Kiesvereeniging Burgerpligt (the Burgerpligt voters’ association) was An Amsterdam voters’ association which on 26 January 1886 held a public meeting devoted to the Atjeh question, at which lieutenant-colonel (ret.) J. J. W. E. Verstege delivered the lecture afterwards printed as Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886).
The meeting of 26 January 1886
As the president of the association, Mr. R. van de Werk, explained in his opening words, the governing commission of Burgerpligt had chosen to put the Atjeh situation on the agenda without thereby pronouncing any approval or disapproval of the Atjeh policy of earlier years or of that moment, and without any wish to declare for the consolidation of the existing order in Atjeh or for breaking with the concentration system; the board was fully convinced that only competent experts should enlighten and advise on that head. The great importance to which the question had grown, the sadly contrary advice given by experts, and the gravity of the moment — a state which would worsen with every year driving the Dutch further from the beginning of the Atjeh war without bringing a good and honourable solution nearer — had been sufficient reason for the board to have the question discussed in a wider circle than the representative bodies, the press, and the military and Indian associations that had hitherto treated it almost exclusively. The meeting was visited by an unusually large number of interested listeners, among them many specialists whom the board had invited at Verstege’s suggestion; as appeared from the printed record, the association was based in Amsterdam, “Netherlands’ first trading city”, and drew for this meeting also visitors from other towns who had made the journey in the depth of winter.
See Also
- Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Verstege, 1886)
- J. J. W. E. Verstege
- R. van de Werk
- Atjeh
- 1886
Source
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. iii-iv, 116-117. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.