I. D. Fransen van de Putte was the Dutch Minister of Colonies whose office covered the outbreak of the Aceh War in 1873. He was one of the most important civilian figures in the decision to act against Atjeh, later became one of the men blamed for the failed opening of the war, and in later years also became a strong parliamentary critic of Dutch conquest policy.
He is significant because his career connects the beginning of the war with later Dutch doubts about how the war should be fought.
Minister of Colonies in 1872 and 1873
Fransen van de Putte became Minister of Colonies in the De Vries-Geertsema ministry on 6 July 1872. During his time in office, tensions with Atjeh increased. Reports from Singapore that Acehnese envoys had approached foreign consuls helped push the Dutch government toward intervention.
On 18 February 1873, Fransen van de Putte sent the important telegram that said delay would be unlawful if the Singapore report was reliable. This telegram became one of the key documents in later Dutch debate about who had truly set the war in motion.
His difference with Loudon
The relation between Fransen van de Putte and Loudon was close, but not identical. Sources later stressed that the minister had warned that demanding recognition of Dutch sovereignty as the first condition, or moving directly to war, could create a bad impression in the Netherlands and abroad. Loudon pushed harder. The exact balance of responsibility between the two men became one of the main questions in later debate.
How he appeared in the pamphlet war
In De enquête over den mislukten tocht naar Atjeh, H. B. van Daalen described how Loudon’s friends and defenders tried to present Fransen van de Putte as the sole designer of the failed conquest of Atjeh. Van Daalen rejected this one-sided explanation. He argued that it was part of a larger effort to protect the Governor-General after the collapse of the first expedition.
This shows how Fransen van de Putte quickly became part of the struggle over blame. He was not only a minister in the background. He became one of the names around which the Dutch public tried to explain why the war had gone wrong.
Link with Van Swieten’s policy
In 1879, Jan van Swieten wrote that discussions among himself, Loudon, and Fransen van de Putte had shaped the policy for the Second Aceh Expedition (1873-1874). Van Swieten presented that policy as more restrained than simple unlimited conquest. This later testimony gave Fransen van de Putte a place not only in the prelude to the first expedition, but also in the political thinking behind the second.
Later critic of the war
Fransen van de Putte later became one of the best-known parliamentary critics of Dutch policy in the war. In the debates after Toekoe Oemar’s defection (1896), he argued that the Netherlands was not well fitted to conquer such a country and that Dutch statesmen should learn patience from earlier colonial history.
Significance
I. D. Fransen van de Putte is significant because he was both a minister at the beginning of the Aceh War and a later critic of its long continuation. Few Dutch politicians stand so clearly on both sides of the same historical problem.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege conducts the parliamentary biography of the minister’s Atjeh career. At the very opening of the war he accused “sommigen onzer volksvertegenwoordigers” of being “more Atjehnese than the Atjehers themselves” (a accusation which the member Van Zuylen van Nyevelt met in the secret sitting of 17 April 1874); he had urged the declaration of war — although on 24 October 1872 he had written to the Governor-General: “laten wij oppassen om in Godsnaam geen oorlog met Atjeh te maken, want het zal ons meer bloed en geld kosten dan geheel Atjeh waard is” (“let us take care, for God’s sake, not to make war upon Atjeh, for it will cost us more blood and money than the whole of Atjeh is worth”); and he put the government’s signature to the annexation of 12 February 1874, even trying — as Verstege shows with Kielstra’s note from the Indisch Genootschap lecture of December 1883 — to ascribe the act to van Swieten exceeding his brief, though the ministerial telegram of 2 February 1874 (the “instructie van het Opperbestuur”) had left the Regerings-Commissaris “meer gebonden… dan de omstandigheden naar zijn oordeel toelieten” (“more bound than the circumstances in his judgement allowed”). The minister was replaced by van Goltstein on 28 August 1874. Since 26 September 1876 he had joined van Swieten in the defence of the afwachtende houding, and invoked general Pel in its support — the reading Verstege refutes with the letter itself (see Pel’s missive to the Governor-General (30 April 1875)). On 15 December 1882 so advised he the government in the Eerste Kamer to retreat upon Atjeh to a limited position: Kraton, Atjeh rivier, Oleh-leh — the very position the brave Pel had found untenable — “the product of continuous accurate study and ripe consideration”, as he said. On 8 December 1885 he pressed at the government, with all emphasis, “not to give in to the pressure for offensive action”, sneered at the “theories imported from armies in Europe” (with a glance to Metz and Paris), declared that in his opinion “the concentration of the troops in Atjeh had turned out excellently” and the reports were “volstrekt niet verontrustend” (“not at all disquieting”), and told the country that after a generation or two rest would be restored in Atjeh, the province that his policy had given the Netherlands, which might one day prove as beneficial a possession as Eastern Sumatra, and strew upon the trading towns of the Netherlands “een regen van goud” (“a rain of gold”) like Deli did. It was also the same man who, when he told in the Eerste Kamer (8 December 1885) that in 1884 Dutch troops, entering a kampong from which they had been fired at, had shot down the first four Atjehers they met, could not help adding: “probably innocent people”, and asking: “is that worthy of a European nation? will this lead to the proposed end: the peaceable submission of the population?”; him Verstege places among the lovers of Atjeh who had never ceased to paint the Dutch troops as tiger-men, and who found ready listeners in The Hague and not a few in the country.
See Also
- James Loudon
- J. Loudon
- Jan van Swieten
- H. B. van Daalen
- De enquête over den mislukten tocht naar Atjeh
- First Aceh Expedition (1873)
- Second Aceh Expedition (1873-1874)
- Toekoe Oemar’s defection (1896)
- Aceh War
- 18 February
- 1873
- 1896
Source
De geschiedenis van Nederland in onzen tijd, by J. A. de Bruyne (Schiedam: J. F. Dupont, 1912), Chapter I–II.
De enquête over den mislukten tocht naar Atjeh, door H. B. van Daalen, redacteur van den Java-Bode (Batavia / The Hague, 1873), pp. 3–23.
De waarheid over onze vestiging in Atjeh, door J. van Swieten (Zalt-Bommel: Joh. Noman en Zoon, 1879), p. 4.
Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland van 1849 tot 1901, by W. J. van Welderen baron Rengers, Vol. IV by W. H. Vermeulen (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955), pp. 269–270, 272.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 8-9, 21, 32, 41, 55, 74, 78, 94, 35 note, 76-77 note. OCR: DLP-158.