Danubroto was a Javanese official appointed resident-coordinator of Atjeh following the incorporation of Atjeh, Tapanoeli, and the former federal state of East Sumatra into the merged province of North Sumatra in early 1951, replacing Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh as head of Atjeh’s administration. Henri J. H. Alers’s Om een rode of groene Merdeka treats his appointment as the moment the central government’s unifying policy in Atjeh was most sharply tested.

Appointment and policy

Alers records that Djakarta addressed its correspondence to a “resident-coordinator” of Atjeh even before Daoed Beureuh’s dismissal as governor had been formally completed — Daoed Beureuh, for his part, simply returned such letters unopened. Once installed, Danubroto attempted to place loyal Atjèhnese — chiefly of the oelèëbalang class — and non-Atjèhnese officials into administrative positions that had, since the 1945–1946 social revolution, been held by members of the Poesa.

Consequences

This policy emboldened the oelèëbalang class, which organised itself under Teuku Mohammed Ali Samalanga as the Badan Keinsjafan Rakjat (B.K.R.), demanding the abolition of the Madjelis Penimbang and the removal of Poesa members from government posts. Alers reads Danubroto’s tenure as illustrating a general principle he draws from Indonesia’s post-war history: that an outside authority’s power in Atjeh could, in practice, only ever rest on the landed nobility, since the central government’s own officials — in supporting the oelèëbalang’s claims — merely repeated the pattern by which Dutch colonial rule had once been built on the same class.

See Also

Source

Om een rode of groene Merdeka: Tien jaren binnenlandse politiek Indonesië, 1943–1953, by Henri J. H. Alers (Eindhoven: Uitgeverij Vulkaan, 1956), Chapter VII §35 “De Negara Islam Indonesia in Atjeh,” pp. 267–268.

Danubroto was a Javanese official appointed resident-coordinator of Atjeh following the incorporation of Atjeh, Tapanoeli, and the former federal state of East Sumatra into the merged province of North Sumatra in early 1951, replacing Teungkoe Moehamad Daoed Beureu-éh as head of Atjeh’s administration. Henri J. H. Alers’s Om een rode of groene Merdeka treats his appointment as the moment the central government’s unifying policy in Atjeh was most sharply tested.

Appointment and policy

Alers records that Djakarta addressed its correspondence to a “resident-coordinator” of Atjeh even before Daoed Beureuh’s dismissal as governor had been formally completed — Daoed Beureuh, for his part, simply returned such letters unopened. Once installed, Danubroto attempted to place loyal Atjèhnese — chiefly of the oelèëbalang class — and non-Atjèhnese officials into administrative positions that had, since the 1945–1946 social revolution, been held by members of the Poesa.

Consequences

This policy emboldened the oelèëbalang class, which organised itself under Teuku Mohammed Ali Samalanga as the Badan Keinsjafan Rakjat (B.K.R.), demanding the abolition of the Madjelis Penimbang and the removal of Poesa members from government posts. Alers reads Danubroto’s tenure as illustrating a general principle he draws from Indonesia’s post-war history: that an outside authority’s power in Atjeh could, in practice, only ever rest on the landed nobility, since the central government’s own officials — in supporting the oelèëbalang’s claims — merely repeated the pattern by which Dutch colonial rule had once been built on the same class.

See Also

Source

Om een rode of groene Merdeka: Tien jaren binnenlandse politiek Indonesië, 1943–1953, by Henri J. H. Alers (Eindhoven: Uitgeverij Vulkaan, 1956), Chapter VII §35 “De Negara Islam Indonesia in Atjeh,” pp. 267–268.