Atjeh — H.C. Zentgraff’s Atjeh, printed by Drukkerij “De Unie” at Batavia and dated on the title page 8 APR. 1938 — is the source-book of the present wiki. The author, Zentgraff, wrote it as a partial corrective to the run of Atjeh-war literature in which heldenrollen were reserved for the Dutch and the Acehnese reduced to sloebers, vuilbuiken, althans gemeene verraders — men too easily dismissed as traitors. He had, dank zij de door het Legerbestuur welwillend verleende vergunning, consulted the military archives, and he had Informaties ingewonnen bij velen die in den krijg eene rol speelden; the result is a book that deliberately grants the Acehnese enemy à tout seigneur tout honneur.
Structure
The book is divided into twelve chapters, of which the page-citations of the present wiki follow the original pagination: Inleiding; Van schande en vernedering; De Vrouwen; Het Adelaarsjong; Vergeelde brieven; Verhalen van de Blang; Van vreemde dingen; Hoe Tjoet Ali “Sjahid” werd; Van den Sjahid; Van sterven en begraven; De onbekende “Beer”; and Het Korps Maréchaussée. The Inleiding sets the moral frame; the Vergeelde brieven chapter prints the ultimatum letter of 1885 and the brief van 18 Radjab 1325; Het Adelaarsjong follows the wanderings of T. Radja Sabi; Het Korps Maréchaussée closes the book with the history of the corps and the anticipation of the fiftieth-jubilee Kandoeri Rajeu of April 1940.
Sources and method
Zentgraff had, by his own account, in de militaire archieven zeer belangrijk materiaal raadplegen — the Legerbestuur’s permission giving him access to official reports otherwise closed: among them the pencil-notes of Bivak Tamoen of 22 April–27 April 1897 from Van Daalen to his wife, the Hoedt dagboek of the Gajoetocht, the Mosselman patrouille-rapport on the death of Tjoet Meuthia, and the Behrens report on the death of Tengkoe di Barat. He layered these with oral information from velen die in den krijg eene rol speelden and with the pamphlets and hikajat prang that circulated among the Acehnese themselves — the Tadkirat arrakidin of Tengkoe Koetakarang among them.
The second bundel
Zentgraff projected a tweede bundel — a second volume — to follow this one; it never appeared. The Atjeh of 1938 therefore remains his single book on the Atjeh-oorlog, and the present wiki’s source-section, on every article, cites it accordingly: Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia.
Significance
The book appeared eight years after the Korps Maréchaussée’s Kandoeri Masoesé jubilee of 2 April 1930 and two years before the projected fiftieth-jubilee of April 1940 — als straks, in April 1940, het Korps Maréchaussée eene halve eeuw bestaat. The second jubilee never came off; the Japanese invasion of March 1942 swept away the colonial world the book documented. Atjeh is therefore a valedictory as much as a history: the record of an institution and a war that were already passing from living memory into the archives Zentgraff had been allowed to read.
See Also
- H.C. Zentgraff
- Korps Marechaussee van Atjeh en Onderhorigen
- Tiro-oelama’s ultimatum letter (1885)
- Brief van 18 Radjab 1325
- Habib’s 1884 memorandum
- Tadkirat arrakidin
- Sultanszegel
- Aceh War
- Tengkoe Sjech Saman di Tiro
- T. Radja Sabi
- Tjoet Ali
- G.C.E. van Daalen
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- 1930
- 1938
- 1940
Source
Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia. OCR-filename: 20260709_002148_DLP-81-Atjeh_OCR.txt.