The transition from military to civil government in Atjeh was the central objective of H. N. A. Swart’s governorship and the subject of the sharpest controversy it aroused. Atjeh, du Croo wrote, had for decades — “harsh, anxious years” — been an almost completely military country: “soldiers administered, soldiers regulated, soldiers decided, soldiers set the tone; the civil official and the ‘private person’ were and remained individuals of subordinate importance.” Swart’s great merit was that he fully understood, and scrupulously applied, the proposition that military government, or government by soldiers, must be an exception, and that civil government is the normal government.
The doctrine
“Il n’est rien fondé que par le sabre,” said the soldiers after Napoleon — and they were right, not only in Atjeh but in all the finally opened Buitengewesten. But that soldier was not trained, not formed, for administrative work in its full and above all in its more finished form. So long as that administrative work remained confined to a pioneer task among primitive people and in a district infected with fierce and general resistance, so long the civil-and-military gezaghebber was “de-man-die.”
That proposition is unassailable, and its systematic application brought the Buitengewesten in excellent fashion under strong and very sound Dutch authority.
The military objection
“And there lies the catch.” Virtually all soldiers governing in Atjeh and there “vastgegroeid” judged the proposition wrong: in their view Atjeh could not for the foreseeable future be governed by B.B. officials. Du Croo set out their case in the imagery of the card game Hombre — “spadille, manille, basta, ponto — de 4 hoogste troeven in het vroeger in Atjeh algemeen gespeelde Hombre-kaartspel.”
The spadille was the warning reference to the “civielen tijd” of Pruijs van der Hoeven and Laging Tobias.
The manille was the argument that it had repeatedly appeared in later years too that resistance could suddenly flare up in apparently quiet districts, so that the Acehnese could only be governed by a toean who could exchange his pen-holder and law-book for klewang and carbine at lightning speed.
The basta was the argument that one had not yet learned, after all that unceasing change, that a system which answered well should not after ten or fifteen years be replaced by another merely for the sake of a theoretical fiction, so that military authority must remain the governing authority for at least one more generation.
The ponto was the suspicion that what this Governor wished to achieve at all costs within the relatively short time of his administration was a stubborn and dangerous pushing through of his own views, without consultation with or advice from “Atjeh-specialiteiten,” and all that chiefly to satisfy his own ambition.
“So thought a good many in Atjeh — not young fools, not gossip-mongers, but serious, hard workers in the Acehnese wilderness.” That they thought so, at least as regards spadille, manille and basta, was explicable and understandable, du Croo conceded. Firm ground had at last been found; ground on which one could build. And therefore — in view of the costly and sad experience of shifting insight — nothing should be rushed: this generation, which had been so closely involved in the general resistance, which had partly waged that resistance itself or had suffered from it in family relations or possessions, could and might in their view be placed under no government but a military one.
The problem of the “vastgegroeide” officer
But in governing in his own way, du Croo argued, such a relatively young officer-administrator — thrown mainly on his own resources, working hard in loneliness and isolation and set before great responsibility — “groeide vast” to his sub-division.
“That young fellow has been sitting there three years at a stretch,” an old and knowing resident once said, “he really feels himself a king! He must go!” The resident was right, although “die jongen” was a very well-assessed civil authority. But he no longer saw the wood for the trees, he thought himself almighty and indispensable, he looked down on “het civiel” and preached to everyone that “het civiel” could never practically govern in such a country. “There were… many such. The military-civil controversy is an Indies affliction. The bacillus had not yet been found and the therapy not yet established.”
Swart’s insistence and the criticism of it
So thought many in Atjeh — so thought and spoke and wrote very many in the Indies, also years after Swart’s retirement, when resistance broke out again in 1925/1926.
“It remains Swart’s imperishable merit that, undaunted, sure of himself and equally sure of the correctness of his insights, he chose and held his own way and direction.” Despite setbacks and disappointment, despite obstruction, because he was convinced that the goal he held before his eyes was attainable within the time he had conceived and moreover was the right one.
That unyielding persistence should not be thought lightly of: “only the self-assured man, who had weighed every possibility and was convinced that he had chosen the right one, had the right to report “political situation favourable” — even though he had at the same time to record events such as those in Daja, Lhong, Seunagan or Boven Wòjla. For he knew that those excesses could no longer be of significance against the whole.”
The katjauers (“gossip-mongers”)
Throughout those ten years Swart felt and knew opposition and obstruction against him. That is doubly felt in a country like Atjeh — “a hotbed of gossip and intrigue, where even good workers begrudged one another the light in their eyes, where so many — and they were not all of the male sex — strove for higher distinction and a better posting, where just as many thought themselves insufficiently rewarded or passed over, and where therefore there was gossiping, eternally and always gossiping.”
The chief servants of the chabar angin (rumour, literally “news of the wind”) reproached Swart — or rather “said of Swart” — that he let himself be influenced by katjauers, that he was susceptible to flattery and fine talk, that he pursued a policy of outward show. But anyone who might speak with the seventy-nine-year-old, as the author did, would find it hard to suppress a smile at such charges on hearing “Swart’s uncommonly accurate and telling characterisation of his collaborators, whom he saw through man by man.”
