The Encyclopaedisch Bureau was the scholarly editorial office of the Netherlands East Indies colonial administration that, in 1917, compiled De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 2: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden — the second instalment of the systematic gazetteer of the Outer Possessions — as one of the Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen issued by the Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen from the Landsdrukkerij at Weltevreden. The Bureau’s imprint appears on the title page of the volume itself — bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau — and its work is repeatedly cited in the running text, which refers forward to companion Mededeelingen still in preparation, including the uitvoerige nota on Simeuloë that “weldra als Mededeeling van het Encyclopaedisch Bureau verschijnt.”
Institutional mandate and founding
The Bureau was tasked — in its own words — with “publishing all kinds of data concerning the Buitenbezittingen in order to inform the public, and in particular Trade and Industry, of the knowledge that had in the meantime been gathered about the regions that had only recently become accessible, in order to make use of it in the interest of the development of those regions.” It was attached to the office of the Adviseur voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen and the Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen from their establishment in 1908.
The immediate occasion for the Bureau’s composition of De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914 was the Colonial Exhibition of 1914 at Semarang, at which the gewesten of the Buitenbezittingen had presented overviews of the state of land and people. The exhibition’s partial failure — owing to the 1914 outbreak of the European war — prompted the commissioning of the Bureau’s report: “to the Encyclopaedisch Bureau was now tasked the duty of meeting the adverse influence of the circumstances by compiling a report on the Buitenbezittingen, using the Government and gewestelijke submissions present at the exhibition.” The Bureau’s report “became much more extensive than was intended in the conception of that limited assignment” — growing into “a sketch of the development of the Buitenbezittingen during the period 1904–1914, so important for those territories.”
Place within the colonial information order
The Encyclopaedisch Bureau was the editorial arm of the Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, the advisory office through which the central Gouvernement collated the administrative, geographic, and ethnographic knowledge accumulated by the Civil Service in the Buitenbezittingen — that is, the territories outside Java and Madura. Its Mededeelingen — printed at the Landsdrukkerij in Weltevreden — were intended, as the Atjeh volume’s preface indicates, to make the buitengewoon officials’ accumulated experience available in a standardised, retrievable form to governors, Residents, and Assistant-Residents serving successive tours in the field. The De Buitenbezittingen series was its flagship publication: a planned multi-volume encyclopaedia of the Outer Possessions, of which Deel II, Aflevering 2 — covering the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden after J. L. J. H. Pel’s military occupation of 1874 — was the most substantial instalment yet issued.
Working method and sources
The Bureau’s editors worked not from independent research but from the consolidation of existing documentation: governors’ reports, the Nota’s of officials such as the Snouck Hurgronje-an Adviseur voor Inlandsche en Arabische Zaken, the surveys of the Dienst van het Mijnwezen and the Adviser voor het Havenwezen, the financial statements of the landschapskassen, and the archival records of the Sultans of Atjeh. Where its narrative relies on living informants it names them: the trade figures for the Sabang haven, for example, are said to have been verstrekt door den adviseur v/h. Havenwezen in N. I., while the koelie-cijfers of the European cultures derive from the Arbeids-inspectie. The Bureau’s editorial voice — marked by the recurring “Sn.” citation to Snouck Hurgronje’s Het Gajoland — is that of a careful synthesiser rather than an original investigator.
Significance
The De Buitenbezittingen series, and the Atjeh volume in particular, became the standard reference for the generation of Dutch officials who administered the gewest through the pacificatie of Swart and after. Its dense statistical appendices — Bijlage I listing every Hoofd van Gewestelijk Bestuur from 1874 onward, Bijlage III on steamship arrivals, Bijlage VII on credit-bank lending, Bijlage VIII on the contract-koelie population — codified the colonial state’s picture of the territory at the moment of its transition from military to civil governance.
See Also
- Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen
- Adviseur voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen
- Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Departement van Binnenlandsch Bestuur
- Koloniale Tentoonstelling van 1914 te Semarang
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- H. N. A. Swart
- H. Colijn
- Simeuloë
- Buitenbezittingen
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- 1908
- 1914
Sources
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 2: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), title page, p. 60.
De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914, Deel I, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), pp. 3–4 (Bestuurs-organisatie), Voorwoord.
