Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876 — full title: Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876. De offensieve handelingen der guerilla. Uit officiëele bescheiden samengesteld en met eene kaart, schetsen en plans toegelicht (Aceh from 26 December 1875 to 4 September 1876: The offensive operations of the guerilla, compiled from official documents and explained with a map, sketches and plans) — was an 1883 Dutch military history of the Aceh War written by H. F. Meijer, Kolonel (Colonel) of the General Staff of the Netherlands Indies Army (Indische leger). It was printed by P. B. Nieuwenhuijs of Breda for the Royal Institute for the Tropics (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen) and is one of the most detailed primary accounts ever published of the guerilla phase of the war in Groot-Atjeh.
Publication and purpose
Meijer wrote the book with the permission of the Commander of the Army and chief of the Department of War (Commandant van het Leger en Chef van het departement van Oorlog) in the Netherlands Indies. He used the official reports that the military commander and the various column, corps, company, detachment and patrol commanders in Atjeh had sent to their superiors, together with the Colonial Reports of 1875, 1876 and 1877. In the foreword (Voorbericht) he stated that he had recorded only facts as the commanders themselves had reported them, expressly avoiding the polemics that had followed Jan van Swieten’s campaign in the pamphlet war of 1874–1876.
Meijer had himself served in Atjeh as chef van den staf (chief of the staff) of the troops in Atjeh and had personally commanded the column that stormed the enemy fortification at Lambaroe on 7 March 1876. The book is therefore partly an eyewitness work.
How Meijer defined his subject
Meijer deliberately limited himself to the offensieve handelingen des vijands (the offensive operations of the enemy) — that is, to the attacks, ambushes, overvallingen (surprises), night assaults and raids which the Acehnese guerilla carried out against the Dutch posts, patrols and convoys. The Dutch offensive operations of the same period, he announced, deserved a separate work, so that both the tactics of General Pel and the character of the enemy could be judged fairly.
The period the book covers begins on 26 December 1875, when Pel launched his great offensive (the seventy-day campaign, zeventig-daagsche veldtocht), and ends on 4 September 1876, when part of the troops in Atjeh under General Wiggers van Kerchem began their march to the XXVI Moekims to complete Pel’s plan of closing the XXII and XXVI Moekims off from the sea.
Contents of the book
Apart from the foreword and an introduction on the political situation and the organisation of the armed forces in Atjeh and dependencies, the book contains eight chapters:
- Chapter I — a short description of the terrain held by the Dutch posts in Atjeh: the south-east line (Biloel, Atoë, Atoë Noord, Kajoe-Lē, Lambaroe, Mesigit Pagar-Ajer, Pagar-Ajer), the second line (Djempit, Ketapan Doewa, Mibouw Zuid, Mibouw Oost, Lo-ong, Longbatah-Mesigit), the western posts (Boekit Daroe, Boekit Terin, Pakan Badak, Boekit Seboen, Lampagar, Sinangri, Lampasei, Blang-Oë) and the northern posts (Koewala Gigiëng, Kota-Pohama, Moesapi, Kota-Radja Bedil, Tibang, Lamara Northeast and Southeast, Langkroek, Lamprit, Kota Alam, Oleh Karang, Pango).
- Chapter II — the general form and arrangement of the Dutch fortifications (bentings).
- Chapter III — the armament and strength of the post garrisons as at the end of March 1876.
- Chapter IV — the purpose of the various posts, the territory entrusted to each post commander, and the general instructions.
- Chapter V — the means of communication between the posts and with the headquarters at Kota Radja.
- Chapter VI — the offensive operations of the enemy between 26 December 1875 and 9 March 1876: the night attack on Lemboeq N.O., the grass-fire attack on Lamprit, the destruction of Captain Van Swieten’s detachment, the ambush near Lamkoenjit, the ambush of Buijs’ detachment, the journey of the two Bugis couriers and the storming of Lambaroe.
- Chapter VII — the offensive operations of the enemy between 9 March and 4 September 1876: the ambush near Atoë, the night attack on Lampagar, the founding of Biloel Zuid, the loss and recapture of the west hill-post, the ambushes of 14 July, 17 July, 28 July and 28 August 1876, and the night ambush in the Gli Taroem pass.
- Chapter VIII — the events in Pidir and Gigiëng between 26 December 1875 and September 1876: the occupation of Pidir and the breach with Gigiëng.
Maps and sketches
The book was illustrated with ten maps, sketches and plans, including a map of the theatre of war in Groot-Atjeh in 1876 (scale 1:40,000) with the march routes of the troops, plans of the battlefield of Lambaroe and of the enemy fortification there, a sketch of the camp at Lampagar in the night of 2–3 May 1876, sketches of Biloel Zuid, of the terrain between Kroeëng Raba and Lepong, of the battlefields of 17 July and 28 July 1876, of the pass of Gli Taroem in the night of 8-9 August 1876, and of the Dutch establishment at Pidir.
Meijer’s conclusions
Meijer held that the enemy’s successes — the surprise attacks, ambushes and assaults — were mostly caused by gross carelessness, lack of watchfulness and neglect of the first principles of field security on the Dutch side, though he added that in 1876 a large part of the Dutch troops consisted of young soldiers whose training left much to be desired. The enemy, he wrote, showed with what skill and energy a guerilla war could be sustained against a properly organised European army, and the book was intended as a warning and an instruction for the Indies army.
Significance
The book is one of the fundamental printed sources for the history of the Aceh War between the Second Aceh Expedition and the later concentration system. Because Meijer reproduced the official field reports almost unchanged, the work preserves the names of hundreds of officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers — Dutch, Ambonese, Madurese, Javanese, African and Bugis — as well as the names of Acehnese chiefs, kampongs and strongholds, at a level of detail unmatched by any later account.
See Also
- Kolonel Meijer
- Guerilla warfare in Groot-Atjeh
- Storming of Lambaroe (7 March 1876)
- Night attack on Lampagar (2-3 May 1876)
- Gli Taroem night ambush (8-9 August 1876)
- Occupation of Pidir (31 May - 4 June 1876)
- Aceh War
- 1876
Source
Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876. De offensieve handelingen der guerilla, uit officiëele bescheiden samengesteld en met eene kaart, schetsen en plans toegelicht, door H. F. Meijer, Kolonel van den Generalen Staf bij het Indische leger. Breda: P. B. Nieuwenhuijs, voor het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, 1883. 282 pp. with 10 maps, sketches and plans. OCR file: 20260801_230453_DLP-149-Atjeh_van_26_December_1875_tot_4_September_1876_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.