Abraham Kuyper

Dr. Abraham Kuyper was a Dutch politician, theologian, and leader of the Anti-Revolutionary Party, who served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. He is mentioned in socialist critiques of the Aceh War as a representative of “imperialisme” and “veroveringszucht” (conquest fever), being accused by socialist parliamentarian H. van Kol of justifying colonial expansion.

Van Kol’s critique

During the 1901 Indische begrooting (Indies budget) debates, Van Kol denounced “Imperialisme, de veroveringszucht, waarvan Dr. Kuyper zich ditmaal de profeet had gemaakt” (Imperialism, the conquest fever, of which Dr. Kuyper had this time made himself the prophet). Van Kol argued that Kuyper’s rhetoric represented a dangerous tendency in Dutch politics that would lead to further colonial wars and atrocities.

Van Kol connected this “imperialisme” to “kapitalistische hebzucht” (capitalist greed), stating that “onze koloniale politiek” (our colonial policy) was being directed by such greed, with “koloniale gruwelen” (colonial atrocities) as the unavoidable consequence.

Kuyper’s colonial vision

Kuyper’s political programme, as described by Van Kol, included strengthening the colonial bureaucracy, continuing the Aceh War, and ignoring the “eerschuld” (debt of honour) — the 187 million guilders that the Dutch state had taken from the colonial treasury since 1867. Van Kol described the Aceh War as “de melkkoe van allerlei goudzoekers” (the cash cow of all sorts of gold diggers), suggesting that Kuyper’s government was serving such interests.

Political context

Kuyper’s coalition government, which took office in 1901, represented a shift towards a more active imperial policy. His cabinet included ministers who favoured colonial expansion and military spending, including the continuation of the Aceh War. Van Kol’s critique of Kuyper was part of a broader socialist opposition to the new government’s policies.

Significance

Abraham Kuyper is significant in Acehnese history as the representative of the political establishment that the socialist movement opposed on colonial issues. His government’s policies of colonial expansion and continued warfare in Aceh were the target of socialist critiques, and his figure stands as a symbol of the dominant colonial ideology of the time. The debates between Kuyper’s supporters and the socialist opposition shaped the parliamentary discourse on the Aceh War in the early 20th century.

Account from Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis (1955)

The following account is drawn from the parliamentary history of the Dutch Second Chamber as narrated by Vermeulen in the colonial section of the 1955 fourth revised edition of Rengers’s *Schets*.

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) — Dutch Anti-Revolutionary politician, theologian, journalist, and prime minister (1901-1905) — is the principal conservative-Christian voice in the Atjeh debates of the Vermeulen period. His Ons Program of 1878 is the political seed-bed of the ethical policy proclaimed in the troonrede of 1901; his 1896 speech on Atjeh policy and his 1911 speech on zending are the canonical anti-revolutionary interventions in the colonial parliamentary record.

The “straf des hemels” of 1874

When, after the 1873 declaration of war on the sultan of Atjeh, cholera broke out among the Dutch troops, Kuyper (a.r.) — at that date still in the editorial rather than the parliamentary phase of his career — called the epidemic a “straf des hemels” — a punishment from heaven. The remark is, in the Vermeulen narrative, the measure of Kuyper’s conviction that the official motivering of the war was inadequate.

The 1896 speech on the “staalkaart”

In the 1896 Tweede Kamer debate following the defection of Toekoe Oemar, Kuyper (a.r.) acknowledged that the Netherlands bore guilt for unleashing the Atjeh-oorlog in 1873, but held that this injustice had now prescribed (“verjaard”) and that the historical situation had to be respected, “gelijk Christus, de Romeinse Keizer, de dwingeland in Rome, erkende met de woorden: geeft de keizer wat des keizers is” — as Christ, the Roman Emperor, the tyrant in Rome, acknowledged with the words: render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. For Kuyper there was no escape from continuing the war.

