Atjeh up to date was a comprehensive statistical and administrative compilation detailing the financial, military, and economic status of Acheh under Dutch colonial rule, primarily covering data from 1908 to 1914. The document serves as a quantitative snapshot of the colony during the latter stages of the Aceh War and the subsequent consolidation of Dutch authority, recording extensive figures on colonial budgets, export and import volumes, shipping tonnage, and military expenditures.
Scope and Content
The compilation is characterized by its exhaustive tabular data, reflecting the bureaucratic priorities of the colonial administration in the early twentieth century. Rather than narrative history, Atjeh up to date focuses on the quantifiable metrics of governance and pacification. The surviving fragments of the document contain dense statistical tables tracking year-over-year changes across several key domains:
- Colonial Finance: Detailed ledgers of revenues and expenditures, with total figures reaching into the millions of guilders (e.g., aggregate financial lines showing figures such as 4,169,072 and 5,206,526 for 1908, scaling significantly to over 12 million by 1912).
- Trade and Shipping: Monthly and annual registries of vessel arrivals, tonnage, and the valuation of imports and exports moving through Acehnese ports.
- Military and Pacification: Statistics correlating with the deployment of the KNIL, tracking troop movements, garrison costs, and the financial overhead of maintaining control over the Acehnese interior and coastal dependencies.
Significance
As a primary source, Atjeh up to date provides historians with the empirical backbone for understanding the economic cost of the Dutch pacification of Sumatra’s northern tip. While narrative sources provide the political and cultural context, statistical compendiums from 1908–1914 reveal the sheer material scale of the colonial enterprise. The data illustrates the transition from active, costly military campaigning to a stabilized, revenue-generating colonial province, culminating in multi-year budget projections extending to 1917.
See Also
Source
Atjeh up to date (Statistical and Administrative Compilation, c. 1914). Archival reference DLP-10. Fragmentary OCR extraction containing financial ledgers, shipping registries, and colonial budget tables for 1908–1917.