Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (A Beautiful Page from Atjeh’s History) was a Dutch military campaign history written by two officers of the Netherlands East Indies Army — W. Cool, Kapitein der Genie, and G. B. Hooijer, Kapitein der Infanterie O.I., Ridder der Militaire Willems-Orde 4de klasse — with a foreword by Generaal K. van der Heijden, and published by Martinus Nijhoff at ‘s-Gravenhage in 1889, accompanied by the chromolithographed sketch map of the upper basin of the Atjeh river. The book narrates, as a continuous eyewitness account compiled from a field diary kept during the march, the expedition of the column under Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach from its embarkation at Oleh-leh on 26 July 1879 through the landing at Lampanas, the occupation of the valley of Lamtoba, the punitive expedition against Kepaja Doewa, the march to Selimoen of 13 August–15 August 1879, the return and the ten days’ quarantine at Lampanas, to the final re-embarkation of 2–4 September 1879.
Character and method of the work
The authors state that the narrative was composed from the diary kept during the tocht itself — “Is uit dit gedurende den tocht nangehouden dagboek, dat onze beschrijving is opgeteekend” — the daily journal from which the description was recorded. They consciously addressed themselves to the non-military reader (niet-militaire lezers), explaining in footnotes such technicalities as the order of march of a column in mountain terrain, the strength of an advance guard, or the difference between European and Indies marching speeds — noting that the ten palen (roughly three hours) covered on the approach to Lamtoba was “eene geheele andere marschsnelheid dus als waarop in de Europeesche oorlogen gerekend wordt” — a wholly different marching speed from that reckoned in European wars.
The narrative is deliberately double-sided. Alongside the triumph — the moment at Selimoen when the column heard the Wilhelmus van Nassauwen played by the band of Majoor Lubeck’s column already in occupation — the authors set the cost: the sickness statistics by which, of 2,234 men, 769 were dead, evacuated or unfit for service after one month, and the description of the fever refugees on the pier of Oleh-leh where “niemand en niets” welcomed the returning victors. The book closes with an appeal for public support of the Indisch leger: “Stel dat leger in staat zijn schoone en eervolle, maar zware taak te volbrengen” — enable that army to accomplish its beautiful and honourable, but heavy task — the protection of the Indies territory with its thirty million souls.
The foreword by Van der Heijden
The volume opens with a dedicatory letter from Generaal K. van der Heijden, dated Bronbeek, June 1889, commending the work as recalling “eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis,” praising its geographical data on the interior of Groot-Atjeh “die men elders te vergeefs zoekt,” and correcting one identification: the Toekoe Moeda Daud named in the book, head of Selimoen, “een der pretendenten voor den Sultanstroon,” who submitted to him on 20 August 1879, was not the then-current Sultan-pretendant, whose coming had been announced by Toekoe Ajer-Alang on the same date but who had excused himself on account of the approaching poeasa (the fasting month).
Sources and antecedents
The book’s strategic criticism — of the removal of Van der Heijden, the splitting of military and civil authority under his civil successor, and the loss of “de vrucht van jaren strijds en stroomen bloeds en millioenen schats” — the authors declare to have been treated more fully in their earlier articles, het Atjeh-vraagstuk in the Militaire Spectator of 1886. A footnote cites, for a kindred observation on bivouac morale in rain, a description in the Indisch Militair Tijdschrift of 1888 of the 1865 expedition on the Oostkust of Sumatra against Siak led by Majoor Vink.
The surviving copy consulted for the Aceh Wiki History bears the stamps of the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam, and shelf-marks of the Institute’s Tropen-bibliotheek; the printer’s imprint is the Fluid-Hollandsche Boek- en Handelsdrukkerij.
Significance
The book is the principal eyewitness narrative of the closing operations of the first phase of the Atjeh-oorlog — the operations that Generaal van der Heijden’s day-order of 5 September 1879 declared to have brought “geheel Groot-Atjeh ten onder gebragt.” Together with G. B. Hooijer’s later De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897), it fixes this author as the war’s most important personal chronicler of the years 1879 and 1893–1896. Its detailed topographical account of the upper Atjeh-rivier valley — worked into the accompanying schetskaart — answered, in Van der Heijden’s judgement, the hitherto unsolved question of where and how the Atjeh river valley ends.
See Also
- W. Cool
- G. B. Hooijer
- Voorwoord of Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (Van der Heijden, June 1889)
- Schetskaart van het boven-stroomgebied der Atjeh-rivier (1889)
- Het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Cool & Hooijer, Militaire Spectator 1886)
- Selimoen Expedition (August 1879)
- Lamtoba column (1879)
- Lamtoba
- Lampanas
- Selimoen
- De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (Hooijer, 1897)
- 1879
- Aceh War
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool, Kapitein der Genie, en G. B. Hooijer, Kapitein der Infanterie O.I., Ridder der Militaire Willems-Orde 4de klasse, met een voorwoord van Generaal K. van der Heijden, met eene schetskaart in chromolithographie (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt, title page, printer’s imprint, pp. 1, 18-19, 23, 43, 51, 77-82.