Scheepvaartregeling

The Scheepvaartregeling (literally “shipping regulation”, also “maritime trade regulation”) was the Dutch system of controlled maritime trade on the coasts of Atjeh — first proposed by Scherer in May 1881, first introduced on a part of the North Coast in May 1882, first applied throughout Atjeh in May 1883, withdrawn by the concentration system of October 1884 (except on the East Coast, where it was maintained), and finally and definitively introduced in October 1893 for the East Coast and April 1894 for the North and West Coasts — that Kruijt identifies as the principal strategic instrument neglected by the Dutch throughout the Atjeh-oorlog. Its consistent application, Kruijt argues, was the principal means by which the Dutch could have mastered the coasts and so ended the war; its half-hearted and inconsistent application was, in Kruijt’s analysis, the principal cause of the protraction of the war from 1873 to 1896.

Scherer’s Doctrine

The doctrine of the Scheepvaartregeling was set out most fully by the Assistent-Resident Scherer in his lecture of 20 January 20 January 1891 before the Indisch Genootschap at ‘s-Gravenhage on the subject “Hoe moet Atjeh gepacificeerd worden” (How Atjeh must be pacified). The resistance came not from Groot-Atjeh but from the onderhoorigheden (dependencies) — the East, North, and West Coasts. There the money was earned with which the costs of the war were met; there the young fanatical people were gathered to make incursions into Groot-Atjeh; and there the resistance retired in perfect safety when the Dutch put the fire too close to the shins of the guerrillas in Groot-Atjeh. “De meester van de kust is meester van het land” (The master of the coast is the master of the land), Scherer held.

The Scheepvaartregeling was the means by which the Dutch could exercise political influence on the coasts at low cost and with decisive effect. A few Dutch-controlled harbours for general trade were opened on the coasts — Edi and Telok Semawé on the East Coast, Poeloe Rajja on the West Coast, and so on. All trade had to pass through these harbours under Dutch supervision. Import and export clearance, visitation, and the levying of import and export duties took place there by Dutch personnel. The products of surrounding statelets were transported to the commercial centres so created by small coastal vessels, while imports moved in the opposite direction. The revenues came into Dutch hands. The Dutch sat on the money-chest. The Sultan’s share — formally the Dutch’s by right of succession to the Sultanate — came in regularly; the remainder was periodically paid out to the rightful claimants who had given no cause for complaint. To those who misbehaved, fines were imposed, deducted from their money; or, according to the gravity of their offence, the whole was withheld, or their harbour was closed to all import and export.

The 1881 Proposal and the 1882 Partial Introduction

Already in May 1881 Scherer, stationed at the post established at Telok Semawé in 1881, set out to the new Governor Pruijs van der Hoeven the necessity of a rational Scheepvaartregeling. The Governor was not persuaded: C’était precher un converti. By the pressure of circumstances the Governor gave Scherer, in May 1882, the freedom to introduce the regulation on a part of the North Coast. Howsoever only partially and with defective means applied, it worked excellently.

The 1883 General Introduction and the 1884 Withdrawal

In May 1883 the Governor Laging Tobias, equally convinced of its great usefulness, ordered, under further approval of the government, the introduction of Scherer’s Scheepvaartregeling in all Atjeh. Even though unprepared and with inadequate means, it worked excellently under Scherer’s able leadership — until, in October 1884, by order of the High Government in the Netherlands, it was wholly withdrawn and even the abolition of all posts on the coasts was decided. Only on the East Coast, where it had worked for ten years, was it maintained, in order not to lose all influence there as well.

The Van Teijn Memorandum of August 1889

The later Governor Van Teijn continued to urge the Scheepvaartregeling on the government. In August 1889 he wrote:

“Hoe meer ik kennis maak met den aard en het karakter van den Atjeher, hoe meer ik gevestigd raak in mijne overtuiging, dat wij steeds een middel in de hand moeten hebben om zonder veel bezwaar dadelijk te kunnen straffen, indien ons gezag niet wordt geëerbiedigd. Daartoe geeft de scheepvaartregeling gelegenheid. ‘t Zij door heffen van boeten, in te vorderen door naasting voor korteren of langeren duur van de in- en uitvoerrechten; ‘t zij door allen in- of uitvoer te verbieden. Zonder deze regeling zullen wij nimmer ons gezag op de kuststaatjes kunnen handhaven en zullen wij nimmer voldoenden invloed in Groot-Atjeh kunnen uitoefenen.”

