The Blokkade — in Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract also the rigoureuse blokkade (rigorous blockade), algemeene sluiting (general closure), or simply sluiting (closure) of the Atjehnese coast — was the Dutch naval blockade prescribed by Staatsblad No. 105 van 1884 of 1884, which ordered “eene rigoureuse sluiting van het geheele kustgebied, d. w. z. van Tamiang op de Oostkust tot Troemon op de Westkust” (a rigorous closure of the entire coastal territory, i.e. from Tamiang on the East Coast to Troemon on the West Coast), in order to sever the interior from foreign arms and rice supplies and so to compel the submission of the war-party at Keumala. Entrusted for execution to Generaal Demmeni together with the Concentratie (concentration) of 19 August 1884, the blokkade was applied by Demmeni only in part — “slechts sommige gedeelten van de kust sluiten en blokkeeren en dit niet eens consequent” — and was formally withdrawn the next year by Staatsblad No. 85 van 1885. The measure is, in De onderwerping van Atjeh, the central polemical target of Van Heutsz’s diagnosis — the fout (mistake) and ramp (disaster) whose partial application he treats as worse than either the rigorous closure the Regeering (Government) had prescribed or the scheepvaartregeling (shipping regulation) Scherer had proposed.
The 1884 decision
The rigoureuse blokkade was decided by the secret sessions of the Staten-Generaal (States General) of 16–17 June 1884 and ordered by besluit (decree) of the Gouverneur-Generaal (Governor-General) van Rees of 19 August 1884 — the same besluit that imposed the Concentratie (concentration system). Van Heutsz describes the prescribed measure in the 1893 tract as a closure to be extended across the entire coast:
“eene rigoureuse sluiting van het geheele kustgebied, d. w. z. van Tamiang op de Oostkust tot Troemon op de Westkust”.
The legal basis was supplied by the metropolitan statute Staatsblad No. 105 van 1884, which authorised the naval closure of the entire Atjehnese coast for the duration of the war. The instrument was the marine: a “groote marine-macht” — a large naval force — was despatched to Atjeh to enforce the sluiting (closure), and Gouverneur Laging Tobias — who had refused to execute the measure — was replaced in February 1884 by Demmeni, krijgsmacht (military force) being preferred over the civil governor for the purpose. The political purpose was the bedwingen van het voortdurend verzet in Groot-Atjeh door het uitoefenen van dwang op de onderhoorige kuststaten — the suppression of the continuing resistance in Groot-Atjeh by exerting pressure on the dependent coastal statelets — by cutting the toevoer (supply) of rice, arms, and opium on which the inland resistance lived.
The partial application by Demmeni
Demmeni, who had been appointed on the explicit understanding that he would “eenvoudig het hem voorgeschreven stelsel in practijk zou brengen” — simply put into practice the system prescribed to him — declined to apply the full blokkade. Van Heutsz’s diagnosis is that the betoogingen (arguments) and nota’s (memoranda) of Resident Scherer, co-signed by the assistent-resident van Groot-Atjeh (assistant resident of Groot-Atjeh) van Langen, shook the General’s resolution:
“De Generaal Demmeni werd door Scherer’s betoogingen en zijne nota’s, waarmede de assistent-resident van Groot- Atjeh van Langen instemde, aan het wankelen gebracht in zijn plan om cenvoudig uitte- voeren, wat hem door de Regeering opgedragen was en voerde niet de algemeene rigoureuse blokkade in, maar liet slechts sommige gedeelten van de kust sluiten en blokkeeren en dit niet eens consequent, terwijl hij voor andere gedeelten, reeds bij besluit van 13 October 1884 eene soort scheepraartregelin invoerde”.
The compromise produced what Van Heutsz calls the tweeslachtig ding (two-headed thing, hybrid): “eene soort van scheepvaartregeling, die niet deugde … en 2e. naast die verkeerde scheepvaartregeling eene partieele blokkade, die natuurlijk, in verband met de eerste, evenmin nut kon stichten” (a kind of shipping regulation that was no good … and 2nd, alongside that wrong shipping regulation a partial blockade, which of course, in connection with the first, could do no good either). The one thing the hybrid scheme could achieve, Van Heutsz conceded, was “dat aan den invoer van oorlogscontrabande belemmering werd in den weg gelegd” (that an obstacle was placed in the way of the import of war-contraband).
Demmeni’s reluctance was sustained, not momentary. The correspondence between the Regeering in Indië (Government in the Indies), the Opperbestuur (Supreme Authority) in Nederland, and Demmeni in Atjeh exposed the General’s position that the full blokkade would not bring the submission of Groot-Atjeh, because the interior produced sufficient food to outlast the closure, and that the bedwingen van het voortdurend verzet — the suppression of the continuing resistance — could not be attained by it:
“dat uit die briefwisseling, gepaard met voorstellen uit Atjeh, gebleken was, dat de Generaal Demmeni van eene blokkade voor Atjeh in ‘t geheel geen heil verwachtte, omdat, op grond vooral van de vermeende voldoende voedingsmiddelen in het binnenland, naar zijne overtuiging, daarmede het doel dat er door beoogd werd: het bedwingen van het voortdurend verzet in Groot-Atjeh door het uitoefenen van dwang op de onderhoorige kuststaten, niet te bereiken was”.
