Afwachtende houding

Properties2
tagsconcept, dutch, colonial, military, strategy, defensive, aceh-war, 1874, van-swieten
aliasespassive posture, wait-and-see posture, passieve stelsel, afwachtende stelsel, passive system van Swieten, defensive system Atjeh

7 min read

The afwachtende houding (wait-and-see posture; also passieve stelsel or afwachtende stelsel) was the passive defensive strategy applied by generaal van Swieten after the fall of the Kraton on 24 January 1874 and again by generaal Wiggers van Kerchem after the death of generaal Pel on 24 February 1876. It is the chief bête noire of Borel’s Onze vestiging in Atjeh: the strategy that, in Borel’s judgement, squandered the fruits of the Kraton’s fall, prolonged the Atjeh-oorlog for years, and very nearly cost the Dutch their entire vestiging in the crisis of May–June 1874. Pel’s reversal of the afwachtende houding from 28 April 1874 is the central narrative of the book.

The Instruction to Pel

The afwachtende houding was, in Borel’s account, the explicit strategic doctrine that van Swieten bequeathed to his successor. The verbal instruction that Pel received from van Swieten on inheriting the command — recorded in the brochure of gep. luit. kol. de Rochemont — was: “zooveel mogelijk vechten weinig, eene zuiver afwachtende houding bewaren” (fight as little as possible, keep a purely wait-and-see posture). Van Swieten had himself applied the doctrine from 15 February 1874 onwards, after the expedition to Ketapang Doewa. “Geen vechten meer met den vijand, maar werken met schop en spade” (no more fighting with the enemy, but work with spade and shovel) was the formula. The Javaansche hulptroepen of Mangkoe Negoro and Pakoe Alam, a veld-batterij, one company of vesting-artillerie and the achterlaadkanonnen van 12 c.M. were sent back to Java; the padi-snijden concession was granted to Langkroek; the daily patrols from Pakan Atjeh to the Taman, ordered on 7 April 1874, came “2½ maand” too late. The afscheidsrede of 23 April 1874 — “Ik beschouw den oorlog met Atjeh als geëindigd” — was the public expression of the doctrine.

The Consequences

The afwachtende houding had, in Borel’s account, catastrophic consequences. The desecration of Dutch graves at Lampoeloe on 26 April 1874 was the “eerste wrange vrucht” of the passive system. The crisis of May–June 1874 followed: by the end of May the Dutch macht had “ten gevolge van het overgroot aantal zieken bijna niets meer beteekende”; some companies could field fewer than 30 men of an original 125; Borel insists that 500 kloeke Atjehneezen could have taken the Kraton. The kwade moesson broke on 31 May 1874, rendering the Atjeh-rivier onbevaarbaar and proving the fout of never building a zeehoofd at Oeleh Leh. The enemy breakthrough of June 1878 — when the enemy broke through the Dutch line during van der Heijden’s absence at Gedoeng, fell into the IV, VI and IX Moekims, verjoeg the pro-Dutch bevolking and committed the “gruwelijke moordtooneel in een van onze hospitalen” — was, Borel judged, the final vindication of his argument that the afwachtende houding could not hold the line.

Pel’s Reversal and the Return Under Wiggers

kolonel Pel — who inherited the bezettingskorps on 26 April 1874 — “dacht er evenwel geheel anders over” than van Swieten on every point of the doctrine. From 28 April 1874 he ordered the daily bombardment of kampongs within range; on 4 May 1874 he met Toekoe Nek and decided to bezet Marassa, Oeleh Leh and other posts; from 20 June 1874 — the battle of Lampoeloe — he resumed the offensive. The battle of Garouw of 28 June 1874, the battle of Soerian of 26 July 1874, the conquest of Langkroek of 28 September 1874, the conquest of Lemboe of 7 November 1874, the battle of Longbatta of 31 December 1874, the surprise of Lamara Olejlo of 14–15 February 1875, the completion of the stelling-Pel in May 1875, the great offensive of December 1875 – February 1876 — all were the work of Pel’s reversal. After Pel’s death, however, the afwachtende houding returned. generaal Wiggers van Kerchem — who assumed command on 10 March 1876 — was “geen voorstander van het aanvallende stelsel”; he wished not to extend the linie further and to adopt “strijkt afwachtende houding.” The stelling from the Kroeng Raba to the Kwala Gigieng remained “nagenoeg onveranderd” for the rest of the period Borel describes.

