The Governorship of General van der Heyden (Achehnese Van der Heijden) — covering the years 1877 to 1881 — is described by C. Snouck Hurgronje in The Achehnese as the period in which the Dutch at last learnt by experience that while a defensive policy in no way advanced their dominion in Acheh, a vigorous offensive would make the enemy come to his senses. Under Van der Heyden’s leadership, all Great-Acheh was conquered, and the Achehnese for the first time were brought to recognise the Dutch as a military power of the first order.
The Governor’s Policy
Van der Heyden inherited a war that had been allowed to drift since the first and second expeditions of 1873. The policy of the Dutch Government, in the years immediately following those expeditions, had rested on the illusion that by taking up certain strong positions — one having the former sultan’s residence as its centre and others being important harbours in the dependencies — the rest of the country could be forced to submit, and that by the submission of certain of the principal chiefs the other headmen and the rest of the people would be brought under Dutch authority. The years of defensive warfare that followed produced no result; the Achehnese continued to harass the Dutch posts at will.
Van der Heyden reversed this policy. He took the offensive in earnest, sending out armed columns — the “excursions” by which his governorship is remembered in Achehnese tradition — and pursuing the hostile bands into their fastnesses. The effect on the Achehnese themselves was immediate. From the very commencement of the war, the peacefully inclined inhabitants of Meura’sa and other places which had tendered their submission to the Dutch had exposed themselves to the hatred of their fellow-countrymen by their attitude during the first and second expeditions. After Van der Heyden’s excursions, Snouck Hurgronje observes, “the feeling towards them began to amend.” The hostile party no longer regarded submission as mere cowardice, but as a response to a power that could not be defied with impunity.
Legacy
The conquests of Van der Heyden’s governorship opened the way, however prematurely, for the introduction of a purely civil government in 1881. The Dutch politicians, Snouck Hurgronje writes, supposed that now that the war seemed virtually at an end they could fall back upon a more defensive attitude. The years 1881 to 1884 were needed to enable them to see that the establishment of widely extended military posts in Great-Acheh and the introduction of a settled administration could never lead to the breaking down of the opposition in the dependencies; and that, on the contrary, so long as one did not oneself take the offensive against the Coast-states, the military posts in Great-Acheh would be the target of continual attacks by the Achehnese. The Government and the House of Representatives in the Netherlands then took the decision — alas, an erroneous decision — that the expenditure on Great-Acheh must be curtailed, and that the resistance in the Coast-states must be overcome by naval coercion alone. From this decision sprang the establishment of the “linie” or Dutch pale in 1884.
Effect on Achehnese Opinion
Even after the formal close of Van der Heyden’s campaigns, the Achehnese continued, Snouck Hurgronje notes, to “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.” The governorship thus marked not the end but the transformation of Achehnese resistance — from the open military resistance of the sultan and the great chiefs to the religiously organised jihad of the ulamas that was to characterise the long period of concentration.
See Also
- General van der Heijden’s excursions
- First and Second Dutch Expeditions to Acheh
- Establishment of the Dutch ‘linie’ (pale)
- Dutch policy of ‘concentration’
- Acheh War
- 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.