The Nota over de betrekkingen — full title Nota over de betrekkingen tusschen Nederland en Atjèh van 1824 tot 1873 — is the official Dutch government memorandum on the relations between the Netherlands and Atjèh from 1824 to 1873, prepared for the States-General in 1873 and published in the Officieele bescheiden betreffende het ontstaan van den oorlog tegen Atjèh in 1873 (Regeeringsuitgave, 1881). It is, in Kreemer’s history, the principal official source for the causes of the Atjèh-oorlog, and is cited throughout his account of the 1824–1873 period.
Kreemer’s use of the Nota
Kreemer refers to the Nota repeatedly in his account of the pre-war period, citing it by page for the principal incidents of the half-century of Dutch–Atjèhnese relations: the 1831 plundering of an American ship at Koeala Batèë (Nota p. 10); the 1836 Dolphijn affair (Nota p. 13); the 1844 plundering of British vessels (Nota p. 14); the 1851–1852 plunderings (Nota p. 14); the 1855 De Haai visit (Nota p. 16); the 1857 treaty (Nota p. 19); the 1860 seizure of Dutch ships (Nota p. 21); the 1868 affairs (Nota p. 27–28); and the 1872–1873 pre-war diplomacy (Nota p. 33, 36).
The companion volume
The Nota was published as part of the Officieele bescheiden betreffende het ontstaan van den oorlog tegen Atjèh in 1873 — a Regeeringsuitgave (government publication) of 1881 — which collected the official correspondence and documents relating to the outbreak of the war. Kreemer cites this volume, alongside De Klerck’s De Atjèh-oorlog dl. I (1912) and Kielstra’s Beschrijving van den Atjèh-oorlog dl. I (1883), as the principal authority for the pre-war period.
Significance
The Nota is, in Kreemer’s narrative, the official Dutch account of the breakdown of the 1824 treaty framework — the documentary record on which the Dutch government’s decision to declare war on 26 March 1873 was based. Its publication in 1881 — eight years after the war’s outbreak — was itself a political act, intended to establish before the States-General and the public that the war had been forced upon the Netherlands by the progressive failure of the treaty framework and by the Sultan’s approaches to foreign powers.
See Also
- Acheh
- Causes of the Atjèh-oorlog (Kreemer’s account)
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824
- Declaration of war on Atjèh (26 March 1873)
- Aceh War
- E. S. de Klerck
- E. B. Kielstra
- 1873
- 1881
Source
Atjèh. Algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en onderhoorigheden, door J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut. Eerste Deel. Leiden: N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill, 1922. Hoofdstuk I, B (“Periode 1824—1873. Oorzaken van den Atjèh-oorlog”), passim, noten.
Officieele bescheiden betreffende het ontstaan van den oorlog tegen Atjèh in 1873. Regeeringsuitgave, 1881. The Nota appears at p. 10 ff. of that volume.