J. Kreemer

J. Kreemer was a Dutch colonial official, ethnographer and manuscript researcher who served as a Kontroleur B.B. on Sumatra’s Westkust in the early twentieth century, later as Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut (Archivist of the Atjèh Institute), and authored the two-volume monograph *Atjeh* (1922‑23) and the comparative work *De Karbouw* (1956). He also documented the scarcity of an Acehnese manuscript of the Burda attributed to the author of the Nalam Mo’lôt. His career exemplifies the typical trajectory of the colonial scholar-administrator, while his manuscript note adds a specialised contribution to the study of Acehnese literary transmission.

Career and field experience in Atjeh

Kreemer’s field experience in northern Sumatra was both prolonged and intimate. In 1907 he was a young Kontroleur B.B. (a junior civil administrator of the Binnenlands Bestuur) on Sumatra’s Westkust, where his observations of the local Malay buffalo economy supplied the material for his first scholarly article, published in De Indische Gids (dl. I). Over the following years his responsibilities and travels extended into the Atjeh sphere proper. He records, in De Karbouw, that he personally passed along the Gajo-weg—the road linking the N.E. coast of Atjeh with the interior Gayo country—in 1917, and observed on its steep descents that buffalo-cart drivers employed a wooden brake-shoe (remschoen) under their buffelkar wheels, contrary to a widespread Dutch assumption that such braking technology was unknown in the archipelago.

Kreemer also notes that during an earlier stay in Atjeh he personally verified the near-identity of the albino-buffalo prohibition legend across six North-Sumatran population groups: Groot-Atjeh (kawöm Dja Sandang), Atjeh’s Westkust, the Gajoland groups of Kedjoeroen Boekit and Petiambang, the Alas mergō’s, and the Simaloer landschap Tapah. He likewise notes a personal visit to the Gajoland during which he found, repeatedly, that an informant could no longer remember the name of his own genealogical group, while the pantang prescription attached to that group was “muurvast in zijn herinnering vastgelegd” (firmly fixed in his memory).

Fieldwork and methodology for Atjèh

Kreemer’s field-research in Atjèh for the Atjèh monograph lasted from 18 February 1916 to 23 October 1917, during which he also worked in the governor’s archive at Koeta Radja. In his preface he states that the building-blocks of the work are of three origins: “vooreerst die, welke reeds in de literatuur voorhanden zijn; in de tweede plaats die, welke door eigen navraag in loco van Inlandsche zijde werden verkregen; en eindelijk die, welke afkomstig zijn van het gewestelijk archief te Koeta Radja” — “first, those already available in the literature; secondly, those obtained by own enquiry in loco from the native side; and thirdly, those derived from the regional archive at Koeta Radja.”

Of the existing literature, Kreemer records that he made “vooral een druk en dankbaar gebruik gemaakt van ‘De Atjèhers’ en van ‘Het Gajöland en zijne bewoners’” — “especially a heavy and grateful use was made of ‘De Atjèhers’ [by Snouck Hurgronje] and of ‘Het Gajöland en zijne bewoners.’” Next to these, Kreemer credits the “onschatbare Gajösch-Nederlandsche Woordenboek” of Dr. G. A. J. Hazeu.

Principal informant

Kreemer records his principal Atjèhnese informant as Teungkoe Tjhèh Ibrahim, the hatib (preacher) of the great mosque at Koeta Radja and kali of the moesapat’s of Koeta Radja, Oelèë Lheuë, and Lam Njöng. Kreemer notes that this man — “in Westerschen zin volkomen ongeschoold en toch met een diepe kennis, een fijnen geest en onberispelijke vormen begaafd” — “in the Western sense completely uneducated and yet endowed with a deep knowledge, a fine mind, and impeccable manners” — had been one of Snouck Hurgronje’s most valued informants. “Maandenlang kwam hij schrijver dagelijks vanuit zijn kampoeng Lam Bhö te Koeta Radja bezoeken, wèl wetende, dat zijn hulp niet kon worden ontbeerd voor het doen slagen van de door schrijver op zich genomen taak.”

