Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (An Appeal to the Dutch People concerning the Aceh Question) was a pamphlet published at Amsterdam by J. H. de Bussy in 1886, containing the lecture given by the pensioned lieutenant-colonel J. J. W. E. Verstege on 26 January 1886 at a public meeting of the Amsterdam voters’ association Kiesvereeniging Burgerpligt, together with a foreword by the association’s president, Mr. R. van de Werk, four appendices, and a folding map of Groot-Atjeh showing the Dutch positions at the end of April 1874, at the end of April 1875, and on 1 March 1885. The pamphlet is one of the most detailed military-political indictments of the Dutch concentration policy in Atjeh written in the first year of that policy’s operation.
Form and contents
The printed brochure ran to about 135 pages. It carried mottoes from Camille Rousset (Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 May 1885) — “Occupation restreinte, ce système bâtard que dément l’histoire coloniale de tous les temps et de tous les peuples” (“Restricted occupation, that bastard system contradicted by the colonial history of all times and all peoples”) — and from Lord Lytton’s Glenaveril, on the warning cry of “check” that nations too often hear too late. After the president’s opening speech the pamphlet contained the Inleiding (introduction) and four numbered parts, followed by a Conclusie, the closing appeal, and four appendices:
- Part I argued that, in connection with the character of the Acehnese people, the concentration could not be permanently tenable for the Dutch.
- Part II argued that the concentration was in complete conflict with the annexation policy irrevocably proclaimed in 1874, and could therefore never lead to the object of the war.
- Part III argued that on military grounds — including the experience gained at Aceh at the end of April 1874 and April 1875 — the concentration had to be condemned as untenable in the long run.
- Part IV showed that the concentration was the crowning of the statecraft applied to Atjeh since 11 March 1881: its precursors, its execution, and its results.
The Conclusie demanded a commissoriale enquête (commission of inquiry) composed of men of independent character, to be sent to Atjeh with free access to the archives at home and in the Indies, empowered to hear every person under oath, and charged to answer seven questions: the actual state of Groot-Atjeh and the coast states; whether the concentrated position was durably tenable and could bring the Dutch to the end of the war; what must be done for Atjeh if it could not; the state of the Netherlands Indies Army; whether that army could defend the colonial interests; what must be done for the army; and what the Atjeh War had cost since 1873 in lives and money. Appendix D supplied extensive statistical material on the neglect of the Indies army (see below), and the lecture closed with an appeal to the Dutch people, quoting general Knoop’s words that the Atjeh war was a volksramp (a national disaster).
The opening speech of the president of Burgerpligt
Mr. R. van de Werk, president of Kiesvereeniging Burgerpligt, opened the meeting with a few words explaining that the choice of subject implied neither approval nor disapproval by the board of the Atjeh policy followed in earlier years or at that moment, and no desire to declare for or against the concentration system; the board had acted only out of the conviction that competent experts had to enlighten and advise. He noted that the question, of so great financial and general political importance for the overseas possessions and the mother country, had hitherto been treated almost exclusively as belonging to the domain of military and, to some extent, of Indian associations and journals, and that the apathy with which the Dutch people had watched a thirteen-year war — which had already cost so many lives and millions upon millions of money — could be explained by the purely military side of the matter and by the public’s ignorance of Indian conditions. The unusually large attendance, he thought, proved that many shared the board’s view.
Verstege’s thesis and method
Verstege declared his principal aim to be merely to awaken the interest of the thinking part of the Dutch people for the “endless Atjeh drama”, which had already cost thousands of lives and, approximately, not less than two to three hundred million guilders, and which had cast a dark shadow on the old war fame and national honour of the Netherlands. The lecture rested on four kinds of evidence: first, the known character of the Acehnese people, drawn from old travellers such as Admiral de Beaulieu, from Kolonel Gerlach’s 1878 book, from a manuscript lent to him by the then governor of Sumatra’s Westkust, the former contrôleur Kroesen who had known Atjeh well during the second expedition; secondly, the documentary record of the second expedition and the annexation of 1874, drawn from the proclamations, letters and private journal of general Van Swieten as published in the general’s own De Waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh and partly revealed after the opening of the secret deliberations of 16–18 April 1874; thirdly, the positions held by the Dutch troops at the end of April 1874 and of April 1875, in relation to the new position of 1 March 1885; and fourthly, the course of statecraft since 11 March 1881 and the events of the execution of the concentration, drawn from the Koloniale Verslagen (Colonial Reports) of 1885, parliamentary proceedings, and the eyewitness reports of men on the spot.
