The resumption of the Acheh War in 1896 marked the end of the fifteen-year suspension of hostilities that had begun with the concentration policy of 1881, and the beginning of the methodical final subjugation of Acheh by the Dutch. The immediate occasion of the resumption was the closing of the Uma episode, which had indirectly exercised a healthy influence upon the management of Achehnese affairs by opening all eyes to the need of vigorous action if one did not wish to abandon altogether the subjugation of Acheh.
The end of the concentration policy
The war against the Achehnese, Snouck Hurgronje observes, had been allowed to be suspended since 1881 without any real resultant gain. The concentration policy, by which the Dutch had confined themselves to a narrow perimeter around Kuta Raja, had given the Achehnese a respite of which they had fully availed themselves. The enemy, by nature more warlike and from of old more devoted to war than any race in the neighbouring islands, was by this time far better equipped than at the outset of the Dutch invasion of Acheh. He had a superfluity of arms and munitions; he possessed a better knowledge of the tactics of European troops and the difficulties that they had to overcome; and he had, during the concentration-time, formed no high estimate of his foe’s intelligence. Thus his self-confidence stood higher than ever.
The Uma episode and its effect
The Uma episode, however melancholy in itself, indirectly exercised a healthy influence upon the management of Achehnese affairs. Teuku Uma’s secret opposition to Dutch rule had changed to open hostility, but since the real purport of his actions had long been as obvious as the day, Snouck Hurgronje could not speak except in a highly specialised sense of Uma’s “defection”. The termination of the episode opened all eyes to the need of vigorous action; and in 1896 the war was resumed.
The direction of Van Heutsz
Above all, since Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz in 1898 took the direction of affairs, everything was methodically done to make the necessary end, once and for all, of this insurrection. The resumption of the war was thus not a sudden burst of energy but a deliberate policy, in which the experience of the concentration-years was turned to account and the lessons of the Uma episode were applied. Van Heutsz’s methodical direction contrasted sharply with the half-measures of the preceding period, and within a few years it had reduced the open resistance of the Achehnese to guerilla warfare.
The character of the renewed war
Whenever the Dutch troops encountered the Achehnese in the open field, the die was soon cast: the Achehnese could not, owing to lack of unity and organisation, keep in the field anything like a military force for long. On the other hand, the Achehnese had an advantage in guerilla warfare which made their subjugation a gigantic task, and through which the combatant numbers at their foe’s disposal were of even less avail than his superior strategy and organisation. Between the populated districts the Achehnese found sometimes jungles and sometimes swamps in which he could conceal himself; from the central highlands of North Sumatra, where the Gayos and Alassers lived, a huge ring of forest separated him. In ordinary times he made clearings for pepper and rice fields in the jungle; in time of need such clearings offered themselves as excellent hiding-places over which bands could scatter themselves. The resumption of the war thus inaugurated not a brief campaign but a long and laborious reduction, in which the superior organisation of the Dutch was pitted against the natural advantages of the Achehnese terrain and the Achehnese genius for irregular warfare.
See Also
- Achehnese War
- Submission of Teuku Uma
- Concentration scheme
- Governor Van Heutsz
- Teuku Uma
- General Van der Heijden’s excursions
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.