The policy pursued in Atjeh had, Kuyper said, given him the impression “dat wij ons stelselmatig op stelselloosheid hadden toegelegd” — that we had systematically applied ourselves to systemlessness:

“Het was letterlijk of we een volledige staalkaart van alle denkbare methoden om Atjeh te bestrijden voor ons hadden gelegd en alsof we, onbekwaam een keuze te doen, ons hadden voorgenomen achtereenvolgens alle deze verschillende stelsels eens te beproeven. Thans (1896) eerst schijnt men aan het einde van die serie te zijn. Immers, thans is men teruggekomen op het reeds eenmaal beproefde stelsel van Van der Heyden. Een negende nieuw stelsel heeft men blijkbaar niet kunnen vinden”.

— It was literally as if we had laid out before us a complete sample-card of every conceivable method of combating Atjeh, and as if, incapable of making a choice, we had resolved to try in turn each of these different systems. Now (1896) for the first time we seem to have reached the end of that series. For now we have returned to the already-once-tried system of Van der Heyden. A ninth new system apparently could not be found.

The 1901 troonrede and the Ethical Policy

The troonrede of 1901 — drafted under the Kuyper ministry — gave an ereplaats — place of honour — to the “staatkunde van zedelijke verplichting” — policy of moral obligation — that Kuyper’s Ons Program of 1878 had been the first to formulate in political form. The doctrine of the moral vocation of the Netherlands towards its colonial populations was soon adopted by the other political parties; “het zou trouwens niet denkbaar zijn, dat ze was afgewezen” — it would not have been conceivable, after all, that it should be rejected.

For the Christian parties, especially the anti-revolutionaries, Kuyper said, it was clear that the first Dutch duty was to bring to the Indies “die zegeningen van veiligheid en orde, die Nederland, sinds hier het licht der evangeliën doordrong, door Gods goede gunst ontving en, God zij lof, nog steeds bezitten mag” — those blessings of security and order that the Netherlands, since the light of the Gospels penetrated here, has received by God’s good grace and, praise God, still possesses. The second duty — preparing the Indies for greater autonomy — was more acceptable to the non-confessional parties than the first, with its Christian-zending subtext.

The 1911 zending debate

In the 1911 begrotingsdebat Kuyper (a.r.) mounted a principled argument against Snouck Hurgronje’s recently published Nederland en de Islam. The neutral (neutraal) education that Snouck advocated was, in Kuyper’s reading, equivalent to “modernistic” education: “Het zou de inlanders tot vrijdenkerij brengen of tot het hindoeisme terug doen zinken” — it would bring the natives to freethinking or sink them back into Hinduism. Kuyper’s rule for the Indies was: “de bizondere school regel, de gouvernementschool aanvulling” — the confessional school the rule, the government school a supplement. To the objection that, where the private initiative could not provide, the government must step in, Kuyper replied: “Ik heb gezegd: de bizondere school regel, de gouvernementschool aanvulling. Moeten er 100 scholen komen en richt het particulier initiatief er slechts 11 op, dan moeten er eenvoudig 89 door het gouvernement worden opgericht. Ik laat geen enkele plaats onbezet”.

The “kromme stok” judgement

Kuyper was willing to acknowledge the existence of less noble motives in the colonial enterprise. But, he added: “wanneer men aan de historie vraagt, tot welk resultaat dit heeft geleid dan luidt het antwoord allerwegen … dat met deze zeer kromme stok in de regel een rechte slag is gedaan” — when one asks history what result this has led to, the answer everywhere is … that with this very crooked stick, as a rule, a straight stroke has been made. “Juist de volle inbezitneming van Azië en Afrika door verschillende Europese mogendheden heeft in die streken een toestand doen geboren worden van hoger menselijk bestaan. Een toestand, ik stem het toe, niet verworven dan tot de prijs van veel kostelijk bloed en van veel jammerlijke ellende. Maar die bange periode is moeten doorworsteld worden om deze volkeren te kunnen opvoeren tot een hogere fase van menselijk geluk”.

Significance

Kuyper is the central anti-revolutionary voice in the Atjeh debates of the Vermeulen period. His 1896 “staalkaart” speech is the canonical conservative-Christian acknowledgement of the failure of pre-Heutsz Atjeh policy; his 1911 zending speech is the canonical anti-revolutionary challenge to the Snouck Hurgronje version of the ethische politiek.

