The Koloniale Tentoonstelling van 1914 te Semarang (“the Colonial Exhibition of 1914 at Semarang”) was a colonial exhibition held at Semarang in 1914 that provided the occasion for the writing of the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s volume De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914. The exhibition included a separate section for gewestelijke inzendingen (regional submissions), in which — alongside a few residencies of Java — the majority of the gewesten of the Buitenbezittingen, including Atjeh and Dependencies, presented overviews of the state of land and people in separate pavilions.
Account from De Buitenbezittingen (1917) — Koloniale Tentoonstelling van 1914 te Semarang
The Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s volume De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914 opens, in its Voorwoord (Preface), with an account of the Koloniale Tentoonstelling van 1914 te Semarang as the originating occasion of the work. The Bureau notes that the exhibition included, alongside the gewestelijke pavilions, a paviljoen Koloniaal Beheer (Colonial Administration pavilion) in which the Departementen van algemeen bestuur (Departments of general administration) submitted numerous data of “very great importance for the knowledge of our island realm outside Java and Madura.”
The Bureau notes that the exhibition, “by the circumstances” — that is, by the 1914 outbreak of the European war — “was by no means as busy as expected, and as it indeed deserved.” The “numerous, often wholly new facts, gathered by the Government and the administrative officials with much effort,” were therefore “not made known in such ample measure as was necessary to fully achieve the above-mentioned goal: the dissemination of more knowledge about the Buitenbezittingen.”
The Bureau was thereupon tasked with “compiling a report on the Buitenbezittingen, using the Government and gewestelijke submissions present at the exhibition” — a report that, in the event, “became much more extensive than was intended in the conception of that limited assignment.” The resulting volume is the source from which the present account is drawn, and is the reason why so much of the post-1896 Dutch record on Atjeh — including the pacification of Atjeh, the Atjeh-tramway, and the landschapskassen of the Atjeh and Dependencies residency — is preserved in a single published work.
Significance
The Koloniale Tentoonstelling van 1914 te Semarang is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account, the originating occasion of the volume De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914 — and thus, indirectly, of the principal published Dutch record of the pacification of Atjeh and the post-1896 consolidation of Dutch rule in Atjeh. The exhibition’s partial failure — owing to the 1914 outbreak of the European war — is itself the reason why the Bureau’s volume exists: the Bureau’s report was commissioned as a remedy for the failure of the exhibition to disseminate knowledge of the Buitenbezittingen to the wider public.
See Also
- Buitenbezittingen
- Encyclopaedisch Bureau
- Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen
- Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Atjeh-tram
- Landschapskassen
- Semarang
- 1914
Sources
De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914, Deel I, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), Voorwoord.