The Concentratiebesluit of 19 August 1884 — the besluit van 19 Augustus 1884 (decree of 19 August 1884) by which the Governor-General van Rees ordered the Concentratie (concentration policy), the withdrawal of all outlying Dutch posts to the concentrated stelling (defensive line) of Groot-Atjeh, and promulgated it by the proclamatie (proclamation) of the same date to the Atjehnese — is, in Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract De onderwerping van Atjeh, the principal bête noire of the entire Atjeh record: the groote politieke fout (great political mistake) that reversed the Van der Heijden conquest of Groot-Atjeh and condemned the colony to another fifteen years of war. The decision was taken in the secret sessions of the Staten-Generaal of 16–17 June 1884 over the head of the colonial Atjeh authorities — “zonder dat aan de autoriteiten te Atjeh om eenig nader advies was gevraagd” — and was executed, despite Gouverneur Laging Tobias’s ongevraagd (unsolicited) warning that “een dergelijk vertoon van zwakheid, ten zeerste zou schaden aan het Nederlandsch gezag”, by his successor Generaal Demmeni from August 1884. The decision produced three operational corollaries: the abolition of the posts at Telok Semawé and Samalanga; the elimination of the controleurs (civil-administrative officials) in the onderafdeelingen (sub-divisions) of Groot-Atjeh; and the formal establishment of the rigorous blockade of the entire Atjeh coast from Tamiang on the Oostkust to Troemon on the Westkust.
The 16–17 June 1884 secret Staten-Generaal sessions
The Concentratie was authorised, in the first instance, by the secret sessions of the Staten-Generaal of 16 and 17 June 1884 in The Hague. Van Heutsz records the parliamentary origin:
“Dat de hangende plannen de kort daarop ingevoerde Concentratie zouden wezen, waartoe besloten was in de geheime zittingen van de Staten-Generaal van 16 en 17 Juni 1884”.
The decision was taken at the metropolitan level — opperbestuur in Nederland (supreme government in the Netherlands) — without consultation of the colonial Atjeh authorities, “zonder dat aan de autoriteiten te Atjeh om eenig nader advies was gevraagd”. The colony’s Governor-General at the moment of the decision, G.-G. ’s Jacob, had himself, in August 1883, “dergelijke inkrimping officieel besprak” but, after hearing the opinions of the Governor and the autoriteiten van land- en zeemacht te Kota Radja (authorities of the land and sea forces at Kota Radja), had “openlijk verklaard, dat noch tot inkrimping van grondgebied, noch tot vermindering van troepenmacht zou overgegaan worden, zoolang in de toenmalige omstandigheden geen verandering kwam”. The June 1884 secret sessions thus overrode both ‘s Jacob’s August 1883 declaration and the colonial authority of the Atjeh government itself. The decision was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, the metropolitan opperbestuur’s imposition on the colony of a policy the colony’s own authorities had rejected.
The 19 August 1884 proclamation by van Rees
The Concentratie was promulgated in the colony by G.-G. van Rees — who had succeeded ‘s Jacob as Governor-General and visited Atjeh in March 1884 — by proclamatie of 19 August 1884. Van Heutsz records the dateline and the OCR-damaged text:
“in weerwil van de op 19 Augustus door den Gouvernnurr-Gnnraall van Rees uitgevaardigde proclamatie, waarin hij aan de Atjehers deed verkondigen edat xij er nooit in rouden slagen eons een enkelen stap terugtedringen”.
The proclamation — dat zij er nooit in zouden slagen ons een enkelen stap terugtedringen (that they would never succeed in driving us back a single step) — was Van Rees’s public assurance to the Atjehnese that the Dutch would never yield an inch. The Atjehnese, Van Heutsz records, “waren zoo vrij te gelooven, dat ons terugtrekken in de geconcentreerde stelling niet vrijwillig, maar gedwongen was en voortsproot uit zwakte, uit onmacht om den strijd langer vol te houden” — read the proclamation in precisely the opposite sense, as proof that the Dutch withdrawal was involuntary, the product of weakness, of inability to sustain the struggle. The formal besluit — de concentratie, die bij besluit van 19 Augustus 1884 bevolen werd (the concentration that was ordered by decree of 19 August 1884) — was the legal instrument by which the Concentratie was executed.