Van Heutsz confirmed all these opinions in full in his excellent and clear brochure “De onderwerping van Atjeh”, published in 1898.

The 1893–1894 Definitive Introduction

How fully Deijkerhoff himself was convinced of the good effect of the blockade and considered its strict and permanent maintenance necessary, he had already from the beginning, with the Resident Scherer, arranged the preparation of a Scheepvaartregeling. Scherer came over to Atjeh for this purpose, visited the various coastal statelets, had discussions with the chiefs — who, in the prospect of being released from the straitening bands of the blockade, were glad to see him come. Only Pedir refused to accept the conditions set. The Scheepvaartregeling replaced the blockade as Scherer’s regulation was gradually introduced: in October 1893 for the East Coast and in April 1894 for the North and West Coasts, with respectively Edi, Telok Semawé, and Poeloe Rajja opened as harbours for general trade.

This measure was, alas, also not carried through consistently, not vigorously and forcefully applied. Not only not as intended by Van Teijn (after submission obtained by blockade), but inadequately prepared and therefore prematurely introduced, and again at once weakened by special licences and concessions. The Dutch were not sitting on the money-chest, they were sitting beside it, and it had all the appearance as if it were more instituted to please the Atjehers than to put power in the hands of the Dutch.

Kruijt’s Judgement

Kruijt’s judgement of the Scheepvaartregeling is the most sustained strategic argument of his brochure. Already under Van der Heijden — who had perceived that it was the onderhoorigheden that fed the resistance in Groot-Atjeh, that drew profit from the war, that had an interest in its continuation, and that therefore without supervision of the coasts the end was not foreseeable — the necessity of coastal control had been recognised. Van der Heijden had, against the wish of the government at Batavia, introduced such control on his own responsibility in July 1879; the government had acquiesced, on condition that it should be temporary; and it had been abolished in 1881, to be greatly regretted — for, whatever its initial shortcomings, it contained the principle of the Scheepvaartregeling, and might already then have become what was only instituted ten years later and ought to have been from the start.

The protraction of the war from 1873 to 1896 was, in Kruijt’s analysis, principally the consequence of the Dutch failure to apply the Scheepvaartregeling consistently. Every Dutch governor who had had experience of the coasts — Van der Heijden, Scherer, Laging Tobias, Van Teijn, Deijkerhoff — had urged it; every Dutch government — in the Netherlands and in the Indies — had refused or half-heartedly applied it. The Dutch’s “penny-wise and pound-foolish” parsimony had reduced the Marine in Atjeh to four ships, so that proper supervision of the coasts was no longer possible. The Dutch’s blind trust in the policy of arming Teuku Umar had substituted a far more costly and far more dangerous policy for the cheap and effective instrument that the Scheepvaartregeling provided.

Significance

The Scheepvaartregeling is the central strategic concept of Kruijt’s brochure and the principal strategic instrument of the Atjeh-oorlog. Its consistent application was, in Kruijt’s analysis, the principal means by which the Dutch could have ended the war earlier; its half-hearted and inconsistent application was the principal cause of the protraction of the war. The doctrine that “de meester van de kust is meester van het land” (the master of the coast is the master of the land), first articulated by Scherer and confirmed by Van Teijn and Van Heutsz, would be vindicated by the subsequent Dutch victory under Van Heutsz after 1898, which rested on the systematic application of the Scheepvaartregeling and the marechaussée campaigns of the late 1890s and early 1900s. The Scheepvaartregeling is, with the concentration system, one of the two principal Dutch strategic concepts of the war, and the one whose neglect Kruijt most deplores.

Account from De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893) — the prescription

Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract treats the scheepvaartregeling — controle op handel en scheepvaart, in the book’s OCR variably mis-spelled scheepraartregeling and a dozen other forms — as the positive prescription Van Heutsz sets against the fout of the blokkade and the cajoleering of the Civiel Gouverneur regime of 1881–1883. The tract elaborates the scheepvaartregeling at length — covering its intellectual origin in Scherer’s 1879–1880 Noordkust tour, its first application in May 1883 under Laging Tobias, Scherer’s 20 January 1891 Indisch Genootschap lecture, Van Heutsz’s own preferred five-component design, and the Van Teijn closure of 1888–1890 as the operational precedent.

