ACHIN, fi-chenf, or ATCHEEN. A petty kingdom of about 20,000 square miles area, with more than half a million inhabitants, at the north end of Sumatra, famed from ancient times as part of the Golden Chersonese. The country is mountainous and intersected with many rivers. The famous Gold Mountain, 6000 feet high, is at the extreme northern point, with the capital city of Achin at its base.
The shorter stature, darker color, etc., of the aborigines of Aehin has led some authorities to separate them from the Sumatrans in general, and their language is by others held to be Poly nesian rather than Malay at bottom. While un doubtedly Malays. the Achinese, like several other peoples of the East Indies. may have a strain of Arab blood. In the seventh century the 'Hindu missionaries introduced civilization, and many emigrants from India settled here. In the thirteenth century the people were converted to the faith of Islam, the sultans of Achin claiming descent from the first ?Mohammedan missionary. When in the sixteenth century Europeans reached Aehin, they found astonishing wealth. The Ach inese sent an embassy to the powerful Dutch republic, and the envoys had audience of Prince Maurice in his camp before Grave in 1602. The Dutch kept up intermittent trade intercourse with them until 1811, when Sumatra was ceded to the British. \\ hen the Dutch regained nom inal possession, Great Britain stipulated that none but British citizens should reside in Achin, and that the Dutch should not conquer the little kingdom, the English wishing to retain the com merce. The piratical instincts of the Achinese,
however, led them into conflicts with the Dutch, who found it necessary to chastise them. In 1871, by the Hague Treaty, the British withdrew their reservation, and the Dutch sent an expedi tion in 1873 to capture the chief city and invade the country. They were beaten in this, as well as in other expeditions, and the country was not pacified until several years later, when a civil government was instituted. The Achill wars have cost the Netherlands 12,000 lives and nearly one hundred million dollars for blockade and naval and military operations, and the country is yet practically unsubdned in the interior. This is not merely owing to the fanatical spirit of independence in the natives, but also and more because Achill furnishes a rich and tempting field for British blockade runners. There was an outbreak in 1901. There are numerous works in Dutch treating of Achin, and there are in Hol land many monnments and trophies of the war. Besides the historical work of Veth, Atehin (Leyden, 1873), the standard treatise on the is Snouck, De Ajelrers (two volumes, Batavia, 1893-95).