The 1911 zending debate

In the 1911 begrotingsdebat Kuyper (a.r.) mounted a principled argument against Snouck Hurgronje’s recently published Nederland en de Islam. The neutral (neutraal) education that Snouck advocated was, in Kuyper’s reading, equivalent to “modernistic” education: “Het zou de inlanders tot vrijdenkerij brengen of tot het hindoeisme terug doen zinken” — it would bring the natives to freethinking or sink them back into Hinduism. Kuyper’s rule for the Indies was: “de bizondere school regel, de gouvernementschool aanvulling” — the confessional school the rule, the government school a supplement. To the objection that, where the private initiative could not provide, the government must step in, Kuyper replied: “Ik heb gezegd: de bizondere school regel, de gouvernementschool aanvulling. Moeten er 100 scholen komen en richt het particulier initiatief er slechts 11 op, dan moeten er eenvoudig 89 door het gouvernement worden opgericht. Ik laat geen enkele plaats onbezet” — I have said: the confessional school the rule, the government school a supplement. If 100 schools are to come and private initiative establishes only 11 of them, then 89 must simply be established by the government..

Account from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (1897)

Kuyper’s speech of 16 November 1897 in the Atjeh debate is printed in Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (1897) under the editorial heading Een Christen aan het woord (a Christian speaks), and his reply of 17 November under the heading Door moorden tot het Evangelie.

Support for the new minister

He opened with a word of sympathy for the newly appointed Minister of Colonies Cremer. So long as the state of war in Atjeh continued he considered it his duty, quite apart from his judgement on the other members of the cabinet, to support the Minister of Colonies; and whereas with the minister’s predecessor this had sometimes been difficult, with this incumbent the fulfilment of the duty was even agreeable.

On the justice of the war

Kuyper granted that he had heard Van Kol’s criticism with pleasure, but concealed neither that it contained nothing new for him, since Van Kol had done little but develop once more the same ideas that had been developed more than once, in all manner of forms, in that same chamber more than twenty years before. The only difference between then and now was that whereas formerly such considerations were mostly delivered from the right, they now came from the other side.

Nevertheless, he held that a debate on the justice or injustice of the Atjeh war “is niet meer van onzen tijd.” — is no longer of our time. The criticism remained an extremely important subject for the historical researches of the historian, but had in his view ceased to form an element of political debate or parliamentary discussion — at least at the treatment of the colonial budget. He added the limitation deliberately, because he could well imagine that the criticism remained a justified element for political debate at the general deliberation on the Staatsbegrooting; and if Van Kol would then repeat his complaint and close it with the conclusion that it must not be forgotten that it was the liberal party that remained answerable for the vicious origin of the Atjeh war, he thought a subject would indeed be brought into the debate on which one might discuss not without fruit.

He affirmed that Van Kol’s citation of what he himself had formerly said about Atjeh did not give the impression that he now thought differently about the origin of this war: “wat ik in 1874 en 1875 hier betoogde, beaam ik nog.” As to the historia morbi, glossed in the pamphlet’s footnote as ziektegeschiedenis, he was therefore wholly at one with Van Kol.

The objection to the conclusion

His objection was to the conclusion. Every argument must be followed by a conclusion, and the conclusion drawn did not seem to him to fit the premises. It would have been otherwise if Van Kol had concluded: the Atjeh war was unjustly begun; every unjustly begun war, however long its course, must be broken off without delay; therefore I propose that the chamber declare that we ought immediately to withdraw from Atjeh. Or he might have proposed a gentler conclusion: this war was in any case begun by us and in no case by the Javanese; the costs of this war ought therefore not to be brought upon the Indies account but must be borne by the Netherlands, since the Dutch people, by sending hither a majority such as it then was, had through its deputies willed that war at its rise; not the Javanese but the Netherlander must therefore pay the loan.

But such a conclusion the honourable speaker had not made. He wished only the appointment of a state commission which would report in a year. If Kuyper had shared Van Kol’s feeling that the war was unjust not only in origin but that its continuation was a loss to the nation and a horrible injustice that ought immediately to cease, he would not dare to take upon his responsibility the perpetuation of that state of things even for a year — and, well considered, for much more than a year, since when the report came after a year the government would certainly need a second year before coming to the chamber with complete and well-formed plans.

