J. A. Kruyt

J. A. Kruyt — also rendered J. A. Kruijt, with the OCR-garbled form J. A. Kniijt also occurring in the text — was a Dutch author whose work Atjeh en de Atjehers (“Aceh and the Acehnese”) is cited repeatedly by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese as one of the standard sources on the country and people of Aceh. His name appears in the footnotes of the Introduction as one of the small body of Dutch writers whose observations on Acehnese life and history had been published before Snouck Hurgronje’s own investigations.

The Work: Atjeh en de Atjehers

Atjeh en de Atjehers is the work by which Kruyt is known to scholarship. Cited in three distinct connections by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese — on the letters patent issued under the Sultan’s nine-fold seal (p. 58), on the weight to be attached to civil wars in Aceh (p. 144), and on Acehnese material culture and weapons (p. 56) — the work is treated as a standard reference for the formal documents, political history, and material culture of Aceh.

Citations in The Achehnese

Letters patent and the ninefold seal

The first specific citation of Kruyt in Vol. I occurs in the chapter on the official documents of the Acehnese sultanate, where Snouck Hurgronje refers to Atjeh en de Atjehers (p. 58) in connection with the formal letters patent issued under the Sultan’s nine-fold seal. The reference occurs in the long note appended to Snouck Hurgronje’s analysis of the letters patent given to the Panglima Meuseugit Raya. This document, composed in a mixture of Malay and bad Arabic, opens with a long invocation of blessings — on the Prophet, on his four companions Abu Bakr, Omar, Uthman, and Ali, on “the glorious Pole of the world” Shaikh Abdul-Qadir Jilani, and on the whole line of deceased sultans whose names also appear in the chab sikureu’eng (the nine-fold seal). It is dated Monday, the 4th of Rabi’ al-Awwal 1307 Hijrah — equivalent to the 28 October 1889 — and is issued in the name of Sultan Alaedin Muhamat Dawot Shah Juhan by his “Keureukon Katiboy Muluk” or royal secretary (see Keureukon Katiboy Muluk). For comparison of the formal features of such documents, Snouck Hurgronje refers the reader to Kruyt’s work.

Civil wars in Aceh

In a footnote relating to the Achehnese War, Snouck Hurgronje commends “a very correct estimate of the weight to be attached to civil wars in Acheh” to be found in Atjeh en de Atjehers (p. 144). The remark bears on the essentially local and personal character of Acehnese hostilities: wars in Aceh, as Snouck Hurgronje elsewhere observes, were “of small importance and little blood was spilt,” and cannot be compared in scale or consequence to the wars of European powers.

Acehnese material culture and weapons

For an account of Acehnese weapons, Snouck Hurgronje refers the reader to Van Langen’s article on Aceh’s west coast in the Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, together with Kruyt’s Atjeh en de Atjehers (p. 56) and an appendix to the Notulen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap of 1892. The same work is therefore treated as a standard reference for the description of Acehnese dress and weaponry.

Place in the Dutch colonial literature on Aceh

Kruyt’s Atjeh en de Atjehers belongs to the literature produced by Dutch officials and observers in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, alongside the Atjehsch Staatsbestuur of Van Langen and the writings of Niemann and Coolsma. These works, together with the early monographs of Van den Berg and the later researches of Snouck Hurgronje himself, form the principal Dutch-language corpus on Acehnese society.

Variant spellings

The variant spellings Kruyt and Kruijt — both of which occur in the text of The Achehnese — are alternative renderings of the same author’s name. The OCR-garbled form Kniijt, which appears in the indexed Vol. I (p. 225) of The Achehnese, likewise refers to the same author.

Account from Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)

J. A. Kruyt was a Dutch naval officer who served aboard the man-of-war Timor during the blockade of the north-east coast of Sumatra in the early years of the Atjeh-oorlog, from 1873 to 1875, and who afterwards wrote Atjeh en de Atjehers — Atjeh and the Atjehers — published at Leiden by E. J. Brill in 1877 with the sub-title ‘twee jaren blokkade op Sumatra’s Noordoost-kust’ — two years of blockade on Sumatra’s north-east coast. The book is one of the principal contemporary narratives of the blockade period and the only detailed European source for the east-coast pepper economy immediately before its late-nineteenth-century collapse.

Service and Observations

Kruyt’s two years of blockade service gave him an intimate acquaintance with the eastern coast of Atjeh and with the oeléebalangs of Perlak, Idi, Peudawa and Lho’ Seumawé. He records the pepper-trade of the coast in detail: a pepper-garden usually contained five thousand trees, which yielded five kojang of 110 picol. Three or four men watched and maintained the garden, lived there, and received, besides daily maintenance, half the harvest, which half they sold to the garden’s owner at the prevailing market-price. A collection of pepper-gardens together was called a seuneubò. The east coast, Kruyt reports, annually exported 5–6 thousand kojang of pepper, at Penang market-prices between 200 and 250 pillar-dollars the kojang (price in August 1873); three years earlier the price had been 90 pillar-dollars.

