De enquête over den mislukten tocht naar Atjeh was the 1873 pamphlet in which H. B. van Daalen of the Java-Bode attacked the Dutch handling of the First Aceh Expedition (1873), criticized the inquiry that followed the defeat, and defended the field commanders against what he saw as an attempt by the colonial government to shift blame downward. Reprinted from two Java-Bode articles, the pamphlet belongs to the first great public argument of the Aceh War.
The work is important because it did not only describe the lost expedition. It also attacked the political conduct of Governor-General Loudon, questioned the role of I. D. Fransen van de Putte, and challenged the anonymous defense published as Bemoediging.
Publication and setting
The title page named Van Daalen as editor of the Java-Bode. That mattered because it showed that the text came out of the colonial press, not from the official military record. The pamphlet appeared when the Dutch defeat in Atjeh was still fresh and public argument had already begun over who should carry the blame.
Van Daalen opened by recalling the judgement that the war with Atjeh was “het begin van het einde” — the beginning of the end. He said he had shared that fear from the start. In his view, the defeat had exposed the emptiness of the claim that the expedition had added a glorious page to Dutch policy in the Indies.
Criticism of the war itself
Van Daalen argued that the disaster should not be treated as a simple accident. If the ruler of Atjeh had submitted at once, he wrote, the same men who were now silent would have praised the expedition as a masterpiece of bold policy. Because the campaign failed, they now tried to move responsibility away from the highest political authorities.
One of the sharpest parts of the pamphlet was its language about the Acehnese side. Van Daalen wrote as though fortune had chosen to honour the right of the kingdom of Atjeh, the vigilance of its ruler, and the courage of its people. That made the pamphlet unusual in Dutch colonial print, because it treated Acehnese resistance not only as stubborn but as morally serious.
Attack on Bemoediging
A large part of the pamphlet was directed against Bemoediging, which Van Daalen saw as an almost official defense of Loudon. He described its author as a military insider who seemed to know confidential letters, secret debates, and private opinions inside government. He also argued that the style and argument of the piece closely matched Loudon’s own day order to the troops in May 1873.
For Van Daalen, the point was clear: the anonymous article tried to protect the Governor-General by shifting blame to the commissioner and the commanders in the field.
The inquiry after the retreat
The second half of the pamphlet described what happened after the expedition returned to Batavia. Van Daalen stated that senior officers were quietly given written questions dated 6 May 1873. In his reading, these questions were meant either to prove that the retreat had been unavoidable or to prepare the way for blame against the commanders.
When this questioning did not settle the matter, a formal Commission of Inquiry into the First Aceh Expedition was appointed. Van Daalen objected both to the way it was formed and to the way it worked. Its president was a civilian, and other members were not, in his view, of unquestioned authority over the officers whose conduct was being judged. He also drew attention to the withdrawal of Colonel Kroesen from the commission after a few sittings, which made the whole process look even more troubling.
Defense of the commanders
Van Daalen did not claim that military mistakes were impossible. His argument was that the government had no right to proceed by secret accusation, by questioning subordinates behind the backs of their chiefs, and by rushing into a formal inquiry before hearing the commanders properly. He wanted clear charges, open procedure, and respect for military hierarchy.
Significance
De enquête over den mislukten tocht naar Atjeh is one of the key printed documents from the first year of the Aceh War. It turned the defeat of 1873 into a debate about justice, responsibility, and colonial government. It also preserved one of the earliest public arguments that the problem lay not only in battlefield decisions, but in the haste and overconfidence with which the war had been begun.
See Also
- H. B. van Daalen
- Bemoediging
- Commission of Inquiry into the First Aceh Expedition
- First Aceh Expedition (1873)
- James Loudon
- I. D. Fransen van de Putte
- Raad van Nederlandsch-Indië
- De Java Bode
- 1873
Source
De enquête over den mislukten tocht naar Atjeh, door H. B. van Daalen, redacteur van den Java-Bode. Twee artikelen, overgedrukt uit de nos. 131 en 132 van den Java-Bode (Batavia: H. M. van Dorp & Co.; ‘s-Gravenhage: De Erven Thierry & Mensing; C. van Doorn & Zoon, 1873), pp. 3–23.