The parable of the apple tree

He then developed the image for which he was afterwards attacked by both Van der Zwaag and Van Kol. If he had a garden separated by a fence from his neighbour’s, and one of his boys had gone over that fence and climbed a tree to pluck the apples, and he saw his neighbour shoot out of his house and not only pull the boy out of the tree by his legs and give him a sound box on the ear but set upon him so viciously that danger to his life arose, he would not say: I keep out of it, it is my boy’s own fault; he would spring over the fence himself, one, two, three, to rescue his child. And if his neighbour then did not desist but drew a knife, he would seize him and throw him to the ground and hold him until he had disarmed him.

Thus even in private life, he argued, out of something begun by one’s own fault a condition is not seldom born in which one is nevertheless compelled to act in self-defence. And in private life one has still the police and the judicial power above one, which can do right in such a dispute; but that was not the case in a suit between the Dutch and Atjeh, for there stood no international power above them that could speak and maintain right between them. On that ground he could be fully convinced that the guilt originally lay on the Dutch side and yet acknowledge that gradually a condition had been born in which simple withdrawal could bring no improvement.

Stelselvastheid and the Gospel

The Dutch calling, he said, was to make an end of the stelselloosheid through which they had continually kept the course of affairs dragging, and by that dragging had brought it about that new millions were squandered and new human lives sacrificed each time. “Nu het geval er eenmaal toe ligt, gelijk het ligt, moeten wij stelselvastheid voor stelselloosheid in plaats stellen, en doortasten met alle kracht.” — Now that the case lies as it does, we must put fixity of system in place of systemlessness, and press through with all our strength.

What was now to be done was to show Europe and Atjeh that the Hollanders, in their sometimes sickly phlegm, often hesitate and waver long and only reluctantly proceed to do their duty, but that once awakened and come to a firm resolve, thanks to that same phlegm they also persevere. And then — yes, but only then — their moral obligation would speak again, to better for Atjeh the suffering they had inflicted on her by the so frivolously undertaken war. Theirs would then be the duty to bring Atjeh in rich measure the blessings of a firm and orderly administration, the blessings of their higher civilisation and development, “en ik voeg er bij, bovenal de zegeningen van het Evangelie, dat alleen waarlijk vrij maakt en verlost.” — and I add, above all the blessings of the Gospel, which alone truly makes free and redeems.

He declined to prescribe how the minister should set about it: no Minister of Colonies was in a position to give the chamber an exposé in which he reckoned out with the mathematical certainty of a Moltke how the enemy would be surrounded and overcome; and even if a minister were able to, Kuyper would think it very questionable for him to reveal his plan of campaign there.

The citadel and the recherchevaartuigen

To the objection that the Dutch were masters of only so small a spot in Atjeh, he answered that a citadel too is but a small spot compared with the whole town it commands, but maintained that whoever has the citadel is master also of the town: “Groot-Atjeh is de sleutel van heel de positie.” — Groot-Atjeh is the key to the whole position.

On one thing only did he urge the minister: to press through. And pressing through he did not find in what the minister proposed concerning the recherchevaartuigen, which had to serve to prevent ammunition being continually imported into Atjeh. It was mistaken thrift to be niggardly with them: “Willen we onze positie op de kust handhaven, maakt dan op eens het aantal dier recherchevaartuigen compleet.” — If we wish to maintain our position on the coast, then complete at once the number of those search vessels. He ended by declaring that though the newly appointed ministry might not in all respects have his sympathy, he would nevertheless congratulate the fatherland on it, provided this minister might at the end of his four-year term adorn himself with the laurel of having cut this cancer out of the Dutch colonial administration and made an end for good and all of the history of suffering.

The reply of 17 November

On the second day Kuyper answered Van der Zwaag, Troelstra and Van Kol. To Van der Zwaag he granted the praise of consistency, but asked whether he had considered the impoverishment the loss of the colonies would bring; whether their abandonment would not provoke a European war between the great colonial powers; and what condition would arise if all European powers withdrew — instancing Tunis, Algiers, Tripoli and Klein Azië.

