The Sarekat Atjeh was the association of progressive young oelèëbalangs and Acehnese officials founded at Koeta Radja in December 1916 under the patronage of the Civil and Military Governor H. N. A. Swart, with some two hundred chiefs and officials as members.
Foundation
It must have been a great satisfaction to Swart, du Croo wrote, to be able to record in the Koloniaal Verslag of 1916 that in December of that year a meeting was held at Koeta Radja, in his presence, of progressive young oelèëbalangs and Acehnese officials “who found no satisfaction in the old, narrow conceptions, who wished to modify the outdated adat usages, who wished to promote the raising of the Acehnese woman and of both secular and religious education. Thus arose the Sarekat Atjeh, of which 200 chiefs and officials became members.”
The first meeting
That first gathering, at which nearly all the prominent chiefs were present, was especially remarkable for its choice of officers: “as chairman there was elected the young, progressive oelèëbalang of Peureula’, while as honorary chairman there was elected the well-known, very old-fashioned and conservative oelèëbalang of Keumangan: young and old went together.”
Programme
The association’s declared aims were the modification of outdated adat usages, the raising of the position of the Acehnese woman, and the promotion of both secular schooling and religious education.
Significance
The Sarekat Atjeh represented the emergence within the Acehnese chiefly class itself of the reforming impulse that Swart’s volksonderwijs policy had aimed at, and the acceptance by the Governor of its patronage marked the closing phase of his administration, two years before the transfer to civil government. In the Sumatra Post interview of 1914 Swart had already declared that he expected much of the younger generation of chiefs, then being trained at Bandoeng or Fort de Kock, as “the old territorial chiefs, who had lived through the long struggle, gradually disappeared… and with them an old generation disappeared.”
Those younger chiefs did not always fulfil expectation as a transitional link — nor could that be expected; where circumstances made them succeed an older generation prematurely or too quickly or too young, they often met obstruction from the remaining “men of the old school.” “Teukoe Tjhi’ Peusangan could confirm this.”
See Also
- H. N. A. Swart
- Volksonderwijs in Atjeh
- Peureula’
- Keumangan
- T. Tjhi’ Moehammad Djohan Alamsjah
- Oelèëbalang
- Koeta Radja
- 1916
Source
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XIII, p. 135; Chapter XVI, pp. 150–151.