The Atjeh-enquête was the official inquiry opened by the Indische regeering after the failure of the first Aceh expedition of April 1873, in which numerous subordinate officers were summoned to pronounce judgement on the conduct of their superiors — a procedure Borel denounces as “de onzalige enquête” (the ill-fated inquiry), a “groote onbillijkheid” and a “niet te verschoonen fout” on the part of the colonial government. Although intended to fix responsibility for the disaster outside the Kraton in which Generaal Köhler had been killed, the enquête produced, in Borel’s account, “hoegenaamd geen practisch nut” but “veel kwaad en ergernis” — no practical benefit, but much harm and scandal.
Origins
The shock of the April 1873 échec was enormous; the news, Borel writes, caused an “enorme indruk” in both Indië and Nederland, and the whole Dutch nation engaged with the war and demanded vengeance. Because the mislukken of the first campaign could “grootendeels toegeschreven worden aan het gemis van behoorlijke gegevens” — to the lack of reliable intelligence about the country and its defenders — opinion naturally looked around for someone to blame. The temptation to shift responsibility onto the commanders who had actually led the operatiën proved irresistible. Instead of examining its own failure to gather intelligence on Atjeh before despatching an expeditionary force, the Indische regeering chose to “de schuld der geleden nederlaag hoofdzakelijk zoeken bij de bevelhebbers die de krijgsoperatiën geleid hadden.”
Procedure and Borel’s Critique
The instrument chosen was the enquête: subordinate officers were called up to deliver “hun oordeel over de handelingen hunner chefs.” It is precisely this inversion of military hierarchy that Borel finds so repugnant. By summoning jonge or junior officers to sit in judgement on the very generals under whose eye they had served, the government committed what he calls a “groote onbillijkheid en tevens eene niet te verschoonen fout.” The procedure was, in his view, an “onvruchtbaar wroeten in het verleden” that could win nothing and alter nothing of what had already happened. Worse, it sowed lasting bitterness within the officer corps: the enquête, “waarover in Indië zooveel te doen geweest is,” had, he insists, “hoegenaamd geen practisch nut, maar daarentegen veel kwaad en ergernis gesticht.”
Vindication of Köhler
Time, in Borel’s telling, vindicated the dead general. When, during the second expedition of November 1873 to April 1874, the Dutch came to grapple at first hand with the “ontzaglijke bezwaren” of the country — the bedekt terrain, the bamboe-doeri covered walls, the swarming irregular benden — the mislukken of the first veldtocht was, he writes, “als vanzelf en ten volle gerechtvaardigd.” It even aroused “algemeene verwondering” that Köhler, “in zoo korten tijd, met zulk eene betrekkelijk geringe macht, tot onder de wallen van den Kraton genaderd was.” Borel closes his treatment of the enquête by explaining that he has felt bound to offer this verklaring to the “vele dapperen, die gedurende de maand April 1873 hun leven voor het vaderland opgeofferd of veil gehad hebben.” The lesson he draws is institutional rather than personal: a government that cannot accept responsibility for its own unpreparedness should not shift the burden onto its soldiers.
See Also
- First Aceh Expedition (April 1873)
- Storm on the Kraton (1 April 1873)
- Generaal Köhler
- Second Aceh Expedition (1873–1874)
- 1873
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 7–9.