The Defense of Netherlands Indies debate cluster (1916–1917) is the interconnected body of speeches, pamphlets, organisations, persons, concepts, and parliamentary interventions through which the question of how to secure the Netherlands Indies against foreign aggression was fought out in Dutch public life during the First World War. The cluster revolves around the personal rivalry between former Governor-General J. B. van Heutsz — championing the defence programme of his son-in-law J. Van der Weyden — and his former subordinate Van der Maaten, whose pamphlet of 25 February 1917 exposed the secret co-authorship and political manoeuvring behind the campaign. This entry is the navigational hub for the cluster’s fourteen constituent articles.
The cluster at a glance
The cluster comprises fourteen articles distributed across the wiki:
Origins: the stalled defence reform of 1913-1914
The cluster’s prehistory begins with the Staatscommissie voor de Verdediging van Nederlandsch-Indië, which issued its report in 1913. Van Heutsz had declined to sit on the Commission in 1912, dismissing its work as “monnikenwerk” (monk’s work). A vlootwet (fleet bill) had been prepared and would have been submitted to the Staten-Generaal in August 1914, but the outbreak of the First World War prevented its introduction; it was not submitted in 1915 or 1916 either. The Fleet Bill of 1914 thus became, in its absence, one of the central grievances of the debate that followed. On 9 January 1914, at a meeting of the Vereeniging ter Beoefening van de Krijgswetenschap, Van der Weyden — with Van Heutsz’s authorisation — quoted the devastating private judgment that the proposed fleet “niet vechten zal” (will not fight) and the proposed army “niet vechten kan” (cannot fight). The follow-up meeting of 27 February 1914 became the occasion on which Van der Weyden first promised his defence brochure, though the brochure itself would not appear for more than two years.
The campaign of January-February 1917
The campaign proper opened with Van Heutsz’s speech at the Bond van Vrije Liberalen in Amsterdam on 13 January 1917. The speech, reported in De Nieuwe Courant and De Telegraaf of 13 January–14 January 1917, called for the appointment of a buitengewoon Regeerings-Commissaris with unlimited powers to reform the colonial defence system — a role pointing unmistakably to Van Heutsz himself. Heer Knobel rose to propose Van Heutsz as “den man bij uitnemendheid” for the task, a motion received with “levendig applaus en langdurige toejuichingen” though the board of the Bond prudently declined to include it in any formal resolution. Vattier Kraane also spoke, on economic development in connection with defence.
Van Heutsz repeated and extended his arguments at the Industriebond (Industriële Club) meeting of 17 February 1917, reported in the Handelsblad of 18 February 1917, at which he set out the “hoofdlijnen” of the government’s accepted defence system as drawn from the Memorie van Antwoord — 4 battleships (linieschepen), 5 cruisers, and 25 submarines at an estimated acquisition cost of 275 million guilders — and dismissed the army component as adequate only for the defence of Java.
The Van der Maaten counter-attack
Van der Maaten, who had served under Van Heutsz in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden and broken with him after the Atjeh-enquête of 1908, was provoked by the Bond van Vrije Liberalen speech into writing the pamphlet Z. E. De Oud Gouverneur-Generaal J. B. van Heutsz en de Defensie van Nederlandsch-Indië, written in Montreux and dated 25 February 1917, published at ‘s-Gravenhage by Martinus Nijhoff. After reading the Handelsblad report of the Industriebond meeting he added a Naschrift (Postscript) before publication. The pamphlet’s most consequential revelation was that the Van der Weyden brochure was in fact co-authored by Van Heutsz himself — pages 389–395 were entirely in Van Heutsz’s own hand — and should properly be called the “brochure Van Heutsz-Van der Weijden.” On the substance of defence, Van der Maaten argued that as long as funds were insufficient for a fleet capable of gaining naval supremacy, all money for the naval force should go to submarines of great power and range rather than battleships, and rejected the brochure’s proposition that India should bear all defence costs as “immorality.”
