The Nota over de betrekkingen van Nederland tot het Rijk van Atjeh sedert 1824 (Note on the relations of the Netherlands with the Kingdom of Atjeh since 1824) was the official Dutch government memorandum on Netherlands–Acehnese relations, printed as document no. 141 of the Tweede Kamer session of 1872–1873 and afterwards appended to the collection of official papers on the origin of the war with Atjeh published by the government at the Landsdrukkerij in 1881. It was the document to which the Minister of Colonies J. T. Cremer appealed in the Atjeh debate of 16 November 1897 as the authoritative refutation of the socialist thesis that Atjeh had been innocent of provocation.
Content and use in the 1897 debate
Cremer told the chamber that the Nota would show to those who took an interest in the matter — naming pointedly “de afgevaardigden uit Enschedé en Tietjerksteradeel,” that is H. van Kol and Troelstra — that “Atjeh lang niet zoo onschuldig was, als zij het willen doen voorkomen” (Atjeh was by no means as innocent as they wish to make it appear).
The argumentative core of Cremer’s use of the Nota was the declaration annexed to the Treaty of London of 1824, which he read into the record in the original French: “que cet état (d’Atchin) sans rien perdre de son indépendance offre au navigateur et au commerçant cette constante sécurité que semble ne pouvoir y être établie que par l’exercice modéré d’une influence européenne” — that this state, without losing anything of its independence, should offer to the navigator and the merchant that constant security which appeared capable of being established there only by the moderate exercise of a European influence. By that clause, Cremer argued, the Netherlands had assumed “de vrij onmogelijk na te komen verplichting” (the practically impossible obligation) to protect the trade and navigation of the European nations against land- and sea-robbery on the part of Atjeh without touching Acehnese sovereignty; and Atjeh, he said, had used that restriction to indulge its hostile disposition towards the Dutch for years together.
Cremer coupled the Nota with two further bodies of evidence: the published papers of the comité-generaal of 1874, whose secrecy had since been lifted, and in particular page 46 of its report, where the British government was recorded as having complained repeatedly that its traders “had been interfered with, and their ships and property plundered by people in the neighbourhood of Atcheen”; and the statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Gericke van Herwijnen in the comité-generaal that he had “de bewijzen hier voor mij liggen” (the proofs lying here before me) of Acehnese attempts to place themselves under the suzerainty of Turkey, of America and of France, adding that the French envoy had made communications to him on the subject.
Contested authority
Van Kol in his reply of 17 November 1897 rejected the Nota’s implied case. He held that the official papers on “de aanleiding tot den Atjeh-oorlog,” carefully kept secret for eight years, were known to him also, and that the pretext of foreign interference had been “een verfoeilijk kluchtspel” (a detestable farce). He recalled Kuyper’s words in the Handelingen of 1874–1875, p. 1305, that a “zot” (fool) and a “monomaan” (monomaniac) had, by “de inblazingen van een leugenaar” (the promptings of a liar), made the viceroy the dupe of a false alarm. Van Kol further observed that the instructie given to the Regeeringscommissaris sent to Atjeh to communicate Dutch grievances to the sultan contained no mention of piracy at all, but only of the fear of the interference of foreign powers.
See Also
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824
- Comité-generaal van 1874
- Instructie aan den Regeeringscommissaris naar Atjeh (1873)
- J. T. Cremer
- H. van Kol
- Gericke van Herwijnen
- Sumatra Tractaat (1871)
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- 1824
- 1872
- 1881
Source
Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, pp. 47–48, 62–63.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898 (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.