General Booms was a Dutch generaal and military historian whose “zeer juist geschreven critiek” of the second Dutch expedition against Atjeh — a critique that Borel cites as one of the principal contemporary judgements on generaal van Swieten’s conduct of the war — forms part of the documentary scaffolding of Onze vestiging in Atjeh.
The Critique of the Second Expedition
Borel introduces Booms in the opening chapter of his book, alongside generaal Knoop and gep. lt.-kol. de Rochemont, as one of the named critics whose published judgements of the second expedition he cites to buttress his own indictment of van Swieten. The critique is described as “zeer juist geschreven” — very justly written — and is offered by Borel as an independent corroboration of the verdict he himself reaches by participant-observation. The principal points of the critique converge with Borel’s own: that van Swieten left the third brigade at Padang instead of landing it at the Kroeng Raba-baai for a pincer movement against the Kraton; that he ordered the storming of the Mesigit on 6 January 1874 “tegen alle Indische traditiën in, zonder noemenswaardige voorbereiding, alleen in front”; that he recalled the achterlaadkanonnen and one company of vesting-artillerie to Java; and that he declared the war ended on 23 April 1874 and departed on 26 April 1874 leaving a “zeer gebrekkige stelling.”
Borel’s Use of Booms
Borel’s use of Booms is characteristic of his method: he invokes the named critics of the second expedition — Booms, Knoop, de Rochemont — not as substitutes for his own participant-observation but as independent authorities whose published judgements corroborate the conclusions he himself has reached at the guns’ mouth. The convergence is significant, because Booms (a general officer), Knoop (a general officer) and de Rochemont (a retired luitenant-kolonel) represent the professional military consensus of the Indies army, against which van Swieten’s partisans had tried to defend his conduct by appealing to Pel’s particulier schrijven attributing his succes to van Swieten’s beleid. Borel explains Pel’s letter as nederigheid, erkentelijkheid and deferentie, and treats the Booms-Knoop-de Rochemont consensus as the more reliable measure.
Sources
Over de eerste expeditie tegen Atjeh: Een antwoord aan Generaal de Stuers, G. G. Booms, ‘s-Gravenhage: A. van Hoogstraten & Zoon, 1875, pp. 1-22.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege leans, in his Appendix D, much on generaal P. G. Booms’s Historische kritiek: de eerste Atjehsche expeditie en hare enquête (overdrukt uit de Indische Gids, May and June 1880) for the documented account of how the first expedition was prepared: the admiral’s answers at the Raadsvergadering of 21 February 1873 (see Schout-bij-nacht Geerling), the evidence that the legerbestuur (army administration) had in the one month from 21 February to 22 March 1873 “done what was possible, and with that little time had, as it were, raked together” for the equipment, and the verdict that the inquiry of 1873 — “schijnbaar om een staatsbelang” (“ostensibly for a public interest”) — chiefly served to make the conduct of the commanders the scapegoat, with veiling of the chief causes of failure: “de tekortkomingen en de fouten van de regeering” (“the shortcomings and the mistakes of the government”). Verstege notes that such an inquiry “moeten wij niet hebben” (“we must not have”), while demanding a true commission of inquiry into the whole Atjeh question (see Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Verstege, 1886)).
See Also
- Second Aceh Expedition (1873–1874)
- Generaal Knoop
- Luitenant-kolonel de Rochemont
- Jan van Swieten
- Pel’s letter to Jan van Swieten
- Generaal Pel
- Atjeh-enquête
- 1873
- F. V. A. de Stuers
- J. H. R. Köhler
- E. C. van Daalen
- T. H. Kroesen
- General Booms Answer to General de Stuers
- First Aceh Expedition
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. p. 21.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 102, 119-123. OCR: DLP-158.