The Ordonnantie van 19 Maart 1881 (“Ordinance of 19 March 1881”) was the Dutch-language original of the colonial ordinance respecting the administration of justice among the native population of Groot-Atjeh (Great Acheh), published at Batavia in 1881 with an explanatory memorandum (memorie van toelichting) by Mr. T. H. der Kinderen. The same Ordinance is cited in its English dress by Snouck Hurgronje as the Ordinance of the 14th March 1881. The discrepancy of dates — 14 March in the English citation, 19 March in the Dutch title-page — corresponds to the interval between the signing of a colonial ordinance and its formal promulgation in the Staatsblad of the Netherlands-India.
Subject-matter and citation
The Ordonnantie is cited in the second of Snouck Hurgronje’s discussions of Achehnese legal institutions, namely his account of the Kali Malikon Adil. Writers on Acheh had accustomed their readers to the idea that above the kalis of the uleebalangs and of the panglima sagi there sat enthroned in the capital a supreme hereditary judge of that title — “Judge of the righteous King” — and for this notion, Snouck Hurgronje remarked, “we have again to thank Mr. Der Kinderen, whose chief guide in forming this conclusion was the bearer of the title himself.” The latter, for reasons not difficult to surmise, had told Mr. Der Kinderen tales regarding his exalted position in flagrant conflict with the truth, painting an idealised picture of its importance as it had been at the time of its first establishment, some two and a half centuries ago, and furbishing this up as the actual state of things at the present day. The Ordonnantie and its memorie are the documentary deposit of that misapprehension.
Relation to the Ordinance of 14 March 1881
The Ordonnantie of 19 March and the Ordinance of 14th March 1881 are one and the same instrument, cited in different contexts in The Achehnese. The English-style citation appears in the Introduction, where Snouck Hurgronje contrasts the Ordinance as a piece of codification that “perished at its birth” with the living uncodified adat of the Achehnese. The Dutch citation appears in the body of the work, in connexion with the office of the Kali Malikon Adil, where the explanatory memorandum by Der Kinderen is the immediate object of criticism.
Failure and historical importance
Like its English-cited counterpart, the Ordonnantie was a dead letter. The war had been allowed to be suspended in 1881, and the concentration policy that followed confined Dutch authority to a narrow perimeter around Kuta Raja. The Ordonnantie therefore never came into effective operation, and the Achehnese continued to regulate their affairs by their own adat and hukom without reference to it. As a historical document, however, it remained of importance for the picture it gave — erroneous in part, but minutely documented — of the legal institutions which the Dutch colonial government in 1881 supposed itself to be administering.
See Also
- Ordinance of 14th March 1881
- Kali Malikon Adil
- T. H. der Kinderen
- Achehnese War
- Concentration scheme
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.