The annexation proclamation of Atjeh was the official announcement by which the Indische regeering, in early February 1874, declared that it would assume the opperbestuur over the rijk of Atjeh following the death of the young sultan and the fall of the Kraton on 24 January 1874. The proclamation was issued by telegraphic correspondence between generaal van Swieten in Atjeh and the minister of Koloniën in The Hague in the first days of February 1874; simultaneously a blijvende vestiging was decided. Borel treats the proclamation as a fateful and somewhat ambiguous act — “of men al dadelijk eene volkomen annexatie op het oog had, moet betwijfeld worden” — that committed the Dutch to an inland vestiging when a coastal point and a blockade would have been cheaper.
The Death of the Sultan
The immediate occasion of the annexation proclamation was the death of the young Sultan of Atjeh in early February 1874. The sultan — elsewhere identified as Alauddin Mahmud Syah II — had governed a rijk that Borel describes as “een rijk met een roemrijke geschiedenis dat eeuwen lang onafhankelijk geweest was.” His death was, Borel notes, politically advantageous to the Dutch: “er bestond nu geen gevestigd bestuur meer” — no rijksgroot had enough gezag to be a negotiating partner. The Indische regeering refused to allow a new sultan to be installed. The Dutch government’s refusal to recognise a successor had the immediate political consequence of removing the channel through which a negotiated settlement might have been reached; it also supplied the legal pretext — the absence of a recognised sovereign — for the annexation proclamation that followed.
The Telegraphic Decision
The decision to annex Atjeh and to establish a blijvende vestiging was taken by telegraph in the first days of February 1874 between van Swieten at K. Radja and the minister of Koloniën in The Hague. The telegraphic correspondence — one of the documents Borel cites — was the legal basis on which the Indische regeering assumed the opperbestuur over the rijk. The proclamation itself announced that the Dutch government would henceforth exercise sovereign authority over Atjeh, that the Sultan’s governmental apparatus would be replaced by a Dutch civiel bestuur, and that the Kraton and the surrounding territory would become the Dutch hoofdplaats of K. Radja. The blijvende vestiging — the decision to maintain a permanent garrison at K. Radja rather than withdraw after a punitive expedition — was the strategic corollary. Borel notes that whether the Dutch had from the first “eene volkomen annexatie op het oog had” — that is, whether they intended full annexation or merely a temporary occupation — “moet betwijfeld worden.” The ambiguity of the original intention would, in his account, haunt the conduct of the war: the Dutch were committed to an inland vestiging without having committed to the offensive operations necessary to make that vestiging secure.
The Strategic Consequence
The annexation proclamation had, in Borel’s judgement, a fateful strategic consequence. By committing the Dutch to a blijvende vestiging at the Kraton, the proclamation transformed the campaign from a punitive expedition — which might have been terminated by withdrawal after the fall of the Kraton — into a permanent occupation of inland territory. Borel calls the occupation of the Kraton a “grote strategische fout” — the fount of all the subsequent errors that he indicts: the premature departure of the hoofdmacht, the afwachtende houding (wait-and-see posture), the crisis of May–June 1874, the Longbatta disaster and the cholera catastrophe of February 1875. A coastal point — Oeleh Leh or Marassa — combined with a blockade, would, Borel argued, have achieved the same end at a fraction of the cost. The annexation proclamation thus stands, in Borel’s account, as the legal and strategic hinge of the Atjeh-oorlog: the moment at which a limited punitive expedition became a permanent colonial war.
Verstege’s documentary analysis (1886)
Verstege gives the most exact printed collation of the annexation series (1886, pp. 34-36): the proclamation “to the heads in the realm Atjeh and dependencies” of 28 January 1874 — “that the Atjehers, now that they are conquered, are bound to honour the conqueror and to follow his commands; that we desire that they lay down their arms, level the fortifications around the kampongs…”; the proclamation of 31 January 1874 — “that the people of Groot Atjeh, after a brave defence and a tenacious struggle, has had to yield to the Dutch weapons; that the people is conquered, the Kraton conquered, the Sultan dead, and many heads have perished in the struggle; that henceforth no other flag but the Dutch and that of befriended powers will be acknowledged, and neither Atjehnese nor own flags may be borne; that all states which place themselves under the new order of things may count on the protection of the N. I. government; but that those who within a reasonable time shall not have offered their submission will be regarded as hostile, and expose themselves and their subjects to the destruction of their kampongs and other hostile acts”; the letter of 2 February 1874 to the heads and foremost hoeloebalangs of the three Sagies (“I have not hidden from the Sultan that my means of conquering in war were so good and powerful, that there was for the Atjehers no chance to keep up the resistance. Do the heads of the Sagies think that they will each separately be able to withstand me, when united they could not prevent the conquest of the Kraton? Do they mean to force me to lay the land waste and to make their innocent wives and children unhappy?”); the letter of 8 February 1874 to Imam Longbattah and Toekoe Kadli — “the Kraton will be arranged as a kota for the Dutch, under whose administration safety and protection will be given to all who settle in its neighbourhood”; “at Atjeh a great trading city will be founded”; and the proclamation of 12 February 1874 to the population of the three Sagies, declaring that the heads kept aloof and had not brought the usual tokens of homage, and: 1° that the writer had taken upon himself the government of the three Sagies; 2° that the heads who, before the end of the month, gave no tokens of submission would be declared deprived of their dignity; 3° that the population in that case would be allowed to elect other heads in place of the former, who would be protected in their maintenance; 4° that in the adat (customs of the land) no change would be made, everything remaining as before, with this difference: “dat thans het Nederlandsch Gouvernement Souverein is in plaats van den Sultan” (“that now the Dutch Government is Sovereign in the place of the Sultan”). On these documents Verstege put to every impartial Dutchman in 1886 the question of their single possible sense: since that date the Dutch had become Sovereign over the Atjehnese people, with all the obligations and responsibilities attached to that rule; by that annexation, by that most aggressive political deed, and by other proclamations and letters of general van Swieten, they were forced to the conquest of the land and the actual submission of the people — “and it was this act that minister Fransen van de Putte stamped with his approval” (see also C. van Nispen van Sevenaar: “besloten waren te houden, wat wij éénmaal aan Atjeh hadden ontnomen” — “we were resolved to hold what we had once taken from Atjeh”, and the impossibilities that annexation created in 1875 and 1884).
See Also
- Death of the Sultan of Atjeh and annexation proclamation (1874)
- Fall of the Kraton (24 January 1874)
- Jan van Swieten
- Van Swieten’s afscheidsrede (1874)
- Kraton (institution)
- Sultan of Atjeh (d. 1874)
- Kota Radja
- Afwachtende houding
- 1874
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 38, 48, 54, 58, 89–95.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 34-36, 32, 43-44. OCR: DLP-158.