The Pall Mall Gazette was a London evening newspaper, founded in 1865 and published in London until 1920, that carried commentary on the Atjeh War and on the Dutch colonial question in Atjeh. The paper is named in the Dutch pamphlet Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk by Een Ooggetuige (1880s) as a source of British press commentary on the Atjeh question, which the author of the pamphlet discusses in the course of his argument on the conduct of the war.
The paper and its character
The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening paper founded in 1865 and modelled on the American style of journalism. It took its name from the Pall Mall Gazette imagined in Anthony Trollope’s novel The Three Clerks (1857). The paper became, under the editorship of John Morley in the late 1860s and under W. T. Stead in the 1880s, one of the leading London evening papers, known for its commentary on imperial and foreign affairs.
Commentary on the Atjeh question
The Pall Mall Gazette carried commentary on the Atjeh War and on the Dutch colonial question in Atjeh. The author of the Beschouwingen refers to the paper’s commentary in the course of his argument on the conduct of the war, and discusses the argument — then current in the Dutch and British press — over whether the Netherlands should continue the war or should withdraw from Atjeh. The reference to the Pall Mall Gazette places the pamphlet within the wider contemporary debate on the Atjeh question, in which the Dutch and British press exchanged views on the war and on the strategic and commercial value of Atjeh.
Significance
The Pall Mall Gazette is significant within the AcehWiki corpus as a source of British press commentary on the Atjeh War cited in the contemporary Dutch pamphlet literature. The paper’s commentary on the Atjeh question is a document of the British interest in the Dutch colonial war — an interest that sprang from the British position at Singapore and Penang, from the British trade with the Atjehnese pepper country, and from the wider imperial rivalry between Britain and the Netherlands in the archipelago.
See Also
- Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk
- Een Ooggetuige
- Aceh War
- Singapore
- Penang
- 1880s
Source
Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk, door Een Ooggetuige, met een Kaart van het Oorlogstooneel, de Vaarwaters en vereischte Kustlichten voor den Wereldhandel (Rotterdam: Van Meurs & Stufkens, [c. 1880s]). Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, shelfmark 1830 C17 2611 / 1830 0947 8285.