The 1907–1908 Aceh resistance was the “vrij hevige opflikkering van het verzet” — fairly fierce flare-up of resistance — that erupted in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden in 1907 and 1908 under the governorship of Gotfried Coenraad Ernst van Daalen, the last organised spasm of armed defiance in the Atjeh-krijg before the pacificatory policy of his successor H. N. A. Swart drew the Acehnese elites into the colonial order. The Encyclopaedisch Bureau attributes the flare-up to two specific causes: van Daalen’s “al te hard doorgevoerde represaille-maatregelen” — overly harshly executed reprisal measures — and the “scherpe besnoeiing der adat-inkomsten” — sharp curtailment of the customary revenues — to which the contemporary administration subjected the native chiefs.
Causes
The first cause was military. Van Daalen, who had won his reputation as the conqueror of the Gajoland and Alaslanden in 1904, continued in the governorship a doctrine of disproportionate retaliation against any act of defiance; the result, the handbook implies, was to alienate populations that had been moving toward accommodation. The second cause was administrative and fiscal. Throughout the Gouvernement the customary revenues of the oelèëbalangs and other volkshoofden — the wasé oelèëbalang, the wasé pangkaj, the wasé peutoeha — had been tolerated, even formalised, as the price of cooperation. The “scherpe besnoeiing” of these adat-inkomsten cut directly at the economic basis of chiefly authority, and many chiefs who had submitted under van Heutsz now had reason to reconsider.
Course of the resistance
De Buitenbezittingen does not narrate the events of 1907–1908 in detail, but the Bijlage V tables of losses recorded for those years indicate the scale of the fighting. In 1907 the Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger suffered 18 killed and 214 wounded; on the Acehnese side 1,917 were killed, 649 wounded, 488 captured and 136 who submitted. In 1908 the army’s losses rose to 19 killed and 290 wounded, with Acehnese losses of 855 killed, 1,143 wounded, 41 captured and 333 submissions — figures that mark 1908 as the heaviest year of combat since 1905. The casualty curves of Bijlage V then descend steeply through 1909, 1910 and 1911 as Swart’s policy took hold.
Swart’s response
The resolution of the crisis came with the succession of Lieutenant-General Swart as Civil and Military Governor in 1908. Swart’s response was double: first to demonstrate, “in de eerste jaren van zijn bewind,” the “bewijzen onzer overmacht” — proofs of Dutch overwhelming power — and then, having done so, to pivot to a “verzoenende en vertrouwenwekkende politiek.” The chiefs who had been coerced into submission under van Daalen were thereby “steeds meer ook uit overtuiging aan onze zijde gebracht” — increasingly brought to the Dutch side by conviction rather than by force. The volksleiders “die toen door dwang onderworpen waren” — who had then been subdued by force — were drawn into cooperation.
Significance
The 1907–1908 resistance was the last major convulsion of the Atjeh-krijg. Its suppression did not produce peace in the older military sense so much as transform the conflict into a slower, administrative one — the “voorzichtige en geleidelijke vervanging van militaire bestuurders door civiele ambtenaren” and the accompanying “inkrimping der troepenmacht” that the handbook cites as “een krachtig bewijs” of the consolidation that came, after years of stubborn struggle, “betrekkelijk snel en onverwacht.” The episode also fixed the negative reputation of van Daalen’s governorship against the positive legend of Swart’s, a contrast that framed Dutch memory of the Atjeh pacification for the remainder of the colonial period.
See Also
- Aceh War
- G. C. E. van Daalen
- H. N. A. Swart
- Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz
- Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Oelèëbalangs
- Bijlage V
- Colonne van Daalen naar de Gajolanden en Alaslanden (1904)
Source
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 2: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), pp. 33–34, Bijlage V.