The Critique

Borel’s critique of the afwachtende houding is the connective argument of Onze vestiging in Atjeh. The doctrine was, in his reading, the original sin of the second expedition: the Tactische aanbevelingen en wenken booklet distributed to officers before the expedition had prescribed the gulden regel that “Slechts eene krachtige vervolging kan de overwinning vruchtbaar maken” — and van Swieten had disregarded it. The doctrine was also, in Borel’s reading, contrary to the nature of the Atjehnese enemy: the Atjehnees volkskarakter — “woest, dapper, vrijheidlievend, onafhankelijk, fanatiek” — could be subdued only by the kracht der wapens and never by proclamations, gifts, or passive posts. Borel’s alternative was the aanvallende tactiek: mobiele colonnes of 600–800 men, always ready to march, operating two or three in verbond toward the same doel, supported by steel achterlaadkanonnen with schokbuis and by the two principal means of kappen en branden (cutting and burning). The Indische Brigade proposal of 1878 was the prescriptive culmination of the critique: only a metropolitan reinforcement on the scale of the 1830 French expedition against Algiers could supply the force that the aanvallende tactiek required.

Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)

Verstege traces the party of the waiting posture, still headed in his day by general van Swieten and joined, from 26 September 1876, by the former minister Fransen van de Putte. The Militaire Spectator, the oldest military journal of the country, had taken sides for the waiting posture “from the very beginning”, and majoor de Bas in its first issue of 1886 still defended the general; but the krijgsgeschiedenis (war history), Verstege maintains, cannot point to a single example of a fighting, freedom-loving people brought to submission by mere waiting. The general’s own texts supply the doctrine: the instruction left to Kolonel Pel (22 April 1874) that “de agressieve kracht” of the enemy was small; the letters of 27 October to the Minister against the departing troops (“niet wij, maar hij wordt door die vruchtlooze aanvallen uitgeput … wij stijgen dagelijks in sterkte” — “not we, but he is exhausted by those fruitless attacks … we rise daily in strength”); De Waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh’s sentence that the waiting posture abandoned in 1875-1876 was already, in 1879, near to the war’s end; and, at the very hour of being disproved by every day of Atjeh history, the melancholic album-word of May 1884 that war “must always be constructive and civilising” (see Jan van Swieten). Against them all Verstege invokes Pel’s own missive of 30 April 1875 (see Pel’s missive to the Governor-General (30 April 1875)), the pacification wrought by Van der Heijden in 1879-1880 “niet door afwachten maar met doortastend handelen” (“not by waiting but by resolute action”), and the Clausewitz doctrines abused by the general: “dat het strijdt met het begrip van oorlog, om de verdediging het uiterst of einddoel te doen blijven” (“that it conflicts with the very notion of war to leave defence as the uttermost or final aim”), and that no enemy is ever subdued by occupying one hostile province with quiet composure and preferring the more secure possession of that small conquest to great results (D. II, pp. 2-3, 226, 231, 257). The verdict of his own minister of War, Weitzel, fighting the Schepel bill in the Kamer of 26 May 1885, supplies the pamphlet’s close: “the most passive defence possible” is “a system condemned by all experts in all times and in all countries” — for the own country; how much more for a limited position in a land inhabited by a brave, freedom-loving people.

See Also

Source

Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 48, 54, 58, 77, 86, 87, 96, 116–122, 124–128, 144–148, 171–172, 203, 207, 213, 270, 286, 294, 303, 320–322, 332, 344, 354.

Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 25-26, 37, 50-52, 55-58, 89-91. OCR: DLP-158.

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