The four appendices
Bijlage A recorded the words of majoor Perelaer, who praised his comrade Verstege and supplied the very lacuna he had noticed: a series of jottings — expressly not claiming completeness — on the losses suffered inside the concentration line between February and November 1885, showing that within the line there was no safety for goods, troops, or even the immediate neighbourhood of Kota Radja (see Guerilla raids inside the concentration line (1885)).
Bijlage B recorded the words of C. Bosscher, oud-directeur (former director) of the Binnenlandsch Bestuur, who saw in the Atjeh situation the beginning of a general collapse of Dutch prestige in the Archipelago, and demanded above all the reorganisation of the army.
Bijlage C recorded Verstege’s reply to both speakers, in which he declared that reorganisation of the Indies army stood, in his view, above all possible inquiries; that he was a warm supporter of general conscription though a father of three near-grown sons; that the system of paid substitutes was a most unfavourable factor for recruiting Netherlanders for the colonial army; and that the names of all persons whose conduct he had criticised, as well as of known or presumed opponents, had been given by him to the board of Burgerpligt with the proposal to send them all invitation cards, so that they could refute him — the chairman could confirm that Mr. Fransen van de Putte had received such an invitation.
Bijlage D gave Verstege’s data for judging the neglect of the military force in the Netherlands Indies: the secret-committee revelations of April 1874 on the state of the fleet and army in 1873; the material condition of the first expedition (only two of three battalions armed with the Beaumont rifle, the barisan battalion of Madura counted as a hindrance rather than a reinforcement, too-heavy 8 cm guns, a miner company short of establishment); the testimony of captain G. C. E. van Daalen, former head of the cabinet of the army commander, general Kroesen, that in 1869, 1870 and 1871 repeated warnings about the deficiency of personnel and matériel had been refused or delayed; the strength and loss figures of the second expedition; the sickness statistics of 1874 and 1875; the army formations of 1871–1885; the hospital return of the army; and an overview of the losses of the army in 1875–1884 with separate figures for the government of Atjeh.
Verstege’s correction by former minister de Brauw
The pamphlet ends its section on the parliamentary statement of 16 November 1882 with a long note acknowledging that Verstege’s citation of minister de Brauw — “that we were lord and master on Sumatra” — was drawn from the newspaper Het Dagblad van Zuid-Holland en ‘s Gravenhage of 17 November 1882, and that the former minister, in a letter of 27 January 1886, objected that he had said about the opposite, explaining that by the “undivided sovereignty over Sumatra” he had meant nothing more than that the treaty with England of 2 November 1871 gave the Netherlands the right to rule over the whole of Sumatra including Atjeh, to the exclusion of every other European nation. Verstege, while conceding the rectification, reproduced the surrounding 1882 debate to justify his original reading and printed de Brauw’s own words as a clue to the interpretation.
See Also
- J. J. W. E. Verstege
- Kiesvereeniging Burgerpligt
- R. van de Werk
- M. T. H. Perelaer
- C. Bosscher
- Concentratie-stelsel (1884-1896)
- Het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Cool and Hooijer, Militaire Spectator 1886)
- Guerilla raids inside the concentration line (1885)
- Verstege’s folding map of Groot-Atjeh (1886)
- 1886
Source
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk. Voordracht in “Burgerpligt” te Amsterdam, door J. J. W. E. Verstege, gepens. Luit.-Kolonel (met een uitslaande kaart van Groot-Atjeh) (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), 135 pp. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.