Mr. B. ter Haar Bzn. — Bernard ter Haar Bzn. — was a Dutch colonial jurist and scholar, Professor (Hoogleraar) at the Rechtshogeschool (Law School) at Djakarta, and the author of Beginselen en Stelsel van het Adatrecht (first edition 1939) — the magisterial survey of the adatrecht (customary law) of the indigenous population of the Netherlands Indies that remains, in the words of Prof. Logemann’s foreword to the posthumous editions, “voorshands maatgevend” (for the time being, authoritative). He died in a German concentration camp on 19 April 1941, his scientific work uncompleted; his Beginselen en Stelsel was nevertheless issued in four editions between 1939 and 1950, and was translated into English for the New York market in 1948.
Career
Ter Haar was Professor at the Rechtshogeschool at Djakarta — the colonial law school that trained the Dutch and Indonesian jurists of the Netherlands Indies. His chair placed him at the institutional centre of the colonial legal science, and his work on adatrecht was the fruit of the systematic study of the customary law of the archipelago that the Rechtshogeschool had pursued since its foundation. The Beginselen en Stelsel — the first edition of which appeared in 1939 — was the synthesis of that study: a work that sought to bring forward, “in tweeërlei opzicht algemeenheden” (in two respects generalities) — first, by describing the characteristic features of Indonesian legal institutions so that the principles and system of adatrecht become visible; and second, by indicating the factors that act upon the state and the change of adatrecht.
The Beginselen en Stelsel
The Beginselen en Stelsel is the principal systematic account of Indonesian adatrecht. It describes the general types of Indonesian legal institutions — the village community, the clan, the princely sphere, the land-right, the marriage payment, the inheritance — and illustrates them with concrete local examples drawn from the nineteen rechtskringen (legal circles) of the archipelago. The rechtskring Atjeh — placed first in the book’s overview of the legal circles — is one of the principal sources of these concrete examples, and Atjehnese legal terms — djinamée, wang pemasoeqan, peungklēh, sanbod-aanname — are cited throughout the work as illustrations of general Indonesian legal types. The work identifies Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers (1893–1894) as the principal source for the Atjeh legal circle, and notes that Kreemer’s Atjeh (1922–1923) brings “geen nieuws” (no news) after Snouck Hurgronje and Van Vollenhoven.
Death and posthumous editions
Ter Haar died on 19 April 1941 in a German concentration camp. Logemann’s foreword to the posthumous editions — written for the third edition of 1946 and reprinted in the fourth of 1950 — records that “Zijn wetenschappelijk werk bleef onvoltooid” (his scientific work remained uncompleted) and that “Zijn maatschappelijk werk voor het hooge goed der rechtsbedeeling staat in den storm van een politieke en sociale omwenteling” (his social work for the high good of the administration of justice stands in the storm of a political and social revolution). Logemann nonetheless avers that he does not fear that the work and the man will be lost: “Hun zuiverheid, hun critisch gehalte, hun werkelijkheidszin waarborgen daarvoor. De arbeid noch de mensch Ter Haar zullen uit de cultuurgeschiedenis van Indonesië zijn uit te delgen” (their purity, their critical content, their sense of reality guarantee it. Neither the labour nor the man Ter Haar shall be effaced from the cultural history of Indonesia).
The study and the growth of adatrecht had, Logemann acknowledges, “sinds 1940 zeker niet stilgestaan” (certainly not stood still since 1940). “Maar Ter Haars magistraal inzicht in beginselen en stelsel blijft voorshands maatgevend” (but Ter Haar’s magisterial insight into principles and system remains for the time being authoritative), “zoodat een ongewijzigde herdruk volkomen gewettigd is” (so that an unchanged reprint is fully warranted). The fourth edition of 1950 was issued with the text again unchanged, save for a supplementary literature list prepared by Mr. H. Th. Chabot, and with a voorbericht by Soepomo — the Indonesian jurist who would become one of the principal architects of the independent Indonesian legal system.
The English translation
The work was translated into English and published in New York in 1948, with an introductory chapter on the ethnological background of adatrecht and on the place of adatrecht in the organisation of the legal system of the former Netherlands Indies, written by Professors E. Adamson Hoebel and A. Arthur Schiller. The translation made Ter Haar’s “monumentaal werk” (monumental work) accessible to the English-reading public — a development that, in Soepomo’s words, “ongetwijfeld zal bijdragen tot een ruimere verbreiding van het inzicht in het systeem van het Adatrecht dan tot dusverre mogelijk was” (will undoubtedly contribute to a wider dissemination of the insight into the system of Adatrecht than has hitherto been possible).
Significance
For AcehWiki, Ter Haar is significant as the author of the principal systematic account of Indonesian adatrecht — the work that places the Atjehnese adatrecht within the wider Indonesian legal landscape, and that identifies Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers as the principal source for the Atjeh legal circle. His death in a German concentration camp on 19 April 1941 — a date that connects the colonial legal science of the Netherlands Indies to the wider history of the German occupation of the Netherlands — gives his figure an additional resonance: the professor of the Rechtshogeschool at Djakarta, whose work on the adatrecht of the archipelago remained authoritative into the post-colonial era, was also a victim of the European war that ended the colonial order his work had been built to study.
See Also
- Beginselen en Stelsel van het Adatrecht (Ter Haar, 4th ed. 1950)
- J. B. Wolters
- adat
- Atjeh adatrecht (Ter Haar account)
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers (1893-94)
- J. Kreemer
- Soepomo
- Djakarta
- Rechtshogeschool Djakarta
- 19 April
- 1939
- 1941
- 1948
- 1950
Source
Beginselen en Stelsel van het Adatrecht, door Mr. B. ter Haar Bzn., in leven Hoogleraar aan de Rechtshogeschool te Djakarta. Vierde ongewijzigde druk. Groningen, Djakarta: J. B. Wolters, 1950. Title page; foreword by Logemann (third edition, 1946); and Voorbericht bij de vierde druk by Soepomo (January 1950).