The excursions of General van der Heijden — the marches through the Achehnese highlands in the late 1870s and 1880s — were a series of military expeditions undertaken by the Dutch commander (later Governor of Acheh) during the period between the second Dutch expedition against Acheh (1873–1874) and the eventual abandonment of the concentration policy. They are mentioned in The Achehnese as the principal exception to the general inactivity of the Dutch forces during the concentration-time, and as the occasion on which the attitude of the Achehnese towards their peacefully-inclined countrymen first began to amend.
C. Snouck Hurgronje introduces the excursions in the context of the Dutch-Achehnese relationship. The peaceful people of Meura’sa, Gampong Jawa, and other places which had tendered their submission to the Dutch “exposed themselves to the hatred of their fellow-countrymen by their attitude during the first and second expeditions. After the excursions of General van der Heijden the feeling towards them began to amend, but later on and especially at the present time [1891—92] it has become unfavourable in the highest degree.” The excursions thus marked a brief interval in which the Dutch, by sallying out from their lines, succeeded in shaking the Achehnese conviction that the kafirs were worn out and must soon give in; their cessation, and the renewed passivity of the concentration period, undid the effect.
The Achehnese, as Hurgronje repeatedly emphasises, “constantly express their conviction that they were wrong in ever vacillating for a moment (as they did in the time of General van der Heijden), that Allah is manifestly on their side, and that the Dutch, infidels worn out by defeat after defeat and beset by sickness and other such troubles, must give in at last in spite of their apparently superior strength.” The van der Heijden excursions thus form a kind of watershed in the moral history of the war: a moment when Achehnese confidence in the inevitable defeat of the infidel was briefly shaken, before being restored by the long inactivity of the concentration period. The excursions did not, however, accomplish the subjugation of the country. They lacked the systematic character of the later maréchaussée campaigns under van Heutsz, and their effect was in the end undone by the policy they were meant to supplement.
The general himself — General van der Heijden — was one of the principal Dutch commanders of the war. His excursions through the highlands were distinguished from the routine holding of the “concentrated line” by their penetration into the country beyond the line, and they foreshadowed the more aggressive method of small, lightly-equipped native troops under European officers which, under van Heutsz from 1898, finally broke the back of Achehnese resistance. The excursions thus occupy, in the historiography of the Achehnese War, a place midway between the concentration policy and the maréchaussée: they were the first Dutch recognition that the war could not be won from behind a line of forts, but they were not yet the systematic application of the new method.
See Also
- General van der Heijden
- General van der Heyden
- Concentration Scheme
- Achehnese War
- Holy war against the Dutch
- Governor Van Heutsz
- Proclamation of the Pretender Sultan
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.