The proclamation of Toekoe di Tiroe of 2 February 1885 — dated 16 Rabioel Achir 1302 A.H. — was a victory proclamation issued by Toekoe di Tiroe, the principal war leader of the Acehnese resistance in Groot-Atjeh, from his headquarters at Anak Galoeng, at the moment when the Dutch were carrying out the concentration, the withdrawal from the outer posts into the limited fortified line around Kota Radja. The pamphlet was widely circulated not only among the Acehnese but, as was reported at the time, even among the Javanese population of the Indies.
Contents
The proclamation, as rendered in Dutch by Verstege in his 1886 pamphlet, declared:
“En geopenbaard is het teeken der overwinning door het terugtrekken der ongeloovigen. Hoevele sterke versterkingen hebben de Moslims reeds genomen, hoevele stevige wapenen buit gemaakt! De zekerheid, dat de Moslims moedig zijn, vermeerdert de vrees, de schuwheid en den kommer der ongeloovigen en renegaten. Een duidelijk teeken daarvan is, dat zij door versterkingen omgeven, omheiningen (de 1000 M. breede, zoogenaamde vrije strook) willen maken en wachten plaatsen.”
(“And the sign of victory has been revealed by the retreat of the unbelievers. How many strong fortifications the Muslims have already taken, how many stout weapons they have seized! The certainty that the Muslims are brave increases the fear, the timidity and the distress of the unbelievers and renegades. A clear sign of this is that they, surrounded by fortifications, want to make enclosures — the 1000-metre-wide so-called free strip — and to post watches.”) The proclamation ended: “De ongeloovigen zullen, zoo God het wil, overwonnen en verdreven worden, zooals de Heer, de Verhevene, heeft beloofd” (“The unbelievers will, God willing, be conquered and expelled, as the Lord, the Exalted, has promised”).
Context and interpretation
Verstege printed the proclamation as documentary proof that the Atjehnese read the Dutch concentration — defended by minister Sprenger van Eijk in the Tweede Kamer on 19 December 1884 — as nothing but a flight, and he remarked that it was remarkable that Toekoe di Tiroe now had his headquarters at Anak Galoeng, the very place which had for a long time been the Dutch headquarters and to which Pruijs van der Hoeven, as Gouverneur-Commissaris, had in September 1880 wanted to move the chief seat of the government, as being more centrally situated in the then line — a proposal the government had declined to adopt. Verstege warned that the proclamation, circulated even among the Javanese population, could fall on fertile ground outside Atjeh as well, in view of the revival of religious zeal observed among the Muslims of the archipelago for some time, fed from Turkey according to warnings received by the government already at the end of 1880 and in February and March 1881, and further excited by the events in the Sudan.
Verstege noted in the same connection that already in 1884 an Arabic pamphlet had been circulated in the Preanger Regentschappen, in Bantam, in Central Java and in Atjeh, in which a certain Sjaich Abdoellah reported a dream-vision which had befallen him at Medina in the year 1297 A.H. (1880), entitled De laatste vermaning van Mohamed aan zijne gemeente (“The last admonition of Muhammad to his community”); Dr. Snouck Hurgronje wrote of it, in the Indische Gids of July 1884, that it pronounced a kind of excommunication over those who refused to be stirred up, but had no political tendency and could be called more innocent than the Akireng Djaman, in which the King of the Netherlands was made contemptible as an unbeliever and ridiculous as a conquered man.
See Also
- Tengkoe di Tirou
- Anak Galoeng
- Concentratie-stelsel (1884-1896)
- 1000-meter strook
- Guerilla raids inside the concentration line (1885)
- 1885
- Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Verstege, 1886)
Source
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 67, 70-71, which reproduces the proclamation in Dutch translation. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.