The First and Second Dutch Expeditions to Acheh — the two armed expeditions sent by the Netherlands India Government against the sultanate of Acheh in 1873 — together opened the Achehnese-Dutch war that was to last, with interruptions, for more than three decades. C. Snouck Hurgronje treats them in The Achehnese as the events which, more than any other, fixed the lines along which the long struggle would develop: the first attack ending in failure and the death of General Köhler, the second succeeding in the formal occupation of the kraton but failing to subdue the country.
Consequences for Peacefully Inclined Achehnese
The political importance of the two expeditions extended, Snouck Hurgronje observes, far beyond their immediate military result. From the very commencement, the peacefully inclined inhabitants of Meura’sa and other places which subsequently tendered their submission to the Dutch exposed themselves to the hatred of their fellow-countrymen by their attitude during the first and second expeditions. The cleavage between those who were prepared to come to terms with the Gompeuni and those who held out for the jihad was already, in those first months, marked in blood.
Relation to the Excursions of General van der Heyden
It was not until the excursions of General van der Heijden (1877–1881) that the feeling of the actively hostile party towards the peacefully inclined began to amend. Under Van der Heyden’s vigorous offensive, all Great-Acheh was conquered in turn, and the Dutch forces acquired the reputation of an enemy to be reckoned with. Even after that, however, the position of those who had compromised themselves by submission remained hazardous; and “later on, and especially at the present time 1891–1892,” Snouck Hurgronje writes, the feeling of the openly hostile party towards the submitted has “become unfavourable in the highest degree.”
Linguistic Echoes
The expeditions left their mark on the Achehnese vocabulary itself. The Achehnese call the Dutch Ulanda (Hollander), but the commoner appellation is kaphe — the Achehnese pronunciation of kafir (infidel) — which is used without the least ill-will. They have two personal pronouns of the third person: jih, employed without distinction, and geunan, which betokens a certain respect for the person spoken of. The honour which is paid as a matter of course to a simple keuchi’ is regarded as too high for Dutchmen, even for the Governor of Acheh. The title of Tuan heutsa or “great Tuan” (Malay besar) which the Achehnese apply to the Governor of Acheh “carries with it no respect”; it is for them a foreign word which they occasionally use to describe high officials of the Gompeuni, and which sounds to their ears very much as the “Great Mogul” does to ours. Even the people of Meura’sa and Gampong Jawa, who had wholly compromised themselves by complete submission, called all Dutch authorities jih.
Significance
The first and second expeditions thus inaugurated not merely a military campaign but a lasting estrangement of the two communities, which no subsequent policy of concentration or of gradual subjugation could overcome. Their failure to bring the sultanate to terms set the pattern for the long series of fruitless enterprises that followed — the line of fortresses of 1884–1896, the abortive civil government of 1881–1884, and the slow, methodical conquest under Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz from 1898 onwards.
See Also
- First Dutch attack on Acheh
- Acheh War
- Governorship of General van der Heyden
- Establishment of the Dutch ‘linie’ (pale)
- Dutch policy of ‘concentration’
- Holy War (Jihad) against the Dutch
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.