The Atjèh monograph (1922‑23)

Kreemer’s principal scholarly monument is the two-volume general survey Atjèh: algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en Onderhoorigheden, published in 1922–1923 by N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill in Leiden. The work treats Atjeh as a territorial-administrative unit (the colonial Atjeh en Onderhorigheden) and gathers ethnographic, linguistic, religious and historical material on the Achehnese and on the neighbouring Gayo and Alas peoples of the interior. Its two volumes cover history, antiquities, geography, ethnography, economics, administration, law, customs, religion, folk medicine, chronology, and language — a scope unmatched by any earlier or later single work on Atjèh.

Comparative method and scope

Kreemer states that, by the comparative method underlying his arrangement, “in hoofdzaak alleen de Atjèhers, Gajö’s en Alassers betrokken” — “in the main only the Atjèhnese, Gayo, and Alas were included.” The Malay inhabitants of Atjèh’s West Coast, the Singkelese, and the Simalorese were excluded as already adequately described elsewhere. The spelling of native terms follows the system of Dr. Snouck Hurgronje, with the simplification that the Atjèhnese sound rendered by Snouck as th is rendered by Kreemer as s.

De Karbouw cites Atjeh on, among other subjects: the Atjeh plough-term langaj (I, 501); the Atjeh riverside enclosures during the growing season (I, 504); the Atjeh fattening custom peuteumbôn (I, 497–498; II, 595, 628); the Atjeh dwangjuk term leunggoeq (I, 505); the Atjeh bòh pè pulley device (I, 505); the Atjehse crocodile-charmers goeroe boeja (I, 188, 201); the Atjeh “bloeitijdperk” of 1607–1636 (I, 192); the Atjeh sale-rite of grasping the buffalo’s nose-rope (I, 321); the koeta djaq “wandelende fort” of buffalo-hide (I, 307); the *poephon blang* field-consecration rite (I, 471; II, 578); the magic-circle baris-Laksamana (I, 312; II, 586–587, 661); the sakét oelèe neuraja maturation crisis (II, 624); the Atjeh rules on the teungkoe meunasah slaughterer (II, 209); the tjaram / tjinggram earnest-money (II, 321, 368, 383); the poewôê siê husband obligation (II, 335, 673 nt.); the prohibition on using rice from a death-house as seed-rice (II, 458 nt. 2); the Gajoland and Alasland genealogical groups subject to the albino-buffalo prohibition (II, 544); the seurapi gold necklace with horn-motif (I, 584); and the Atjeh pantang legend of the albino-buffalo and the andjalai storage (I, 507).

De Karbouw (1956)

Kreemer’s late synthesis De Karbouw: Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel was published in 1956 by N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve in ‘s-Gravenhage and Bandung. In the Voorbericht (dated ‘s-Gravenhage, October 1955), Kreemer explains that he undertook the book to fill a gap in the ethnographic literature: the buffalo, “the pre-eminently useful domestic animal for the life of the peoples of the Archipelago,” had never received a monographic treatment. He notes with quiet wryness that “what is described in this book belongs to an outlived order (een overleefd tijdsbestel)” — much had changed since the pre-war sources on which he largely drew, but much also remained the same.

Manuscript Survey

Beyond his ethnographic monographs, Kreemer contributed a brief but noteworthy note on Acehnese literary manuscripts. Citing a passage in Atjeh II (page 686), he reported the existence of an Acehnese manuscript of the Burda attributed to the same author who produced the Nalam Mo’lôt (an Acehnese Mawlid). Kreemer observed that this Burda manuscript was not found among the numerous Acehnese hand-scripts housed in the Leiden Library, underscoring the scarcity of Acehnese copies of the Burda despite its widespread presence in other parts of the Indonesian archipelago.

