General Deykerhoff was a Dutch military officer who served as Governor of Acheh during the closing phase of the so-called “Uma-period” — the three years of the concentration-scheme policy that gave the adventurer Teuku Uma his fatal influence over the affairs of the colony. Snouck Hurgronje mentions him in the Introduction to The Achehnese as the “blindly-trusting General Deykerhoff” on whom Teuku Uma finally turned, in Defection of Teuku Uma, when the latter judged that the time had come to reveal the long-concealed hostility that lay beneath his professed friendship for the Dutch.
The episode belongs to the history of the Dutch concentration scheme of 1884–1896, under which the colonial government sought to reduce its military expenditure in Great Acheh by withdrawing into a fortified “line” around the old seat of the sultanate, and leaving the rest of the country to be pacified in some imagined future by the operation of time. The scheme was disastrous. Snouck describes how “a Governor absolutely unacquainted with native affairs” gave his entire confidence to the adventurer Teuku Uma, “immediately after Uma’s submission, and, in defiance of all warnings, persisted in strengthening Uma by generous subsidies of Dutch weapons and Dutch money”. The Governor in question was Deykerhoff, who treated Uma as a “trusty councillor” and entrusted him with the command of friendly Achehnese forces.
Armed and subsidised by the colonial government, Uma used his Dutch patron’s confidence to deal out, “as his own, plentiful subsidies to his friends in the War-party and tried by all means in his power to acquire the maximum of influence both over the Dutch and their opponents”. The only apparent gain which Uma brought to his protector was an extension of the Dutch “line” beyond its original limits — a gain that was, in Snouck’s words, “due to and continued to depend on the slender thread of his good-will”. When at last, in March 1896, Uma judged that he had sufficient money and arms “to play a leading part among the War-party, and the claims which his friend Deykerhoff pressed upon him began to be burdensome”, he threw off the mask and openly defected. Snouck treats the “defection” as a misnomer: “since the real purport of his actions had long been as obvious as the day, we cannot speak except in a highly specialized sense of Uma’s ‘defection’”.
The episode had at least one salutary consequence. “The Uma episode, however melancholy in itself, indirectly exercised a healthy influence upon the management of Achehnese affairs. Its termination opened all eyes to the need of vigorous action if one did not wish to abandon altogether the subjugation of Acheh”. In 1896 the war was resumed, and from 1898 under Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz the subjugation was systematically prosecuted. Deykerhoff’s governorship thus marks the nadir of Dutch policy in Acheh, and the immediate cause of the decisive turn that followed.
Account from Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis (1955)
The following account is drawn from the parliamentary history of the Dutch Second Chamber as narrated by Vermeulen in the colonial section of the 1955 fourth revised edition of Rengers’s *Schets*.
Deykerhoff — governor of Atjeh in the early 1890s — is, in the source’s narrative, the colonial administrator who, alongside the governor-general Pijnacker Hordijk, declined to follow the 1892 advice of Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje and instead placed his trust in Teungku Um — the warlord who would defect in 1896 and turn his modern-Dutch arms against his former patrons.
The Snouck Hurgronje rejection
The source records that Deykerhoff and Pijnacker Hordijk “meenden de raadgevingen van Snouck Hurgronje niet te moeten volgen” (believed they should not follow Snouck Hurgronje’s advice). The Snouck Hurgronje advice of 1892 had three components: ignore the “sultanspartij” (sultan’s party) at the court as of no significance; do not negotiate with the enemy but strike him sensibly; and thereafter seek to win the confidence of the population by a good welfare policy. The Deykerhoff-Pijnacker Hordijk rejection of this advice was, the source implies, the proximate cause of the 1896 defection of Teungku Um.