Concepts in dispute
Two interconnected concepts structured the technical military argument:
- Inlandsche Militieplicht — the proposed obligation of compulsory military service for the native (inheemsche) population of Netherlands Indies. Van Heutsz’s reversal on this question — strongly advising against it as Governor-General, advocating for it in 1917 to support his son-in-law’s programme — was the clearest instance of the personal manoeuvring Van der Maaten exposed. Native opinion itself was divided: at a meeting of the Indische Krijgsvereeniging on 6 March 1916, three of four native speakers were far from enthusiastic about militia service, with Heer Satiman declaring that the Javanese considered becoming a soldier the worst thing that could happen “in dit ondermaansche rijk van tranen.”
- Kader-quaestie — the problem of finding sufficient European officer and non-commissioned officer cadres to lead an expanded native army. The Indische Legerbestuur considered it “een uiterst moeilijk, ja bijna onoplosbaar vraagstuk.” Van der Maaten drew an explicit comparison with the Atjeh-vraagstuk (the Aceh Question), arguing that just as the Atjeh-oorlog had been prolonged by indecision and excessive consultation, so too would the cadre question prove tractable once entrusted to “a practically experienced man with clear judgment and knowledge of Indian affairs.”
The two concepts intersected with the defence demonstrations of 31 August 1916, held at various hoofdplaatsen across Netherlands Indies, which Van Heutsz represented as involving “duizenden en nog eens duizenden Indiërs” and which Van der Maaten exposed as consisting largely of “nontonners” drawn by the spectacle (rameh) rather than by conviction.
The wider frame
The debate took place against the First World War, which “raged around the Dutch East Indies and exposed the vulnerability of colonial possessions defended by an inadequate fleet and army.” Van der Maaten identified the “Hollandsche Koopmansgeest” (Dutch merchant spirit) — the habitual tendency to settle defence matters “op een koopje” (on the cheap) — as a root cause of chronic defence underfunding. Vattier Kraane supplied the fiscal counterpart to the Van Heutsz–Van der Weyden military programme, advocating the exploitation of oil fields in Djambi and gold fields in Benkoelen through Naamlooze Vennootschappen with state participation, and concluding idealistically with a vision in which “de blanke en de bruine broeder elkander beter begrijpen en waardeeren” — a sentiment Van der Maaten satirised as “aandoenlijk mooi zooveel onbaatzuchtigheid.”
Significance
The cluster is significant in the broader history of Aceh and its afterlife for three reasons. First, it shows how the reputations and methods forged in the Atjeh-oorlog were redeployed in metropolitan politics two decades after the war’s conclusion: the conqueror of Aceh and his former subordinate carried the authority of the colonial small-war theatre into a debate about the survival of the empire they had helped to build. Second, it exposes the internal divisions among Marechaussee veterans — the rupture produced by the 1908 enquête did not heal, and resurfaced in 1917 as a public quarrel over defence policy. Third, it documents the moment at which the question of native military service — the Inlandsche Militieplicht that would later become a central issue of Indonesian colonial politics — first entered mainstream Dutch party-political debate through the Bond van Vrije Liberalen and the Vereeniging ter Beoefening van de Krijgswetenschap.
See Also
People
- Governor Van Heutsz
- J. Van der Weyden
- Van der Maaten
- C. C. Vattier Kraane
- G. C. E. van Daalen
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
Organizations
- Bond van Vrije Liberalen
- Vereeniging ter Beoefening van de Krijgswetenschap
- K.N.I.L.
- Korps Marechaussee van Atjeh en Onderhorigen
Concepts
Events
- Defense demonstrations of 31 August 1916
- Van Heutsz’s vernietigend oordeel on the Staatscommissie (1914)
- Van Heutsz’s Bond van Vrije Liberalen defense speech (13 January 1917)
- Industriebond defense meeting (17 February 1917)
- Defense of Netherlands Indies debate (1917)
- Atjeh-enquête
Documents
- Netherlands Indies Fleet Bill (1914)
- Van der Weyden’s defense brochure
- Van der Maaten’s pamphlet on Van Heutsz and the Defense of Netherlands Indies
Places
Source
K. van der Maaten, Z. E. De Oud Gouverneur-Generaal J. B. van Heutsz en de Defensie van Nederlandsch-Indië (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1917).
Oost-Indisch Journael: Palaver om de tafel met het gat, by Merac, Toekan-Serie no. 2, ed. G. L. Tichelman (Haarlem: De Gulden Pers, 1947).