Moens’ journey through Atjeh (November 1913) was the fourteen-day tour of the pacified Atjeh made in November 1913 by the retired naval lieutenant W. Moens at the invitation of luitenant-generaal H. N. A. Swart, Gouverneur van Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden — a journey which, because Moens had served about twenty years earlier in the naval blockade of the Acehnese coast, became a documented comparison between the Atjeh of the war and the Atjeh of the peace, and was published as the feuilleton series Reisindrukken van Atjeh in the Algemeen Handelsblad and as a booklet by Jacob van Campen in 1914.
The invitation at Sabang
Moens had left Holland in July 1913 for a business journey through other parts of the Indies; the fortnight in Atjeh stond niet op het programma (was not on the programme). On the outward voyage, arriving at Sabang, he met there Gouverneur Swart, an old acquaintance, who pressed him to reserve fourteen days at the end of his business trip in order to convince himself with his own eyes of the state of the country. What decided Moens was Swart’s remark that it pleased him when Hollanders themselves came to see what Atjeh now was, so that more confidence in the land’s conditions might arise in the mother country.
The route
The journey began with the crossing from Pangkalan Brandan by steam launch over the Aroe-baai, past the petroleum-tank village of Pangkalan Soesoeh and up the Salahadji river to the little place of that name, and then over a hardened art-road to Kwalla Simpang on the Tamiang river, the first post of a government official on Acehnese soil — where the civiel-gezaghebber Wessels greeted him: Nu is u werkelijk in het gevaarlijke (!) Atjeh (Now you really are in dangerous (!) Atjeh). At Kwalla Simpang Moens witnessed the placing of the last span of the Tamiang bridge, visited the first native school on Acehnese soil, saw the market, the cinema of an Arab, and the tram terminus, and was shown the rubber estate Soengei Lipoet. By the Atjeh-tram he travelled over Langsar and Peureula — where the oil of the Perlak fields was pumped in a heavy pipeline to Pangkalan Brandan — to Idi, with a noon-day halt, and so along the foot of the hills past Loh Soekoen to Loh Semaweu, the once fortified post and headquarter of the assistent-resident of the North Coast, M. C. Roos van Raadshoven.
From Loh Semaweu Moens went by dogcart some twenty kilometres to the maréchaussée-bivak of Boeloh Blang Ara, where four brigades and two officers still patrolled after the remaining kwaadwilligen of the mountains; with the archaeologist De Vink he visited the grave of the queen of Pasé at Koeta Kareuëng; and he called upon the oelèëbalang, the Maharadja of L. Semaweu, who offered him a glass of Heidsieck monopole. From Bireuën he drove up the Gajoe-weg as far as Kroeng Seumpoe, passing the iron bridge over the Peusangan and the region where kapitein Heinzenknecht had worked and been murdered. With Gouverneur Swart and the ex-Minister of War Colijn — the whole in an extra train consisting of locomotive, tender, goods van and salon wagon with after platform — he went on over Samalanga to Sigli, where majoor Veldman received them and where Moens visited the courtroom of the Scheepens murder, slept in the Fransche barak, and sat at dinner with three bearers of the Militaire Willemsorde. Over the waterscheiding (watershed) at Selimoen he reached the valley of Groot-Atjeh and Koeta Radja, where he lodged at the Governor’s house; one day after Colijn had departed — his presence having made the last part of the journey vruchtbaarder en interessanter (more fruitful and more interesting) — Moens left by way of Sabang for Europe.
The events of the peace
The journey coincided with the last weeks before the onafhankelijkheidsfeesten (the independence festivities of November 1913), when the officials left their posts for the capital without concern; it passed the ground of the Tamiang expeditions of 1893, the empty military hospital of Panteh Perak, and the ruins of the old ceintuurbaan embankment near Koeta Radja. On the way Swart gave Moens his reasoning on the pursuit of the kwaadwilligen, and the chiefs of Samalanga greeted toewan Colijn — of whose 160 days’ march from Medan to Sigli Moens heard the story at Veldman’s table — while in Koeta Radja Moens heard the case of Panglima Polim’s sister, which Swart had decided, with the council of the oldest oelama’s of Groot-Atjeh, in the divorce case against the dictates of adat.
Significance
Moens’s journey is significant as one of the earliest published Dutch inspections of pacified Atjeh by an independent eyewitness. It gave the Netherlands a route-by-route description of the country as it stood after forty years of war: the trams and roads in use, the markets busy, the schools full, the Europeans travelling alone, the tax-collectors carrying cash unescorted. The editorial note of the Algemeen Handelsblad underlined that the value of the impressions lay, besides the picture of a considerable part of Sumatra, in the establishment of a historical fact of the greatest significance for the Netherlands and its colonies: Er is vrede op Atjeh, de Atjeh-oorlog is voorbij (There is peace in Atjeh, the Atjeh war is over).
See Also
- W. Moens
- Reisindrukken van Atjeh (Moens, 1914)
- H. N. A. Swart
- Hendrikus Colijn
- Atjeh-tram
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Onafhankelijkheidsfeesten at Koeta Radja (November 1913)
- 1913
Source
Reisindrukken van Atjeh, door W. Moens, oud-luitenant ter zee (Amsterdam: Jacob van Campen, 1914), pp. 7–52. OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-99-Reisindrukken_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.