He was warm-hearted and to many a fatherly friend; it pained him to have to be hard towards valued and trusted collaborators, “but the clarity of his notes on the journals left little to be desired.”
Scheepens and the paradox of civil advance
Du Croo posed a paradox that illustrates the difficulty of Swart’s aim: that even a man like Scheepens found in 1913, in Swart’s civil construction and in the steady increase of civil interference and civil officials, reason “to long for the end.” Scheepens’s last letter to H. J. Schmidt, of 10 August 1913, advised him not to hurry back from leave: “The situation here is now such, and the method of work of such a kind, that clerks, bailiffs and self-satisfied pen-pushers in general come to the fore. Only when that evil current has passed would I make ready. Wait and see how things go… I have already applied to the Governor for release from my civil post.”
The Van Daalen decree
A further obstacle came from the army command. Scheepens’s letter of 26 December 1909 recorded: “Not long ago feelings were stirred here by a decree of the army commander (Van Daalen). Owing to a shortage of officers in the Infantry, no further civil employments might be entrusted to them, and those already so charged had to be relieved of them forthwith. I thereby lose the help of Van Doorn and of Grashuis. How is that to be managed, my dear fellow? Meanwhile the Governor has begun the fight against that provision and must have laid the matter before the Governor-General. I heartily hope that it will give occasion for the earlier introduction of wholly civil administration.”
The Streber (“careerist”) charge answered
Swart was to others “een Streber” who, to satisfy personal ambition, had immoderately hastened the process of conversion from military to civil and pushed it through before land and people were ripe for it.
Du Croo answered: that ambition had then probably also existed in Borneo and Celebes, where Swart risked everything for the same aim and working method — “and succeeded completely. If that work rested on ambition, then that ambition was a very healthy one.” Naturally those who knew only Atjeh considered the work in Borneo and Celebes easier and not comparable with Atjeh: “Atjeh was Atjeh! What proved right elsewhere did not on that account have to be right for Atjeh.” That, Swart denied: it was all application of the same insights, though under other circumstances, and those circumstances he did not consider insuperable.
Moreover, du Croo added, “a careerist is recognised, certainly in official or military life in the Indies, by his subordinates, above all by those of lower rank, les petits, les sans-grades. Well then: talk to them, hear their judgement, read their letters — and especially those from the later years, when Swart in Holland could no longer be a useful patron.” And besides: “a careerist never risks — and that is what people in Borneo and in Atjeh gladly wished him — that he should “break his neck”.”
The outcome
Swart’s own farewell address of 2 September 1918 made the point explicit: with the laying down of his office “an important piece of Atjeh history” was closed, since there would now be an absolute separation of civil and military authority as existed in all other provinces. Since 1915, in view of the political situation, he had been wholly convinced of the possibility of that separation. Moreover, that separation could be accompanied by the most loyal co-operation between civil and military authorities, “and with a little self-denial on both sides, a difference of view need never lead to regrettable collisions.”
Du Croo’s own summary held that Swart had, by governing and pacifying, made Atjeh ripe for civil government in its full extent, provided the successor continued to govern along Swart’s lines and possessed the tact and skill to leave the military element a generous place for the time being. The best of the civil successors saw this and acted accordingly, practising gradualness in the advancing de-militarisation and leaving a few vulnerable and very sensitive spots in Atjeh under a civil-and-military gezaghebber. Beside these, some successors were not of the Van Heutsz–Swart school and were imperfectly acquainted with Atjeh and its history; they did not follow the lines “and thereby delayed the process of progress by some years, which made itself painfully felt.”
By 7 March 1936, when Governor Van Aken handed over the government to Resident Jongejans, the process was nearly complete: Van Aken declared that he considered the sub-divisions Alaslanden, Lam Meulò, Meulaboh and Tapa’ Toean — the last still governed by officers — “made entirely ripe … for civil administration,” and that only considerations of economy had restrained him from making proposals to that effect. Du Croo called that “the keystone of the pacification — eighteen years after Swart’s retirement.”
Significance
The military-civil controversy was, as du Croo put it, “an Indies affliction.” Swart’s resolution of it in Atjeh — the province where the argument for continued military rule was strongest — established the pattern for the whole of the Buitengewesten and was, in his own and his biographer’s judgement, the true meaning of the word pacificatie.
See Also
- H. N. A. Swart
- W. B. J. A. Scheepens
- H. J. Schmidt
- Gotfried Coenraad Ernst van Daalen
- Van Aken
- J. Jongejans
- Katjau
- Swart’s farewell address (2 September 1918)
- Het Pacificeerende Bestuurswerk 1908-1918
- Binnenlandsch Bestuur
- 1918
Source
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XIV, pp. 138–142; Chapter XVI, pp. 156–157; Chapter XVII, p. 164.