The abolition of posts at Telok Semawé and Samalanga
The operational core of the Concentratie was the withdrawal of the outlying Dutch posts to the geconcentreerde stelling (concentrated defensive line) of Groot-Atjeh. The most consequential withdrawals were the abolition of the posts at Telok Semawé and Samalanga. Van Heutsz’s catalogue of the abolished posts:
“de betrekkingen van assistent-resident ter Noord- en Oostkust en van controleur der onderafdeeling Samalanga werden ingetrokken tegelijk met de opheffing der vestigingen op laatstgenoemde plaats en te Telok Semawé”.
The abolition of the Telok Semawé post — the seat of the assistent-resident ter Noord- en Oostkust (assistant resident for the North and East Coast) — was the most consequential single act of the Concentratie. Telok Semawé had been, under Scherer’s administration, the operational centre of the scheepvaartregeling (shipping regulation) on the Noord- en Oostkust; the post was “een maand na Scherer’s vertrek werd ingerukt” — was abolished one month after Scherer’s own departure in early October 1884. The abolition of the Samalanga post — the seat of the controleur der onderafdeeling Samalanga (controller of the sub-division Samalanga) — closed the second of the two kruisboot-bangoen test sites of 1880 that had given Scherer the empirical foundation of the scheepvaartregeling concept.
The elimination of controleurs in the onderafdeelingen of Groot-Atjeh
The Concentratie’s second operational corollary was the elimination of the controleurs in the onderafdeelingen (sub-divisions) of Groot-Atjeh and the transfer of their functions to the military commandants of the posts. Van Heutsz records the reassignment:
“de controleurs in de onderafidellnnen van Groot-Atjeh werden afgeschaft, de functiën van assistent-resident ter Westkust (standplaats Melaboeh) en van controleur te Segli werden opgedragen aan de daar gevestigde militaire commandanten”.
The controleurs were the civil-administrative officials on whom the scheepvaartregeling and the contrôle op handel en scheepvaart (supervision of trade and shipping) had depended; their abolition, and the transfer of their functions to the military commandants, was the operational expression of the policy of non-interventie in de binnenlandsche aangelegenheden van de kuststaten (non-intervention in the internal affairs of the coastal statelets) that the Concentratie made explicit. The civil administration of the Atjeh colony was, in effect, abolished along with the outlying posts: the assistent-resident ter Westkust at Melaboeh and the controleur te Segli were both transferred to the military commandants, and the assistent-resident ter Noord- en Oostkust (standplaats Telok Semawé) and the controleur der onderafdeeling Samalanga were eliminated entirely.
The resignation of Laging Tobias
The Concentratie was the immediate occasion of the resignation of Gouverneur Laging Tobias. Van Heutsz records the chronology: Laging Tobias had offered his resignation in February 1884, “toen de Regeering het eenige middel verwierp waarvan hij in de bestaande omstandigheden een goede uitkomst verwachtte” — when the Regeering (Government) rejected the only remedy from which he had expected a good outcome, namely his projected restoration of the sultanate under Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed. The resignation had been declined by G.-G. ’s Jacob, and Van Rees — on his March 1884 visit — had betuigd (assured), “dat hij de inzichten van den Gouverneur Laging Tobias omtrent den met Atjeh te volgen weg vrij juist vond”. Laging Tobias, in consequence, “besloot hij niet verder op zijn ontslag aan te dringen”. The June 1884 secret sessions and the 19 August 1884 Concentratiebesluit were, however, “hangende plannen” of which the Governor “in geenen deele” had been warned; on perceiving, in June 1884, that the Concentratie had been decided “zonder dat aan de autoriteiten te Atjeh om eenig nader advies was gevraagd”, Laging Tobias “rekende het zich tot plicht nogmaals ongevraagd tegen de uitvoering er van ernstig te moeten waarschuwen, omdat hij overtuigd was, dat een dergelijk vertoon van zwakheid, ten zeerste zou schaden aan het Nederlandsch gezag en dit niet alleen te Atjeh, maar in geheel Nederlandsch-Indië”.
