The Lhóng action of 1933 was the last significant armed rising of the Atjèhnese against Dutch authority in the colonial period, fought in the remote oelèëbalangship of Lhóng — belonging to the sagi of the XXV Moekims of Groot-Atjèh — and extinguished only with the installation of Teukoe Radja Djoema’at as oelèëbalang of Lhóng, who “had restored confidence and authority in this area and had brought about orderly conditions.” Piekaar’s Atjèh and the War with Japan names the action as the terminus of post-Atjèh War resistance: of the actions “which repeatedly flared up after the conclusion of the Atjèh War,” the Bakóngan uprising was the most serious and “the action in Lhóng (1933) the last of significance.”
The terrain and its isolation
Lhóng lies in the wild mountain country where the Barisan range “reaches here, as in the adjacent area of the sagi of the XXV Moekims … right down to the coast.” Its isolation preserved, even into the 1930s, the religious mentality of the Atjèh War generation. Piekaar records that in this region the “standstill of time was reflected in the religious instruction. Here no modernization of religious education, as one found in Groot-Atjèh and on the North Coast.” It was no coincidence that “the last military action of significance mentioned in the ‘Introduction’ took place in 1933 in the neighboring Lheng.” Garrisons at Tjalang and Lam Nó and a detachment at Lam Soedjèn in Lhóng had been maintained precisely to make “intensive patrolling possible” in this volatile country.
Aftermath
The rising’s suppression inaugurated two decades of peace in Lhóng. The new oelèëbalang, Teukoe Radja Djoema’at, was confirmed as an “energetic forty-year-old” who would later be among the eight Great-Atjèhnese chiefs arrested by G. F. V. Gosenson on 11 March 1942 in the celebrated “coup d’état” — a measure aimed at the very leadership class which had been restored to authority by the settlement of 1933. The action’s most lasting institutional legacy was the disbandment of garrisons across the West Coast during the German-war years: “Lam NO (subdistrict Tjalang), Lam Ië (subdistrict Meulabóh)” and Lam Soedjèn were all withdrawn in the accelerated reduction of the garrison network after 1939.
Significance
The Lhóng action closed the cycle of armed resistance which had run intermittently since 1873. When the next uprising came — the revolt in Great Atjèh of 1942 — it was no longer a localised, religiously motivated prang sabi in the mountain fastnesses, but a coordinated fifth-column movement aligned with the Japanese invasion.
See Also
- Bakóngan uprising (1925–1927)
- Atjèh War
- Lhóng
- Tjalang
- Lam Nó
- Lam Soedjèn
- Teukoe Radja Djoema’at
- Colonel Gosenson
- 1933
Source
Atjèh and the War with Japan, by Dr. A. J. Piekaar, translated from the Dutch original Atjèh en de oorlog met Japan (1949) (‘s-Gravenhage/Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve; English edition), Chapter I § 1, Chapter III § 1, Chapter III § 3.