin deposits in Bangka.
With the decline of authority, first
of the Sumatran rulers, then of the Dutch Company, Sumatra became once again an
economic frontier, as colonists from settled areas flocked to new regions to grow export crops. The
absence of major powers suited foreign traders, but when commercial disputes
for vengeance to their respective navies. The Americans began this gunboat
diplomacy by destroying coastal Acehnese villages in 1826 and 1838, and then
French fleets did the same in 1839 and 1840.
The Dutch had to start almost from
scratch when their prewar possessions were returned by Britain after the
Napoleonic Wars 1816. Economically on their knees and militarily tied down by
the Java War (1825-1830), the Dutch were obliged to accept that others would
dominate Sumatra’s trade. Meanwhile, they moved slowly, using their limited
military force to annex one river port a time, trying to ensure that no other
Europeans staked a political claim to any part of the island. Sumatrans did not
accept the extension of Dutch authority without a fight.
Anglo-Dutch squabbling over their
respective rights following the founding of Singapore was temporarily resolved
in 1824, when the British whit drew all claims to Sumatra, in return for the
Dutch doing the same on the Malay Peninsula. In 1825, the Dutch seized control
of Palembang and the tin-bearing islands of Bangka and Belitung. The Dutch also
inherited a British conflict with a militant Islamic movement known as “Paderi”
in the Minangkabau heiglands, a conflict which dragged on until 1837, when the
Paderi’sleader, Imam Bonjol was finally killed. (See “History” in WEST
SUMATRA.)
Dutch
conquests
The
Paderi movement disturbed the Batak as well as thr Minangkabau areas. A
conquest of the southern Batak areas in the 1820s was carried out from the
Paderi commercial stronghold of Bonjol in northern Minagkabau. The key leader
of the holy war to the north was Tuanku Rao, a Batak who had converted to
milliant Islam. He led a Paderi force forcing most of the Mandailing and
Angkola areas of Shout Tapanuli to accept Islam. Tuanku Rao appears to have
taken his troops even farther north, and tried unsuccessfully to convert the
Bataks around Lake Toba.
There is a story that Tuanku Rao
invited the tenth Singamangaraja (Toba Batak priest-king who lived west of the
lake) to meet him in the market place at Butar, and there killed him. Other
Batak stories say that Tuanku Rao enjoyed extraordinary military success
because he was the abandoned nephew of the magical Singamangaraja. European
attempts to Christianize the Batak were less successful. It was not until the
mid 19th century that any real progress was made. (See “The Batak”
in NORTH
SUMATRA).
Over two decades, from 1820 to 1841,
the Dutch gradually conquered the Minangkabau area and built a series of
strategic forts in the highlands. This made the most densely-populated region
of Sumatra also the principal dutch stronghold. The expenses of the garrisons
were met by the forced delivery of coffe at fixed prices. There was however
enough land to enable the enterprising Minangkabau to take advantage of
improving communications and expanding markets to grow their own coffee,
tobacco, sugar, cassia and gambir, giving rise to a prosperous,
commercially-oriented middle class.
The same group responded
enthusiasti-cally to the token efforts the Dutch made to provide modern secular
school for Indonesians. In the 1840s they began funding their own ditrict
schools. By 1872 there were almost 1,200 Minangkabau children in school-a
proportion several times higher than in Java, where education was limited to
the aris-tocracy. This first generation to be literate both in Jawi
(Malay-Arabic) and Latin script provided Sumatra and the rest of Indonesia with
a large number of its clerks, school teachers, journalist and political
activist in the 20th century.
Dutch progress on the east coast of
Sumatra was hampered by constant protests by British merchants in Singapore and
Penang. A Dutch expedition was sent to Siak in 1858 to throw out an English
adventurer, and another to the small northern states of Langkat, Deli, Serdang
and Asahan in 1865, to estab-lish Dutch rights against claims of Acehnese
suzerainty and British commerce.
