The Indische begrooting (Indies budget) was the annual financial statement of the Dutch East Indies colonial administration, presented to the Dutch Tweede Kamer for approval. It was the subject of intense parliamentary debate, with socialist members such as H. van Kol using it as the primary vehicle to criticize colonial policy, including the Aceh War and its economic consequences.
The Indische begrooting voor 1898 — the budget of Netherlands India for the year 1898 — was the estimate on whose general deliberations in the Tweede Kamer on 16 November and 17 November 1897 the Atjeh debate took place. The pamphlet Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (1897) bears as its sub-title Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898.
Socialist critique
Socialist parliamentarians consistently used the budget debates to expose the economic dimensions of colonial rule. They argued that the Indische begrooting was a document that revealed:
- The financial burden of the Aceh War on the Dutch treasury.
- The economic interests (shipping companies, suppliers, planters, mining companies) that benefited from the war — see Economic interests in the Aceh War.
- The extraction of wealth from the colony to the Netherlands, including the “eerschuld” (debt of honour) of 187 million guilders taken from the colonial treasury since 1867.
The 1901 budget debate
The 1901 budget debate was particularly significant. Van Kol attacked Dr. Abraham Kuyper’s government for its imperialist rhetoric and its continuation of the Aceh War. He criticized the government for spending “vijf miljoen” (five million guilders) on a tramway in Aceh for military purposes, while failing to fund irrigation works on Java. He also exposed the “uitputting van den soldaat in Atjeh” (exhaustion of the soldier in Aceh) and the incidence of venereal diseases among European troops.
Colonial poverty and exploitation
Van Kol used the budget debates to highlight the poverty of the Javanese, arguing that 25 million Javanese had an average annual income of only f31, of which f6.60 was paid in taxes, while the colonial administration spent f2.7 million on education for 65,000 Europeans but only f1.5 million on the education of 25 million indigenous people.
The Atjeh charge on the budget
H. van Kol opened the debate by pointing out that the chamber stood on the point of again placing forty million at disposal “voor vechten en dooden te land en te water,” — for fighting and killing by land and by sea, and asked whether it was permissible to increase that great number of millions again by some tens, and whether it would not be a sacred requirement of right and humanity to save at least a great part of it by making an end to the war.
He noted that the war’s expenditure could not be exactly stated — Bergsma having declared five months earlier that neither the Ministry of Colonies nor the Indies could say precisely how much had been spent specifically on Atjeh — and gave the competing estimates: some eleven hundred million on army and fleet since 1873; three hundred and fifty million in extra expenditure over twenty-five years by his own calculation in Land en Volk van Java; seven to eight hundred million by others; and a thousand million guilders and a hundred thousand human lives by the Java Bode of 13 April 1897.
The impossibility of separating the Atjeh charge
Van der Zwaag made the crucial procedural point. The only means a member could apply was to refuse the funds voted for the war; “maar ook dit is niet wel mogelijk. Het is namelijk niet mogelijk de uitgaven voor den Atjeh-oorlog af te scheiden van de uitgaven ten behoeve van het Indische leger in het algemeen.” — but even this is not well possible. It is, namely, not possible to separate the expenditure for the Atjeh war from the expenditure on behalf of the Indies army in general. The only remaining means was therefore to declare that one would never give one’s vote to the Indies budget as a whole so long as the war continued.
The crowding out of reform
The Memorie van Antwoord contained the government’s own admission that so long as the war continued to demand its sacrifices the abolition of personal burdens could probably not be carried as far as desirable, many useful expenditures would have to be omitted and great thrift practised in every field. Every critic of the war seized on the passage. Pijnacker Hordijk opened his speech with it; Van der Zwaag concluded from it that “de Atjeh-oorlog domineert alles”; and Van Kol listed on 17 November the reforms thereby postponed: education, the medical service, justice for Europeans, railways and irrigation works; the care of the insane; the abolition of the vexatious farming of taxes “aan de parasieten van den Javaan” — to the parasites of the Javanese; the combating of opium use; the abolition of the dwangcultuur; and the means for Java to defend itself against a foreign enemy. “Nuttige uitgaven moeten achterwege blijven, want… Atjeh moet verwoest worden. Maar waarom dan toch? Met welk recht en met welk doel?” — Useful expenditures must be omitted, because… Atjeh must be destroyed. But why then? By what right and with what object?
He concluded: “Niemand heeft het recht te klagen over tekorten op de Indische begrooting, wanneer men deze moedwillig doet ontstaan door het nutteloos verspillen van millioenen op Atjeh. Niemand mag zich in vollen ernst als hervormer beschouwen, die niet voor alles dien doelloozen oorlog doet beëindigen.” — No one has the right to complain of deficits on the Indies budget when one wilfully causes them by the useless squandering of millions on Atjeh. No one may in full earnest regard himself as a reformer who does not before all things bring that aimless war to an end.
Provisions relating to Atjeh
The budget as debated contained the request for three recherchevaartuigen; a reinforcement of two thousand Europeans for 1898, considered sufficient by the Indies government; and, in chapter II, division II, sub-division 19, a sum of f 1500 for the limitation of slavery in the self-governing landschappen of the government of Celebes — a figure Van Kol cited to show that the Dutch tolerated in their own dependencies the very evils for which they had made war on Atjeh.
See Also
- H. van Kol
- Aceh War
- Abraham Kuyper
- Economic interests in the Aceh War
- Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij
- 1901
- Memorie van Antwoord on the Indies budget for 1898
- Voorloopig Verslag on the Indies budget for 1898
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- Van Kol’s motion of 16 November 1897
- Van der Zwaag
- Recherchevaartuigen
- 1897
- 1898
Sources
De Sociaaldemokraten in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam, c. 1901). Vrije Universiteit Bibliotheek, pp. 20-21, 28-29.
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. 3–4, 10, 13–14, 25–27, 60–61.
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.