Scherer’s original conception (1879–1880)

The intellectual origin of the scheepvaartregeling is the Noordkust tour of Scherer as wd. assistent-resident in 1879–1880. Van Heutsz’s encomium fixes the arrival and the originality in a single sentence:

“op dit tijdstip was juist, als wd. assistent-resident, op de Noordkust gekomen de man — de tegenwoordige resident Scherer — uit wiens helder brein het eerst het denkbeeld van eene rationeele regeling voor handel en scheepvaart in verband met onze vestigingen op de kusten, is gesproten”.

The empirical origin of the scheme lay in the Gighen and Samalanga episodes, where two Dutch emissaries — Said Abdellah and Soetan Maharadja — had been murdered and the local chiefs had repeatedly evaded payment of the bangoen (the blood-price). Scherer’s solution was to lay a kruisboot (a marine patrol vessel) before the harbours of Gighen and Samalanga and to collect the bangoen by levying duties on the in- and out-going goods:

“Dit hielp; te Gighen betaalde men nog vóór dat de kruisboot er lag en te Samalanga, nadat de kruisboot er slechts drie dagen gelegen had. Dat was voor Scherer eene vingerwijzing en bracht hem op het denkbeeld, dat als slechts alle in- en uitvoer langs onze vestigingen plaats had onder onze contrôle, wij ook het middel in de hand hadden om de hoofden van de verschillende staatjes in het rechte spoor te houden”.

The Gighen–Samalanga test was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, the answer to the question Generaal Pel himself had posed in his letter of 30 April 1875: what, after the completion of his plan, was to be done? Scherer’s answer was that the controle op handel en scheepvaart would put the Dutch “op de geldkist” of Atjeh — on the cash-box of Atjeh — and thereby provide both the middel tot beloonen als straffen and the middel om de hoofden … in het rechte spoor te houden.

The May 1883 introduction under Laging Tobias

Van Heutsz records the May 1883 introduction under Gouverneur Laging Tobias, attributing the denkbeelden to Scherer and the invoering to Laging Tobias:

“Reeds in Mei 1883 toch, zoo verhaalt ons Scherer, vaardigde hij, onder nadere goedkeuring der Regeering, een besluit uit, waarbij, volgens zijn (Scherer’s) denkbeelden, eene contrôle op handel en scheepvaart werd ingevoerd, die alles wat in- en uitgevoerd werd door onze handen deed gaan en aan ons toezicht onderwierp”.

The May 1883 scheepvaartregeling covered the Noord- en Westkust from June 1883 and the Oostkust from earlier still — “op laatstgenoemde kust was daardoor als vanzelf, te Edi, een handelscentrum ontstaan, waren hoofden en bevolking tot welvaart geraakt” — and on the Noordkust “had de ondervinding aangetoond, dat in die scheepvaartregeling het middel lag om ons bestuur de macht en invloed te bezorgen, noodig om geleidelijk tot een ordelijken stand van zaken te geraken”. Van Heutsz’s verdict is the highest praise he accords any Governor in the entire catalogue: “de scheepvaartregeling door Scherer voorgesteld en door Laging Tobias ingevoerd gaf alles wat men kon verlangen” — the scheepvaartregeling proposed by Scherer and introduced by Laging Tobias gave everything one could desire. The measure placed the Dutch “in den volsten zin des woords op de geldkist van Atjeh” and gave them the macht om de Atjehers te doen betalen zooveel en waar wij zelf maar wilden. The May 1883 scheepvaartregeling thus stands, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, as the high-water mark of the post-Van-der-Heijden policy.

Scherer’s four-point programme (20 January 1891)

Scherer’s principal public exposition of the scheepvaartregeling was the lecture he gave to the Indisch Genootschap on 20 January 1891 — the lecture Van Heutsz would later refute point-by-point in the policy-prescription half of the 1893 tract. Van Heutsz records Scherer’s four proposals:

“Scherer dan wil het volgende en zegt overtuigd te zijn, dat zoo doende de pacificatie zal verkregen worden. 1°. Het controleeren van handel en scheepvaart … 2°. Het meester worden op de kust … 3°. Het isoleeren van Groot-Atjeh … 4°. Het pacificeeren van Groot-Atjeh met of zonder sultan”.

