J. Jacobs was a Dutch ethnographer and author of Het familie- en kampongleven op Groot-Atjeh (“Family and Kampong Life in Greater Atjeh”), published in two volumes in Leiden in 1894. The work was offered in 1902 by the bookseller Martinus Nijhoff at 17 florins in commemoration of the third centenary of the Dutch East India Company.
Work
Jacobs’ two-volume study of family and village life in Groot-Atjeh (Greater Atjeh, the heartland of the sultanate) provided one of the most detailed late-nineteenth-century accounts of Acehnese domestic and social organisation. It complemented the larger-scale ethnographic and political studies by C. Snouck Hurgronje (De Atjehers, 1893-94) by focusing on the micro-level of household and community structure. Jacobs’ work remains a valuable source for the social history of the Acehnese people during the late colonial period.
Source
A List of the Best Books Relating to Dutch East India, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague (1902).