Method and tone

Kreemer writes in a measured, comparative, late-nineteenth-century ethnographic idiom: he ranges across the archipelago, marshals his citations (to Snouck Hurgronje’s *De Atjehers*, to Hazeu’s Gayo dictionary, to Djajadiningrat’s Atjehsch dictionary, to his own earlier writings), and is generally content to let the comparative material speak for itself rather than to impose a theoretical apparatus. He is, however, attentive to the explanatory glosses offered by his sources — recording, for instance, Snouck Hurgronje’s cautionary note that the present-day obedience to a pantang food-prohibition rests not on totemistic conviction but on fear of ancestral wrath — and he occasionally allows himself a quietly critical aside, as when he rejects Skeat’s folk-etymology of baris-Laksamana as “Admiral’s Line” in favour of the Ramayana reference to Laksamana’s protective circle around Sita.

Significance

Kreemer is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history on two grounds. First, his Atjeh (1922-23) is, with Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers (1893-94), one of the two principal Dutch scholarly syntheses on Atjeh as a country and people, and the principal encyclopaedic survey of the early civil-government period. Second, De Karbouw itself, although a work of comparative ethnography rather than an Atjeh monograph, contains in concentrated form a uniquely rich dossier of Atjeh buffalo-lore. Finally, his manuscript note adds a specialised data point to the study of Acehnese literary transmission, reminding scholars of the uneven survival of texts such as the Burda in Acehnese collections.

Additional account from Beginselen en Stelsel (1950) — Kreemer’s Atjeh and the adatrecht

B. ter Haar BzN notes in his Beginselen en Stelsel van het Adatrecht (first ed. 1939; 4th ed. 1950) that Kreemer’s Atjeh (1922-23) appears in his survey of the literature on the rechtskring Atjeh, but with the qualified judgment that the work brings, “na Snouck Hurgronje en Van Vollenhoven geen nieuws” — after Snouck Hurgronje and Van Vollenhoven, no news. The judgment places Kreemer’s Atjeh in the secondary line of the Atjeh adatrecht scholarship: the principal source remains Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers, and Kreemer’s Atjeh—published three decades later, after the foundational work of Snouck Hurgronje and of Van Vollenhoven on the adatrecht—is, in Ter Haar’s account, a synthesis that does not add new material to the adatrecht scholarship but rather consolidates what Snouck Hurgronje and Van Vollenhoven had already established.

Account from Atjèh by J. Kreemer (Deel II)

Kreemer opens his Atjèh monograph (Deel II) with a preface (Voorbericht) in which he explains the genesis and method of his work. He identifies himself as Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut (archivist of the Aceh Institute) and records that his fieldwork in Atjèh lasted from 18 February 1916 to 23 October 1917 — a period of twenty months.

He describes his work as resting on three bouwstoffen (building-blocks):

The existing literature — above all Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers and the subsequent Het Gajöland en zijne bewoners — which he uses as a foundation
Direct inlandse inlichtingen (indigenous information) gathered in conversation with Atjèhnese informants, above all his principal informant Teungkoe Tjhèh Ibrahim
The gewestelijk archief (provincial archive) of the Gouvernement Atjèh en Onderhoorigheden

Kreemer also acknowledges the “onschatbare” (invaluable) Gayo-Dutch dictionary of G. A. J. Hazeu as an essential resource for the sections on the Gayo highlands.

His comparative method extends across three languages and peoples: Atjèhnese, Gayo, and Alas — treating the highlands and the coastal lowlands as a unified study-area. His spelling system follows Snouck Hurgronje’s conventions with one simplification: the digraph th (used in Snouck for the Atjèhnese emphatic t) is simplified to s throughout Kreemer’s work.

Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)

J. Kreemer was the Dutch scholar whose recent book on Atjeh author Joh. Langhout twice invokes: for the celebrated characterization of Governor H. N. A. Swart’s administration — “the swords were forged into ploughshares” — and as what Langhout calls the first great and grand attempt to fill the existing need for economic literature on Atjeh.

