Grepen uit den Atjeh-oorlog. Generaal van der Heyden’s verwijdering van Atjeh — “Excerpts from the Atjeh War. General van der Heyden’s removal from Atjeh” — is an article by J. J. C. A. Bannink, published in 1939 in the Orgaan van de Nederlandsch-Indische Officiersvereeniging (Organ of the Netherlands Indies Officers’ Association), vol. 24, p. 175 e.v., in which the author drew on the Atjeh War to present excerpts bearing on the figure of General van der Heyden and on the circumstances of his removal — verwijdering — from Atjeh. The article is recorded as No. 550 in Van Meurs’s Literatuur-Overzicht over het jaar 1939 (The Hague, 1940), in the Sumatra chapter.
Author and venue
Bannink — already known in the AcehWiki corpus from the entry C. A. Bannink — published the article in the Orgaan van de Nederlandsch-Indische Officiersvereeniging, the monthly journal of the Netherlands Indies officers’ association, which was the principal professional venue for the Dutch colonial officer corps and a common outlet for retrospective military-historical writing on the Atjeh-oorlog. The choice of venue signals the article’s intended audience: serving and former officers of the Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger with an interest in the campaigns of the preceding generation.
Subject: van der Heyden and his “verwijdering”
The article’s subject, as recorded by Van Meurs, is “Generaal van der Heyden’s verwijdering van Atjeh” — the removal of General van der Heyden from Atjeh. The noun verwijdering — removal, distancing — is significant: it denotes not a routine transfer but a separation imposed from above, a recall that carried the implication of displeasure. Van der Heyden — known elsewhere in the corpus as General van der Heyden and as the officer who figures in the Samalangan campaign — was one of the principal Dutch military commanders of the Atjeh War, and his “removal” was an episode of consequence in the internal politics of the colonial army. Bannink’s article, by drawing “grepen” — excerpts, selections — from the Atjeh War record, presented the episode to the officer corps as a case study in the relations between a commander and his superiors.
Place in the 1939 Literatuur-Overzicht
The article is No. 550 in the Sumatra chapter (Hoofdstuk III, Nos. 548–658) of Van Meurs’s survey, where it stands at the head of the B-letter entries of the Sumatra chapter and is the first Atjeh-specific entry of that chapter. Its placement there, alongside the Brandhof note on Kleiland-aanwinning op Atjeh’s Westkust in 1902 (No. 557), the da Costa survey of the Padrie-oorlog (No. 558), and the Damsté edition of the Seven Sleepers legend (No. 560), marks it as one of the principal retrospective accounts of the Atjeh War published in 1939.
Significance
For AcehWiki, the article is significant as a 1939 retrospective on the Atjeh War and on the figure of General van der Heyden, published in the principal professional journal of the Netherlands Indies officer corps at a moment — the late colonial period — when the Atjeh War was passing from living memory into institutional history. The article furnishes an independent source for the episode of van der Heyden’s removal, and it complements the corpus’s existing entries on General van der Heyden, on the Samalangan campaign, and on the wider military history of the Atjeh-oorlog.
See Also
- Literatuur-Overzicht over het jaar 1939 (Van Meurs, 1940)
- H. van Meurs
- c-a-bannink
- general-van-der-heyden
- van-der-heyden-s-samalangan-campaign
- Aceh War
- K.N.I.L.
- Kleiland-aanwinning op Atjeh’s Westkust in 1902 (Brandhof, 1939)
- De Padrie-oorlog (Costa, 1939)
- De legende van de heilige zeven slapers in het Atjehsch (Damsté, 1939)
- Acheh
- 1939
- 1940
Source
Literatuur-Overzicht over het jaar 1939 van de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde en Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indië, door H. van Meurs (‘s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1940), Hoofdstuk III (Sumatra en naburig gebied), No. 550. Citing: J. J. C. A. Bannink, “Grepen uit den Atjeh-oorlog. Generaal van der Heyden’s verwijdering van Atjeh,” Orgaan van de Nederlandsch-Indische Officiersvereeniging, vol. 24 (1939), p. 175 e.v.