The warning made his position untenable: “Met dit advies was het natuurlijk onmogelijk den Heer Laging Tobias met de uitvoering te belasten van de concentratie, die bij besluit van 19 Augustus 1884 bevolen werd”. Laging Tobias’s February 1884 resignation was now “ingewilligd” — accepted — and the bestuur (government) “weder in handen gegeven aan een militair, den kolonel Demmeni”. The resignation of Laging Tobias was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, the second great loss of the Atjeh campaign — the loss of the only governor who had both perceived the necessity of the scheepvaartregeling (introduced by him in May 1883) and warned, ongevraagd, against the vertoon van zwakheid (display of weakness) the Concentratie would represent.
Significance
The Concentratiebesluit of 19 August 1884 is, in Van Heutsz’s narrative, the principal bête noire of the entire Atjeh record: the groote politieke fout (great political mistake) that reversed the Van der Heijden conquest of Groot-Atjeh and condemned the colony to another fifteen years of war. Its significance in the Aceh Wiki History record lies in five things. First, it was authorised by the secret sessions of the Staten-Generaal of 16–17 June 1884 — zonder dat aan de autoriteiten te Atjeh om eenig nader advies was gevraagd — and thus represents the metropolitan opperbestuur’s imposition on the colony of a policy the colony’s own authorities had rejected. Second, it was promulgated by G.-G. van Rees’s proclamatie of 19 August 1884, which the Atjehnese read in precisely the opposite sense from its intended one — as proof that the Dutch withdrawal was involuntary, the product of weakness. Third, it produced the abolition of the posts at Telok Semawé and Samalanga — the operational centres of the scheepvaartregeling on the Noord- en Oostkust and on the Noordkust respectively — and thus the operational destruction of the scheepvaartregeling that Scherer had introduced in May 1883 under Laging Tobias. Fourth, it eliminated the controleurs in the onderafdeelingen of Groot-Atjeh and transferred their functions to the military commandants — the operational expression of the policy of non-interventie in de binnenlandsche aangelegenheden van de kuststaten (non-intervention in the internal affairs of the coastal statelets). Fifth, it was the immediate occasion of the resignation of Laging Tobias — the governor who had both introduced the scheepvaartregeling and warned, ongevraagd, against the vertoon van zwakheid the Concentratie would represent — and thus the second great loss of the Atjeh campaign after the dismissal of Van der Heijden in early 1881. The Concentratie’s corollary — the rigorous blockade of the entire Atjeh coast from Tamiang to Troemon — was abolished within a year by Staatsblad No. 85 of 1885, and the Concentratie itself was, in Van Heutsz’s counter-factual, the groote politieke fout against which “in de Staten-Generaal zelfs door den gewezen minister Fransen van de Putte gewaarschuwd was”.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege dates by the same day: the kolonel Demmeni entering office there as civil and military Governor (after the proposal of Laging Tobias, see Normale bestuursinrichting (Atjeh, 1881-1884)), and the Governor-General Van Rees’s proclamation to the Indies princes and the population of the dependencies of Atjeh, known in the Netherlands in September 1884 — in which he pledged that the foolish attackers would never succeed “ons een enkelen stap terug te dringen” (“in driving us back a single step”), while the state kept the then ripening concentration still covered from the nation below; “de inhoud van dat staatsstuk kon althans het Nederlandsche volk niet doen vermoeden, dat toen (September) de voorbereiding voor onze concentratie op Atjeh reeds in vollen gang was” (“the contents of that state paper could at least not make the Dutch people suspect that then (September) the preparation of our concentration on Atjeh was already in full swing”) — the decision had already been laid down in the secret sessions of 16-17 June (see Concentration decision (16-17 June 1884)).
See Also
- Van Rees
- Laging Tobias
- Demmeni
- Pijnacker Hordijk
- Fransen van de Putte
- Staten-Generaal
- Concentratiestelsel
- Blokkade
- Staatsblad No. 105 van 1884
- Staatsblad No. 85 van 1885
- Scheepvaartregeling
- Scherer
- Groot-Atjeh
- Telok Semawé
- Samalanga
- Tamiang
- Troemon
- 1884
Source
De onderwerping van Atjeh, door J. B. van Heutsz, Majoor der Infanterie, gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef; Batavia: G. Kolff en Co., 1893, esp. pp. 24, 28–35. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 74, 79-80. OCR: DLP-158.