G. Kolff & Co. — also styled G. Kolff en Co. on the title pages of nineteenth-century tracts — was a major printing and publishing firm based in Batavia, described in the Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas (1926) as the largest such enterprise in the Dutch East Indies. In 1893 the firm, together with De Gebroeders van Cleef of ‘s-Gravenhage, issued J. B. van Heutsz’s policy tract De onderwerping van Atjeh — the work that opens with Van Heutsz’s appeal that “De Atjeh-oorlog knaagt aan ons Koloniaal bezit, hij moet eindigen. Laten wij eindelijk aan de beschaafde wereld toonen, dat wij daartoe in staat zijn” (The Atjeh-war gnaws at our Colonial possession; it must end. Let us finally show the civilised world that we are capable of it). In 1926 the firm printed the Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas; it was also connected with the Neresco cigar factory in Djokjakarta.
Account from Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas (1926) — G. Kolff & Co.
The atlas was printed by G. Kolff & Co., as stated on the title page: “Druk van G. Kolff & Co.” The firm is also depicted in a plate showing the printing works: “Een gedeelte der plaatdrukkerij van de Firma G. Kolff & Co. te Batavia, de grootste inrichting op dit gebied in Nederlandsch-Indië, waar o.a. dit boekwerk uitgegeven werd.” (A section of the plate-printing works of the firm G. Kolff & Co. at Batavia, the largest establishment in this field in the Dutch East Indies, where, among other things, this work was published.)
The atlas also notes that the firm was connected with the Neresco cigar factory in Djokjakarta, which in the preceding year had produced 35% of the imported cigar output.
Co-publication with De Gebroeders van Cleef of ‘s-Gravenhage (the Van Heutsz tract, 1893)
The title page of the 1893 Van Heutsz tract names the two co-publishers in a single line — DE GEBROEDERS VAN CLEEF te ‘s GRAVENHAGE / G. KOLFF en Co. te BATAVIA — and the verso of the title page repeats the dual imprint in the formal publication line: DE GEBROEDERS VAN CLEEF / G. Kolff en Co. / 1893. / BATAVIA. The arrangement was a colonial-metropolitan co-publication: G. Kolff en Co., in Batavia, served the colonial-Indies readership — the civil servants, the officers, the bestuursambtenaren actually engaged in the Atjeh-oorlog — while De Gebroeders van Cleef of ‘s-Gravenhage served the metropolitan readership of the Netherlands: the parliament, the press, the Indisch Genootschap, the colonial-policy public. The dual imprint made the tract simultaneously available in the colony and in the metropole, and is the arrangement by which the work of a serving colonial officer could be made to circulate in both contexts at once.
Batavia was, in the late nineteenth century, the colonial seat of Dutch East-Indies administration: the Gouverneur-Generaal of Nederlandsch-Indië resided there, the Departement van Koloniën’s colonial arm was housed there, and the colonial-Indies press — the Javasche Courant, the Indische Gids, the colonial-edition policy pamphlets — was largely printed in Batavia. A Batavia publishing house that issued colonial-policy tracts for the Indies readership — the civil and military officers actually engaged in the Atjeh-oorlog — was, in the publishing ecology of the 1890s Dutch East Indies, the natural colonial counterparty for an author like Van Heutsz, who was, in 1893, a serving Major of Infantry and the gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden — formerly Chief of Staff in Atjeh and Dependencies.
Significance
G. Kolff & Co.’s significance in the Aceh Wiki History record is bibliographic and contextual. The firm’s role as the publisher of the Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas placed it at the centre of the colonial government’s jubilee publishing programme; its status as the largest printing and publishing house in the Indies made it the natural choice for a work intended for wide distribution both in the colony and in the Netherlands. The firm is also the colonial-Indies publisher of the single most important policy tract on the Atjeh-oorlog printed in the Dutch East Indies before the turn of the century — the tract in which Van Heutsz set out the diagnosis of twenty years of failed policy that would, within a decade, prepare his own elevation to the Governorship of Atjeh and, ultimately, to the Governor-Generalship of the Dutch East Indies. The dual De Gebroeders van Cleef / G. Kolff en Co. imprint is also the standard bibliographic marker by which the 1893 first edition of De onderwerping van Atjeh is identified — the marker cited on the title page and reconstructed, with the OCR-noise typical of the 1893 tract’s page-scan, in the Aceh Wiki History source record.
Account in Hooijer’s De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897)
G. Kolff & Co. was the Batavia publishing and bookselling house that issued De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh by G. B. Hooijer jointly with De Erven F. Bohn of Haarlem.
The imprint
The title-page of the work names Haarlem and Batavia as the twin places of publication: HAARLEM DE ERVEN F. BOHN. BATAVIA. G. KOLFF & Co. Kolff was among the principal publishers of colonial military, administrative and topographical literature in the Netherlands Indies in the later nineteenth century.
See Also
- De Gebroeders van Cleef
- De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893)
- Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz
- Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas (1926)
- Volkslectuur
- Batavia
- 1893
- 1926
- De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (Hooijer, 1897)
- De Erven F. Bohn
- G. B. Hooijer
Sources
Nederlandsch Indië Platen Atlas met korte beschrijvingen, uitgegeven door Volkslectuur, Weltevreden, Java. Weltevreden: G. Kolff & Co., January 1926. Title page; Plate 324.
De onderwerping van Atjeh, door J. B. van Heutsz, Majoor der Infanterie, gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef; Batavia: G. Kolff en Co., 1893, title page (p. 1) and title-page verso. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.
De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh, door G. B. Hooijer, Gep. Luit.-Kolonel O. I. Leger, met 24 platen (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam. OCR-filename: 20260719_140140_DLP-134-De_verlaten_posten_in_Groot_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, title page.
Acknowledgement of sources. This article is a single consolidated account combining the material previously held in this entry with the account given in De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897) by G. B. Hooijer. Dutch terminology has been rendered in English, the original Dutch being retained only in direct quotations and in bibliographic citations.