Atjeh van 1905 tot 1908 was the three years of the governorship of Gotfried Coenraad Ernst van Daalen, which du Croo treated under the heading “Van Heutsz commits the great mistake of his life”.
Van Heutsz had determined long in advance that only the then lieutenant-colonel Van Daalen could succeed him, “at least during the first years, the time in which ‘fighting’ in his view still remained the main thing.” Du Croo held it necessary to go into that choice at length “because it brought the undeniably great figure of Van Daalen into a place where he ought never to have been put, because in that way Atjeh underwent an unfavourable and very damaging setback, and because as a result Van Daalen’s successor was faced with an almost impossibly heavy task of restoration and rebuilding.” Van Heutsz himself acknowledged that Van Daalen “most certainly not in full measure” possessed the required qualities of head and character, yet in the same assessment sought to excuse them and to demonstrate improvements — “and… this conclusion is wide of the mark and had to be wide of the mark, because the character and the views of a hard, strong and self-assured figure like Van Daalen could not possibly be altered, let alone improved. And so he committed more than a mistake — he committed a fault.” Snouck Hurgronje had warned Governor-General Rooseboom on 2 October 1903; the only alternatives, as Van Heutsz knew, were Van der Maaten, Colijn or Swart. The consequence was the state of the province Swart found in 1908: five to six thousand men in resistance, chiefs stripped of income by the boete-systeem, the herds destroyed and the population indifferent.
See Also
Source
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter VIII, pp. 80–87.