8 February is the date of the generaal Van Swieten letter of 8 February 1874 to several Acehnese chiefs, in which the grey warrior-hero wrote the well-known lines that “the great mosque would be rebuilt and would be made into a true place of mercy, from which no longer death and destruction, but prayers to Almighty God and works of love would go forth.” In Oost-Indisch Journael by Merac (1947), 8 February is the book’s marker of the Van Swieten letter: the well-known lines that followed the 1873 storming of the mosque.
The Van Swieten letter
“The grey warrior-hero, General Van Swieten, addressed to several Acehnese chiefs in a letter of 8 February 1874 the well-known lines: ‘that the great mosque would be rebuilt and would be made into a true place of mercy, from which no longer death and destruction, but prayers to Almighty God and works of love would go forth.’” The 8 February 1874 letter is the book’s — and Van Swieten’s — clearest statement of the colonial state’s religious politics in Aceh: the rebuilding of the mosque as a place of mercy, the replacement of death and destruction with prayers and works of love.
Significance
8 February is significant in Oost-Indisch Journael as the date of the Van Swieten letter of 8 February 1874. The book frames this letter as the colonial state’s response to the 1873 storming — a promise to transform the mosque from a site of warfare into a place of mercy. The date 8 February thus serves as the book’s marker for this key expression of colonial religious policy in Aceh.
Articles referring to this date
- 1902
- 1908
- H. J. Schmidt
- H. N. A. Swart
- The resistance in Atjeh 1908–1912
- Pidië
- Tgk. Ma’at
- Extract from the service record of H. N. A. Swart
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
On this date in 1874 van Swieten wrote to Imam Lhongbattah and Toekoe Kadli that the Kraton would become a Dutch kota and at Atjeh a great trading city be founded; on this date in 1876 Pel, returned from the conquest of the XXV Moekims, addressed his soldiers in the day order quoted in the pamphlet (see Jacobus Pel).
See Also
- Oost-Indisch Journael
- Meusigit Raja
- generaal Van Swieten
- 1873
- 1874
- 1879
- 1881
- General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh (1943)
- H. N. A. Swart
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
Source
Oost-Indisch Journael: Palaver om de tafel met het gat, by Merac, Toekan-Serie no. 2, ed. G. L. Tichelman (Haarlem: De Gulden Pers, 1947), the chapter on the Meusigit Raja.
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), passim.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 35, 58, 83 note. OCR: DLP-158.