Een Ooggetuige — Dutch for “An Eyewitness” — is the pen name under which the anonymous Dutch author of the pamphlet Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk — Reflections on Aceh and our war with that kingdom — was published by Van Meurs & Stufkens in Rotterdam in the 1880s. The pen name claims first-hand knowledge of the Atjeh War theatre, but the author’s real identity is not recorded on the title-page of the pamphlet and has not been identified.
The pen name and its convention
The use of a pen name was common in the Dutch pamphlet literature of the Atjeh War. Serving and retired officers, colonial officials, merchants, and private commentators debated the conduct, aims, and strategic value of the war in a stream of pamphlets issued throughout the 1870s and 1880s, many of them anonymous or pseudonymous. The choice of the name Een Ooggetuige — “An Eyewitness” — places the author within this convention: the name is a claim of authority, signalling that the writer had seen the Atjeh theatre at first hand and could therefore speak with knowledge of the country, the war, and the people. The name does not reveal whether the author was a soldier, an official, a merchant, or a private traveller, and the pamphlet itself does not make the author’s station plain.
The pamphlet
The pamphlet that Een Ooggetuige wrote is a contribution to the contemporary Dutch debate on the Atjeh War. It describes the kingdom of Atjeh, its pepper plantations, and its situation at the northern tip of Sumatra; it argues for the strategic and commercial value of Atjeh in relation to world trade, comparing the Atjehnese coast and the Strait of Halakka with Singapore; it discusses the conduct of the war and the controversy over whether the Netherlands should continue or withdraw; and it refers to the London Pall Mall Gazette commentary on the Atjeh question. The pamphlet was issued with a folded map, the *Kaart van het Oorlogstooneel, de Vaarwaters en vereischte Kustlichten voor den Wereldhandel* — “Map of the Theatre of War, the Waterways and required Coastal Lights for World Trade” — which set out the Atjehnese coast, the waterways around it, and the positions at which coastal lights were held to be needed.
Argument and stance
As far as the damaged text of the surviving copy allows the author’s argument to be recovered, Een Ooggetuige is critical of the existing colonial administration and of the way the war had been conducted, while insisting that the Netherlands should not abandon Atjeh. The author argues that a withdrawal would be read by the Atjehnese as a defeat and would weaken the Dutch position throughout the archipelago, but holds that the war can only be brought to a successful end if the country is settled on a firmer footing — with better roads, better coastal lights, and a clearer plan for the civil administration of the Atjehnese interior. The argument on the strategic value of Atjeh, and on the comparison with Singapore, is the most distinctive feature of the pamphlet, and is the part of the argument that the accompanying map was designed to support.
Significance
The significance of Een Ooggetuige within the AcehWiki corpus lies in the author’s contribution to the contemporary Dutch pamphlet literature on the Atjeh War. The pamphlet is one of a number of anonymous or pseudonymous writings on the war — including the accounts of Terwogt and Beuming — that shaped the Dutch public debate on the war, and its argument on the strategic and commercial value of Atjeh, and on the comparison with Singapore, is a document of the practical and commercial thinking that underlay the Dutch continuation of the war. The author’s real identity remains unknown.
See Also
- Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk
- Van Meurs & Stufkens
- Kaart van het Oorlogstooneel
- Aceh War
- Strait of Halakka
- Singapore
- Pall Mall Gazette
- Pepper cultivation in Atjeh
- Rotterdam
- 1880s
Source
Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk, door Een Ooggetuige, met een Kaart van het Oorlogstooneel, de Vaarwaters en vereischte Kustlichten voor den Wereldhandel (Rotterdam: Van Meurs & Stufkens, [c. 1880s]). Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, shelfmark 1830 C17 2611 / 1830 0947 8285.
Note on the source text. The surviving copy of the pamphlet was digitised and processed through OCR (Nemotron-OCR v2). The OCR output is badly damaged throughout, and many words are illegible. The article above reports only such facts as can be read with confidence from the title-page, the map legend, and the legible passages of the body text. The author’s real identity is not recorded on the title-page and has not been identified.