Economic interests in the Aceh War

Economic interests in the Aceh War refers to the various commercial and financial stakeholders who, according to socialist parliamentarian H. van Kol and his party colleagues, benefited from the continuation of the conflict in Aceh and therefore opposed its cessation. This analysis was central to the socialist critique of Dutch colonial policy from 1897 onwards and framed the war as a project driven by capitalist greed rather than humanitarian or strategic concerns.

The economic interests alleged behind the Atjeh-oorlog were the commercial, plantation and shipping interests which Troelstra and H. van Kol contended were served by the continuation of the Atjeh-oorlog, and which they made the central charge of the socialist case in the Atjeh debate of 16–17 November 1897. The charge was answered directly by the Minister of Colonies J. T. Cremer, himself a former chairman and commissioner of several of the companies named.

Who benefited

In the 1897 debate on his motion, Van Kol and Troelstra named specific groups that, in their view, profited from the war:

Officers and military personnel: those who gained promotions, honours, and career advancement.
Stoomvaartmaatschappijen (Shipping companies): those who provided transport for troops and supplies, receiving lucrative government contracts.
Leveranciers van bouwstoffen en levensmiddelen (Suppliers of building materials and food): contractors who profited from provisioning the army.
Aannemers, fabrikanten en ondernemers van transportmiddelen (Contractors, manufacturers and transport entrepreneurs): all those involved in the military-industrial supply chain.
Europeesche planters en mijnmaatschappijen (European planters and mining companies): those who were eyeing the resources of Aceh and sought its subjugation to exploit its “groote rijkdommen van den bovengrond en den ondergrond” (great riches of the surface and sub-surface).

The “cash cow” metaphor

In later debates, Van Kol described the Aceh War as “de melkkoe van allerlei goudzoekers” (the cash cow of all sorts of gold diggers). This metaphor emphasized that the war had become a source of ongoing profit for specific interests who could continue to extract money from the state budget as long as hostilities persisted.

The Transvaal connection

Van Kol also drew a parallel between the Transvaal and Aceh, arguing that the same capitalist logic was at work in both cases: “De maatschappijen zijn reeds gevormd, de gelden reeds bijeen, en daarom moeten de Atjehers (evenals de Transvaalsche Boeren) onderworpen worden om kapitalistische hebzucht te kunnen verzadigen.” (The companies have already been formed, the capital has already been raised, and therefore the Acehnese (like the Transvaal Boers) must be subjugated in order to satisfy capitalist greed.)

The 5 million guilder tramway

Van Kol cited the example of a proposed tramway in Aceh costing five million guilders as evidence of the war’s economic distortion. He argued that this enormous expenditure was for military purposes (referred to as “militaristische doeleinden”), while the government claimed it could not afford irrigation works on Java or other development projects.

Significance

This analysis of economic interests in the Aceh War was one of the first systematic critiques of Dutch colonial capitalism in parliament. It exposed the material motivations behind the war, challenging the official narrative of a humanitarian or strategic mission. The concept of economic interests driving colonial warfare became a cornerstone of socialist and later anti-colonial analyses of Dutch imperialism in Indonesia. Van Kol’s claims were later corroborated by historians studying the political economy of the Aceh War.

Troelstra’s argument

Troelstra began by distinguishing the political from the economic meaning of the war, and by insisting that he did not mean the economic interests of individual persons or of individual companies but whether the interests of the whole Dutch people were bound up in the war. The whole colonial policy of all countries, and above all of the Netherlands, was in his view a consequence of the necessity or the wish to make capital productive: the Dutch colonies had from their origin been trading colonies and were beginning more and more to become plantation colonies. Dutch capital which could not make the required dividends at home, and which could not exploit the waste grounds constituting a fifth of the Netherlands with sufficient profit, turned rather to the fertile regions abroad, where a labouring population dwelt that let itself be exploited in all manner of ways.

He cited De Java Bode of 16 March 1897, which had pointed out that already six months before the defection of Teuku Umar it had been advised in the Indies to buy shares in the Koninklijke, so that it seemed already to have been known that six months later an aggressive policy would be followed in consequence of which those shares would rise.

He then turned to the East Coast of Sumatra, taken into exploitation by various companies after the treaty with Siak of 1858. According to the Indische Regeeringsalmanak of 1894 there were then already some hundred and thirty tobacco estates established there, of which the Deli Maatschappij was the chief, disposing of thirteen thousand five hundred bouws and having made from 1870 to 1893 twenty-eight and a half million guilders in dividends. In Deli, Batoe Bahra, Serdang and Assahan the Dutch tobacco companies had established themselves.

Troelstra observed that since the more aggressive policy in Atjeh had begun, the exploitation of land in those districts also appeared likely to increase. He had read in Het Vaderland a few days earlier a notice taken from the Deli Courant that Tamiang would soon be opened and that the holders of claims to land concessions would be called upon to prove them. Tamiang, he explained, was the outermost part of the former dependencies of Siak, the tract bordering on the coastal region of Atjeh; applications for the exploitation of lands there had been made some years earlier but not proceeded with, because of the insecurity resulting from the non-subjection of Atjeh and because the Dutch government thought it necessary to protect those who settled there. He asked whether the opening of Tamiang was to be seen in connection with the changed tactics.

