The Agrarisch Reglement was the agrarian regulation in which, according to D. W. N. de Boer, the weakened Atjehnese beschikkingsrecht of the directly governed territory would finally be superseded by a liberal law imposing practically no restrictions on the indigenous inhabitant.
De Boer’s prediction
Writing of Groot-Atjeh — where the sovereignty of the oeléëbalangs had formerly been subordinate to that of the Sultan and was now subordinate to that of the Gouvernement, and where they were becoming onderdistrictshoofden (sub-district heads) under the three Panglima Sagi — De Boer judged that the already feeble right of avail and everything connected with it was “gedoemd, allengs plaats in te ruimen voor het Al-Maleische liberale recht, dat ook hier tenslotte in een den inheemsche practisch zoo goed als geen beperkingen meer opleggend Agrarisch Reglement zal worden vastgelegd” — doomed gradually to give way to the general Malay liberal law, which here too would finally be laid down in an Agrarian Regulation imposing practically no restrictions upon the indigenous inhabitant.
Significance
The passage records the direction in which, at the beginning of the 1930s, an experienced Atjehnese judge expected colonial land policy in the directly governed territory to move: away from customary control over the disposal of waste land and towards a regime of free individual holding.
See Also
Source
Het recht op den grond in Atjeh, by D. W. N. de Boer, dated Scheveningen, November 1931, pp. 59-80. Offprint DLP-141, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, ‘s-Gravenhage; Bibliotheek KITLV accession 0060 4460 60 081470 428.