Hok gantjing was the Acehnese term — given in parentheses as (Hok gantjing) in W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889) — for the waarborgsom, the surety-money imposed by the Dutch Militaire Bevelhebber upon a submitted district of Groot-Atjeh in 1879 in lieu of punitive destruction: the payment of a bond for every house, as the guarantee of the district’s good behaviour.
The rate of 1879
The institution is described in the narrative of the occupation of the Lamtoba valley. In the first days of the occupation the column-commandant had announced that the Militaire Bevelhebber, highly angered at the reception given to the chiefs of the XXVI Moekims, had ordered all the kampongs of the valley to be burnt. In view, however, of the peaceful submission of the population, word came in the following days from the Militaire Bevelhebber that the originally fixed punishment was abandoned, and that in its place was prescribed the payment of a surety-money — de betaling eener waarborgsom (Hok gantjing) — fixed at ten dollars for every wooden house and three dollars for every bamboo house. The same scale was prescribed, in the march order of 11 August 1879, for the district of Selimoen upon its submission — together with the taking of five hostages.
Enforcement
In the Lamtoba valley the bond proved beyond the chiefs’ means: at the conference held by Overste Gerlach with all the heads of the valley on 21 August 1879, they declared themselves unable to pay the fixed sureties, the more so since the population had not yet wholly returned to the kampongs. The alternative laid down was the taking of hostages: the Imam and the Rijksbestierder, with half of the wakils and kampong-heads, had to follow the column to Kota Radja — the decision from which the whole hostage affair of the evacuation unfolded, including the flight and voluntary return of Panglima Banten.
Significance
The hok gantjing belongs to the system by which Generaal van der Heijden’s government converted the conquest of 1879 into a civil order: graded money-bonds, hostage-taking in default, and the sparing of kampongs that answered — the counterpart of the tuchtiging by fire applied to Kepaja Doewa and Lam-Lepong.
See Also
- Tuchtiging
- Occupation of the Lamtoba valley (July–August 1879)
- Evacuation of the Lamtoba valley (21–23 August 1879)
- Panglima Banten
- March order for the Selimoen expedition (11 August 1879)
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 31, 36, 65. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.