Van Kol’s refutation of the causes of the Atjeh-oorlog was the historical section of the speech delivered by H. van Kol in the Tweede Kamer on 16 November 1897, in which the social-democratic deputy for Enschedé examined and rejected each of the three official grounds on which the Dutch declaration of war against the Sultanate of Atjeh of 26 March 1873 had been justified: the practice of piracy on the Acehnese coasts, the continual wars among the Acehnese statelets, and the danger of the interference of foreign powers.
The three alleged causes
Van Kol stated that three reasons had been given: “1. het plegen van zeeroof op de Atjehsche kusten, 2. de voortdurende oorlogen onder de verschillende Staatjes, en 3. gevaar voor inmenging van Vreemde Mogendheden.” — 1. the committing of piracy on the Acehnese coasts, 2. the continual wars among the various petty States, and 3. danger of interference by Foreign Powers. Not one of these pretended causes, he held, could stand the test of unprejudiced investigation.
Piracy
Piracy could not be denied, but Van Kol asked whether it had been as bad as was so often maintained, chiefly on the authority of vehemently written papers of the Straits-Settlement which had an interest in urging the Dutch to war, since Penang owed no small part of its prosperity to it. He held that the register of Acehnese sins had been scrutinised and published with the utmost care, and that even so the only speaking facts of piracy to be found were in 1851, when one American, one Netherlands, two English and one Neapolitan ship were plundered. He asked why the request of Kuyper for a complete statistic of the cases of piracy had never been met.
Did that give the Dutch, in 1873, the right to declare war on the sultan? The man was perhaps unwilling; that was not known, and no single fact demonstrated it conclusively. He had even promised by treaty in 1857 to prevent piracy — see Tractaat van 1857 — but he could not, being as powerless in that respect as the Dutch themselves were off Sumatra, off Nieuw-Guinea and even off Java.
Van Kol supported this with the Koloniaal Verslag itself, which recorded that in 1896 two cases of piracy occurred at Japara, two at Madoera, and one each at Batavia, Soerabaya and Probolingo; and that on the Mentawei-eilanden prauws were “niet zelden” robbed and their crews murdered without the Dutch being able to prevent it. He read from De Locomotief of the previous month that pirates lay constantly in wait in the straat Madoera, that several prauw-masters refused freight for the Oosthoek, and that the tambangans which formerly sailed by night to Kamal and Grissee now took care to be in before dark, since the sea-rovers had more than once ventured after sunset even onto the roadstead near the guard-ship.
He asked whether for that which the Dutch themselves could not prevent an independent prince might be thrust from his throne and his land taken from him, recalling that head-hunting still occurred in the part of Timor under direct Dutch authority, that widows had within a few years been burned on the pyres of the Hindoe-vorsten van Bali, and that slavery still existed in the Gouvernement Sumatra’s Westkust, in Toba and Silindoeng, in the southern and eastern divisions of Borneo, in South Celebes, on Soemba and Lombok — with f 1500 entered in the very budget before the chamber for the limitation of slavery in the self-governing landschappen of the government of Celebes. What would be said, he asked, if another power declared war on Netherlands India because the government was unable to prevent piracy, head-hunting, slavery and cannibalism in its own dependencies? Why measure with two measures according to whether princes had a white or a brown skin?
Internal quarrels
The second ground he dismissed by the same method. Were such wars not equally the order of the day on numbers of islands of the Indischen Archipel nominally subject to Dutch authority? Did not the Gajoes and Allas from time to time raid in the Battak landen? Were there not continual fights in Toba and Silindoeng? Did not inhabitants of Djambi make incursions into the Padangsche Bovenlanden, in which three Dutch subjects were shot dead? Had the Dutch not often refused to meddle in the internal wars of the island of Nias? Had the Dutch administration not that very year let the landschappen of Timor fight quietly among themselves so long as Dutch subjects were not involved, just as wars between the tribes were continually in progress on North and East Flores and in the Solor and Allor islands? Why then must the Dutch intervene in Atjeh, in quarrels between tribes wholly independent of them?
Foreign interference
The third reason he called somewhat less far-fetched than the others, but held that even before the war began it was known that the so-called verraad of the Acehnese consisted in a few wholly or half-invented conversations of doubtful persons and adventurers with the trade consuls of Italië and N.-Amerika, who exercised not the least power and were at once disavowed by their governments — a point marked in the pamphlet by the marginal note “Tegengesproken” (contradicted). That the sultan sought support was, he said, obvious: as an independent prince he had the fullest right to do so, and against the conduct of the Netherlands Indies Government it was for him a requirement of self-preservation.
The history of encroachment
Van Kol placed the three causes against a narrative of Dutch encroachment. Once the mightiest empire of Sumatra, possessing the greater half of the island, Atjeh had long seen its territory crumble away into Dutch hands. After the O.-I. Compagnie left Sumatra’s Westkust towards the end of the previous century, withdrew the post at Baros and delivered Padang to the English, the whole trade had passed to the English until 1819. In 1824 the Dutch concluded the treaty of London, by which the fruits of earlier robbery were bartered away and Sumatra was obtained in exchange for Malakka under the express condition that relations with Atjeh should be so regulated that the sultan should lose nothing of his independence.
