The civil-versus-military government question in Atjeh was the Dutch administrative controversy — running from the establishment of the civil government of 1881 to the eve of the First World War — whether the conquered or half-conquered sultanate of Atjeh should be administered by a civil Gouverneur or Resident, as in the ordinary residencies of the Indies, or by a military governor, as befitted a theatre of war.
The establishment and failure of the civil government, 1881–1884
By decision of 6 April 1881 the military government of Atjeh was replaced by a civil administration under a Gouverneur; the experiment, associated with the names of Pruys van der Hoeven and Laging Tobias and with the military counter-weight of kolonel Haus, collapsed within three years: the Resident found himself in a humiliating position, losing approximately 120 men between September 1882 and March 1883, and the lesson was read, by its critics, to be that a civiel gezag in a country still at war was a contradiction. By the decisions of 19 August 1884 the civil government was abolished, and kolonel Demmeni was named military governor.
Scherer’s adage and Coblijn’s rejoinder
The Resident G. A. Scherer, in his Indisch-Genootschap lecture Hoe moet Atjeh gepacificeerd worden?, pleaded anew for the civil side with the adage that it does not stand to reason that every able officer of the Indies army is also an able administrator. Coblijn retorted in Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen (1893) that the the Netherlands had witnessed the contrary in a long series of soldier-administrators: Michiels, De Stuers, De Brauw, Van Swieten, Andresen, Kroesen, Verspyck, Happé, Pel, Van der Heyden, Demmenie, Van Teijn, and how many subaltern officers of the Indische Leger who ruled entire districts with the greatest success; while the British in India showed likewise — Clive, Low, Metcalfe, Henry and George Lawrence, Outram, Edwardes, Lumsden, Davidson, Durand and Nicholson. The question, Coblijn wrote, was not man or office but character; and in a country at war, armed authority alone could govern.
Moens and the practice of 1913
Thirty years later the question civiel- of militair bestuur op Atjeh (civil or military government in Atjeh) was again publicly much discussed. Moens, in the Reisindrukken van Atjeh (1914), gave his opinion that the existing arrangement should not be disturbed: Gouverneur Swart combined in his person the civil and the military authority, and had behind him a civil administrator’s experience of nine years — as Resident of the Zuid- en Ooster-afdeeling of Borneo, as Gouverneur van Celebes, and then in Atjeh. Moens quoted the saying that was current: wij weten, wat wij hebben, maar wij weten niet wat wij krijgen (we know what we have, but we know not what we shall get), and warned that one should not transplant the young and still tender plantje (little plant) of the confidence and prosperity that had been gained. The handover of Aceh to a civil governor was finally effected only in 1918, in the last year of Swart’s government.
Significance
The controversy is significant in the constitutional history of the Indies as the Atjeh case of the general nineteenth-century debate between het gezag van het zwaard and het gezag van den ambtenaar — a debate in which the peculiar persistence of the Atjehnese resistance forty years after the landing of 1873 made the province for generations the standing argument of both parties.
See Also
- Establishment of Civil Government in Aceh (6 April 1881)
- Civil government period
- Government decisions of 19 August 1884
- Handover of Aceh to a civil Gouverneur (1918)
- G. A. Scherer
- W. A. Coblijn
- H. N. A. Swart
- De benoeming van een civiel gouverneur van Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden (1881)
- Aceh War
Source
Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen, door W. A. Coblijn, gepensionneerd Kolonel van het Oost-Indisch Leger (‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef, 1893), pp. 70–83; Reisindrukken van Atjeh, door W. Moens, oud-luitenant ter zee (Amsterdam: Jacob van Campen, 1914), pp. 47–48. OCR-filenames: 20260716_140310_DLP-100-Hoe_Atjeh_te_onderwerpen_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt; 20260716_140310_DLP-99-Reisindrukken_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.