17 November is the date of the second and concluding sitting of the Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer in 1897, and of the division in which Van Kol’s motion on the Atjeh-oorlog was rejected by seventy-two votes to three.
The sitting of 17 November 1897
The Minister of Colonies Cremer opened by placing on record the declarations of the sixty-two coastal princes of Atjeh, an observation he had omitted the previous afternoon and which he judged indispensable to a right understanding of the Dutch position.
H. van Kol replied with the speech printed under the headings Nog eens de zeeroof, Onze volkenrechtelijke stelling, Ons prestige in Indië, Waarom niet uit Java?, Atjeh onneembaar, De belanghebbenden and De conclusie, setting out in detail the atrocities, the doctrine of the kring van belang, the prophecy of Toekoe Baid, and the list of commercial beneficiaries of the war.
Kuyper answered Van der Zwaag, Troelstra and Van Kol, invoking the impoverishment that the loss of the colonies would bring, the Russian legend of the two heavenly beings, and the answer of the Christus concerning the penny and the image of Caesar. Ketelaar rose to withdraw the support he had given the motion. Troelstra replied to the minister’s jest about Russian and Swiss professors and was twice called to order by the President. Cremer answered briefly on the question of cruelties, quoting Bergsma’s statement of 22 September 1896.
The general deliberation and the deliberation on the motion of order were then closed, and the motion was put and rejected by seventy-two votes to three, the three being Van Kol, Troelstra and Van der Zwaag.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Closing date (1885) of majoor Perelaer’s list of incidents inside the concentration line (see Guerilla raids inside the concentration line (1885)).
See Also
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- Van Kol’s motion of 16 November 1897
- 16 November
- J. T. Cremer
- Verklaringen van de kustvorsten van Atjeh
- 1897
Source
Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898 (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), see op. cit.. OCR: DLP-158.