Onderkoning — viceroy — was the term used by Kuyper in the Tweede Kamer in 1874–1875, and quoted by H. van Kol in 1897, for the Dutch authority in the Indies whom he held to have been deceived into the Atjeh-oorlog.
The quotation of 1897
Van Kol, answering the Minister Cremer on 17 November 1897, argued that the pretext of foreign interference had been “een verfoeilijk kluchtspel,” and cited Kuyper in the Handelingen of 1874–1875, p. 1305: a “zot” (fool) and a “monomaan” (monomaniac) had, “door de inblazingen van een leugenaar” (through the promptings of a liar), made the onderkoning the “dupe” of a “loos alarm” (false alarm).
The passage belongs to Van Kol’s argument that the official papers on the origin of the war, kept secret for eight years and published at the Landsdrukkerij in 1881, showed the fear of foreign intervention to have been manufactured — and that the instructie given to the Regeeringscommissaris sent to Atjeh contained no mention of piracy at all, but only of that fear.
Kuyper for his part affirmed in the same debate that he took back no word of what he had argued in 1874 and 1875 about the vitium originis of the war, but denied that it was decisive for the position of 1897.
See Also
- Abraham Kuyper
- H. van Kol
- Comité-generaal van 1874
- Instructie aan den Regeeringscommissaris naar Atjeh (1873)
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- 1874
- 1897
Source
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. 21, 62–63.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898 (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.