Van Swieten’s proclamation on the sovereignty of Atjeh was the celebrated declaration issued by generaal Van Swieten after the fall of the kraton in 1874, by which the Netherlands announced that it had taken the place of the sultan and assumed sovereignty over the whole of Atjeh. In the Atjeh debate of 16 November 1897 the Catholic deputy Bahlmann identified it as “de tweede groote fout” (the second great error) of the whole war.
Text as cited
Bahlmann quoted the proclamation in the chamber in these terms: “Wij Nederlanders zijn gekomen in plaats van den Sultan. Wij hebben de Souvereiniteit over het geheele land aanvaard. Het geheele land moet aan onze heerschappij worden onderworpen.” — We Netherlanders have come in the place of the Sultan. We have accepted the Sovereignty over the whole country. The whole country must be subjected to our dominion. — We Netherlanders have come in the place of the Sultan. We have accepted the sovereignty over the whole country. The whole country must be subjected to our dominion.
Bahlmann’s critique
Bahlmann set the proclamation in a sequence of two founding errors. The first, he said, lay already in the first dispatch of the Minister Fransen van de Putte — “souvereiniteitserkenning of oorlog” (recognition of sovereignty or war) — which had made it impossible for the statesmen and soldiers of the day to conceive any arrangement other than direct Dutch rule; they could not envisage for Atjeh a state of affairs such as existed in Central Java, with its surviving princely houses, but only the incorporation of Atjeh under direct Dutch administration. The second error was Van Swieten’s proclamation, which converted that assumption into a public and irrevocable claim.
To this pair of errors Bahlmann applied the maxim he attributed to the elder Cato of the Romans: “Quod ab initio non valet, tractu temporis convalescere non potest” — what is invalid from the beginning cannot be made good by lapse of time — glossed in the pamphlet’s footnote as “Wat van den aanvang af niet deugt, kan door geen verloop van tijd in orde worden gebracht.” — What is not sound from the beginning cannot be put right by any lapse of time.
Bahlmann further observed that a third means was now being applied to reach the pacificatie of Atjeh, and that neither the Indies government nor the minister would hear of the restoration of the sultanate as a condition of peace; since sovereignty over Groot-Atjeh was insisted upon, he urged that no half-measures be taken but that the course adopted be consistently pursued.
See Also
- Jan van Swieten
- Bahlmann
- Isaac Dignus Fransen van de Putte
- Restoration of the sultanate of Atjeh (proposal)
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- Kraton of Aceh
- Groot-Atjeh
- 1874
- 1897
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. 29–30.
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.