”The swords into ploughshares”

Writing of the end of the Atjeh war under Governor Swart (by 1913 all effective opposition in the province had ceased), Langhout quotes Kreemer’s judgement in the first, recently appeared volume of his book on Atjeh: “Onder het bestuur van Swart werden de zwaarden tot ploegscharen omgesmeed” (“Under the government of Swart the swords were forged into ploughshares”). Langhout adds that although General Swart owed this important fact in part to the action of his predecessors, it must be fully recognized that the pacification of Atjeh and Dependencies was accomplished under his administration.

The economic literature on Atjeh

In his closing word, discussing how Atjeh had never stood in a friendly light, in the Netherlands or abroad — a misunderstanding which, Langhout argues, was largely due to how little was known of Dutch economic statecraft in Atjeh — Langhout observes that Kreemer’s book “can be regarded as the first great and grand attempt to supply the existing need for economic reading on Atjeh”, beside which his own modest collection of facts sought a place.

Account from De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden (1918)

In 1918 Kreemer published, as Mededeelingen No. 6 of the Atjèh Instituut — overprinted from Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, deel XXXV (1918), afl. 3 — his *De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden* (“Rice Cultivation in the Aceh Region and Dependencies”). The monograph, printed for the Directeuren der Maatschappij ter Bevordering van het Natuurkundig Onderzoek der Nederlandsche Koloniën by E. J. Brill in Leiden, is the principal Dutch-language technical-and-ethnographic study of rice cultivation across the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden — covering Groot-Atjeh, the Noordkust, the Oostkust, the Alasland and the Westkust.

The 1918 rice monograph sits mid-career in Kreemer’s scholarly production: after his first field article of 1907 (De Maleier en zijn karbouw) and before the two-volume Atjèh synthesis of 1922-1923. The monograph is the principal contemporary source for the “Rice Question” of 1916 — the Dutch colonial policy debate, conducted in the columns of the Deli Courant by Ackerstaff, Van Tubergen and the Landbouwadviseur J. H. Heyl, on whether Atjeh could become the rice-storehouse of the Sumatra’s East Coast plantation belt. Kreemer’s monograph reproduces Heyl’s calculation that of the 1.6 million pikoel of rice required annually by Deli, “nearly half” could come from Atjeh — and prints Heyl’s table of the regional breakdown of cultivated sawah, average yield, total production, local consumption and surplus available for export.

The monograph also documents the dense Acehnese-Gayo-Alas agricultural vocabulary of highland Sumatra rice cultivation at the close of the long nineteenth century — the typology of sawahs and ladangs, the oemòng sub-types, the blang complex-of-fields, the djeungki foot-pounder rice mill, the mawaih sharecropping institution, the toempoh mutual-aid institution, the djakeuet rice tithe, and the goentja volume measure. This vocabulary, systematically recorded with its Gayo and Alas equivalents, is an indispensable source for the historical study of the Atjeh rice-economy and of the Acehnese language.

Sources

De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), Voorbericht (pp. 5-6) and passim.

Atjèh: algemeen samenvattend overzicht van land en volk van Atjèh en Onderhoorigheden, by J. Kreemer, 2 dln. (1922-1923). Leiden: N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill. Identifier: Delpher MMKB02B:000001798; PPN 395084288. Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

Beginselen en Stelsel van het Adatrecht, door Mr. B. ter Haar Bzn. Vierde ongewijzigde druk. Groningen, Djakarta: J. B. Wolters, 1950. Pp. 245-246 (sources for the rechtskring Atjeh).

20260707_232246_DLP-54-Een_16de_eeuwse_Maleise_vertaling_van_de_Burda_van_al_Bu_s_i_ri_OCR.txt, pp. 20-22.

Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 95, 192–193.

De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, by J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjeh-Instituut. Mededeelingen betreffende het Onderzoek van Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, No. 6. Overgedrukt uit het Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, deel XXXV (1918), afl. 3. Leiden: Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E. J. Brill, 1918.

tags	person, scholar, colonial, dutch, ethnographer, manuscript, 20th-century, author
aliases	J. Kreemer (author of Atjeh), J. Kreemer (author of De Karbouw), J. Kreemer, Johannes Kreemer, Kreemer, Mr. J. Kreemer, Dr. J. Kreemer, Justus Kreemer

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