The Ereschuld — the “debt of honour” — is the doctrine, principally associated with Van Deventer (v.d., liberal-democrat MP), that the Netherlands owed a moral debt to the Nederlandsch-Indische archipelago for the surplus — the batig slot — extracted from the cultuurstelsel period and after. The doctrine was rejected by Cremer and Van Asch van Wijck in their conduct of the Comptabiliteitswet amendment of 26 June 1903 that formally abolished the bijdrage of Nederlandsch-Indië to the finances of the realm.
The Van Deventer doctrine
Van Deventer’s name is associated, above all, with the parliamentary agitation that drew attention to the surplus that the Netherlands had extracted from the Nederlandsch-Indische archipelago during the cultuurstelsel period. In the Vermeulen retrospective, Van Deventer’s view is recorded in passing: “al hetgeen dat van 1831 af tot en met 1877 door ons is ontvangen, volgens minister De Waal rondom 700 millioen” — everything that we received from 1831 to 1877 inclusive, in the round figure of 700 million guilders given by minister De Waal.
The Bos counter-argument
The proposition that the present generation could not, however, compensate a dead Indies generation for the wrong done to it was, Vermeulen notes, one that Van Deventer’s contemporary Bos contested. Bos “achtte het nageslacht wel degelijk aansprakelijk” — held the descendants indeed accountable — and compared the matter to social insurance, where the present generation must stand surety for the errors of the past.
The ministerial refusal
Cremer and Van Asch van Wijck declined to frame the Comptabiliteitswet amendment of 26 June 1903 as the discharge of an ereschuld. The official formula was: “geen terugtrede in hetgeen door de daartoe volkomen bevoegde macht vroeger in wettige vorm is geschied” — no retreat from what was done in lawful form by the authority fully competent to do so. The existing state of affairs was to be the starting-point for financial policy; the past could only strengthen the conviction that, when the Indies were in need, the motherland must support them according to its ability. The ground of the new policy was, accordingly, not the recognition of an obligation to restitution but the recognition of a moral vocation (zedelijke roeping) of the motherland towards the colonies and of the significance of the colonial condition for the entire Realm.
The Van Asch van Wijck-Idenburg formula
Van Asch van Wijck’s successor Idenburg (a.r.) reaffirmed the refusal in a nota to the Tweede Kamer: the ereschuld “niet haar grond [vondt] in de aanvaarding van een verplichting tot restitutie, maar in de erkenning van een zedelijke roeping van het moederland tegenover de koloniën en van de betekenis van de toestand der koloniën voor het gehele Rijk” — found its ground not in the acceptance of an obligation to restitution but in the recognition of a moral vocation of the motherland towards the colonies and of the significance of the colonial condition for the entire Realm.
Significance for Atjeh
The ereschuld doctrine bears on Atjeh because the Atjeh-oorlog ([[1873-1904)|Atjeh-oorlog]] was, in the Vermeulen retrospective, one of the principal charges on the Nederlandsch-Indische budget that the batig slot had been used to defray. The rejection of the ereschuld frame in favour of the zedelijke roeping frame was, accordingly, the official re-orientation of the Atjehnese war’s cost from a charge owed to a charge to be borne.
See Also
- Batig Slot
- Cultuurstelsel
- Indische Comptabiliteitswet amendment (26 June 1903)
- C. Th. van Deventer
- J. T. Cremer
- Jhr T. A. J. van Asch van Wijck
- A. W. F. Idenburg
- De Waal
- Bos (liberal MP)
- Ethische Politiek
- Atjeh-oorlog (1873-1904)
- 1831
- 1877
- 1903
Source
Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland van 1849 tot 1901, by Mr W. J. van Welderen baron Rengers, 4th rev. ed., Vol. IV: Oost-Indië 1891-1918 by Dr W. H. Vermeulen (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955), pp. 284-285.