The Gewapende Politie (“Armed Police”) was the Dutch colonial armed police force of the Netherlands East Indies, formed on Java in 1897 from the old pradjoerits and Djajang Sekars corps (native cavalry detachments) that had until 1871 been under native officers and were in that year placed under European instructors. In the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account, the Gewapende Politie was progressively extended to the Outer Possessions in the early twentieth century as the post-pacification consolidation of Dutch rule required a substitute for the field army that had been partially withdrawn from the newly-pacified territories. The Bureau notes that the Atjeh and Dependencies residency was the only Buitenbezittingen gewest in which the armed police division was not under the command of a retired or active army officer — a continuing military exception that reflects the still-recent character of the Pacificatie.
Account from De Buitenbezittingen (1917) — Gewapende Politie
The Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account of the Gewapende Politie appears in the chapter on police. The Bureau notes that the Politie in the Netherlands East Indies was divided into the Gewapende Politie and the Algemeene Politie (general police) — the latter still too recent an institution for its results to be assessed. For the Gewapende Politie, the Bureau provides an overview of its expansion in the Buitenbezittingen.
The Bureau’s narrative of the origins of the Gewapende Politie notes that “the corps on Java was formed from the corps of pradjoerits and Djajang Sekars (native cavalry detachments), which had until 1871 been under native officers, and in that year were placed under European instructors as ‘pradjoerits.’ In 1897, in place of these pradjoerits, ten corps of Gewapende Politie were formed.” The Bureau notes that “in the Buitenbezittingen, the Gewapende Politie had already existed long before that time. In 1864 a corps was established in Benkoelen to replace the pradjoerits then present there, while in 1871 corps of armed police already existed in Pontianak, Sambas, Timor, the Lampong Districts, Palembang, and Benkoelen.”
The Bureau notes that “with the expansion of our administrative involvement in the Buitenbezittingen, the number of such corps also gradually increased. Especially when the rapidly succeeding events of the first decade of this century made the pacification of previously turbulent territories an accomplished fact and the field army could be partially withdrawn, the administrative officials — in order to maintain order and peace in those newly subjected regions and to break such local resistance as still occasionally flared up — had to have a means of power at their disposal.”
The Bureau’s account of the organisation of the Gewapende Politie notes that “the corps now consists of 22 divisions, of which 20 are in the Buitenbezittingen, and a central depot at Soekaboemi, where the training of cadre and recruits takes place. Each division — with the exception for the time being of that in Atjeh — is under the command of a retired or active officer of the army, while the technical leadership, under the orders of the Director of Binnenlandsch-Bestuur, is entrusted to a chef, simultaneously head of the Afdeeling Gewapende Politie of the Departement van Binnenlandsch Bestuur.”
The Bureau’s statistical table of the Gewapende Politie in the Buitenbezittingen shows that the Atjeh and Dependencies gewest had 5 detachments-commandanten and 17 brigades — a substantial deployment that reflects the still-recent character of the Pacificatie and the continuing need for armed police support of the civil administration.
Significance
The Gewapende Politie is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account, the principal police instrument of the post-pacification consolidation of Dutch rule in the Buitenbezittingen — the substitute for the field army that had been partially withdrawn from the newly-pacified territories. The continuing military command of the Atjeh division — the only such exception in the Buitenbezittingen — reflects the still-recent character of the Pacificatie even at the end of the 1904–1914 decade.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege preserves the forgotten earlier use of the Armed Police as a Atjeh measure: instead of using the appointed military force for the expulsion of the robber bands growing under his regime, the civil governor Pruijs van der Hoeven entrusted that task to an armed police — “eene daarvoor niet berekende en ook nergens elders gebruikte gewapende politie” (“an armed police unsuited for it and not used anywhere else”) — through which those so-called bands of robbers or marauders assumed more and more the character of hostile bands that renewed the guerilla war (see Normale bestuursinrichting (Atjeh, 1881-1884)). The Koloniaal Verslag of 1885 records with what Verstege calls gladness that this police, “which in the hand of the governor Pruijs van der Hoeven partly became the instrument to bring Atjeh into the later unfavourable state, luckily exists no longer” — a note distinguishing this early and unsucceeded Atjeh armed police from the later corps of 1897 described above.
See Also
- Departement van Binnenlandsch Bestuur
- Departement van Oorlog
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Buitenbezittingen
- Soekaboemi
- Benkoelen
- Palembang
- Pontianak
- Sambas
- Timor
- Lampongsche Districten
- Aceh War
- 1864
- 1871
- 1897
- 1914
Sources
De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914, Deel I, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), pp. 18–20 (section “De Politie”).
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 73 note, 86 note. OCR: DLP-158.