The Bakóngan uprising (1925–1927) was the most serious armed rising of the Atjèhnese against Dutch authority in the two decades after the formal conclusion of the Atjèh War, fought in the remote subdistrict of the Zuidelijke Atjèhse Landschappen — the territory of Bakóngan and the landschap of Kloeët — under the instigation of Teukoe Radja Angkasah, whose son Teukoe Ramli Angkasah would later be installed by the Japanese as self-governing authority of Kloeët in 1945. Piekaar’s Atjèh and the War with Japan treats the Bakóngan rising as the high-water mark of post-Atjèh War resistance and as the event which, even eighteen years later, still shaped the military geography of the West Coast: “only in the subdistrict of Zuidelijke Atjèhse Landschappen, the scene of the Bakóngan uprising, the military commander remained entrusted with civil administration.”
Course and consequences
The rising “was the most serious” of all the resistance actions “which repeatedly flared up after the conclusion of the Atjèh War,” and prompted decisive administrative reconstruction. The two landschappen of Kloeët (20,000 inhabitants) and Troemón (5,000), until then attached to the subdistricts of Tapa’toean and Singkel respectively, were “separated from these subdistricts and, combined into one subdistrict, placed under the administration of the officer responsible for the action at Bakóngan.” After the rising, Teukoe Hoesin of the Troemón oelèëbalang family was persuaded to give up his trading business in Koetaradja and accept the office of self-governing ruler; Piekaar credits him with having brought “this region, torn by uprising and misrule, back to peace.”
Strategic legacies
The uprising also dictated the extension of the West Coast Road through the Barisan range in the 1920s — “military-strategic considerations (Bakongan uprising 1925-1927) were decisive.” Until then KPM vessels and regional craft had been the only link between West Coast administrative posts. The garrison at Paja Bakóng in the subdistrict of Lhó’ Soekón remained one of the regional pegs of Dutch military vigilance until its disbandment after the outbreak of the war in Europe.
Significance
The Bakóngan rising was the last occasion on which the Dutch felt compelled to merge civil and military command in a single Atjèhnese subdistrict. Its suppression closed the era of large-scale religiously motivated resistance — the Lhóng action of 1933 would be only a flicker — and inaugurated the long pacification which, by 1938, allowed Resident Jongejans to begin transferring military-administered subdistricts to civil control.
See Also
- Atjèh War
- Lhóng action (1933)
- Zuidelijke Atjèhse Landschappen
- Kloeët
- Troemón
- Tapa’toean
- Teukoe Radja Angkasah
- Teukoe Ramli Angkasah
- Teukoe Hoesin
- 1925
- 1927
- 1938
Source
Atjèh and the War with Japan, by Dr. A. J. Piekaar, translated from the Dutch original Atjèh en de oorlog met Japan (1949) (‘s-Gravenhage/Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve; English edition), Chapter I § 1, Chapter II, Chapter V § 4.