The Encyclopaedisch Bureau was the scholarly editorial office of the Netherlands East Indies colonial administration that, in 1917, compiled De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 2: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden — the second instalment of the systematic gazetteer of the Outer Possessions — as one of the Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen issued by the Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen from the Landsdrukkerij at Weltevreden. The Bureau’s imprint appears on the title page of the volume itself — bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau — and its work is repeatedly cited in the running text, which refers forward to companion Mededeelingen still in preparation, including the uitvoerige nota on Simeuloë that “weldra als Mededeeling van het Encyclopaedisch Bureau verschijnt.”
Institutional mandate and founding
The Bureau was tasked — in its own words — with “publishing all kinds of data concerning the Buitenbezittingen in order to inform the public, and in particular Trade and Industry, of the knowledge that had in the meantime been gathered about the regions that had only recently become accessible, in order to make use of it in the interest of the development of those regions.” It was attached to the office of the Adviseur voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen and the Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen from their establishment in 1908.
The immediate occasion for the Bureau’s composition of De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914 was the Colonial Exhibition of 1914 at Semarang, at which the gewesten of the Buitenbezittingen had presented overviews of the state of land and people. The exhibition’s partial failure — owing to the 1914 outbreak of the European war — prompted the commissioning of the Bureau’s report: “to the Encyclopaedisch Bureau was now tasked the duty of meeting the adverse influence of the circumstances by compiling a report on the Buitenbezittingen, using the Government and gewestelijke submissions present at the exhibition.” The Bureau’s report “became much more extensive than was intended in the conception of that limited assignment” — growing into “a sketch of the development of the Buitenbezittingen during the period 1904–1914, so important for those territories.”
Place within the colonial information order
The Encyclopaedisch Bureau was the editorial arm of the Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, the advisory office through which the central Gouvernement collated the administrative, geographic, and ethnographic knowledge accumulated by the Civil Service in the Buitenbezittingen — that is, the territories outside Java and Madura. Its Mededeelingen — printed at the Landsdrukkerij in Weltevreden — were intended, as the Atjeh volume’s preface indicates, to make the buitengewoon officials’ accumulated experience available in a standardised, retrievable form to governors, Residents, and Assistant-Residents serving successive tours in the field. The De Buitenbezittingen series was its flagship publication: a planned multi-volume encyclopaedia of the Outer Possessions, of which Deel II, Aflevering 2 — covering the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden after J. L. J. H. Pel’s military occupation of 1874 — was the most substantial instalment yet issued.
Working method and sources
The Bureau’s editors worked not from independent research but from the consolidation of existing documentation: governors’ reports, the Nota’s of officials such as the Snouck Hurgronje-an Adviseur voor Inlandsche en Arabische Zaken, the surveys of the Dienst van het Mijnwezen and the Adviser voor het Havenwezen, the financial statements of the landschapskassen, and the archival records of the Sultans of Atjeh. Where its narrative relies on living informants it names them: the trade figures for the Sabang haven, for example, are said to have been verstrekt door den adviseur v/h. Havenwezen in N. I., while the koelie-cijfers of the European cultures derive from the Arbeids-inspectie. The Bureau’s editorial voice — marked by the recurring “Sn.” citation to Snouck Hurgronje’s Het Gajoland — is that of a careful synthesiser rather than an original investigator.
Significance
The De Buitenbezittingen series, and the Atjeh volume in particular, became the standard reference for the generation of Dutch officials who administered the gewest through the pacificatie of Swart and after. Its dense statistical appendices — Bijlage I listing every Hoofd van Gewestelijk Bestuur from 1874 onward, Bijlage III on steamship arrivals, Bijlage VII on credit-bank lending, Bijlage VIII on the contract-koelie population — codified the colonial state’s picture of the territory at the moment of its transition from military to civil governance.
See Also
- Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen
- Adviseur voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen
- Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Departement van Binnenlandsch Bestuur
- Koloniale Tentoonstelling van 1914 te Semarang
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- H. N. A. Swart
- H. Colijn
- Simeuloë
- Buitenbezittingen
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- 1908
- 1914
Sources
De Buitenbezittingen, Deel II, Aflevering 2: Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), title page, p. 60.
De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914, Deel I, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), pp. 3–4 (Bestuurs-organisatie), Voorwoord.