G. F. W. Borel was a Dutch Kapitein der Artillerie (Captain of Artillery), Ridder van de Militaire Willemsorde, and bearer of the Eresabel, who served in the Atjeh-oorlog between 1873 and 1878 and wrote the critical military history Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven (‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878). As a participant-observer he supervised the debarkation of the siege guns at Oeleh Leh and personally traced the new zuider-face battery on the bastion of K. Radja on the morning of 14 August 1874, when the Atjehneezen fired a twelve-shot salvo that passed only inches from him and his officer. His book and his March 1878 article Een vaderlandsch belang in Het Vaderland together form the principal published record of his thinking on the conduct of the war.
Service in Atjeh
Borel served with the artillery of the Indische leger throughout the second phase of the Atjeh War. He was present at the siege works around the Kraton in January 1874 and remained with the bezettingskorps after van Swieten’s departure in April 1874. On 14 August 1874 he laid out the new zuider-face battery on the bastion of the southern face of K. Radja — a battery first armed and fired on 18 and 22 August 1874 — under point-blank Atjehnese fire; he records that the twelve-shot enemy salvo missed him and his officer “slechts met eenige duimen.” He also supervised the debarkation of guns at the zeehoofd, an operation he describes as one of the most damagingly neglected of the whole occupation.
The Book and the Brigade Proposal
Borel finished Onze vestiging in Atjeh at ‘s-Gravenhage on 27 August 1878. In the Voorberigt he declares that, with the war already in its sixth year, “het wel niet voorbarig heeten” to pronounce a critical judgement, and he acknowledges that his work is in many respects “gebrekkig en onvolledig,” but insists that his aim was to represent “de feiten en toestanden naar waarheid, zonder overdrijving en zonder mij door eenige partijschap te laten leiden.” The book is in fact strongly partisan: it is a sustained indictment of generaal van Swieten’s afwachtende houding after the fall of the Kraton, and an equally sustained vindication of generaal Pel.
On 1, 2 and 3 March 1878 Borel published in Het Vaderland a three-part article entitled Een vaderlandsch belang, proposing the formation in the Netherlands of an expeditionary Indische Brigade of three to four thousand men — infantry, artillery and engineers — to be raised from Dutch volunteers, sent directly to Atjeh (not via Java’s “ongezonde garnizoenen”), armed with steel achterlaadkanonnen, and bound to a strict two-year engagement. He amplified the proposal in De Militaire Spectator, No. 7, jaargang 1878. He estimated the cost at six million guilders for the first year and ten to fifteen million for the whole two years, to be raised as an oorlogsleening and ultimately repaid, he suggested, in Acehnese pepper.
Intellectual Posture
Borel writes as a professional artilleryman and a moralist. He repeatedly invokes foreign campaigns as tactical analogues: the German pursuit after Sédan (1870), the Russian failure before Plevna (1877), the French expedition against Algiers (25 May 1830) quoted from Camille Rousset’s L’Histoire de la guerre de Crimée, and the English Abyssinian and Ashantee expeditions as proof that Europeans need no “acclimatiseren” in tropical climates. His characterisation of the Atjehnees volkskarakter — “woest, dapper, vrijheidlievend, onafhankelijk, fanatiek,” “uit eene geheel bijzondere stof gekneed” — fixed a Dutch military stereotype even as he saluted the Atjehneezen as “een schitterend voorbeeld van wat een volk vermag dat zijne onafhankelijkheid wil bewaren.” He closes the book with the wish that, if his brigade proposal is adopted, the words of Rousset on the Algiers expedition — “rien n’avait été négligé pour le succès de l’expédition” — may apply to the Dutch in Atjeh.
Significance
Borel is the principal Dutch critical voice on the conduct of the Atjeh War between 1873 and 1878. His book is one of the few primary sources that narrates Dutch reverses — the échec at Lampoe Oek, the disaster at Longbatta, the catastrophe at Atoeh — in full tactical detail, and his advocacy of mobiele colonnes over the posten-systeem anticipates the later maréchaussée system associated with van Heutsz.
The 1879 controversy
Jan van Swieten’s 1879 book De waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh directly contested G. F. W. Borel’s Onze vestiging in Atjeh. Van Swieten charged that Borel had detached operations from their conditions of disease, supply, terrain, and political purpose. This was Van Swieten’s polemical assessment, not a neutral finding.
See Also
- Onze vestiging in Atjeh (Borel, 1878)
- Een vaderlandsch belang (Borel, 1878)
- Indische Brigade (proposed)
- Generaal Pel
- Jan van Swieten
- Aceh War
- Afwachtende houding
- Mobiele colonnes (Borel)
- Atjehnees volkskarakter (Borel)
- Militaire Willemsorde
- 1878
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. Voorberigt, pp. V–VI; pp. 160, 182, 336–337, 355, 364.
De waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh: met eene kaart van Atjeh en een plan van den Kraton, by J. van Swieten (Zalt-Bommel: Joh. Noman en Zoon, 1879), pp. 1–465.
Van Swieten’s Rebuttal: The Kampong-Burning Debate
In Van Swieten’s 1879 account, the General devoted extensive passages to rebutting Borel’s advocacy of systematic kampong destruction. Van Swieten argued that Borel had claimed the Acehnese had “forfeited all claim to compassion or forbearance” by their conduct of the war — but Van Swieten responded that this argument, even if accepted, could not justify an endless programme of devastation. He noted that by the time the map of Groot-Atjeh was drawn up in March 1876, 230 kampongs were marked as burned, a number that had certainly grown enormously by 1879.
Van Swieten invoked the provisions of Articles 172 and 173 of the Criminal Code for the Land Forces, which prohibited the destruction of dwellings and property under penalty of death. He further argued that Borel’s approach would require the destruction of virtually everything, because resistance was offered everywhere, and that such a policy would produce only bitterness, prolonging the war indefinitely.
“The entire task in India must be of a different nature,” Van Swieten wrote. “It must be civilizing, ennobling, worthy of the character of a small people that exercises dominion over such beautiful and extensive lands.” He cited the example of the Java War (1825–1830), when the Dutch had refrained from burning kampongs and had succeeded in winning over the population through patience and moderation.
Source (Van Swieten rebuttal)
De waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh, door den Luitenant-Generaal J. van Swieten. Zalt-Bommel, Joh. Noman en Zoon, 1879, pp. 4–7 (Inleiding), pp. 437–455 (closing sections of Hoofdstuk IX).