Kroesen was a highly meritorious civilian official of the Binnenlandsch Bestuur who served at Atjeh during the second expedition and afterwards knew the country and people as few did; at the time of Verstege’s pamphlet (1886) he was Governor of Sumatra’s Westkust. To Verstege he lent, “on demand”, a manuscript on Atjeh and the Atjehnese from which the pamphlet draws the freshest character-sketch of the Atjehsche people in chapter I: “He is, I am sure, a person of exceptional knowledge” (Manuscript, p. 14). (Not to be confused with the army commander, luitenant-generaal W. E. Kroesen, nor with the assistant-resident Kroesen of the 1896 files.)
The Kroesen manuscript on the Atjehnese
In the pages borrowed from his manuscript the people is pictured with the frankness of a long acquaintance. The unnatural vice “niet alleen in hoogere kringen, maar ook door de lagere klassen bedreven” — practised not only in the higher circles but also by the lower classes, and often in the most shameless fashion, even mothers giving up their child to wealthy men for a sum of money; “een knaap wordt goed verzorgd en gekleed, en volgt zijn meester zelfs op het terrein van den oorlog” (“such a boy is well cared for and dressed, and follows his master even on the field of war”). For the first chiefs no authority over the people was possible “dan wat zij zelf wisten te verkrijgen en te houden door ruw geweld” (“but what they knew how to obtain and keep by raw violence”) — moral superiority there seemed hardly possible. The Atjehsche history taught that “niemand ooit zijne meerderen placht te gehoorzamen, tenzij daartoe gedrongen door vrees of eigenbelang” (“no one ever obeyed his superiors unless forced by fear or self-interest”). Deeper than with the Malayan — himself so known for it — the love of independence seemed rooted in the Atjehsche people. At Oleh-leh the following traits struck the observer: the well-built native of the moekim Marassa who stared the newcomer in the face without lowering his eyes; and the notorious sampan anecdote of December 1875, when the contrôleur Tadema, at the request of the newly arrived Majoor Romswinckel, asked Toekoe Nja Mohamad for a vessel, and the hailed countryman offered — “with a face on which self-satisfaction could be read over so happy a thought” — to cross over, to get the sampan’s owner to make with him for Poeloe Bras after dark, and on the way to murder him. Kroesen had witnessed with his own eyes how chief and people were kept in order with the klewang, “a single means to make themselves obeyed”, the chiefs answering that this was the only and the ordinary way to secure the execution of orders. “Niettegenstaande het algemeen belang van handel en scheepvaart en ons zelfbehoud ons noodzaakten Atjeh uit te wisschen uit de rij der onafhankelijke staten, de Atjeher dwingt ook ons een zeker respect af, door den takt, de energie en de bravoure waarmede hij zijne onafhankelijkheid tegen ons verdedigt” (“Though the common interest of trade and shipping and our self-preservation obliged us to erase Atjeh from the row of independent states, the Atjeher also extorts from us a certain respect, by the tact, the energy and the bravoure with which he defends his independence against us”).
His close of 1876
Kroesen ended his description with the words that Verstege quoted as “deze zeer juiste, doch helaas zoo slecht behartigde” (“these very true, but alas so badly attended”): “Het heeft ons meer dan gewone inspanning gekost om met Atjeh zoo ver te komen, als wij nu (1876) zijn… Wij hebben te doen met een in-slecht, maar dapper volk, dat wij, ten bate van het algemeen, verplicht zijn te dwingen met de maatschappij mede te gaan, of des noods te vernietigen. Daarvoor is noodig: geld en energie” (“It has cost us more than ordinary effort to come as far with Atjeh as we now (1876) are… We deal with an inwardly bad but brave people, whom for the good of the general we are obliged to compel to go along with society, or if necessary to destroy. For that is needed: money and energy”). Money, he added, was no difficulty for the Dutch nation, and Atjeh offered a splendid opportunity to show the world what could be achieved — to speak with Jan Pieterszoon Coen — “met een weinig doorzetten en wat courage” (“with a little perseverance and some courage”). The man of peace, who judged the people so well, could not then have imagined, Verstege comments, that nine years later the roles in Atjeh would be entirely reversed.
See Also
- Toekoe Nja Mohamad (Oleh-leh 1875)
- Tadema (controleur at Oleh-leh)
- Majoor Romswinckel (1875)
- Oleh-leh
- Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Verstege, 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. 12-14, 15, 23. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.