Van Heutsz accepts the first proposal — the controleeren van handel en scheepvaart — as the underlying instrument, dismisses the second (meester worden op de kust by alliances with weak coastal statelets) and the third (isoleeren van Groot-Atjeh) as “bepaald verkeerd” and “scharrelpolitiek”, and rejects the fourth’s “met of zonder sultan” in favour of an unambiguous “zonder sultan”. The disagreement between Scherer and Van Heutsz was therefore not on the principle of the scheepvaartregeling but on its mode of application. Scherer wanted a soft scheepvaartregeling introduced alone and gradually; Van Heutsz wanted a krachtige scheepvaartregeling backed by an adequate marine. Scherer’s own warning — which Van Heutsz makes the rhetorical pivot of his refutation — was: “Eene scheepvaartregeling zonder of met eene onvoldoende marine is als een leger zonder of met gebrekkige wapenen” — a shipping regulation without, or with an inadequate, navy is like an army without, or with defective, weapons.

Van Heutsz’s preferred five-component design

Van Heutsz’s distinct version of the scheepvaartregeling, set out in the prescription half of the 1893 tract, has five components:

Routing of all trade through retained Dutch-held ports: Edi, Segli and Olehleh for the Noord- en Oostkust; Telok-Kroet, Melaboeh and Tampat Toean for the Westkust.
Closure of the entire coast between these ports: “van Tamiang op de Oostkust tot Troemon op de Westkust” — the rigoureuse sluiting the Regeering had prescribed in 1884 but never properly applied.
Marine force adequate to make the closure real: a snelvarende marine to catch the Chineesche en Inlandsche vaartuigen that would, once the regulation was in force, “zich een afzonderlijke smokkelhandel organiseeren”.
Revenue, drawn from three sources: the opium-pacht (a European firm had offered in 1890 to farm the opium-pacht at ƒ 250,000 per month for the first year, rising to ƒ 400,000), the invoerrechten on luxury goods (rice to be exempt; artikelen van weelde to be taxed), and the hatsil — the customary revenue share formerly paid to the sultan and now claimable under the 18 artikelen sworn by each submitting statelet.
The boete — graduated monthly fines for non-compliance with the 18 artikelen, levied on the in- and out-flow of goods at the open Dutch-controlled ports.

The result, Van Heutsz writes, would be to “plaatse ons in den volsten zin des woords op de geldkist van Atjeh” — to place the Dutch literally on the money-chest of Atjeh, financing the war’s continuation from its own proceeds. The shorthand contrast Van Heutsz uses to fix the difference is: Scherer’s scheepvaartregeling is “Doen wat ik wil of ik sluit u” — do what I want or I close you — whereas Van Heutsz’s is “Doen wat ik wil of ge betaalt extras” — do what I want or you pay extra.

The Van Teijn precedent and the post-1888 model

The operational precedent Van Heutsz invokes for his preferred scheepvaartregeling is the closure Generaal van Teijn imposed in stages from January 1888 and completed in the beginning of 1890: “in ‘t begin van 1890 eindelijk was uitgestrekt over de geheele Noord- en Westkust”. Van Heutsz even argues that Van Teijn’s “stelsel eigenlijk geen sluiting, maar scheepvaartregeling” was — that Van Teijn’s system was, in substance, not a closure but a scheepvaartregeling, since the open Oostkust ports and the retained Dutch-held outlets on the Noord- en Westkust functioned as the call-ports of a scheepvaartregeling. The Van Teijn closure thus supplied the operational model the 1893 tract would generalise: not the algemeene rigoureuse sluiting the Regeering had wanted in 1884, but the scheepvaartregeling-cum-closure that combined the coercive force of the blokkade with the fiscal leverage of the scheepvaartregeling.

Significance of the Van Heutsz account

The scheepvaartregeling’s significance in the Aceh Wiki History record, in Van Heutsz’s 1893 diagnosis, rests on four things: it was the scheme Scherer had conceived in 1879–1880 from the Noordkust — the rationeele regeling voor handel en scheepvaart in verband met onze vestigingen op de kusten — that Van Heutsz adopted as the central prescription of the 1893 tract and that Van Heutsz would himself implement, in modified form, as Governor of Atjeh from 1898 onward; it was the scheme Laging Tobias had first applied in May 1883 and that Van Heutsz singled out as “alles wat men kon verlangen” — the high-water mark of the post-Van-der-Heijden decade; it was the scheme whose abolition in December 1885 — together with the repeal of the blokkade by Staatsblad No. 85 van 1885 — opened the cajoleering-decade of 1884–1892; and it was the scheme Van Heutsz refashioned in the 1893 tract into his own five-component design — call-ports, closure, marine, revenue, boeten — against the softer application Scherer had proposed in his Indisch Genootschap lecture of 20 January 1891. The scheepvaartregeling is, in Van Heutsz’s narrative, the bestuursmiddel — the instrument of government — that the bestraffingsmiddel of the blokkade could never be; and the prescription the 1893 tract makes is, in this sense, the substitution of the scheepvaartregeling-cum-closure for the blokkade-cum-cajoleering that had defined the fout and ramp of the post-Van-der-Heijden decade. Van Heutsz’s 1893 prescription anticipates — and is the conceptual blueprint for — the 1893–1894 definitive introduction Kruijt records.

Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)

The Scheepvaartregeling (“shipping regulation”) was the customs-and-harbour system designed for the Government of Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden by the commission instituted by Governor-General Mr. Pynacker Hordijk in 1892 — Governors Deijkerhoff and Resident G. A. Scherer — and introduced piecemeal between 1892 and 1897, by which only a few well-situated harbours with a military post and a civil official were open to general trade, the rest of the coast being served from those harbours by small craft alone, while government customs personnel levied the in- and export-duties and paid them to the entitled chiefs, withholding them upon breach of engagement.

Genesis

In 1892 the Government judged it desirable to design a shipping regulation, whereby it would be determined inter alia that a certain category of ships might not load and unload everywhere on the coast, but only in the harbours destined for the purpose whereto sufficient customs personnel for control would be present. A similar measure, already proposed earlier, could then find no favour in the eyes of the Government; until 1892 all proposals to that effect were rejected, and only in that year did the then Landvoogd, Mr. Pynacker Hordijk, institute a commission existing of Governor Deijkerhoff and Resident G. A. Scherer to design such a regulation for the province. “Bij ‘brokstukken’ kwam zij tot stand” — it came into being piecemeal: in 1892 for the East Coast; in 1893 for the North and West Coasts and Groot-Atjeh; in 1896 Sabang was taken up in the regulation; and finally in 1897 the shipping regulation could be introduced for the whole territory.

Principles

“The principal aim of that regulation was: to touch the chiefs of the coast states, upon their unwillingness, in their incomes, without hampering the economic development of the land.” To that end, on the coasts only a few well-situated places would be opened for trade — namely where both a military post and a civil official were established; the trade with the other parts of the coast would be allowed to take place only from those harbours, and indeed by means of small ships which could easily be controlled. In those harbours the customs personnel placed at the Government’s disposal would levy in- and export-duties on the several products and pay them out to the entitled chiefs; but those moneys would be withheld from them as soon as it appeared that they did not keep to the agreement concluded with them.

Effect

Of the harbours along the East Coast of Atjeh only Idi was opened for general trade, the others being declared accessible only to the coasting trade, and then still only to vessels under 25 register tons; all products of the East Coast were shipped only from the harbour of Idi, and articles for the East Coast brought from the Straits Settlements passed via Idi to the several landscapes — “de reeds eerder genoemde scheepvaartregeling bracht vooral de haven van Idi tot grooter bloei” (“the already mentioned shipping regulation brought especially the harbour of Idi to greater bloom”). The regulation came into full effect for the West Coast in January 1895: Poelò Raja, the stapling-place of the northern part of the West Coast, “where several cultures began again to bud”, thereby increased in bloom, and the import of some articles, as petroleum, tobacco and dried fish, began to rise. The system was a deliberate successor to the clumsier “sluitingen” (closings) — such as that of the whole North Coast from August 1890, which had embittered the well-disposed traders — and, on the administrative side, to the open-closed oscillations of 1882–1883 and the wartime blockade. After 1896 the regulation was applied in all its consequences, as part of the active system of power-development under Vetter’s and Van Heutsz’s new course.

Sources

De Atjeh-Oorlog: Kort Overzicht van Oorsprong, Verloop en Gevolg, door J. A. Kruijt. ‘s-Gravenhage: Loman & Funke, 1896. Chapter VI (the Van der Heijden introduction of 1879), Chapter VII (Scherer’s doctrine and the 1881–1884 introduction), Chapter XII (the 1893–1894 definitive introduction), Chapter XIII (the prescription for the future). OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-101-De_Atjeh_oorlog_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 31–32, 34–39, 65–66, 78.

De onderwerping van Atjeh, door J. B. van Heutsz, Majoor der Infanterie, gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef; Batavia: G. Kolff en Co., 1893, esp. pp. 22, 26–28, 32, 34–35, 39–42, 73–77. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.

Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 61–63, 65, 71–72, 74, 98.

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