Beuming’s account of the origin of the Atjeh-oorlog was the introductory chapter of Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh (1911), in which P. H. R. Beuming set out for the Dutch reading public what he held to be de ware oorzaak — the true cause — of the Atjeh-oorlog. It is a soldier’s apologia rather than a critical history, and stands at the opposite pole from the socialist indictment of the war delivered in the Tweede Kamer in 1897; see Van Kol’s refutation of the causes of the Atjeh-oorlog (1897).
Occasion
Beuming explains that when the non-commissioned officers sat together in de groote pijp at Koeta Radja — the sergeants’ club-room — it had sometimes struck him that some among them zich feitelijk geen goede voorstelling konden maken omtrent het ontstaan van den eigenlijken Atjeh-oorlog. Returned to the mother country, he found this to be the case in a very high degree among his countrymen. Many, he wrote, still believed dat de expeditie naar Atjeh louter ten doel had ons koloniaal gebied uit te breiden — that the expedition to Atjeh had merely aimed at extending Dutch colonial territory. This conception he declared wholly incorrect, adding that had the government of the day not been compelled by circumstances, zij zich wel tweemaal zou bedacht hebben, alvorens te besluiten tot dezen onzaligen veldtocht — it would have thought twice before resolving on this ill-starred campaign.
The argument from piracy
Beuming’s case rests on Acehnese piracy. As the Norsemen were once the terror of Europe, he wrote, so the Acehnese had for many centuries been the terror of all Sumatra and the surrounding islands. Already in the days when the Portuguese traded with the Indies they were notorious and feared for their bold piracies, and many a richly laden merchantman fell as booty into their hands. With their slender fast craft they even made landings on the coast of neighbouring Malakka, plundered the coastal places and carried off the inhabitants as slaves. Atjeh, he concluded, had thus already in earlier centuries marked itself as een echte roofstaat — a true robber state — and possessed great influence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
He records that at the end of the seventeenth century the Sultan of Atjeh even attempted to drive the Dutch from the west coast of Sumatra and concluded an alliance with Siam to that end; after the failure of these attempts there arose, as it were by tradition, a hostile disposition against the Netherlands that constantly sought expression.
The treaty sequence
The narrative then follows the familiar treaty sequence. In consequence of the numerous piracies the Netherlands bound itself in 1824 towards England to make an arrangement with the Sultan of Atjeh for the security of trade and navigation, while preserving Atjeh’s independence — see Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824. Such an arrangement was first made in 1857, but brought the Dutch no step further, since the relation between the Dutch and the Sultan remained strained and hostile. The Dutch government could apply no effective means to curb the piracy, because it had to respect Atjeh’s independence.
This obligation was lifted by the Sumatra treaty concluded with England in 1871, by which England renounced its claims on Atjeh and received in exchange the coast of Guinea. When all attempts to bring the Sultan to better views by diplomatic means failed, and when it was learned that envoys of the Sultan had been at Singapore with the consuls of America and Italy to seek help against the Dutch, the forbearance of the Dutch government was at an end and war was declared on the Sultan on 26 March 1873.
The war narrative
Beuming passes rapidly over the first expedition under General Köhler, whose sad course he holds sufficiently known — the failed attack on the Kraton, the storming and abandonment of the great missigit, and Köhler’s death, één groot échec, after which on 29 April 1873 the troops were forced to leave the Acehnese coast.
The second expedition under General Van Swieten had complete success: after stubborn resistance the great missigit fell again into Dutch hands on 6 January 1874 and on 23 April the formidably strong Kraton was conquered; after a series of bloody engagements Dutch territory extended to the Kroeng Raba bay.
After changes of military commanders General Karel van der Heijden came to the government, and from his time date the celebrated marches to the XXII Moekims and XXVI Moekims and to Samalangan. Under his administration, Beuming holds, Atjeh was in fact already subjected and the war party crippled.
The civil interlude and the drama
Beuming’s sharpest passage concerns the civil governors. When in 1881 Van der Heijden was replaced by the civil governor Pruijs van der Hoeven, brak het tijdstip aan van het treurige Atjeh-drama — the period of the sad Atjeh drama began. The war party acted everywhere with boldness again, so that it was thought advisable to abolish the garrisons of Masdjid Indrapoeri, Pakan Badak, Kroeng Raba and others. Thus the territory won with so much effort and at the cost of so many lives grew gradually smaller, and when in 1882 Pruijs van der Hoeven was succeeded by the civil governor Laging Tobias, the success achieved by Van der Heijden was wholly lost.
Being of opinion that they had to do not with a fighting population but with bands of malcontents, the authorities forbade the troops to act, and this notwithstanding that Dutch posts and patrols were continually fired on from the so-called friendly kampongs.
Beuming is careful to distribute the blame: when at last the proof was furnished that wij door de zegeningen van het civiel bestuur leelijk in ‘t moeras geraakt waren — the blessings of civil government had landed the Dutch badly in the swamp — this was niet moet worden geweten aan een te kort in bekwaamheid der civiele gouverneurs, maar aan het dualisme in het bestuurstelsel, not to be ascribed to any deficiency in the ability of the civil governors but to the dualism in the system of administration.
In 1883 the administration was again entrusted to a military commander, Colonel H. D. Demmeni, who immediately followed a policy of combating the war party. The struggle on Groot-Atjeh, Beuming observes, gradually acquired a more religious character, since the priestly party had taken over the leadership of the Prang Sabil, which he glosses simply as Heilige oorlog, holy war.
Through many unfavourable influences under successive governors, the Dutch were by 1892 masters only of a small strip of terrain outside Koeta Radja, secured by a chain of permanent bentings connected by a steam tram — the geconcentreerde linie.
The closing illustration
Beuming closes the introduction with the narrative of the Raijah piracy of 20 July 1893 as een enkel staaltje… van de driestheid der Atjehsche zeeroovers, holding that with it the audacity of the Acehnese was sufficiently demonstrated.
Assessment
The chapter is valuable less as history than as evidence of what a Dutch non-commissioned officer of the period had been taught and believed about the war he fought. Its central claims — that the war was forced on the Netherlands by piracy and by the 1824 obligation, and that the civil interlude of 1881–1883 squandered a victory already won — were the standard apologia of the military party, and may be set against the contrary case argued in the Atjeh debate of 1897.
See Also
- P. H. R. Beuming
- Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh (1911)
- Raijah piracy (20 July 1893)
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824
- Sumatra Tractaat (1871)
- Karel van der Heijden
- A. Pruys van der Hoeven
- P. F. Laging Tobias
- H. D. Demmeni
- Geconcentreerde linie
- Van Kol’s refutation of the causes of the Atjeh-oorlog (1897)
- 26 March
- 1873
Source
Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, met speciaal vervaardigde kaart en toepasselijke photo’s, bewerkt door P. H. R. Beuming, oud-onderofficier van het Ned.-Indische Leger (Amsterdam, December 1911; uitgegeven ten bate van het te stichten Herstellingsoord voor Rijks-Ambtenaren). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br N 82-144
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, met speciaal vervaardigde kaart en toepasselijke photo’s, bewerkt door P. H. R. Beuming, oud-onderofficier van het Ned.-Indische Leger (Amsterdam, December 1911). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.