Article

Raja Haji

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Raja Haji

W.E. Maxwell, writing from his post as Resident of Selangor, published this article in 1890 to present and cross-reference four primary sources relating to the 1783–84 siege of Malacca by Raja Haji, the Bugis Yang-di-Pertuan Muda of Riau. The article’s central contribution is the juxtaposition of a contemporary Malay ballad from the Logan Collection, the Dutch official diary of the siege, and a Malay prose chronicle, allowing the reader to compare Dutch, Malacca-Malay, and Riau-Bugis perspectives on the same events.

Summary

Maxwell’s article is fundamentally an exercise in source criticism and archival recovery. He discovered a thin, discoloured Malay manuscript in the Raffles Library, mislabelled “Sha’ir Acheh,” which proved to be a ballad composed by a Malacca Malay bard sympathetic to the Dutch, celebrating the repulse of the Bugis-Selangor invasion. Maxwell reproduces the full Romanised text of this ninety-five-stanza pantun ballad without translation, noting that the form resists English rendering, but argues for its considerable historical value as a contemporary local document.

The bulk of the article is occupied by two extended source texts. The first is a translation (by Maxwell’s sister, Mrs. Isemonger) of the Dutch official diary of Malacca for 1784, previously published in Dutch by Netscher as “Twee Belegeringen.” This day-by-day record documents the siege from the initial Selangor landings at Batang Tiga in January through the arrival of Admiral van Braam’s relief fleet on 29 May and the decisive assault on 18 June that killed Raja Haji. The second is a translation from the Tuhfat-el-nafis, a Malay chronicle of the Bugis Rajas of the Straits written by Raja Ali of Riau in A.H. 1288, which presents the war from the Bugis-Riau perspective, including vivid eyewitness anecdotes and a dramatic account of Raja Haji’s death in which he is struck by a musket ball while reading a religious text.

Maxwell uses the juxtaposition to highlight discrepancies between the sources. He notes that Begbie’s English account contains errors—such as placing the explosion of the Dolphijn before rather than after the relief of the town—and that the Malay chronicle’s claim of a captured Dutch gun is contradicted by the Dutch diary, which records the gun as “unmounted and taken back.” He also observes that the Malay ballad’s reference to Raja Mohamed Ali of Siak arriving to assist the Dutch carries the pointed comment Malayu pandei membuat tipu (“The Malay is skilled in fraud”), reflecting Dutch suspicion of the Siak prince’s motives.

Key Findings

  • The siege of Malacca lasted from the Selangor landings at Batang Tiga on 14 January 1784 to the decisive Dutch assault on 18 June 1784, a period of approximately five months (pp. 188–205).
  • The Dutch relief fleet under Admiral Jacob Pieter van Braam consisted of five warships (Utrecht, Goes, Wassenaar, Monikkendam, Juno) plus the Company’s ship Hinloopen, lighters, and sloops, arriving in the roads on 29 May 1784 (p. 202).
  • In the final assault of 18 June, the Dutch captured twenty-four enemy vessels and a substantial arsenal including 29 rantakas, 4 iron cannon, 4 brass swivel guns, and over 700 rounds of shot of various calibres (p. 205).
  • The Malay chronicle records Dutch losses in the final action at approximately seventy killed, including three officers, while Begbie’s account gives enemy losses of 450 killed (pp. 176, 222).
  • The Company’s armed ship Dolphijn blew up in the Malacca roads on 25 June 1784, killing 203 persons; only one body (the piper Rijk Adelaar) was recovered, and four Javanese and a Chinaman escaped (p. 207).
  • Raja Haji’s body was positively identified on 22–23 June by a Malay named Intjeh Mangsoer and a Bugis prisoner named Akier, based on a scar on his thigh from a previous engagement at Linggi, his short teeth, and a black circular mark on his body; it was buried at the foot of St. Paul’s Hill on 24 June (pp. 206–208).

Conclusion

Maxwell’s definitive takeaway is that the 1784 siege represents a critical episode in Dutch colonial history that deserves scholarly attention beyond the dismissive tone of earlier English accounts like Begbie’s. By placing the Dutch, Malacca-Malay, and Bugis-Riau narratives in direct dialogue, he demonstrates that each source preserves unique details absent from the others, and that a full understanding of the event requires all three. He closes by expressing hope that a competent historian will one day undertake a comprehensive account of Dutch rule in Malacca, the “most ancient and famous city in these seas.”

Context

  • The primary archival sources are the Malacca official diary (held in the archives of the Resident Councillor at Malacca), the Logan Collection in the Raffles Library, Singapore, and the Tuhfat-el-nafis manuscript. Maxwell’s access to these as Resident of Selangor gave him a positional advantage over earlier scholars.
  • The article contributes to the historiography of Bugis-Malay political history in the Straits of Malacca by recovering a previously unpublished Malay ballad and by providing the first English-language translation of both the Dutch siege diary and the relevant sections of the Tuhfat-el-nafis, thereby making these sources available to a wider readership.

References