The Atjehnees volkskarakter (Borel’s characterisation of the Atjehnese national character) was the stereotyped but admiring portrait of the Atjehneezen that Borel developed throughout Onze vestiging in Atjeh — a portrait of a people “woest, ontembaar, dapper, stoutmoedig, vrijheidlievend, trotsch, met aangeboren krijgshaftigen aard, met doodsverachting” (wild, untameable, brave, bold, freedom-loving, proud, with an innate warlike nature, with contempt for death), “uit eene geheel bijzondere stof gekneed” (kneaded from a quite particular material). The portrait was, in Borel’s account, both a tribute to the enemy and a strategic argument: only a people so constituted could be subdued by the kracht der wapens and never by proclamations, gifts, or passive posts.
The Stereotype
Borel’s portrait of the Atjehnees volkskarakter was, in his own words, a stereotyped but admiring one. The Atjehneezen were “woest, dapper, vrijheidlievend, onafhankelijk, fanatiek” (wild, brave, freedom-loving, independent, fanatical); they were “uit eene geheel bijzondere stof gekneed” (kneaded from a quite particular material); they were “een schitterend voorbeeld van wat een volk vermag dat zijne onafhankelijkheid wil bewaren” (a brilliant example of what a people can do that wishes to preserve its independence). The portrait was developed throughout the book — in the accounts of the battle of Lemboe, the storming of the Mesigit, the échec at Lampoe Oek, the night attack on Longbatta-Mesigit and the Atoeh catastrophe — and was, in Borel’s account, the consistent backdrop against which the Dutch conduct of the war was to be judged. The Atjehneezen were not the easy adversary of colonial assumption; they were a people whose “vrijheidszin” (love of freedom) and “dapperheid” (bravery) made them formidable opponents, and whose “fanatiek” (fanaticism) — a term Borel uses without disapproval — gave their resistance a religious dimension that the Dutch consistently underestimated.
The Comparison with the Turks
Borel draws an explicit comparison between the Atjehneezen and the Turks — the Muslim enemy whom the Russians had encountered in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. The comparison is double-edged. On the one hand, both peoples were Muslims fighting in defence of their homeland; both were “woest, dapper, vrijheidlievend” in the face of a European invader; both had shown that a determined defence could embarrass a great power. On the other hand, the comparison supplied Borel with the foreign analogue he needed for his strategic argument: the Russians, like the Dutch, had underestimated their enemy, had entered the conflict with insufficient force, had suffered an échec, and had had to make great efforts later — most famously before Plevna. “Ook wij hebben te Atjeh dezelfde fout begaan als de Russen in Turkije” (we too have made the same mistake in Atjeh as the Russians in Turkey), Borel writes. The comparison with the Turks was, in Borel’s account, a tribute to the Atjehnese enemy and a condemnation of the Dutch conduct of the war.
The Strategic Argument
The Atjehnees volkskarakter was, in Borel’s account, not merely an ethnographic portrait but a strategic argument. The Atjehnese character — “woest, dapper, vrijheidlievend, onafhankelijk, fanatiek” — could be subdued only by the kracht der wapens (force of arms) and never by proclamations, gifts, or passive posts. The afwachtende houding (wait-and-see posture) of van Swieten and Wiggers van Kerchem was, in Borel’s reading, a strategic error precisely because it misunderstood the Atjehnees volkskarakter: a people so constituted would not be subdued by schop en spade (spade and shovel) works, by padi-snijden concessions, by gifts to spies, or by proclamations that the war was ended. Only the aanvallende tactiek — the mobiele colonnes striking the enemy repeatedly, the kappen en branden (cutting and burning), the steel achterlaadkanonnen with schokbuis — could subdue such a people. The Atjehnees volkskarakter was thus, in Borel’s argument, the empirical foundation of the Indische Brigade proposal: only a metropolitan reinforcement on the scale of the 1830 French expedition against Algiers (quoted from Camille Rousset’s L’Histoire de la guerre de Crimée) could supply the force that the aanvallende tactiek required to subdue the Atjehnees volkskarakter. The portrait thus fixed a Dutch military stereotype of the Atjehnese enemy that would be echoed by later colonial writers, even as it saluted the Atjehneezen as “een schitterend voorbeeld van wat een volk vermag dat zijne onafhankelijkheid wil bewaren.”
See Also
- G. F. W. Borel
- Afwachtende houding
- Aanvallende tactiek in Atjeh
- Mobiele colonnes (Borel)
- Kappen en branden
- Klewang
- Indische Brigade (proposed)
- Jan van Swieten
- Generaal Wiggers van Kerchem
- 1877
- 1878
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 9, 34, 51, 84, 117, 138, 168–169, 231, 237, 317–318, 332, 354, 360, 364.