Further along the East Coast, he said, Dutch capital had already cast its eye on a tract belonging to the coastal states of Atjeh where the Dutch actually had as yet no say at all: the region of Perlak, which appeared to contain good tobacco grounds and also petroleum springs. Concessions had already been applied for some time before for the working of petroleum wells in Perlak, and the forwardness of capital in stretching out its claws so soon towards the riches probably present there had even been mocked in some papers as somewhat American.

Finally he named the minister himself. Immediately after Cremer’s appointment it had been read in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant that the new minister had resigned not only as chairman of the board of the Koninklijke but also as chairman of commissioners of the Deli Maatschappij, as commissioner of the spoorwegmaatschappij, and as commissioner of the Senembah and the Medan-maatschappij. From this, Troelstra argued, it appeared that the minister must be particularly well informed about the connection between Dutch capital on the East Coast of Sumatra and the conquest of Atjeh.

On 17 November Troelstra returned to the point, insisting that in naming these offices he had not meant to cast a personal stain on the minister, whom he did not know, but to characterise “een echte, typische vertegenwoordiger van de geldmacht in Nederland” — a genuine, typical representative of the money-power in the Netherlands placed at the head of one of the most important departments, and thereby to characterise the capitalist nature of the government. He was twice called to order by the President during this passage.

Van Kol’s catalogue of beneficiaries

Van Kol developed the same theme on 17 November under the heading De belanghebbenden. Setting aside all rumour and conjecture, he named as undeniable facts that while thousands and millions suffered heavy loss, some few hundreds found the war laid them no wind-eggs and had already enjoyed millions from it.

Besides the officers, who made quicker promotion and thereby received higher salaries, the war had created lucrative posts for many senior and other officials. Profits were made by the supply of clothing, footwear and headgear for the troops; by the manufacture of rifles and cannon; by the building and maintenance of ships; by the erection of barrack-dwellings and kampementen; and by the delivery of all building requisites, foodstuffs and drink. Contractors and tokohouders had done good business in Atjeh through the victualling of troops and officials; the Prauwmaatschappij and the stoomvaartondernemingen through the import of able-bodied men and the export of the sick, wounded and evacuated.

He quoted the Indische Gids of July 1897: “Pinang heeft aan dezen langdurigen oorlog zeer veel te danken; millioenen van de uitgegeven gelden kwamen in de zakken van firma’s, handelshuizen, aannemers, leveranciers en andere elementen van den handelsstand in Pinang. Vooral werden vele winsten gemaakt met slachtvee, houtwerken, rijst en petroleum.” — Pinang has very much to thank this long war for; millions of the money spent came into the pockets of firms, trading houses, contractors, suppliers and other elements of the merchant class in Pinang. Great profits were made especially with slaughter cattle, timber, rice and petroleum. And from the same journal, p. 893: “De verdere winsten waren voor de smokkelaars, ondanks het uitvoerverbod der Britsche autoriteiten, en de verbodsbepalingen op den invoer, en de blokkaden der Nederlandsche Regeering; ondanks de sluiting der kusten en scheepvaartregeling. De geschiedenis zal later verrassende feiten aan het licht brengen.” — The further profits were for the smugglers, despite the export prohibition of the British authorities, and the prohibitory provisions on import, and the blockades of the Netherlands Government; despite the closing of the coasts and the shipping regulation.

Pinang, he explained, had of old been the market for the Acehnese export articles of pepper, pinang and forest products; from Pinang were brought rice, petroleum, opium, powder and rifles. The Pinang traders and smugglers therefore had the great advantages of the Dutch squandering of millions.

Another considerable part fell to the paketvaartmaatschappij and to the prauwenveren. The latter made colossal profits by their expensive freights — the conveyance of a single soldier from ship to shore costing f 1.18 — and could pay out twenty to twenty-five per cent dividend yearly; the shares of the paketvaartmaatschappij rose in times of aggression and fell in days of gentler tactics. He quoted W. C. Nieuwenhuizen in the Indische Gids: “De geschiedenis van den Atjeh-oorlog is in zekeren zin de geschiedenis van de Nederlandsch-Indische Stoomvaartmaatschappij” — see Nederlandsch-Indische Stoomvaart-Maatschappij.

For figures he turned to De Kroniek of 10 October 1897: adding together the salaries of officers, the pay of the men, the medical service and the transport of troops and goods, the outlay for the Atjeh war was f 9,947,030 in 1871 but had risen by 1895 to f 18,176,000, or f 8,230,000 higher, of which six million might safely be assumed as accruing yearly to private steamers and suppliers of foodstuffs, into whose pockets also disappeared the greater part of the by no means ample salaries of officers and soldiers. There had been years, as 1876, in which a million and a half was spent monthly on Atjeh, of which the interested parties certainly enjoyed a third, especially the stoomvaartmaatschappij, which reckoned f 1000 to f 1500 a day for the hire of a steamboat sometimes lying long on the roadstead. The coal suppliers too did good business and would regret the cessation of the war, so that it was a question from whom a revolt was rather to be feared on the definitive ending of the Atjeh war, from the Javanese or from the Europeans on Java. He compared the position to that in Cuba, where according to the Indépendance belge of 9 October 1897 “des manifestations en faveur du général Weyler ont été organisées par des négociants intéressés aux fournitures de l’armée.”

