The Prauwmaatschappij and the prauwenveren (prauw ferries) were the lighterage undertakings that carried troops, officials and goods between the ships lying on the Acehnese roadsteads and the shore, and which H. van Kol named in the Tweede Kamer on 17 November 1897 among the private beneficiaries of the Atjeh-oorlog.
The charge
In the passage printed under the heading De belanghebbenden, Van Kol listed among those for whom the war “geene windeieren legt” the contractors and tokohouders who did good business in Atjeh by the victualling of troops and officials, and “de Prauwmaatschappij en stoomvaartondernemingen door den invoer van weerbare mannen en den uitvoer van zieken, gewonden en geëvacueerden” — the prauw company and the steam-shipping undertakings, through the import of able-bodied men and the export of the sick, the wounded and the evacuated.
He returned to the prauwenveren in the same speech with figures: they, together with the paketvaartmaatschappij, took a considerable share of the profits; “deze laatsten maakten kolossale winsten door hunne dure vrachten (het vervoer van één soldaat kostte van boord naar den wal f 1.18), en konden jaarlijks 20–25 pct. dividend uitkeeren.” — these last made colossal profits by their expensive freights (the conveyance of a single soldier from ship to shore cost f 1.18), and could pay out yearly 20 to 25 per cent dividend.
Context
The trade existed because the roadsteads of the Acehnese coast — above all Oleh-leh — had no deep-water quays, so that every man and every ton of stores landed for the war had to pass through the lighters. The volume of that traffic is indicated by the parallel figures Van Kol quoted from De Kroniek of 10 October 1897: the outlay for the Atjeh war, counting officers’ salaries, men’s pay, the medical service and the transport of troops and goods, had risen from f 9,947,030 in 1871 to f 18,176,000 in 1895; and the evacuation figures given by Verhey — some 2,900 evacuations of berri-berri sufferers in 1895 alone — measure the return traffic in the sick.
The Minister of Colonies Cremer did not answer the charge concerning the prauwenveren specifically, confining his defence to the Koninklijke and the tobacco companies.
See Also
- Economic interests alleged behind the Atjeh-oorlog (1897)
- H. van Kol
- Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij
- Oleh-leh
- Beri-beri epidemic in the Atjeh garrison
- De Kroniek
- 1897
Source
Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, pp. 68–69.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898 (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.