The Teungku Um trust
Against Snouck Hurgronje’s warning, Deykerhoff and Pijnacker Hordijk “schenkten zij hun vertrouwen aan Teungku Um, die officieel begenadigd werd, een legioen van 250 man op onze kosten mocht onderhouden en later nog 1000 geweren kreeg, veel ammunitie en geld” (placed their trust in Teungku Um, who was officially granted clemency, permitted to maintain a legion of 250 men at our expense, and later received a further 1,000 rifles, much ammunition and money). The arming and subsidising of Teungku Um against the explicit advice of Snouck Hurgronje is, in the source’s narrative, the type-specimen of the colonial-administrator-as-gambler.
Significance
Deykerhoff’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history lies in his role as the colonial governor whose rejection of the Snouck Hurgronje advice and whose trust in Teungku Um produced the 1896 defection that ended the policy of co-opting Atjehnese warlords as Dutch allies.
Appointment
After the retirement of general Van Teijn the Government again chose the policy of waiting and negotiating. “And thus, after a short and feeble rule by General Pompe van Meerdervoort, General Deijckerhoff took office.”
The policy of conciliation
Deijckerhoff was “a convinced adherent of the policy of conciliation.” That policy corresponded entirely with the demands of the Indies moment in 1892, because the army was then preparing for a large-scale undertaking against Lombok which would probably require all its strength, so that Atjeh could count on no reinforcement. Action on an extended scale therefore had to be avoided — “and that lay entirely in the line of Deijckerhoff’s views.”
“But the application of those views also brought with it that the courage and enterprise of the warlike Acehnese greatly increased: if the Kompeni did not dare, he dared twice as much at once!”
The Legioen and the disaster of 1896
Deijckerhoff nevertheless felt that complete inactivity could bring no solution. “That feeling led to a proposal to the Government that was bound to lead to the disaster of 1896: the Acehnese resistance party would be fought by Acehnese well disposed towards us, equipped by us, armed by us and paid by us!”
The Government accepted the proposal, and as commander of the Legion appeared Teukoe Oemar, “an adventurer … and unquestionably untrustworthy.” Although T. Oemar had repeatedly submitted and just as repeatedly attacked Dutch troops afterwards, “Deijckerhoff continued to place rock-firm confidence in him”: T. Oemar was appointed oelèëbalang of Leupoeëng and in September 1893 solemnly installed as Panglima Prang Besar.
It began very well; Dutch authority was restored over the greater part of the territory. But in 1896 the Panglima Prang Besar went over to the resistance party with the Legion the Dutch had armed and paid. “Deijckerhoff had to resign, and Van Heutsz got his long-awaited chance.”
Significance (du Croo, 1943)
Deijckerhoff’s governorship is the negative case on which the entire argument of du Croo’s book rests: it demonstrated that conciliation unsupported by demonstrated power produced not submission but emboldened resistance, and it produced the catastrophe that finally allowed the doctrine of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and van Heutsz to be applied.
Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)
C. Deykerhoff was the Dutch Governor of Atjeh and Onderhoorigheden whose too optimistic and incautious confidence in Teukoe Oemar was broken by the latter’s defection of March 1896, whereupon he was honourably discharged. Earlier, as governor, he had served on the commission that designed the shipping regulation for the province.
The shipping regulation commission, 1892
In 1892 Governor-General Pynacker Hordijk instituted a commission, consisting of Governor Deijkerhoff and Resident G. A. Scherer, to design a shipping regulation for the Government of Atjeh and Dependencies. The regulation came into being piecemeal — in 1892 for the East Coast, in 1893 for the North and West Coasts and Groot-Atjeh; Sabang was included in 1896, and finally in 1897 the shipping regulation could be introduced for the whole province.
The defection of Teukoe Oemar, 1896
After rumours had circulated for some time, the government obtained certainty on 29 March 1896 that Teukoe Oemar — who at his submission in 1893 had received the title “Teungkoe Djohan Pahlawan” — had “thrown off the mask” and would henceforth turn against the Government. The Governor of Atjeh, Major-General C. Deykerhoff, immediately telegraphed the news of Teukoe Oemar’s treason to the Governor-General, who at once convened an extraordinary meeting of the Council of the Indies. In that assembly the Netherlands Indian Government came to the conclusion that the direction of affairs in Atjeh could no longer be entrusted to the governor who had been “al te optimistisch en onvoorzichtig” (“all too optimistic and incautious”) in regard of Teukoe Oemar. Deykerhoff received honourable discharge, and the army commander, Lieutenant-General J. A. Vetter, betook himself once more to Atjeh — this time to take the direction of affairs in hand as Government Commissioner.
