J. J. W. E. Verstege was a pensioned lieutenant-colonel (gepens. Luit.-Kolonel) of the Dutch army, a specialist both on military and on Indian subjects, who on 26 January 1886 gave, at the invitation of the Amsterdam voters’ association Kiesvereeniging Burgerpligt, a public lecture on the Atjeh question which was printed the same year as the pamphlet Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (An Appeal to the Dutch People concerning the Aceh Question). In that lecture he summarised, with extensive documentary and statistical evidence, why the Dutch concentration in Groot-Atjeh of 1 March 1885 could not be permanently tenable and could never lead to the object of the war, and he demanded a commissoriale enquête (commission of inquiry) into the whole Atjeh question and the state of the Netherlands Indies Army.
His military and literary record
Verstege had himself wanted his three near-grown sons to follow the military career, but the eyesight demands for the officers’ training at the Militaire Academie were so high that they could not satisfy them; he was nevertheless a warm supporter of personal, and better still of general, conscription. In Appendix C of his pamphlet he recalled that during 1874 and 1875 he had been placed at the Department of War, where he had amply experienced the objections connected with the regular re-supply of the Atjeh garrison; in 1875 he had already advised the use of bands of Alfoeren from Céram, Ternate or elsewhere against the Atjehnese — a method then judged “too barbarous”. In December 1882 — three years before his lecture — he and others, on the ground of facts they had themselves observed, had publicly declared untrue the accusations that painted the Netherlands Indies Army and some of its commanders in Atjeh as merciless barbarians who spared neither helpless greybeards nor women and children. When the association invited him he accepted the task — as he candidly wrote — without any enthusiasm and with some repugnance, his sole purpose being to awaken the interest of the thinking part of the Dutch people for the endless Atjeh drama and to arrive at a solution of the question before it should be too late.
The criticism he invited
Verstege gave the names of all persons whose conduct he had criticised in his lecture — mostly men then present in the mother country — as well as those of known or presumed opponents, to the board of Burgerpligt, with the proposal to send each of them an invitation card so that they could refute him; among those so invited was the former minister Fransen van de Putte. The chairman, Mr. R. van de Werk, could confirm this. At the meeting, however, no opponents appeared or they kept silent. The pamphlet found an echo in the Militaire Spectator of that year (see Het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Cool and Hooijer, Militaire Spectator 1886)).
See Also
- Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Verstege, 1886)
- Kiesvereeniging Burgerpligt
- M. T. H. Perelaer
- C. Bosscher
- R. van de Werk
- Concentratie-stelsel (1884-1896)
- 1886
Source
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 1-6, 114-117. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.