The 1885 repeal
The correspondence ended in 1885 with the repeal of the blokkade. Van Heutsz records the repeal and the Regeering’s own post-mortem in a single sentence:
“werd bij Staatsblad No 85 van 1885 het Staatsblad No 105 van 1884 ingetrokken, bij welke intrekking de Regeering de zeer juiste opmerking voegde, dat de blokkade algemeen had moeten zijn om het beoogde doel te bereiken, maar slechts teleurstellingen kon baren toen zij slechts partieel werd toegepast en een groot gedeelte van het kustgebied voor den handel openbleef”.
The Staatsblad No. 85 van 1885 thus repealed Staatsblad No. 105 van 1884, and the great naval force sent to Atjeh for the sluiting “werd tegelijkertijd teruggebracht tot enkele schepen” — was at the same time reduced to a few ships. The scheepvaartregeling Demmeni had introduced for some of the coastal states remained in force, however, until approximately the end of 1885: “De door den Generaal voor sommige kuststaten ingevoerde scheepvaartregeling bleef intusschen nog in stand tot ongeveer het einde van het jaar 1885” — and was finally abolished by the Regeering in December 1885, when “voor het vervolg zelfs de geringste beperking van den handel der kuststaten met het buitenland, onder welken vorm ook, verboden” was made (for the future even the slightest restriction of the trade of the coastal states with foreign lands, under whatever form, was forbidden).
Van Heutsz’s argument
Van Heutsz’s polemical case against the blokkade rests on three claims. The first is that the blokkade was a fout — a mistake — because the Regeering, having prescribed the measure, did not enforce its rigorous application: the hybrid partieele blokkade (partial blockade) of Demmeni was, by the Regeering’s own posthumous admission, “slechts teleurstellingen kon baren” (could only produce disappointments). The second is that the blokkade was a ramp — a disaster — because its withdrawal in 1885 carried with it the abolition of the scheepvaartregeling that Laging Tobias had introduced in May 1883 and that Van Heutsz considered the one bright spot of the post-Van der Heijden decade. The third is that the blokkade was the wrong instrument in the first place: where the scheepvaartregeling would have placed the Dutch “in den volsten zin des woords op de geldkist van Atjeh” — in the fullest sense of the word on the cash-box of Atjeh — the blokkade was merely a bestraffingsmiddel (punitive measure), not a bestuursmiddel (instrument of government).
Van Heutsz quotes Scherer’s own argument against the blokkade in the 1893 tract — the same argument Scherer had advanced in his Indisch Genootschap lecture (Netherlands Indies Society lecture) of 20 January 1891:
“Welnu, ik beweer dat de blokkade, omdat zij vriend en vijand ggeljjjk treft en een bestraffings- en geen bestuursmiddel is, nim- mer eenig duurzaam effect zal sorteeren”.
Van Heutsz accepts the critique — the blokkade is a bestraffingsmiddel and not a bestuursmiddel — but reverses Scherer’s conclusion. Scherer had concluded from the punitive character of the blokkade that no closure should be imposed at all; Van Heutsz concluded that the closure must be combined with, and backed by, the scheepvaartregeling’s fiscal leverage. The scheepvaartregeling without an adequate marine was, in Van Heutsz’s phrase, “als een leger zonder of met gebrekkige wapenen” — like an army without, or with defective, weapons — and the marine-enforced closure without the scheepvaartregeling’s fiscal apparatus was a temporary punitive measure that could never produce lasting submission. The prescription the 1893 tract substitutes for the 1884 blokkade is therefore the combination: a rigorous closure of the entire coast from Tamiang to Troemon, plus the scheepvaartregeling on the retained Dutch-held ports of Edi, Segli and Olehleh on the Noord- en Oostkust and Telok-Kroet, Melaboeh and Tampat Toean on the Westkust, plus the assumption of the hatsil (the harbour-dues) and the introduction of the opium-pacht (opium farm-tax).
The closure of the coast that Generaal van Teijn would impose in stages from January 1888 and complete in the beginning of 1890 — “in ‘t begin van 1890 eindelijk was uitgestrekt over de geheele Noord- en Westkust” — is, in Van Heutsz’s reading, the partial vindication of the 1884 prescription: not the algemeene rigoureuse sluiting (general rigorous closure) the Regeering had wanted, because the Oostkust remained open, but “toch nog boven verwachting doel” — still it attained its purpose beyond expectation. Van Heutsz even argues that Van Teijn’s “stelsel eigenlijk geen sluiting, maar scheepvaartregeling” was — that Van Teijn’s system was, in substance, not a closure but a scheepvaartregeling, since the open Oostkust ports and the retained Dutch-held outlets on the Noord- en Westkust functioned as the call-ports of a scheepvaartregeling. The operational model the 1893 tract prescribes is, in this sense, the Van Teijn closure universalised — the rigorous closure of the entire coast combined with the systematic scheepvaartregeling on the open ports.
