The 1824 Treaty of London defined a British sphere of influence on the Malay Peninsula and a Dutch sphere on Sumatra, although its provisions placed no restrictions on British trade on the island. Between the 1870s and the end of the century, colonial troops also defeated the fierce Batak ethnic group, living north of the Minangkabau, and the colonial government encouraged the populace to convert to Christianity. Conflicts arose between them and secular adat leaders, and the latter called for Dutch intervention. The padri were religious teachers committed to the reform and propagation of Islam and were dominant in the region after the assassination of the Minangkabau royal family in 1815. The Padri War (1821-38) pacified the Minangkabau region. By 1823 the eastern part of the island, including Palembang, was under Dutch control. Alarmed by such developments, the Dutch initiated policies of colonial expansion in the Outer Islands (see Glossary), which brought all the land area of modern Indonesia, with the exception of Portuguese Timor, under their control.ĭutch expansion began first in neighboring Sumatra. In the 1840s, the British established a presence in northern Kalimantan (North Borneo), where James Brooke made himself the first "White Rajah" of Sarawak. Pirates flourished in the power vacuum, making Indonesian waters among the most dangerous in the world. Both the British occupation of the archipelago during the Napoleonic Wars and the Java War seriously weakened Dutch authority outside of Java.
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