See Also
- Treachery of Teuku Uma against the Dutch
- Achehnese War
- Acheh
- Concentration Scheme
- Teuku Uma
- Defection of Teuku Uma
- Governor Van Heutsz
- 1892
- Atjehoorlog
- 1896
- Teungku Um
- Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Pijnacker Hordijk
- Teukoe Oemar
- Legioen van Teukoe Oemar
- Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz
- J. van Teijn
- Atjeh van 1890 tot 1898
- Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje
- J. A. Vetter
- Betrayal of Teukoe Oemar (1896)
- Scheepvaartregeling in Atjeh
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
General Deykerhoff was a Dutch military officer who served as Governor of Acheh during the closing phase of the so-called “Uma-period” — the three years of the concentration-scheme policy that gave the adventurer Teuku Uma his fatal influence over the affairs of the colony. Snouck Hurgronje mentions him in the Introduction to The Achehnese as the “blindly-trusting General Deykerhoff” on whom Teuku Uma finally turned, in Defection of Teuku Uma, when the latter judged that the time had come to reveal the long-concealed hostility that lay beneath his professed friendship for the Dutch.
The episode belongs to the history of the Dutch concentration scheme of 1884–1896, under which the colonial government sought to reduce its military expenditure in Great Acheh by withdrawing into a fortified “line” around the old seat of the sultanate, and leaving the rest of the country to be pacified in some imagined future by the operation of time. The scheme was disastrous. Snouck describes how “a Governor absolutely unacquainted with native affairs” gave his entire confidence to the adventurer Teuku Uma, “immediately after Uma’s submission, and, in defiance of all warnings, persisted in strengthening Uma by generous subsidies of Dutch weapons and Dutch money”. The Governor in question was Deykerhoff, who treated Uma as a “trusty councillor” and entrusted him with the command of friendly Achehnese forces.
Armed and subsidised by the colonial government, Uma used his Dutch patron’s confidence to deal out, “as his own, plentiful subsidies to his friends in the War-party and tried by all means in his power to acquire the maximum of influence both over the Dutch and their opponents”. The only apparent gain which Uma brought to his protector was an extension of the Dutch “line” beyond its original limits — a gain that was, in Snouck’s words, “due to and continued to depend on the slender thread of his good-will”. When at last, in March 1896, Uma judged that he had sufficient money and arms “to play a leading part among the War-party, and the claims which his friend Deykerhoff pressed upon him began to be burdensome”, he threw off the mask and openly defected. Snouck treats the “defection” as a misnomer: “since the real purport of his actions had long been as obvious as the day, we cannot speak except in a highly specialized sense of Uma’s ‘defection’”.
The episode had at least one salutary consequence. “The Uma episode, however melancholy in itself, indirectly exercised a healthy influence upon the management of Achehnese affairs. Its termination opened all eyes to the need of vigorous action if one did not wish to abandon altogether the subjugation of Acheh”. In 1896 the war was resumed, and from 1898 under Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz the subjugation was systematically prosecuted. Deykerhoff’s governorship thus marks the nadir of Dutch policy in Acheh, and the immediate cause of the decisive turn that followed.
Nederlanders over de Zeeën: 350 Jaar geschiedenis van Nederland buitengaats, onder redactie van Dr. H. J. de Graaf, met medewerking van Prof. G. Gonggrijp, W. R. Menkman en Prof. Jhr Dr P. J. van Winter, 2e geheel herziene druk (Utrecht: W. de Haan N.V., MCMLV), p. 218.
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter III, pp. 14–17; Chapter V, p. 33.
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 62, 72–73.