The boetenstelsel or boete-systeem — the system of fines, combined with the withholding of chiefly incomes — was the fiscal instrument of the administration of Van Daalen in Atjeh which, in du Croo’s account, “produced nothing but hatred, contempt and resistance” and which H. N. A. Swart largely reversed on taking office in 1908.
Under Van Daalen
Nowhere had resistance and the accompanying anarchy set land and people so far back as in Atjeh in 1908. The chiefs had lost their authority and their confidence in the administration; the population was destitute; the herds were largely destroyed; and “the system of fines and the unlawful withholding of incomes, and the collection of those fines with a strong arm and with no regard for anything or anyone, had produced nothing but hatred, contempt and resistance.”
One of Swart’s collaborators who administered Keureutòë for years recorded: “For years the chiefs had been cut back in their incomes by withholdings.” Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje had warned in 1903 that under Van Daalen the chiefs received letters back unanswered for supposed faults in the placing of their seals, “accompanied by a fine.”
Swart’s reversal, 1908
At the meeting Swart held at Lho’ Seumawè with all the oelèëbalangs of the eastern part of the province, he was told bluntly by one of them: “not only are there evildoers everywhere, but we ourselves are evildoers too!” — and there came up “the disastrous application of the system of fines and the withholding of their incomes.”
“Those unlawfully withheld incomes certainly amounted to a couple of hundred thousand guilders. I informed them that whatever in my opinion had been wrongly withheld would be returned at once and without more ado. But with the fines or withholdings rightly imposed it was otherwise. Those I regarded as a security for their good conduct.”
The general policy of the new course was that “the unlawfully withheld incomes were paid out, as were the security deposits wrongly paid into the wegenfonds (road fund); the territorial chiefs were supported and gradually returned to their gampongs.”
The charge of buying the peace
Swart was reproached with “scattering money about” — but, du Croo wrote, “those who speak so did not know the conditions, did not know how for years all those people had been wronged. That prompt and never niggardly repayment made an excellent impression.”
Later restriction
In 1910 the imposition of fines or securities on political units was forbidden — “except in the Gajò and Alas lands, where a lively and living solidary responsibility exists.” In the Gajò Loeös the requirement of a security remained one of the recognised means of compulsion where moral pressure on the registered failed to bring in the uitgewekenen.
See Also
- Gotfried Coenraad Ernst van Daalen
- H. N. A. Swart
- Oelèëbalang
- The resistance in Atjeh 1908–1912
- Keureutòë
- Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje
- Lho’ Seumawè
Source
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter IX, pp. 90–91; Chapter XI, pp. 103–104; Chapter XIII, p. 137.