As Atjeh’s power declined it soon lost Djohor and some dependencies of Siak, one of its vassal kingdoms. The Dutch attacked Baros in 1829 and 1834, and were repelled with Acehnese help. In 1838 warships went out to extend Dutch power at Baros, Tapoes and Singkel; the raja of Singkel, Mohammed Aroef, asked to be left to live in peace, saying “wij zijn een vrij volk en doen niemand kwaad” (we are a free people and do no one harm), and found it “zeer onbillijk, zich eens anders goed toe te eigenen, alleen omdat men meer geld en meer volk voor den oorlog heeft” (most unjust to appropriate another’s goods merely because one has more money and more people for war). The government remained deaf, and Baros was occupied in 1839 and Singkel in 1840. In 1848 the Acehnese tried to retake Singkel but were not strong enough; fighting followed in 1848–1849 and 1851, and a treaty was concluded with Troemon to make it independent of Atjeh — that is, said Van Kol, to raise it in revolt against its liege lord.
On the East Coast of Sumatra Dutch conquest-hunger had roused the jealousy of England, whose remonstrances against the aggressive policy of the day were so serious that the posts at Indragiri and Siak were withdrawn in 1842. What the Dutch had done half a century earlier out of fear, Van Kol argued, they ought now to repeat at Atjeh’s northern point out of a sense of right alone.
In 1857 the Dutch concluded with the sultan the so-called Atjeh-tractaat of trade and friendship, and as a proof of friendship concluded a treaty with Siak, over which Atjeh had long asserted rights and whose sultan now recognised Dutch suzerainty. Apart from Assahan, Dutch sovereignty had been made to be recognised as far as the northern boundary of Tamian, the Acehnese always resisting, until by an expedition in 1865 Assahan too, and thus the whole East Coast of Sumatra, came into Dutch hands. Two expeditions were sent to Nias in 1863 and one to Singkel in 1865. It was therefore not surprising, Van Kol said, that the sultan sought support against Dutch overwhelming, and in 1868 even offered the sovereignty of his lands to his religious head, the Commander of the Faithful, the Sultan of Turkije — a wholly comprehensible attempt to preserve his independence.
The Dutch meanwhile did not sit still: by abolishing the differential duties in Siak English trade was satisfied, by throwing a piece of the coast of Guinea to the English government that government was satisfied, and in November 1871 the treaty with England was concluded which left the Dutch a free hand on Sumatra, that is against Atjeh. Use was made of it with all too much eagerness, and already on 26 March 1873 war was declared.
Kielstra’s testimony
Van Kol read into the record the passage from Major Kielstra’s Beschrijving van den Atjeh-oorlog, volume I, page 27, in which the Dutch historian conceded that Acehnese and Netherlanders had for the last two centuries stood more or less hostile to one another; that impartiality obliged one to add that the Acehnese also had many reasons to distrust the Dutch; that the Dutch conquests on Sumatra’s West Coast were at first nothing but hostilities against Atjeh committed exclusively in the interest of the monopoly system of the O.-I. Compagnie; that Acehnese merchants had legitimate grievances over the petty vexations of the Dutch tariff and the arbitrary conduct of government officials; that the commanders of the cruising boats permitted themselves many acts of violence at Acehnese expense — as in 1834 or 1835 near the island of Pontjang, where Acehnese prauws provided with proper passes were detained and their crews partly murdered and partly imprisoned; that the crews of the cruising boats, covered by the Netherlands flag and by their official title and under the appearance of a scrupulous application of the tariff, had repeatedly made themselves guilty of acts differing little from piracy; and that no efforts at all had been made to come to better terms with Atjeh, the only thing Atjeh learned of the Dutch being the confirmation of their authority on Sumatra’s West Coast, which it was bound to regard as an act of enmity.
The ultimatum
Van Kol concluded that the Dutch had sought the war, given the occasion and provoked the outbreak. Despite the time granted the sultan to answer, with 29 March fixed as the ultimatum, the bombardment of the coast and the shooting down of the population began already on 27 March 1873. The decision for war had been taken in a shockingly frivolous manner and the war irresponsibly prepared: Atjeh was believed to be in deep decay, in complete anarchy, with no power, no money and no weapons, unable to count on the help of its vassals, and it was thought probable that victory would be gained without a blow and the whole affair finished before the monsoon.
See Also
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- H. van Kol
- E. B. Kielstra
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824
- Tractaat van 1857
- Siak Tractaat (1858)
- Sumatra Tractaat (1871)
- Mohammed Aroef
- Offer of Atjeh’s sovereignty to the Sultan of Turkey (1868)
- Declaration of war against the Sultan of Atjeh (1873)
- 26 March
- 1873
- 1897
Source
Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, pp. 5–10, 62–63.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898 (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.