Bijdragen tot de kennis van het inlandsch bedrijf (1904) — Contributions to the Knowledge of the Native Enterprise — is the more modest, but at least as useful, alternative to the 33-volume report of the commissie tot onderzoek van de mindere welvaart that the Ministerie van Koloniën published in 1904 under the editorship of Van Deventer, Fock and Kielstra. The publication is, in Vermeulen’s retrospective, the type-specimen of the ethical-policy bescheiden — modest — documentation that, by avoiding the over-reaching of the 33-volume report, succeeded in furnishing the colonial administration with usable economic-historical knowledge.
The Van Deventer-Fock-Kielstra editorship
The bijdragen were edited by Van Deventer (v.d., liberal-democrat MP and ereschuld advocate), Fock (liberal, minister of Colonies 1908-1909, later governor-general 1921-1926) and Kielstra. The editorship is one of the cross-party collaborative acts of the ethical-policy period: Van Deventer the liberal-democrat, Fock the liberal, Kielstra the conservative.
The contrast with the Mindere Welvaart commissie
The contrast drawn by Fock — and preserved by Vermeulen — is between the 33-volume report of the commissie tot onderzoek van de mindere welvaart (“naar het meer dan volmaakte gestreefd” — having aspired to more than perfection) and the more modest bijdragen of 1904 (“maar minstens zo nuttig” — but at least as useful). The contrast is, in the Vermeulen retrospective, the type-specimen of the ethical-policy preference for workable over perfect knowledge.
Significance for Atjeh
The bijdragen of 1904 bear on Atjeh because the Atjeh-oorlog ([[1873-1904)|Atjeh-oorlog]] was, in the Vermeulen retrospective, one of the two principal causes of the Indies poverty that the bijdragen and the mindere welvaart commissie were meant to investigate. The bijdragen accordingly furnished the ethical-policy state — and the post-pacificatie administration of Atjeh — with the economic-historical frame within which the costs of the war and the subsequent pacificatie were to be understood.
See Also
- Commissie tot onderzoek van de mindere welvaart (1902)
- Ministerie van Koloniën
- Ethische Politiek
- C. Th. van Deventer
- D. Fock
- Kielstra
- Atjeh-oorlog (1873-1904)
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- 1902
- 1904
- 1914
Source
Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland van 1849 tot 1901, by Mr W. J. van Welderen baron Rengers, 4th rev. ed., Vol. IV: Oost-Indië 1891-1918 by Dr W. H. Vermeulen (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955), p. 285.