Carpentier Alting commission (1918) — Dutch Commissie tot herziening van de bestuursgrondslagen in Nederlandsch-Indië (Commission for the revision of the foundations of government in the Netherlands Indies) — was the commission appointed in 1918 under the chairmanship of Prof. Mr. J. H. Carpentier Alting to draft a revision of the constitutional foundations of the Dutch East Indies. The commission’s appointment is recorded in Mr. Dr. Caron’s chapter De bestuursvormen in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946).
Background and appointment
According to Caron’s account, the Governor-General of the day — in the difficult days at the end of the First World War — found occasion “in November 1918 to address the Volksraad (People’s Council) and to set out a programme for the development of the central representative body, which would bring fundamental changes in the Indies’ forms of government.” To give effect to this promise, “in 1918 a commission was appointed under the chairmanship of Prof. Mr. J. H. Carpentier Alting for the revision of the foundations of government in the Netherlands Indies. This commission submitted, with its report, a draft law on the state ordering (ontwerp-wet op de staatsordening).”
Work and afterlife
The Carpentier Alting commission’s draft law was to exercise considerable influence on the constitutional revision of 1922 in the Netherlands, which in turn shaped the eventual Wet op de Indische Staatsregeling (Law on the Indies State Regulation) of 1925. The 1922 constitutional revision — described by Caron as having introduced, in articles 1 and 63–64, “a very important change in colonial policy” by removing “all obstacles to the transfer of government and legislation to the Indies’ representative bodies in the Indies itself” — opened the way for the commission’s draft to be realised. After the 1922 revision, “a commission of professors in Leiden formed, which compiled a proeve van een staatsregeling voor Nederlandsch-Indië” — the Proeve-Oppenheim, to which Carpentier Alting himself also contributed, alongside Oppenheim, Snouck Hurgronje, Van Vollenhoven and Kleintjes, with the Indonesian Mr. Oerip Kartodirdjo as secretary.
The eventual Wet op de Indische Staatsregeling of 1925 did not, in Caron’s judgement, live up to the promise of the 1922 constitutional revision. The Dutch parliament, he writes, “changed it in a further reactionary direction. No autonomous administrative policy was given to the Governor-General, but the Governor-General was bound, in the exercise of general government, to the King’s instructions.” The assignment of the regulation of internal affairs to organs established in the Indies “had not taken place”; in principle, the regulation of internal affairs remained reserved to the mother-country legislator — that is, to the Crown and the States-General. The result was, in Caron’s words, “great discontent in the Netherlands Indies,” with “a strong echo in the Volksraad.”
Significance for Atjeh
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the Carpentier Alting commission’s significance is indirect but real. The constitutional questions the commission was appointed to address — how to revise “the foundations of government” in light of the promise of greater popular representation — were inseparable from the question of how the Atjeh-derived *korte verklaring* policy of Van Heutsz and Snouck Hurgronje should be constitutionalised. The 261 zelfbesturende landschappen (self-governing territories) that the korte verklaring regulated by 1946 — including the small self-governing territories of Atjeh and Timor — were the constitutional object on which the Carpentier Alting commission’s work bore.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- Nederlandsch-Indië — Netherlands Indies
- Proeve-Oppenheim — Oppenheim Draft
- proeve van een staatsregeling voor Nederlandsch-Indië — trial draft of a state regulation for the Netherlands Indies
- Wet op de Indische Staatsregeling — Law on the Indies State Regulation
- Commissie tot herziening van de bestuursgrondslagen in Nederlandsch-Indië — Commission for the revision of the foundations of government in the Netherlands Indies
- korte verklaring — Short Declaration
- zelfbesturende landschappen — self-governing territories
- zelfbesturende landschap — self-governing territory
- zelfbesturen — self-governing territories
- Volksraad — People’s Council
- bestuursvormen — forms of government
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Mr. Dr. — Master of Laws and Doctor (Dutch academic titles)
- Dr. — Doctor
See Also
- J. H. Carpentier Alting
- Proeve-Oppenheim
- Oerip Kartodirdjo
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Korte Verklaring
- Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz
- L. J. J. Caron
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- 1918
- 1922
- 1925
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), pp. 195–196 (chapter De bestuursvormen door Mr. Dr. L. J. J. Caron).