G. B. Hooijer was an infantry officer of the Netherlands East Indies Army, Ridder der Militaire Willems-Orde 4de klasse, who served in 1879 as chief of the military recording brigade (opnemingsbrigade) of the Lamtoba column during the expedition to Lamtoba and Selimoen, co-authored with W. Cool the campaign narrative Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889), and crowned his literary work on the Atjeh-oorlog with the illustrated album De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897), published when he held the rank of gepensioneerd Luitenant-Kolonel.
The reconnaissance to Lampanas, July 1879
In the last days of July 1879, as 1e Luitenant der Infanterie and chief of the military recording brigade, Hooijer was sent — with a corporal-opnemer and several Achehnese chiefs, among whom the celebrated Panglima Tibang — aboard the government steamboat Zeemeeuw to Lampanas, there to gather the intelligence that Generaal van der Heijden’s well-disposed chiefs had been unable to supply. Although the population of Lampanas appeared not to be hostilely disposed, he was most strictly forbidden to go ashore. From the roadstead, after a conference with the commander of the naval vessel lying there and with the head of Lampanas — Toekoe Mas, who came aboard the Zeemeeuw for the purpose — the landing point was fixed, and upon the headman’s information a figurative sketch of the terrain to be traversed and of the plain of Lamtoba was composed which later proved to give a fair image of the reality. Returning to Oleh-leh, he reported; the General thereupon gave the expedition orders.
Brigade chief in the Lamtoba-Selimoen expedition
With two sergeants-opnemers under him, and mounted — one of the six equestrian officers of the column — Hooijer worked throughout the tocht with the point of the advance guard, the surveyors sketching the terrain in their measuring books as they marched. From Lampanas he mapped the hill track to the valley of Lamtoba; during the fortnight in the valley he accompanied the extended reconnaissances into the surrounding hill- and mountain-land, including Majoor Ducroo’s great sweep towards Kroeng Raija on 12 August; and on the march to Selimoen of 13–20 August he fixed the principal points of the upper Atjeh-rivier valley instrumentally — from the berg-plateau of 14 August, from Selimoen itself, and finally from Indrapoeri — interpolating the remainder from the double route measurements of both columns out and back. From these data the schetskaart attached to the book was compiled — the map that Generaal van der Heijden praised as giving the answer to the hitherto unsolved question where and how the Atjeh river valley ends. On 21 August 1879 the brigade chief also surveyed the one yet unexplored road in the neighbourhood of the Lamtoba valley, the mountain path towards Pedir.
Literary work
With Cool, Hooijer published in the Militaire Spectator of 1886 the series Het Atjeh-vraagstuk, and in 1889 the book itself, written up from the field diary kept during the tocht. Eight years later he published De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897), the illustrated narrative of the outer posts of Groot-Atjeh between 1893 and 1896, in which the same terrain — the XXII Moekims, Anagaloeng, the Goudberg speaking face to face with the Glé Raja — is described from the tenure of a later phase of the war.
Significance
Hooijer is, with his co-author, the principal personal chronicler of the operations of 1879 and of the post-1893 era of the war in Groot-Atjeh. His survey of the upper Atjeh basin remained for decades the only instrumental mapping of a region that no European entered again; and the two books together preserve the fullest officer’s-eye record of the Atjeh-oorlog between the Day-order of 5 September 1879 and the alliance with Toekoe Oemar.
See Also
- W. Cool
- Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (Cool & Hooijer, 1889)
- De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (Hooijer, 1897)
- Schetskaart van het boven-stroomgebied der Atjeh-rivier (1889)
- Zeemeeuw (gouvernements-stoomboot)
- Panglima Tibang Moehamad
- Lampanas
- Lamtoba column (1879)
- Toekoe Mas
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), title page, pp. 4-5, 15, 37, 44-45, 54, 56, 65; De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh, door G. B. Hooijer (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897). OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.