Cremer’s reply

Cremer answered calmly, saying he had foreseen on reluctantly accepting the portfolio that such matters would be alluded to and had resolved never to be angry about them; had it been his object to gain direct or indirect advantage, it would have been more profitable for him not to sit as minister.

To the general question what economic interest the Dutch people had in the conquest of Atjeh, he answered that the maintenance of quiet in and the development of the colonies was a very great economic interest for the Dutch people, and that the pacificatie of Atjeh had become an inherent part of that interest: without that pacification there would be no quiet in the colonies, and Dutch colonial administration would suffer a great blow.

He noted an inconsistency between the two socialists, since Van Kol in his Land en Volk van Java, p. 32, had assigned to capital an important share in the task of bringing the Indies to development — “Geld en kapitaal is er noodig. Geld om spoorwegen en irrigatiewerken aan te leggen, geld om fabrieken te bouwen, industriën te scheppen, het grootbedrijf in den landbouw in te voeren…” — Money and capital are needed. Money to lay railways and irrigation works, money to build factories, to create industries, to introduce large-scale enterprise in agriculture… Asked whether the war was perhaps waged in order to be able to use capital in Tamiang or Perlak, he answered no, but rather the reverse: he believed that capital brought into Tamiang and Perlak would enormously contribute to the pacification of Atjeh, and that when the chiefs and population of those districts saw how far their neighbours on the East Coast were ahead of them in prosperity and development, they would long for a like opportunity.

As former chairman of the Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij he answered that the Atjeh war had existed for years and years before the founding of that company was thought of; that his experience as chairman had been that the provision of ships for expeditions did temporarily strengthen the company’s treasury, though not to the extent it had under its predecessor the Nederlandsch-Indische Stoomvaart-Maatschappij, which had made no contract about hire prices and had often paid great dividends; but that this time was past and charter prices had risen. Moreover, troop transport made such heavy demands on the company’s fleet that the trade on often peaceful routes, which it had been engaged in winning from foreign competitors, was lost to Dutch shipping; the interest of that company, as of Dutch shipping in general and of trade and industry over the whole world, was far better served by a condition of rest and order than by war.

As former co-director of a tobacco company he pointed out that Troelstra had himself named the profit figure made by one of those companies of late notwithstanding the Atjeh war, and that what special interest such a company had, more than any citizen, in the ending of the war was not clear to him. The waging of the war was no advantage to tobacco-planting companies, and they had not suffered much harm from it either. He found the two propositions contradictory: on Troelstra’s construction one company would have an interest in the long duration of the war because of the transports, and another in its ending in order to seize the lands in Tamiang and elsewhere.

Troelstra’s rejoinder

On 17 November Troelstra replied that the minister had fully conceded all that he had asked hypothetically: that the capitalists in Deli and other districts had an interest in the Atjeh war, and the concessionaries in Tamiang and Perlak likewise. Cremer had admitted that all those developers and concessionaries longed for the end of the war because they needed peace for their industry; but had added that if the Dutch withdrew, the Acehnese would fall upon Dutch territory on the East and West Coasts and the industry there would suffer. In that, Troelstra said, lay implied that not every ending of a war was desired by the industrialists: they were content only with such an ending as guaranteed them the establishment of Dutch power in Atjeh.

He denied being an enemy of the employment of capital in the Indies, saying he knew very well that capital could be usefully applied there and that its advantages could to a relative extent extend beyond the limited circle of its owners; his question had been in how far the interest of the capitalists in Deli and like districts coincided with the interest of the Indies and of the Dutch people. “Van distels kan men geen vijgen lezen” — one cannot gather figs from thistles: for the capitalist, making interest and dividend was the historical task; a capitalist might also be a philanthropist, and a few really were, but to demand of the capitalist that he should employ his capital only philanthropically would never enter his head, since it conflicted totally with the nature of capital.

Cremer, closing, said he would not contest the word “capitalist”: as a capitalist he had resolved to devote his time to the benefit of rich and poor alike — “rijken zijn er niet veel” — and therefore mostly of the little man in the Indies.

Sources

De Sociaaldemokraten in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam, c. 1901). Vrije Universiteit Bibliotheek, pp. 3, 12-13, 20-21.

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. 36–41, 49–50, 68–69, 77–79, 80.

Acknowledgement of sources. This article combines material from the publications cited above; the material newly added derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897) and Een strijd in Atjeh (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.

tags	concept, capitalism, colonialism, military, exploitation, event, parliament, dutch, colonial, aceh-war, economics, 1897, socialist, capital
aliases	Economic interests in the Aceh War, Capitalist interests in Aceh, Aceh War economic motivations, Atjeh melkkoe, Economic interests alleged behind the Atjeh-oorlog (1897), De belangen der kapitalisten, Economic interests in the Atjeh war 1897, Troelstra on the capitalist interests in Atjeh, De belanghebbenden

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