Verstege’s folding map of Groot-Atjeh (uitslaande kaart van Groot-Atjeh) was the folding map added to Overste Verstege’s pamphlet Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Amsterdam, 1886), on which the author asked his readers to verify which positions had been taken by the Dutch troops in Groot-Atjeh at the end of April 1874, at the end of April 1875, and on 1 March 1885. The map, with its legend, is the cartographic backbone of the third part of his lecture, in which the concentration of 1885 was compared with the much wider lines held by generaal Pel ten years earlier.
The position at the end of April 1874
At the departure of generaal van Swieten on 26 April 1874 the Dutch held, besides the imperfectly fortified and arranged Kraton itself — without secured communication with the coast and without harbour or landing-place — the following posts:
- Kota Radja with Pakan Atjeh (2 companies);
- a hornwork on the right bank of the Kroeng Daroe and the post Kota Goenoengan (1 company);
- a small earthwork southwest of the Kraton, on the left bank of the Kroeng Daroe;
- Penajoeng, a square bastioned redoubt on the right bank of the Atjehrivier (1 company and 20 artillerymen);
- Kampong Djawa (1 company and 20 artillerymen), opposite Penajoeng, actually only a bivouac for the right half of the 2nd battalion;
- the Marinebenting, a small redoubt on the right bank (50 men);
- the strand-bivak (beach bivouac) at the Oedjong Kali or Koeala Atjeh (50 men).
The force left behind, including the garrison of Poeloe Bras, numbered 128 officers and 3,151 men, of whom on 26 April 178 Europeans and 41 natives were already nursed in the field hospital — on the health of Kota Radja, praised by van Swieten as so healthy, Verstege placed against this the figures in the Koloniaal Verslag: on 12 May 1874, the feast-day of the King’s 25th anniversary on which no work was done (a double incentive to keep out of hospital), 308 patients were nursed in the ambulance and 223 sick in quarters, i.e. about one-eighth of the expeditionary force; on 20 May the figure reached one-seventh; from 26 April to the end of December 1874 902 persons (including dwangarbeiders and naval personnel) of the whole force died and 1,917 were evacuated; and during the whole of 1875 there were 957 deaths and no less than 5,151 evacuated (cited from Kielstra, Deel II, pp. 94 and 194).
The position at the end of April 1875
One year later the foremost inland post was Longbatta-Missigit, and the occupied position was bounded by the following outermost chain of posts: to the south, Oedjong Palanggahan (a blockhouse near Oleh-leh), Soerian, Poe-oe, Blangey, Bang Tjoen Tjoet, Setoe Zuid (occupied since 2 May), Lamara-Oleyloe, Lohong and Longbatta-Missigit; to the east, from Longbatta-Missigit past Blang-Tjoet and Long Zaita Zuid upstream along the left bank of the Atjehrivier as far as Kota Alam on the right bank; and from there over Lemboe Oost, Lemboe Noord, Lampriet, Langkroek Oost, Lamara Zuid Oost, Lamara Noord and Tiban to Moesapie. The base of the triangle so formed was the coastal strip from Oleh-leh to Kota Moesapie.
This chain, the result of an almost uninterrupted one-year struggle sometimes suspended for lack of able-bodied men, had been forced upon Pel by the Atjehers themselves, to safeguard the main position against the ever pressing enemy, to give the troops the rest they so urgently needed, and to keep open the communication with the sea. The position was not extensive — it comprised only 2,500 hectares — but besides the nineteen named fortifications there were several more posts near Kota Radja within the line, bringing the total number of posts, aside from the main position, to thirty-eight in May 1875; their garrison required a force of 2,750 men out of a total force then of between 5,000 and 6,000 men. The fortifications had been raised, sometimes with great sacrifice and mostly under enemy fire, as fixed points from which the enemy could be kept restless and be prevented — otherwise easy on so accidented and enclosed a terrain — from approaching Kota Radja.
Verstege’s comparison with 1 March 1885
The third position on the map, the concentrated line of 1 March 1885 (67 km² or 6,700 hectares with eighteen semi-permanent posts — see Completion of the concentrated position (March 1885)), was adduced by Verstege as proof that the Dutch had been folded back into a narrower line than the one held at the end of 1876: southwest from Kroeng Raba to Lamdjame, east from Toengkoep to Lamjong, and south from Djerir to Lambaroe — a retreat of not less than nearly thirteen kilometres towards Lambaroe. The Atjehers, he remarked, must have noticed that the Dutch steps in going back were larger and quicker than in advancing.
See Also
- Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Verstege, 1886)
- Bezettingskorps in Atjeh
- Postenlinie
- Departure of Jan van Swieten from Atjeh (April 1874)
- Concentratie-stelsel (1884-1896)
- 1874
- 1875
- 1885
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. 6, 48-54; the sickness figures from the Koloniaal Verslag as cited there and in Kielstra, D. II, pp. 94, 194. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.