These small states proved a rich
prize, thanks to the volcanic soil which proved ideal for growing tobacco. The
pioneer Dutch planter, Jacobus Nienhuys,had to Deli (the region around medan ahead of dutch
troops, in 1863, and within decade had
estlablished its reputation for growing the world’s finest cigar wrapper-leaf.
British objections were overcome by opportunities to provision this growing
plantation economy.
In the 1870s and 1880s, 20,000 Chinese
laborers brought in each year to cut down the forests and tend the tobacco
plantations. Later, the planters turned to cheaper ang more tractable Javanese
labor. In the 1920s, just before the system of indentured labor was ended,
partly due to American pressure, a total 260.000 javanese worked on the
plantations. Prosperous new town grew at a Medan, Binjai, Pematang Siantar and
Tanjung Balai. The insignificant coastal rajas who controlled the river mouths
became enormously wealthy on the royalties from plantation land and (in Langkat
after 1980) from oil.
The
Aceh wars
The biggest challenge to Dutch
colonialism in Sumatra was Aceh, which never signed unequal treaties with the
Dutch. It had wealth, arms and foreign contacts from its pepper and betelnut
trade. Aceh also had a treaty of mutual defence with the British, arranged by
Raffles in 1819, and a guarantee of Aceh’s in-dependence was incorporated in
the 1824 Anglo-Dutch Treaty, which divided the Malay-speaking world into two
halves. It was only in 1871 that British, arranged by Reffles in 1819, and a
guarantee of Aceh’s in dependence was incorporated in the 1824 Anglo-Dutch
treaty, which divided the Malay-speaking world into two helvest. It was on ly
in 1871 that British objections were over come, clearning the way for a more
vigorous Dutch apporoach.
The first Dutch attack was
ill-prepared brought on hastily by energetic Acehnese attempts to form
defensive alliances with Turkey, France and the United States. The US Consul in
Singapore agreed to forward a draft Aceh-US Treaty to Washington, though in
received no support from the State Department. A Dutch force of 3.000 men
attacked the Acehnese capital in April 1873, but with drew three weeks later
having lost its commander and 80 men. Humiliated , the Ducht recruited the
largest force they had ever as sambled in the Indies, and landed 10.000 men the
following December. The Acehnese citadel was taken six weeks later amidst a
cholera epidemic that wiped out at least a thousand on each side. This was,
however, only the first chapter in a war which was to last until 1903, tying up
Dutch resources, men and money, and sapping morale for 20 years, leaving a
legacy of bitterness in Aceh.
By the mid-1880s, the leardersip of
Acehnese resistance passed to the ulama (religious
scholars) who died of wounds or disease on the Dutch side. For the Acehnese,
who lost at least 5 times as many, their enduring monument is the memory of
countless dead heroes, some now officially recognized as Indonesia’s national
heroes. Among these are the west coast uleebalang
(district chief) Teuku Umar, who defected in 1896 after acting as the principal
Dutch ally. Others include Teuku Umar’s gallant wife Cut Nyak Dien and ulama leader Cik di Tiro, who defiantly
called on the Dutch governor to embrace Islam if he wished to avoid the
inevitable destruction awaiting the infidels. Right to the end of Dutch rule,
Aceh remained an occupied province. At the approach of the Japannese in 1942,
the province rebelled and drove out the remaining Dutch forces.
On the Dutch side, the eventual
success was credited to two men in particular. Colonel J.B. van Heutsz,
military governor of Aceh from 1898 to 1904, adopted an uncompromising policy
of relentless pursuit, and was rewarded
by being named governor –general (1904-9). His invaluable key adviser was the
Islamic specialist Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, author of a Dutch strategy of
tolerating or even encouraging Islam in what was held to be the religious
domain, but resolutely crushing any sign of Islamic political assertion. After
1904 the policies of these two men were extended throughout the Indies. Dutch
troops penetrated every corner of Sumatra, and by 1910 the whole island was for
the first time under a single authority; but one that did not enjoy much love
from its people.
