Tante — “Aunt” — was the Oom’s wife, and the figure whose influence ran through the whole brigade, sectie and compagnie of the Marechaussee. The book pays the Tante eresaluut — the tribute to the many Tantes whose sterk gevoel voor traditie and for the honour of the bangsa shaped the moral economy of the tangsi: “Het gezag, dat een Oom behoort te hebben, zou hem nooit deelachtig worden, daar het met een Tante behoorde te worden gedeeld” — the authority an Oom ought to have would never be his, because it ought to be shared with a Tante.
The Tante eresaluut
“Naar Tante werd geluisterd en Tante past hierbij een eresaluut, dat naar de herinnering aan haar van harte gaat.” The book’s tribute to the Tante is explicit: the Tante was listened to, and the tribute to her memory is heartfelt. The Tante’s influence ran through the whole brigade, sectie and compagnie; her sterk gevoel voor traditie (strong feeling for tradition) and her care for the honour of the bangsa shaped the moral economy of the tangsi.
The Tante in the tangsi
The Tante’s domain was the vrouwenloods — the women’s shed at the rear of the tangsi, where the soldiers’ wives cooked, washed, gossiped, and tended children. The Tante demonstrated the menarie, quadrille and wals at feestjes, with a zakdoekje in hand; the younger people danced fox-trot and step. The Tante’s kabaya could be ripped in catfights; the one word — lonté — that, spoken between women, could not be undone, automatically made the speaker guilty of the zwaarste straf and brought the case before the Toean Kapitein.
The Tante and the patrouille
“Tante nog even een paar potjes met sambalans klaarmaken” — before the patrouille left, the Tante would make up a few pots of sambal for the first five patrol days. The sambalans were the soldier’s taste of the tangsi in the bivak; the sambal goreng — stukjes vlees, ongelooflijk scherp gekruid — was the Tante’s contribution to the patrouille’s food.
The Tante and the bangsa
The Tante’s care for the honour of the bangsa was the moral centre of the tangsi. A slight to the bangsa was deeply felt: “Belediging voor de bangsa Ambon!” was a war cry in protests. The Tante’s sterk gevoel voor traditie was the mechanism by which the bangsa’s honour was transmitted across generations of anak-kolong — the children of the tangsi who had their own adat and sfeer, distinct from kampong children.
The Tante and the Oom
“Het gezag, dat een Oom behoort te hebben, zou hem nooit deelachtig worden, daar het met een Tante behoorde te worden gedeeld.” The Oom’s authority was, in the book’s argument, inseparable from the Tante: the authority an Oom ought to have would never be his alone, because it ought to be shared with a Tante. The Tante was therefore not just the Oom’s wife but the other half of the Oom’s moral authority — the figure without whom the Oom could not be the Oom.
Significance
The Tante is significant in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. as the other half of the Oom’s moral authority. The book’s argument is that the tangsi culture that made the Oom was, equally, the culture that made the Tante: the two figures were inseparable, and the authority of the one was shared with the other. The Tante eresaluut is therefore the book’s tribute to the moral economy of the tangsi — the economy that the dissolution of the K.N.I.L. in 1949 would dissolve.
See Also
- Oom Ambon
- Tangsi
- Vrouwenloods
- Bangsa
- Anak-kolong
- Lonté
- Sambal
- wals
- Compagniesrapport
- Korps Marechaussee van Atjeh en Onderhorigen
- K.N.I.L.
Source
Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., by G. W. T. Dames, Maj. Inf. K.N.I.L. b.d. (‘s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1954), chapter “Tangsi en Tante.”