H. van Kol

Properties2
tagsperson, politician, socialist, dutch, anti-war, colonial, acheh, social-democrat
aliasesH. van Kol, H. B. van Kol, Hendrikus Bernardus van Kol, Van Kol, Van Kol (social-democratic MP), Van Kol of Enschede

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H. van Kol was a Dutch socialist politician and member of the Tweede Kamer (Lower House of Parliament) for the Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij (SDAP), who served from 1897 and became the most vocal parliamentary opponent of the Aceh War (Atjeh-oorlog). He represented the Enschede district and was one of the first two social democratic members of the Dutch parliament.

Opposition to the Aceh War

Van Kol first spoke against the Aceh War during the general budget debates following his election. On 1 December 1897, he argued that the war was driven by “annexatie-geest” (annexationist spirit) and “de zucht om nog meer landen te veroveren” (the desire to conquer even more territories). He stated that the war had been started “meer dan een kwart eeuw geleden” (more than a quarter century ago) and that its end was still not in sight.

He described the consequences of the war in stark terms: “Vreeselijk waren de gevolgen van dien zoo misdadigen, roekeloozen eersten stap. Tal van menschen verloren het leven, millioenen gouds werden verspild; wreedheden werden bedreven, moord, verraad en brandstichting werden gepleegd, tal van gruweldaden bedreven.” (Terrible were the consequences of that so criminal, reckless first step. Many people lost their lives, millions of gold were squandered; cruelties were committed, murder, betrayal and arson were perpetrated, numerous atrocities committed.)

He concluded: “Wij zijn dus verplicht, in naam van menschelijkheid en recht, zoo snel mogelijk een einde te maken aan den Atjeh-krijg; de Atjeh-kanker moet worden uitgesneden.” (We are therefore obliged, in the name of humanity and justice, to make an end to the Aceh war as soon as possible; the Aceh cancer must be cut out.)

The Motion of 1897

Van Kol was the primary mover behind a motion submitted in 1897 calling for an impartial commission to investigate the Aceh War — see Van Kol’s Aceh War Motion (1897). The motion was co-sponsored by Troelstra and Van der Zwaag, the other two socialist members of the SDAP. It stated that the war should be considered a “nationale ramp” (national disaster) and called for information about the war’s significance to be shared with the nation. It questioned whether continuing the war was desirable and possible after 24 years without an end in sight.

The motion was defeated by a vote of 72 to 3, with only the three socialists supporting it.

Economic critique of the war

Van Kol continued to attack the war in subsequent budget debates. He exposed the economic interests that benefited from its continuation — see Economic interests in the Aceh War — stating that officers, shipping companies, building material suppliers, food suppliers, contractors, manufacturers, and transport entrepreneurs all had a stake in the war’s prolongation. He further argued that European planters and mining companies were pressing for the submission of Aceh, “die azen op de groote rijkdommen van den bovengrond en den ondergrond van Atjeh” (who were preying on the great riches of the surface and sub-surface of Aceh). He claimed that companies had already been formed and capital collected, and that the Acehnese must be subjugated “om kapitalistische hebzucht te kunnen verzadigen” (to satisfy capitalist greed).

He also exposed the practice of sending Javanese convicts to serve as soldiers in the war, condemning it as “elke beschaafde natie onwaardig” (unworthy of any civilized nation).

Other colonial critiques

Beyond Aceh, Van Kol was a persistent critic of Dutch colonial policy. He spoke against heavier taxation of the Javanese, called for the abolition of all forced cultivation (dwangcultuur), opposed the usury of Arabs and Chinese, demanded better indigenous education, and supported freedom of the press, association, and assembly for the Indo people. He also opposed the extension of Dutch authority in New Guinea, predicting it would bring new costs and wars, a prediction he claimed was borne out when three officers were killed there in 1900.

Later career

Van Kol continued his anti-war advocacy during the 1901 Indische begrooting (Indies budget) debates, speaking against what he called “Imperialisme” and “veroveringszucht” (conquest fever), which he said was being prophesied by Dr. Abraham Kuyper. He noted that the Aceh War remained “de melkkoe van allerlei goudzoekers” (the cash cow of all sorts of gold diggers) and that the minister was a fervent advocate of its continuation. See Indische begrooting.

Significance

H. van Kol was the most prominent Dutch parliamentarian to consistently oppose the Aceh War and expose the economic motivations behind it. His speeches and motions provide a contemporary socialist critique of Dutch imperialism and colonial capitalism, framing the Aceh War not as a civilizing mission but as a project driven by capitalist greed and the desire for territorial expansion. His analysis of the “Aceh cancer” and his call for its surgical removal captured the moral and political outrage of the anti-war movement.

