Sarekat Islam — also Sarikat Islam — was the principal indigenous political association of the Nederlandsch-Indische archipelago in the Vermeulen period. Its moderate leadership was weakened by the chronic slowness of the ethische politiek state’s political concessions — in particular the eighteen-month delay between the 1916 proclamation of the Volksraad in the Staatsblad and its 1918 installation — and the post-1918 radicalisation of the Indonesian nationalist movement is, in part, the consequence.
The Volksraad delay
The slowness of Volksraad implementation made it difficult for the moderate leadership of the Sarekat Islam to keep its radical wing in check. The colonial state’s slow tempo did half the work of the radical wing; the moderate leadership was thereby weakened in its internal authority.
The Pleyte context
Pleyte (lib.), minister of Colonies 1913-1918, acknowledged the political awakening of the Indies as a fact to be welcomed: “Het moet toch altijd voor de regeerder … een veel aangenamer en veel grootser taak zijn om een ontwakend volk te leiden dan een slapend volk er onder te houden” — It must always be for the ruler … a much more pleasant and much greater task to lead an awakening people than to keep a sleeping people under. He ventured, despite the political difficulties of the past year, to make possible a greater freedom of association and assembly (vereniging en vergadering) — a measure that his predecessor Fock had already discussed with governor-general Van Heutsz.
The Vermeulen judgement
Vermeulen’s retrospective judgement is that the colonial state’s “[t]almen” — delaying — “maakte het voor het bestuur van de Sarekat Islam moeilijk de radicale vleugel in toom te houden” — made it difficult for the leadership of the Sarekat Islam to keep the radical wing in check. “En toch was prikkeling van de eigen geestelijke en politieke activiteit het noodzakelijke complement om de sociale en economische evolutie door de inheemse bevolking te doen aanvaarden en de door Snouck Hurgronje gewenste associatie van Oost en West tot stand te brengen” — And yet the stimulation of indigenous spiritual and political activity was the necessary complement to make the social and economic evolution acceptable to the indigenous population and to bring about the association of East and West that Snouck Hurgronje had desired.
Significance for Atjeh
The Sarekat Islam context bears indirectly on Atjeh because the post-pacificatie administration of the sultanate was part of the broader ethische politiek program of which the Volksraad was the political apex. The chronic slowness that characterised the Volksraad instalment characterised, also, the political concessions to the Atjehnese population; the post-1918 radicalisation of the Sarekat Islam had its counterpart in the post-1918 stirrings of Atjehnese political activity.
Account from Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)
The Sarikat Islam — Sarekat Islam, the Islamic Association — was the principal political and religious movement of the Netherlands-Indies in the early civilian period, founded in 1912 in Surakarta. In the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden the Sarikat Islam showed a vigorous life after 1918, particularly in the afdeeling Noordkust van Atjeh, and was significant enough to require the banishment of three chiefs of Lho’ Seumawe in 1922. Its Atjehnese history is treated in the article Sarikat Islam in Atjeh (1918–1922).
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapter IX, ‘In het oude rijk Samoedra’, pp. 62–63.
See Also
- 1912
- 1916
- 1918
- 1922
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- D. Fock
- Ethische Politiek
- J. B. van Heutsz
- Lho Seumawe
- Noordkust van Atjeh
- Oelama
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Samalanga
- Sarikat Islam in Atjeh (1918-1922)
- Th. B. Pleyte
- Verbanning van drie hoofden uit Lho Seumawe (1922)
- Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)
- Volksraad
- W. H. Vermeulen
Sources
Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland van 1849 tot 1901, by Mr W. J. van Welderen baron Rengers, 4th rev. ed., Vol. IV: Oost-Indië 1891-1918 by Dr W. H. Vermeulen (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955), pp. 340, 344, 354.
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), passim; Atjeh Patchouli-Olie, by Ir. W. Spoon (1932), for the Koloniaal Instituut and Handelsmuseum.