Kruyt also records the discovery of the petroleum spring at Rantau Pandjang in May 1875, when officers of the Timor were led to it by Atjehnese chiefs. The spring was enclosed by a fence; the oil ran underground into a wooden basin closed by a hatch. The crude oil was twice a day skimmed from the water with banana-leaf buckets; the water ran out through a hole in the bottom of the bucket, and as soon as the brown-green oil began to run, the bucket was held over a hollow bamboo. One man could carry two or three hollow bamboos on his back to Rantau Pandjang, where the oil was sold to traders of Perlak and elsewhere. The further transport was in large earthen pots. The yield of the spring had once been 60 gantang; in 1875 it was 40 gantang — about one picol — which at Rantau Pandjang brought nearly six dollars. The chief had a monthly income from it of two hundred dollars. Besides the principal spring there were three others in Perlak. The roll-stones picked up near the spring proved, on examination, to consist of weathered granite, quartz, quartzite, quartz-conglomerate and siliceous sandstone.

Use by Broersma

Broersma cites Kruyt repeatedly in the early chapters of Verkenningen in Atjeh — for the 1874 encounter with the Gajos at Perlak, where the Gajos were said to be man-eaters and their women ‘eerst schoon’; for the spelling Sekoetji of Blang Sekotji; and for the activities of Teungkoe Tjhi Perlak and his son ‘het jong van Peusangan’. He also cites Kruyt for the gift-practice — a silver coffee-service to the vorst van Edi, a golden watch to another chief, a silver rice-dish to a third — which Broersma still finds illustrated by the heirlooms of Teungkoe habib Moehamat bin Sajet Oesoeih at Peudawa fifty years later.

Significance

Kruyt’s Atjeh en de Atjehers is the indispensable starting-point for any history of the eastern coast of Atjeh in the early blockade-period. His mixture of naval memoir, commercial report and ethnographic note became a model for later colonial reconnaissance literature, and his statistical observations on the pepper-trade are the only quantitative basis for the comparison of the 1873 east-coast exports with the 1913 figures given in De Buitenbezittingen 1904-‘14.

Account from Atjeh als land voor handel en bedrijf (1925)

J. A. Kruyt was a Dutch naval officer and author of Atjeh en de Atjehers, twee jaren blokkade op Sumatra’s Noord-oost-kust (Leiden, 1877), based on cruising with the warship Timor on the east coast of Atjeh between 1873 and 1875.

Account of pepper culture

Kruyt recorded that a pepper garden usually counted 5,000 trees yielding 5 kojang = 1,100 picol, maintained by 3 or 4 men who received half produce at local market price. A collection of pepper gardens together was called seuneubò (Kruyt wrote “seleboe”; probably misheard). He estimated annual export from east coast at 5,000 to 6,000 kojang at Penang market prices between 200 and 250 pilaardollars per kojang in August 1873: three years earlier price had been 90.

Petroleum discovery at Rantau Pandjang

Kruyt’s book also preserves the earliest European description of petroleum wells near Rantau Pandjang, north-west of Peureula, visited in May 1875 by officers of the Timor led by Atjeh chiefs. He described fenced source, underground wooden collection tank with lid, oil skimmed twice daily with pisang leaf buckets, transported in hollow bamboos on back to Rantau Pandjang for sale at nearly 6 dollars per picol, head monthly income 200 dollars. Pebbles near source proved on investigation to be weathered granite, quartz, quartzite, quartz conglomerate and siliceous sandstone.

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. Atjeh en de Atjehers, twee jaren blokkade op Sumatra’s Noordoost-kust, by J. A. Kruyt (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1877). Cited throughout Verkenningen in Atjeh by Dr. R. Broersma. De Atjeh-Oorlog: Kort Overzicht van Oorsprong, Verloop en Gevolg, door J. A. Kruijt, Oud Controleur-Generaal der Nederlanden te Pokkenhage. Boekerij van het Koloniaal Instituut. ‘s-Gravenhage: Loman & Funke, 1896. Title page, Inleiding, and Besluit. OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-101-De_Atjeh_oorlog_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 5, 11, 74–79. Drie Atjeh-mannen: Snouck Hurgronje — Van Heutsz — Van Daalen, door H. T. Damsté (September 1936). OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-111-Drie_Atjeh_mannen_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 5, 8, 13. Atjeh als land voor handel en bedrijf, by Dr. R. Broersma, Gebrs. Cohen, Utrecht, 1925, pp. 27-29, 33-34, 55.

description	Dutch author of Atjeh en de Atjehers, cited as a standard source by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese.
tags	person, scholar, colonial-official, dutch, author, naval, colonial, blockade, timor, east-coast, acheh, kruyt, historian, aceh-war, 19th-century, source, kruijt, diplomat, consul, djidda, snouck-hurgronje, mekka, consul-at-djidda, naval-officer
aliases	J.A. Kruyt, J.A. Kruijt, J. A. Kruijt, J. A. Kniijt, Johannes Augustinus Kruyt, Kruyt Timor, Kruyt blockade, Kruyt Atjeh en de Atjehers, Johannes Antonius Kruijt, Kruijt, De Schrijver (De Atjeh-Oorlog), Oud Controleur-Generaal Kruijt, J. A. Kruit, J. A. Kruijt (consul), Kruijt (Djidda consul), Consul Kruijt, Kruijt Djidda, Netherlands consul at Djidda Kruijt, Kruyt, J. A. Kruyt, Author of Atjeh en de Atjehers 1877, Officer of Timor

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