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*.

H. B. van Kol — Hendrikus Bernardus van Kol (1852-1925) — was a Dutch social-democratic member of the Tweede Kamer, a former colonial civil servant, and — in the 1891-1918 period covered by Vermeulen’s Oost-Indië in het Nederlandse Parlement — the parliamentary voice most consistently critical of the Atjeh-oorlog. His 1902 traverse of Atjeh from north to south gave his subsequent speeches an authority no other social-democratic or liberal critic could match; his 1904 verdict on the expedition of Van Daalen — “erger dan de dagen van Alva’s schrikbewind” — is the most quoted single judgement of the Atjehnese-war parliamentary record.

On the causes of the Atjeh war

In the Tweede Kamer debate of 1897 Van Kol (s.d.) subjected the official motivering (justification) of the 1873 declaration of war to systematic criticism. The first reason — piracy from Atjehese waters — could not be denied, but he asked “of dit nu zo’n onrustbarende omvang had aangenomen” — whether it had really assumed such alarming proportions. The colonial reports of the years preceding the declaration had not singled out Atjeh in this regard; the colonial report for 1897 itself admitted that on the Mentawai-eilanden prahus were still robbed and their crews murdered, and that even Straat Madoera was unsafe after sunset. The second reason — internal warfare — was equally unconvincing, since the Netherlands routinely declined to intervene in inter-tribal wars in regions already formally under Dutch sovereignty. As for the third reason — fear of foreign interference — Van Kol “vermochten niet de kracht van dit motief in te zien” — could not see the force of this motive — since the Sumatra-tractaat of 1871 had just removed it.

On the withdrawal option

In the 1896 Tweede Kamer debate following the defection of Toekoe Oemar Van Kol “stelde voor, dat Nederland zich geheel uit Atjeh zou terugtrekken” — proposed that the Netherlands withdraw entirely from Atjeh. With the Sumatra-tractaat in hand the Netherlands had nothing to fear from England; other powers would readily recognise Dutch claims on Atjeh. The only danger was that, by continuing “onze wrede wijze van oorlogvoeren” — our cruel way of waging war — the Netherlands would give a great power a pretext for intervention.

The 1902 traverse of Atjeh

In 1902 Van Kol traversed Atjeh “van Noord tot Zuid” — from north to south — and was able to certify to the Tweede Kamer that the pacificatie had progressed further than he had thought, and that the “gruwelen” — the horrors — of the Atjeh-oorlog were already past. The illusion of approaching peace was, however, almost immediately dispelled by the expedition of Van Daalen in 1904.

The 1904 verdict

In the 1904 Tweede Kamer debate on the expedition of Van Daalen — in which, according to the official figures, 2,922 inlanders (including 1,149 women and children) had been killed “in weinige dagen” — Van Kol declared it “erger dan de dagen van Alva’s schrikbewind” — worse than the days of Alva’s reign of terror. The Catholic De Stuers went further back into history and compared the expedition to the campaigns of Timoer Lenk and Djengis Khan: “Het is of men op de inlanders een bende bloedhonden heeft losgelaten, het is beulenwerk”.

On the moral economy of imperialism

Van Kol extended his Atjeh criticism into a general critique of Dutch imperial rhetoric. The Dutch were, he said, like “dolende ridders” — wandering knights — going about to put an end to abuses and horrors, “bij voorkeur onder de bruine rassen” — preferably among the brown races. Every Dutch action was preceded or followed by the cliché — “waar alle oude stovenzetsters, die de courant lezen, diep door worden geschokt” — by which all old oven-tenders who read the newspaper are profoundly shocked — of putting an end to people-robbing, slavery, slave-trade, pandelingschap, head-hunting and the like. “Om meer indruk te maken wordt de zaak uitvoerig gesplitst in slavernij, slavenhandel, mensenroof en pandelingschap” — to make more impression the matter is elaborately split into slavery, slave-trade, people-robing and pawnship.

It was, Van Kol conceded, difficult to assume bad faith on the part of the minister or the Indies government. But he could not accept that Dutch imperialism should be other than English imperialism: “Bij de Engelsen zou vuige hebzucht de drijfveer zijn, bij Nederland het verschaffen van geluk en zedelijkheid aan de bewoners van Insulinde” — among the English the motive would be foul greed, among the Dutch the supply of happiness and morality to the inhabitants of Insulinde. “Wie is er die in ernst aan die woorden geloof slaat?” — who is there who seriously credits those words? “Hier (in Nederland) en daar (in Engeland) gelden twee drijfveren, waarvan de ene gezien wordt, de andere niet. De schoonschijnende leuze wordt uitgesproken, maar de geheime drijfveer wordt bemanteld”.