His chief difference with them, he said, was that they viewed the matter incidentally, in itself, while for him it stood in the full light of sociological science and of full history. History taught him incontrovertibly that all peoples remaining outside the Christian sphere, in Africa as in Asia, could not of their own initiative rise to a higher standpoint; the full taking into possession of those parts of Asia and Africa by the European powers had caused a condition of higher human existence to be born there — not won but at the price of much precious blood and much lamentable misery, yet a period that had to be struggled through. Though the starting point of such taking into possession had seldom been just and mostly very material in kind, the outcome taught that this action proceeding from Europe had in the end been a blessing to the population — in an expression, he said, known to Reformed people, “dat met dezen zeer krommen stok nochtans in den regel een rechte slag is gedaan.” — that with this very crooked stick a straight blow has nevertheless as a rule been struck.

What Van Kol had said about cruelties committed he endorsed fully, “indien metterdaad die feiten zoo zijn”; he was convinced that if such facts, in concreto and clearly proved, were communicated to the chamber, not one member of any party would hesitate to pronounce a severely condemnatory judgement, and that no Dutch Minister of Colonies was conceivable who would not use all his strength to stop such barbarities at once. The holy indignation against them would find utterance not only among the three socialists but among all.

The fundamental difference between them lay rather in this, that they thought to keep their ideal out of contact with reality and did not reckon with the power of history, while he did: a sapling newly planted is tender enough to be bent with the hand if it grows crooked, but when it has struck its roots for ten or twelve years and the first weak stem has become hard wood, such bending is impossible.

He illustrated the point with a Russian legend: in earlier years still more anxious misery was suffered on the steppes than now, and the popular tale told that in those days two heavenly beings, clad in the hail-white light garment as symbol of the ideal, hovered over those wretched steppes; the two were one in their love for the ideal, but differed in this, that the one, not to soil the hail-white robe by contact with reality, remained hovering high in the clouds, while the other — “en dat is de heilige, die in Rusland niet het minst wordt vereerd” — descended, ventured his ideal to the contamination of reality, but then had the blessed self-consciousness of having brought spiritual consolation and practical alleviation to the suffering people.

To Troelstra’s objection against the figure of verjaring he answered with the image of the botanist who, hearing a charming child of the house compared to a rose, gravely observes that a rose is a flower and a flower has a stem and leaf, which a girl has not, and that therefore one may not call a girl a rose. To the reproach that as a Christian party they had abandoned Christian principles, he answered with the example of Palestine: there had once been another Atjeh, the old Palestine, conquered not by Netherlanders but by the Romeinen; the Christus had lived in the midst of the conditions born of that conquest, and there had then been patriots who, like these three gentlemen, reacted against that established state of things; but when men wished to entice him to it, he asked for a penny, pointed to the image of the Emperor upon it, and said: “Geef dan den Keizer wat des Keizers is.” And that Emperor was the tyrant at Rome.

Kuyper voted against the motion.

See Also

• Aceh War
• Indische begrooting
• 1901
• Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij
• H. van Kol
• J. H. de Waal Malefijt
• Troonrede of 1901
• Van der Heyden
• H. B. van Kol
• I. D. Fransen van de Putte
• Ethische Politiek
• Toekoe Oemar’s defection (1896)
• C. Snouck Hurgronje
• Nederland en de Islam (Snouck Hurgronje, 1911)
• 1878
• A. W. F. Idenburg
• Declaration of war against the Sultan of Atjeh (1873)
• 1911
• 1911 Indische begrotingsdebat
• 1896
• Ons Program (1878)
• Atjeh-oorlog (1873-1904)

Sources

De Sociaaldemokraten in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam, c. 1901). Vrije Universiteit Bibliotheek, pp. 20-21.

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. 268-270, 278-279, 281, 319-320.

A. Kuyper, Ons Program (1878), p. 332.

A. Kuyper, Algeperst, pp. 24-25, 31 (cited by Vermeulen for Kuyper’s 1911 speeches).

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. 20–24, 40–43, 70–73.

Acknowledgement of sources. This article combines material from the publications cited above; the material newly added derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897) and Een strijd in Atjeh (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.