Dr. W. A. Terwogt

Properties2
tagsperson, author, dutch, colonial, popular-history, 1891, hoorn, atjeh, aceh-war, early-voyages
aliasesW. A. Terwogt, Dr. Terwogt, Terwogt, Willem Anton Terwogt, Dr. W. A. Terwogt of Hoorn

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Dr. W. A. Terwogt was a Dutch author and historian, the writer of De Vader des Vaderlands (“The Father of the Fatherland” — a patriotic work on William the Silent), and the author of Het Land van Jan Pieterszoon Coen: Geschiedenis der Nederlanders in Oost-Indië aan het Nederlandsche Volk verhaald — a popular thirteen-chapter history of the Dutch in the East Indies, published by P. Geerts at Hoorn at the end of 1891. The work is addressed, as its subtitle states, “to the Dutch People” (aan het Nederlandsche Volk verhaald), and it treats the Atjehnese encounters — both the early Dutch voyages of 1599–1607 and the Atjeh-oorlog of 1873–1891 — within a patriotic-ethnographic narrative of the Dutch colonial enterprise.

The Land van Jan Pieterszoon Coen

Terwogt’s Land van Jan Pieterszoon Coen is a popular history of the Dutch in the East Indies, written for a general Dutch readership in the patriotic idiom of the late nineteenth century. The work’s title invokes Jan Pieterszoon Coen — the fourth Governor-General of the V.O.C. and the founder of Batavia — as the emblematic figure of the Dutch East Indian enterprise, and the work’s thirteen chapters trace the history from the first voyages of the late sixteenth century to the Atjeh-oorlog of the 1870s–1890s. The work’s Atjeh content is extensive: the early chapters treat the voyages of Cornelis de Houtman (1599), Paulus van Caerden (1600–1601), the Vereenigde Zeeuwsche Compagnie (1601), Joris van Spilbergen (1602), Sebald de Weert (1602–1603), and the Atjeh contract of Cornelis Matelieff (1606); the closing pages of the thirteenth chapter treat the Atjeh-oorlog from the 1857 treaty of Jan van Swieten through the two expeditions of 1873–1874 to the protracted guerrilla of the 1880s, ending with the hope that the new Minister of Colonies, W. K. Baron van Dedem, will bring the war to a conclusion.

Method and tone

Terwogt writes in the patriotic-ethnographic idiom of the late-nineteenth-century Dutch popular history: the work opens with an Inleiding that surveys the geography and natural history of the archipelago, invokes the Dutch national mission in the Indies, and places the Atjehnese within the comparative ethnography of the archipelago’s peoples. The characteristic Dutch judgments of the Atjehnese — “grootere energie” (greater energy) but “diep verdorven zeden” (deeply corrupted morals) — are stated in the opening pages and sustained throughout. The work draws on the published voyage-accounts, on Frederik de Houtman’s Kort Verhael (the Gouda manuscript), and on the standard Dutch colonial historiography of the nineteenth century, and it is addressed to the general Dutch reader rather than to the specialist.

The work’s treatment of the Atjeh-oorlog is notable for its frankness: the first expedition of 1873 is acknowledged as a defeat — “Wij hadden de nederlaag geleden” (we had suffered the defeat) — and the guerrilla is acknowledged to continue “onverzwakt” (unabated) at the time of writing, end of 1891. The closing pages express the hope that the new Minister van Dedem, who declared that he expected no good from “toegeven en zachtheid” (yielding and softness) toward the “fanatieken Atjeher” (fanatical Atjehnese), will bring the war to a conclusion. The work is thus a document of the Dutch colonial public’s understanding of the Atjeh-oorlog at a moment when the war was, by the author’s own account, far from over.

Significance

For AcehWiki, Terwogt is significant as the author of a popular Dutch history of the East Indies — written for the general Dutch reader at the end of 1891 — that treats both the early Dutch-Atjeh encounters and the Atjeh-oorlog within a single patriotic narrative. The work is a document of the Dutch colonial public’s understanding of the Atjehnese and of the Atjeh-oorlog at the end of 1891, and its account of the early voyages — drawing on Frederik de Houtman’s Kort Verhael and on the published voyage-accounts — preserves the characteristic Dutch judgments of the Atjehnese that shaped the colonial understanding of Atjeh throughout the nineteenth century.

See Also

Source

Het Land van Jan Pieterszoon Coen: Geschiedenis der Nederlanders in Oost-Indië aan het Nederlandsche Volk verhaald, door Dr. W. A. Terwogt, schrijver van “De Vader des Vaderlands” (Hoorn: P. Geerts, [1891]). Title page and Inleiding.

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