The 1905 mining-law debate

In the 1905 debate on the Rengers-era Mijnwet Van Kol was among those who held that “over de rechten van de inheemse bezitters van de bovengrond wat al te licht was heengelopen” — the rights of the indigenous owners of the top-soil had been too lightly passed over. The Eerste Kamer dissenters — 18 against 26 — largely followed Van Kol’s view; the a.r. former minister Godin de Beaufort even joined Van Kol in his preference for state exploitation.

Significance

Van Kol’s 1902 traverse of Atjeh and his 1904 verdict on the Van Daalen expedition make him the principal social-democratic witness of the Atjehnese war. His name is, in the Vermeulen narrative, the invariable point of reference for the parliamentary critique of Dutch imperial conduct in Atjeh and elsewhere in the archipelago.

The Motion of 1897

The motion was defeated by a vote of 72 to 3, with only the three socialists supporting it.

Account from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (1897)

The pamphlet Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (1897) preserves in full Van Kol’s two speeches in the Atjeh debate of 16 November and 17 November 1897, his maiden intervention on the subject as the newly elected deputy for Enschedé.

The historical indictment

Van Kol opened by declaring that of all the urgently necessary reforms in the Indies nothing could in the end come, “indien die kanker aan de welvaart van Indië niet met vaste hand wordt uitgesneden” — see Atjeh-kanker. He recalled that the minister had himself acknowledged on 13 November 1896 that he would rather economise on every point than on Atjeh, and had said that “voor den Atjeh-oorlog moeten tijdelijk alle belangen zwichten.”

He set the war in the frame of the general European annexatie-geest of the previous thirty years and then examined the three official causes of the war — piracy, the internal wars of the Acehnese statelets, and the fear of foreign intervention — rejecting each; the argument is set out at Van Kol’s refutation of the causes of the Atjeh-oorlog (1897). He traced the history of Dutch encroachment from the treaty of London through the occupation of Baros in 1839 and Singkel in 1840 — and the appeal of Mohammed Aroef — to the Tractaat van 1857, the Siak treaty, the subjugation of Assahan in 1865, the offer of Atjeh’s sovereignty to the Sultan of Turkey in 1868, and the Sumatra treaty of November 1871 which left the Dutch a free hand.

He read into the record the admission of Major Kielstra in the Beschrijving van den Atjeh-oorlog, vol. I, p. 27, that the Acehnese also had many reasons to distrust the Dutch, and that the crews of the Dutch cruising boats had repeatedly been guilty of acts differing little from piracy. He condemned the mission of the Vice-President of the Council of the Indies, who had to demand recognition of Dutch sovereignty within twenty-four hours, and noted that although the ultimatum ran to 29 March, the bombardment of the coast began already on 27 March 1873.

The cost

Van Kol gave the fullest financial accounting the chamber had heard. Minister Bergsma had been obliged to declare five months earlier that neither the Ministry of Colonies nor the Indies could state precisely how much had been spent on Atjeh. What was known was that from 1873 to the present some eleven hundred million had been spent on army and fleet, and that as expenditure before the war had been at most thirty million a year, the extra outlay over twenty-five years amounted to three hundred and fifty million guilders. In his brochure Land en Volk van Java he had given this sum; but Van Heutsz, then assistant-resident, had objected in Insulinde that all extra civil expenditure, leave allowances, search vessels, travel and subsistence costs and part of the pensions must be added. Others had reached seven to eight hundred million, and the Java Bode of 13 April 1897 a thousand million guilders and a hundred thousand human lives.

The atrocities and the tribute to the Acehnese

He catalogued the atrocities set out at Atrocities in the Aceh War as alleged in the Tweede Kamer (1897), including the killing of Toekoe Tjoet Machmoed Lam Tenzah and, in his second speech, the cases of Njahim, Joed Mohmed Lamtengah, Wakil Joesoef, the Radja van Samalangan, Bintara Peunang and Toekoe Njak Amat.

Against these he set his tribute to the defenders: when the Acehnese voorvechters, wrapped in a white shroud with arms crossed on the breast, let themselves be calmly shot down, the Dutch must have respect for such men, and acknowledge that those who could so die for their conviction were true jahid’s — witnesses and martyrs of their love for religion and fatherland; see Jahid. The fanaticism that drove them the Dutch had themselves awakened: in the long struggle against the most hated of all Kafirs they had made of a manly resistance to foreign intruders a holy war, a volks-oorlog — see Prang Sabil.

