En tientallen millioenen zijner Inheemsche bevolking kunnen thans alleen nog maar door krachtig militair optreden gered worden! (“And tens of millions of her indigenous population can now only be saved by vigorous military action!”) was a political pamphlet by Dr. A.L.J. Sunier, first published in Wiering’s Weekrevue on 28 February 1946 and reissued as a printed reprint dated 8 March 1946 from The Hague.
Content and Argument
The pamphlet was a direct intervention in the political debate following the end of the Second World War and the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, in which the nationalist movement led by Sukarno had proclaimed Indonesian independence on 17 August 1945. Sunier argued that the Netherlands had both the moral authority and the practical obligation to restore Dutch colonial administration over the Dutch East Indies by force if necessary.
Sunier’s argument drew explicitly on historical precedent. He called for political leaders “als een Churchill, een Colijn, een Van Heutsz” — of the caliber of Winston Churchill, Colijn, and Van Heutsz. The invocation of Van Heutsz is the pamphlet’s most significant point of connection to Acehnese history.
The Van Heutsz Reference and Aceh
Sunier characterized Van Heutsz as “niet in de eerste plaats de militair van den Atjèhoorlog maar de pacificateur van Adjeh” — not primarily the military man of the Aceh War but the pacifier of Aceh. In Sunier’s framing, Van Heutsz was a leader who “had opened the way for millions of indigenous people to security of life and property, legal certainty, and a dignified existence.”
This characterization belongs to a longstanding tradition in Dutch colonial historiography that sought to reframe the Atjeh War — one of the longest and bloodiest colonial conflicts in Dutch imperial history, lasting from 1873 into the early twentieth century — as primarily a work of pacification and administration rather than military conquest and suppression. Sunier deployed this historiographical framing as an argument for renewed action in 1946: just as Van Heutsz had supposedly brought peace and order to Aceh, so Dutch military force could be justified as a similarly civilizing intervention across the broader archipelago.
Publication Details
The pamphlet was issued as a reprint (overdruk) from Wiering’s Weekrevue, a Dutch periodical. It was dated 28 February 1946 in its original appearance and 8 March 1946 in the reprint edition, and published in The Hague. The authorship line identifies the author as “Dr. A.L.J. Sunier.”
Historical Significance
As a document of Dutch colonial discourse in the immediate postwar period, the pamphlet illustrates how the memory of the Atjeh War and figures such as Van Heutsz continued to be mobilized in political argument well after the events themselves. It is a primary source for the historiography of Dutch colonial ideology and for understanding how the Atjeh War was retrospectively interpreted in metropolitan Dutch political culture.
See Also
- A.L.J. Sunier
- Johannes van Heutsz
- Atjeh War
- Hendrik Colijn
- Dutch colonial policy
- Wiering’s Weekrevue
Source
En tientallen millioenen zijner Inheemsche bevolking kunnen thans alleen nog maar door krachtig militair optreden gered worden!, by Dr. A.L.J. Sunier (Den Haag: overgedrukt uit Wiering’s Weekrevue, 8 Maart 1946).