Significance
The blokkade’s significance in the Aceh Wiki History record rests on three things: it was the measure the Regeering prescribed in 1884 as the operational counterpart to the Concentratie — the rigoureuse sluiting of the entire coast from Tamiang to Troemon, authorised by Staatsblad No. 105 van 1884 and entrusted for execution to Demmeni; it was the measure whose partial application by Demmeni produced, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the worst of both worlds — “eene soort van scheepvaartregeling, die niet deugde … en naast die verkeerde scheepvaartregeling eene partieele blokkade, die natuurlijk, in verband met de eerste, evenmin nut kon stichten” — and whose withdrawal by Staatsblad No. 85 van 1885 carried with it the abolition of the scheepvaartregeling that Laging Tobias had introduced in May 1883; and it was the polemical target against which Van Heutsz defined, in the 1893 tract, his own prescription — the combination of a marine-enforced closure with a scheepvaartregeling, an opium-pacht, and the assumption of the hatsil. The blokkade the Regeering prescribed in 1884 and repealed in 1885 is, in Van Heutsz’s narrative, the original fout and ramp of the post-Van-der-Heijden decade — the measure whose botched execution defined the cajoleering-era (cajoling era) and whose reversal defined the operational model Van Heutsz himself would implement, as Governor of Atjeh from 1898 onward, to close the war the partieele blokkade had failed to end.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege’s chapter on the blockade of 1884-1885 (pp. 86-87) records its means and contradictions as set out at Blockade of the Atjeh coast (1884-1885): the 1⅔ million guilders voted on 16 June 1884; the heterogeneous fleet (2 auxiliary squadron steamers; 18 of the Indian military marine; 3 hopper-barges of the Batavian harbour works “made fit” for naval service; 3 steam barges; 2 lifeboats; 5 steam vessels of the same works) for more than five months; the three conflicting official purposes (Koloniaal Verslag; Memorie of December 1884; London conditions of July 1884); the widely assured cause of its small result — Bogaert’s hands so tied “that all chance of success was from the outset excluded”; the wartime experience that the enemy lacked neither arms nor ammunition during the retreat; and the servant’s excuse, that for success the blockade should have been begun much earlier. It cost, with wear and tear, probably double its vote; “net evenals de concentratie, op drie millioen” (“just like the concentration, at three million”) the pamphlet’s computation closes.
See Also
- Scheepvaartregeling
- Concentratiestelsel
- Staatsblad No. 105 van 1884
- Staatsblad No. 85 van 1885
- Demmeni
- Scherer
- Van Heutsz
- Van Teijn
- Laging Tobias
- Van Rees
- Onderhoorigheden
- Tamiang
- Troemon
- Edi
- Segli
- Olehleh
- Melaboeh
- Telok Kroet
- De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893)
- 1884
- 1885
- 1888
- 1890
- 1893
Source
De onderwerping van Atjeh, door J. B. van Heutsz, Majoor der Infanterie, gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef; Batavia: G. Kolff en Co., 1893, esp. pp. 12, 15, 19, 28–43. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.
Account from Van Swieten (1879): Ships, Commanders, and Operations
Lieutenant-General Van Swieten, in De waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh (1879), provided a detailed account of the blockade squadron and its operations. The blockade was initially commanded by Captain-Lieutenant J. W. Binkes after the departure of the expedition’s transports. By the end of June 1873, the squadron had grown to fourteen ships, and by the end of August to twenty-three, including the steam frigate {{HMS Zeeland}}, {{HMS Metalen Kruis}}, {{HMS Citadel van Antwerpen}}, {{HMS Watergeus}}, {{HMS Vice-admiraal Koopman}}, {{HMS Coehoorn}}, {{HMS Den Briel}}, {{HMS Schouwen}}, {{HMS Riowo}}, {{HMS Banda}}, {{HMS Amboina}}, {{HMS Bommelerwaard}}, {{HMS Soerabaja}}, {{HMS Timor}}, {{HMS Sumatra}}, {{HMS Admiraal van Kinsbergen}}, {{HMS Borneo}}, and government steamers {{HMS Hertog Bernhard}}, {{HMS Siak}}, {{HMS Telegraaf}}, and {{HMS Argus}}. The squadron was ultimately under the command of Captain Van Gogh.
Van Swieten noted that despite the blockade’s strictness, “communication with the outside world was not entirely cut off.” The Acehnese were remarkably well informed about external events, and “more than one prauw or small vessel, under cover of night or stormy weather, managed to reach the coast.”
The blockade had both a military and political dimension. Ship commanders were instructed to maintain friendly relations with the rulers of the subordinate states, several of which — notably Edi, Troemon, and others — expressed their willingness to accept Dutch sovereignty. The government was cautious in granting these requests, as lifting the blockade for newly protected ports would have weakened the overall blockade of hostile territory.
Source (Van Swieten account)
De waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh, door den Luitenant-Generaal J. van Swieten. Zalt-Bommel, Joh. Noman en Zoon, 1879, pp. 61–86 (Hoofdstuk II).
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 86-87. OCR: DLP-158.