The doctrine of the kring van belang

In his second speech Van Kol advanced the legal argument that on withdrawal the Dutch had nothing to fear for their position on Sumatra, since the partition of Africa had compelled the civilised nations to admit into international law the system of the kring van belang: the Dutch held the imperium over all islands between 6 degrees north and 11 degrees south latitude and 95 to 141 degrees east longitude, an accessorium of the state of the Netherlands, whether that authority were exercised directly or indirectly, actually or nominally. On Borneo and Timor the mutual frontiers had been regulated by the treaties of 1891 and 1893, and on Nieuw-Guinea likewise; nothing prevented the same being done on Sumatra, English recognition having been secured already by the treaty of 1871.

His personal solution, which he would gladly submit to a commission, was that if the Dutch occupied Poeloe Bras or Poeloe Weh and kept some fast native-rigged vessels, they could hinder piracy far better than with their heavy and costly ships; the conquest of Atjeh was in no case necessary for it.

On prestige

Under the heading Ons prestige in Indië he argued that Dutch prestige would not be shaken if Atjeh were not subdued but only made to feel the Dutch punishing hand: every Javanese knew that Atjeh was strong and had never been subjected, and knew the native saying “wie Atjeh overwint moet machtig en krachtig zijn.” — whoever conquers Atjeh must be mighty and strong. Prestige would rather be raised by ceasing a war that prevented the fulfilment of more pressing duties elsewhere. He instanced the absence of any rising when in the first half of 1876 a quarter of the soldiers and a third of the coolies died, and again at the reverse on Timor in 1890 and the surprise at Lombok.

On Java

Answering Kuyper’s argument that consistency required the abandonment of all colonial possession, Van Kol agreed with one weighty exception: where one had for centuries drawn profit from a foreign land in which one might have brought civilisation but had sown poverty, one could not leave that land, still needing support like a child, to its fate. With Java and perhaps a few Buitenbezittingen such as the Minahassa this was the case. “Java mogen wij niet meer als een lust, doch moeten wij als een last beschouwen.” — Java we may no longer regard as a pleasure, but must regard as a burden. Restitution must first be made of the millions taken from the Javanese, by promoting his welfare and development, “en den knaap op te voeden tot een man, die op eigen beenen kan staan.”

He rejected Kuyper’s parable of the apple thief: the Dutch had wanted the apples, that is the lands of Atjeh; they had already been stealing her apples for years along the East and West Coasts of Sumatra; and now that the Acehnese wished to defend their last orchard, Kuyper would give them a thrashing besides — “slagen geven aan den man dien men eerst heeft leeg geplunderd!” — to give blows to the man whom one has first plundered bare!

The conclusion

His conclusion was: “Wij moeten zoo snel mogelijk terug uit Atjeh, waar wij nooit een voet hadden moeten zetten.” — We must get out of Atjeh as quickly as possible, where we ought never to have set foot. There was no valid reason for beginning, continuing or persevering in that bloody war of conquest, which had become wholly aimless and useless. Instead of resting in the fait accompli, all forces must be exerted to end the injustice. But one thing was certain: if — which he most positively denied — the honour, prestige and authority of the Netherlands required the continuation of the war, then “Neerlands eer met Neerlands geld worden betaald,” and he would gladly support with all his power such a motion if Kuyper would table it, especially since one might then be assured the war would not last as many weeks more as it had been dragged out years.

He voted for his own motion on 17 November 1897 with Troelstra and Van der Zwaag; it was rejected by seventy-two votes to three.

See Also

Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu

Described the ~2 million guilders cost of the Gajoweg as ‘2/10 doelloos verspild’ (2/10 senselessly wasted). Jongejans disputes this, saying it undervalues the peaceful development of the central region.

Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 70.

Sources

De Sociaaldemokraten in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam, c. 1901). Vrije Universiteit Bibliotheek, pp. 2-3, 12-13, 20-21, 28-29.

Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland van 1849 tot 1901, by Mr W. J. van Welderen baron Rengers, 4th rev. ed., Vol. IV: Oost-Indië 1891-1918 by Dr W. H. Vermeulen (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955), pp. 268-272, 277, 305.

Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, pp. 3–13, 60–70.

Acknowledgement of sources. This article combines material from the publications cited above; the material newly added derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897) and Een strijd in Atjeh (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.

Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 70.

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