The beri-beri epidemic in the Atjeh garrison was the sustained outbreak of berri-berri — the thiamine-deficiency disease of rice-eating garrisons — among the troops of the Netherlands Indies Army stationed in Atjeh during the Atjeh-oorlog, which by the mid-1890s had become the principal cause of invaliding and evacuation from the territory. The figures were laid before the Tweede Kamer on 16 November 1897 by the marine officer and deputy J. B. Verhey, under the heading the pamphlet prints as Verschrikkelijke Sterfte (terrible mortality).
The figures given by Verhey
Verhey pointed to the still high figure of berri-berri sufferers in general and in Atjeh in particular, and to the evacuations connected with it: in 1895 some 2,900 evacuations of such sufferers, in 1894 1,400 and in 1893 2,700, in consequence of which the mutatiën there remained continual.
According to the Koloniale Verslagen of 1896 and 1897 the number of sufferers in 1895 and 1896 amounted respectively to 3,329 and 3,412. The whole number of men invalided for berri-berri in 1896 was 132 Europeans and 877 natives; of that disease there died 16 Europeans and 147 natives. Everything hitherto set to work to combat it, Verhey said, had proved to fail. If this disease could be driven out, the strength of the Indies army would considerably increase.
The disease in Van Kol’s indictment
H. van Kol had named berri-berri in his opening speech among the diseases that always follow war — “dyssenterie, cholera, moeraskoortsen, berri berri” — adding that venereal disease and syphilis also attacked those who escaped the enemy’s lead or steel. Troelstra returned to Verhey’s figures on the second day, saying that the chamber had heard from a fellow member the terrible number of human lives the war demanded, and how thousands upon thousands of people had in recent years been mown down by the berri-berri; when the history of the Atjeh war should one day be written from beginning to end, it would be seen that thousands of Dutch citizens had been wantonly given over to the saddest of deaths without really knowing for what.
Cremer’s counter-figures
The Minister of Colonies Cremer, answering Verhey on the health of the troops, maintained that the condition was at present infinitely more favourable than under the system of 1884. Then, he said, the Dutch had had the great losses to berri-berri through the violent action of that disease. Now it appeared from the latest reports covering the period from mid-July that in the whole of Atjeh, out of a garrison of eight thousand men, only two to four berri-berri patients a day entered hospital.
He linked the improvement to the abandonment of the geconcentreerde stelling and the change of system: in the time of general Van der Heyden ten thousand men had been needed in Atjeh, whereas at the moment there were only eight thousand, while the strength of the army as a whole was considerably greater, so that replacement could be properly provided for. He added that the korps marechaussee took much of the most fatiguing work off the troops and was being steadily expanded.
Significance
The berri-berri figures were used by both sides of the debate: by the war’s critics as a measure of the human cost of the occupation, and by the government as evidence that the new system of mobile columns and concentrated kampementen was healthier than the static bentings and posts of the concentration period. The disease was the principal reason why, as Verhey calculated, more than the whole garrison was required annually in replacements, and why a company in Atjeh was in effect renewed in the course of a single year — a va et vient that he judged could not have a favourable influence on the cohesion of the army.
See Also
- J. B. Verhey
- J. T. Cremer
- H. van Kol
- Pieter Jelles Troelstra
- Koloniaal Verslag
- Geconcentreerde linie
- Post-1896 system in Atjeh
- Korps Marechaussee
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- 1893
- 1895
- 1896
- 1897
Source
Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, pp. 10, 19–20, 35, 55.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898 (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.