J. H. Carpentier Alting — published in the volume as prof. mr. J. H. Carpentier Alting — was a Dutch professor of law who, in 1918, was appointed chairman of the commission tasked with revising “the foundations of government in the Netherlands Indies” (herziening van de bestuursgrondslagen in Nederlandsch-Indië), in the difficult days at the end of the First World War. The commission — known in the AcehWiki corpus as the Carpentier Alting commission (1918) — produced a draft wet op de staatsordening (law on the state organisation) that was to influence the constitutional revision of 1922 and the eventual Wet op de Indische Staatsregeling (Law on the Indies State Regulation) of 1925.
Role in the 1918 commission
According to the account given by Mr. Dr. Caron in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946), the Governor-General of the day found occasion in November 1918 — at the close of the First World War — to address the Volksraad (People’s Council) and promise a programme of development for the central representative body that would bring “fundamental changes in the Indies’ forms of government.” To give effect to this, “in 1918 a commission was appointed under the chairmanship of Prof. Mr. J. H. Carpentier Alting for the revision of the foundations of government in the Netherlands Indies.” The commission’s report submitted a draft wet op de staatsordening (law on the state ordering) — that is, a draft constitutional law for the Indies.
Involvement in the Proeve-Oppenheim
Carpentier Alting’s name is also attached, as one of the contributing professors, to the Proeve-Oppenheim — the 1922 Leiden commission of professors that, after the Dutch constitutional revision of 1922, drafted a proeve van een staatsregeling voor Nederlandsch-Indië (a trial draft of a state regulation for the Netherlands Indies). The other contributors were Prof. Oppenheim (after whom the draft is named), Snouck Hurgronje, Van Vollenhoven and Kleintjes; the Indonesian Mr. Oerip Kartodirdjo served as secretary. The Proeve-Oppenheim exercised considerable influence on the eventual Indische Staatsregeling of 1925, though — as Caron observes — the final law fell short of the autonomous Indies government that the Proeve had envisaged.
Significance
For the Atjeh-focused reader, Carpentier Alting’s significance lies chiefly in the constitutional afterlife of the Atjeh-derived administrative thinking of Van Heutsz and Snouck Hurgronje. The *korte verklaring* policy first applied in Atjeh in the early twentieth century had, by 1918, become the standard instrument for the Indies’ zelfbesturen; the question that Carpentier Alting’s commission was appointed to address — how to revise “the foundations of government” in light of the promise of greater popular representation — was therefore inseparable from the question of how the Atjeh-style administration should be constitutionalised.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- Nederlandsch-Indië — Netherlands Indies
- Proeve-Oppenheim — Oppenheim Draft
- proeve van een staatsregeling voor Nederlandsch-Indië — trial draft of a state regulation for the Netherlands Indies
- Wet op de Indische Staatsregeling — Law on the Indies State Regulation
- korte verklaring — Short Declaration
- zelfbesturen — self-governing territories
- Volksraad — People’s Council
- bestuursvormen — forms of government
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Mr. Dr. — Master of Laws and Doctor (Dutch academic titles)
- Dr. — Doctor
See Also
- Carpentier Alting commission (1918)
- Proeve-Oppenheim
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Oerip Kartodirdjo
- Korte Verklaring
- Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz
- L. J. J. Caron
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- 1918
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), pp. 195–196 (chapter De bestuursvormen door Mr. Dr. L. J. J. Caron).