The Sultanspartij — the Sultan’s party, also called the oorlogspartij or war party — was the Acehnese faction that maintained armed resistance to the Dutch, and whose bands are repeatedly named in P. H. R. Beuming’s Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh.
Beuming records that at the end of 1895 de benden van Panglima Polim en die der Sultanspartij, traden overal met driestheid op — the bands of Panglima Polim and those of the Sultan’s party acted everywhere with boldness — marking out the Dutch forward posts in particular, and that since orders had been given to operate as little as possible outside the bentings, the Acehnese marksmen had free play. It was in this period that the sharpshooter of Biloel harassed the sentries of that post.
He describes Toekoe Oemar before his defection as onze zoogenaamde bondgenoot tegen de fanatieke benden der Sultanspartij — our so-called ally against the fanatical bands of the Sultan’s party — the pretext under which Umar obtained from the Dutch the arms, ammunition and money enumerated in Beuming’s account of the defection.
In his introductory chapter Beuming traces the growth of the party’s religious character: after the withdrawal of the military administration in 1881 the war party acted everywhere with boldness again, and under Colonel H. D. Demmeni from 1883 the Dutch adopted a policy of combating it; the struggle on Groot-Atjeh then gradually acquired a more religious character, aangezien de priesterpartij de leiding van den Prang Sabil op zich genomen had — since the priestly party had taken over the leadership of the holy war.
See Also
- Panglima Polim
- Teuku Umar
- Prang Sabil
- Beuming’s account of the origin of the Atjeh-oorlog
- The sharpshooter of Biloel
- Demmeni
Source
Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, met speciaal vervaardigde kaart en toepasselijke photo’s, bewerkt door P. H. R. Beuming, oud-onderofficier van het Ned.-Indische Leger (Amsterdam, December 1911; uitgegeven ten bate van het te stichten Herstellingsoord voor Rijks-Ambtenaren). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br N 82-144
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Schetsen uit den strijd op Groot-Atjeh, met speciaal vervaardigde kaart en toepasselijke photo’s, bewerkt door P. H. R. Beuming, oud-onderofficier van het Ned.-Indische Leger (Amsterdam, December 1911). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.