The comité-generaal van 1874 was the secret session of the Tweede Kamer held in 1874 on the origins of the Atjeh-oorlog, whose record was afterwards released from secrecy and became one of the principal documentary battlegrounds of the Atjeh debate of 1897.
Cremer’s use of the record
The Minister of Colonies J. T. Cremer cited the record twice on 16 November 1897. He referred to “bladz. 46 van het verslag van het comité-generaal van 1874, waarvan het geheim is opgeheven” — page 46 of the report of the comite-generaal of 1874, from which the secrecy has been lifted for the British government’s repeated complaints that its traders “had been interfered with, and their ships and property plundered by people in the neighbourhood of Atcheen,” and its demand that the Netherlands fulfil the obligation assumed by the treaty of 1824.
He cited it a second time for the statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Gericke van Herwijnen concerning the attempts of Atjeh to place itself under the suzerainty of Turkey, of America and of France: “Ik heb de bewijzen hier voor mij liggen,” Gericke had said, adding that the French envoy had made communications to him on the subject.
Cremer concluded: “Hen, die verlangen zich nogmaals in de noodzakelijkheid van den Atjeh-oorlog te verdiepen, verwijs ik naar de gepubliceerde stukken en het in 1874 in comité-generaal gevoerde, later openbaar gemaakt debat. Er nu eene nieuwe discussie over te openen ligt buiten mijn bestek.” — Those who wish once more to go deeply into the necessity of the Atjeh war I refer to the published papers and to the debate conducted in comite-generaal in 1874, later made public. To open a new discussion of it now lies outside my scope.
Van Kol’s use of the same record
H. van Kol answered on 17 November that he too knew the official papers on “de aanleiding tot den Atjeh-oorlog,” which had been carefully kept secret for eight years, and that the pretext of foreign interference “een verfoeilijk kluchtspel was.” He supported this with Kuyper’s words in the Handelingen of 1874\u20131875, p. 1305, that a “zot” and a “monomaan” had, by “de inblazingen van een leugenaar,” — the promptings of a liar, made the viceroy the dupe of a false alarm.
He observed further that the instructie given to the Regeeringscommissaris sent to Atjeh “om den sultan onze grieven mede te deelen en tevens den oorlog uit te lokken” — to communicate our grievances to the sultan and at the same time to provoke the war contained no mention of piracy at all, but only of the fear of the interference of foreign powers — piracy being, in his view, “slechts een voorwendsel, er bij gehaald pour le besoin de la cause,” glossed in the pamphlet as “om de zaak te redden.”
Significance
The eight-year secrecy of the papers, and their eventual publication by the government at the Landsdrukkerij in 1881 together with the Nota over de betrekkingen van Nederland tot het Rijk van Atjeh sedert 1824, made the comité-generaal record the standard reference for both sides of the question of the war’s justification. In 1897 each side read it as confirming its own case: the government as proof of genuine international danger and of British pressure, the socialists as proof that the danger had been manufactured.
See Also
- Nota over de betrekkingen van Nederland tot het Rijk van Atjeh sedert 1824
- Gericke van Herwijnen
- J. T. Cremer
- H. van Kol
- Abraham Kuyper
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- 1874
- 1881
Source
Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, pp. 48–49, 62–63.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898 (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.