Het Atjeh-vraagstuk (The Atjeh Question) was the series of articles published by W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer in the Militaire Spectator of 1886, in which the two veterans of the 1879 campaigns discussed at length the strategic and political management of the Atjeh-oorlog. Three years before their book Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis appeared, the articles carried the argument that the book’s final chapter invokes as established: that the removal of Generaal K. van der Heijden from his high position at Atjeh, and the subsequent splitting of military and civil authority in the barely subdued country, dismantled piece by piece the structure raised with so much toil, blood and treasure.
Citations in the book of 1889
The authors refer to the series twice. In the celebrated panorama passage on the berg-plateau of 14 August 1879, at the moment the column first overlooked the valley of Groot-Atjeh and the road to Selimoen, the footnote directs the reader: “Zie onze artikelen in de Militaire Spectator 1886, Het Atjeh vraagstuk.” And in the closing chapter, recording the loss of the fruits of years of struggle, streams of blood and millions of treasure after Van der Heijden’s dismissal, they write: “we vermelden ‘t o. a. reeds uitvoerig in ons meer genoemd werk: ‘het Atjeh-vraagstuk.’” In their bibliography the series thus functioned as the fuller statement of the polemic of which the book’s epilogue — the lament over the “kunstmatig kale, vlakke terreinstrook van een geweerschotsbreedte, in de lage ongezonde delta te midden der lagunes” within which the troops were thereafter confined — is the condensed resume. The argument anticipates by seven years the pamphlet literature of 1893 — W. A. Coblijn’s Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen and Van Heutsz’s De onderwerping van Atjeh — in which the same indictment was renewed.
See Also
- W. Cool
- G. B. Hooijer
- Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (Cool & Hooijer, 1889)
- General van der Heijden
- De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893)
- Aceh War
- 1886
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), p. 44 footnote 1 and p. 80. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.