Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)

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tagsdocument, book, travelogue, dutch, colonial, acheh, 1923, broersma, reconnaissance
aliasesVerkenningen in Atjeh, Broersma Verkenningen, Reconnaissances in Atjeh, Dr. R. Broersma Verkenningen in Atjeh, De Locomotief October 1923 Atjeh series

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Verkenningen in Atjeh — Reconnaissances in Atjeh — is a series of travel essays by Dr. R. Broersma published in the newspaper De Locomotief in semi-October 1923 and afterwards issued as an offprint bearing the shelfmark C 527 of the Kon. Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde in Leiden. The series records a journey of reconnaissance through the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden in the early years of civilian rule, undertaken in the decade after the formal pacification of the Atjeh-oorlog when the last sultan, Muhammad Daud Syah, had already ceded his realm to the Dutch government and the Atjeh-tram was beginning to serve economic rather than purely military ends.

Scope and Structure

The offprint comprises twenty numbered essays of varying length, beginning with an Inleiding on the traveller’s first approach to Atjeh and proceeding geographically from south to north and then inland. The early chapters describe the Tamiang river basin, the underafdeeling Langsa with its wood-cutting industry and leper colony, and the historical region of Perlak. The narrative then advances through Idi, Lho Soekon, the ancient kingdom of Samoedra, Bireuen in the landschap of Peusangan, and the Gajo-weg leading up to Takengon on Laut Tawar. The later essays treat the great rice-plain of Pidië, the Atjeh-tramway in detail, Groot-Atjeh with its capital Kota Radja and the harbour of Oelèë Lheue, the question of Atjeh as a rice country, and finally a series of reflective chapters on cattle-breeding, trade, labour and staatkunde (policy).

The work is not a military history but an economic and administrative reconnaissance. Broersma explicitly states in his Inleiding that he does not wish to re-trace the war — ‘den strijd niet na te speuren, wenschende te zien het land en het volk in hun staat van vrede’ — but rather to follow the roads along which ‘een rustig volksbestaan vruchten van den arbeid binnenhaalt tot ruimer welvaart.‘

Sources Drawn Upon

Throughout the essays Broersma cites earlier authorities on Atjeh. He repeatedly invokes Dr. Snouck Hurgronje’s Het Gajo-land en zijn bewoners (1903) and the dictionary of Dr. Hazeu for the interior. For the east coast he leans heavily on J. A. Kruyt’s Atjeh en de Atjehers (Leiden 1877), which records Kruyt’s two years of blockade service aboard the man-of-war Timor along Sumatra’s north-east coast during 1873–1875. The colonial publication De Buitenbezittingen 1904-‘14 provides his export statistics, while Dr. Julius Jacobs’s Het familie- en kampongleven op Groot-Atjeh (1894) is cited for the older ethnography of Groot-Atjeh and the condition of lepers there. A 1918 article by H. T. Damste in Koloniaal Tijdschrift, ‘Een stukje Atjeh-geschiedenis’, supplies the succession narrative of Simpang Olim. The soil chemist F. C. van Heurn’s Gegevens betreffende den bodem van Sumatra’s Oostkust supplies the geological judgement on Tamiang. Broersma also quotes, in long paraphrase, the Atjeh-Instituut pamphlet De rijkdom van Atjeh of July 1923.

Method and Tone

Broersma’s method is that of the colonial observer with a practical eye: he records the prices of pepper and pinang, the cost of an artesian boring in Langsa (f 122.931 between 1906 and 1919), the wages of panglong wood-cutters at Bajan (f 3.50 per man per month under the regulation of St. 1909 No. 488), and the prices fetched by an elephant tusk at Peureula, Idi and Peusangan. He visits oeléebalangs in their houses, takes down their genealogies and reports their revenues from the hacil and the petroleum cijns. His tone is critical of Dutch mismanagement — the failed gouvernements rubberonderneming at Langsa opened in 1907 on peat soil that has since sunk under the trees — but sympathetic to the Atjehnese commoner, whose ‘eeng’ (penny-wise) temperament he takes to be the natural seed of commerce once peace should allow it to develop.

Significance

The Verkenningen is one of the most detailed non-military surveys of Atjeh in the early civilian period, treating the country at the moment when the Atjeh-tram met the Deli-spoor at Besitang in 1908 and when the Afdeeling Pidië was detached from the Noordkust van Atjeh in 1922. It is widely quoted in later colonial literature on the economic geography of northern Sumatra.

See Also

Source

Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma. Overdruk uit De Locomotief, semi-October 1923. Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden, shelfmark C 527. OCR-filename: 20260719_030404_DLP-119-Verkenningen_in_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.

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