Maurice Henri du Croo (8 April 1887 – 23 April 1951) was a Dutch colonial army officer, civil administrator, journalist, and writer who served in the Atjeh region of the Netherlands East Indies during the 1920s. He is best known for co-authoring the military book Marechaussée in Atjeh with Kolonel Schmidt, and for his pseudonymous literary works as “Brammetje” and “Abraham Exodus”. His career provides insight into the Dutch military and administrative presence in Aceh during the late colonial period, and his writings form part of the Dutch colonial literature on the Aceh War and its aftermath.
Early Life and Education
Maurice Henri du Croo was born on 8 April 1887 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. He attended the H.B.S. (Hogere Burgerschool, higher civic school) in Arnhem. From 1906 to 1909 he studied at the Koninklijke Militaire Academie (Royal Military Academy) in Breda, and was commissioned as a 2e Luitenant (second lieutenant) in July 1909.
Military Career in the Netherlands East Indies
In 1910 du Croo departed for the Netherlands East Indies as an officer of the K.N.I.L. (Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger, Royal Netherlands East Indies Army). In 1911 he was placed on non-activity at his own request and became an editor for the newspaper De Locomotief in Semarang. He returned to active duty in 1913 and served successively in Timor (1913), Endeh (1914), Koepang (1915), Soembawa (1917), and Bandoeng (1919). In 1920 he was detached as a student to the Hogere Krijgsschool (Higher Military School) in Den Haag; promoted to Kapitein in 1921, he completed his military studies on 31 December 1923 with the classification “no. 2 Category A” and returned to the Indies. In 1924 he was attached to the Navy in Soerabaja.
Service in Atjeh and Civil Administration
In 1925 du Croo, at his own request, was posted to the Buitengewesten (Outer Provinces) — specifically to Atjeh. There he participated in patrols in the rimboe (jungle) and was noted for maintaining a proper appearance even in the field. In 1927 he was appointed Stafofficier (staff officer) and was awarded the Ridder O.N.O. met de Zwaarden (Knight of the Orde van Oranje-Nassau with Swords), a decoration that recognised his service in the ongoing Aceh War.
Alongside his military duties, du Croo was several times charged with the exercise of civil government (civielbestuur), including postings in the small Sunda Islands and in Atjeh. Fellow officer J. K. den Heijer recalled encountering him in Atjeh in the 1920s “on patrol in the jungle, … a well-dressed man, not robust but tough, fit to go to a meeting or pay a visit in the same suit.” Du Croo’s experiences in Atjeh directly informed his later literary work, especially Marechaussée in Atjeh.
Later Military and Administrative Roles
After a leave in 1931, du Croo returned to the Indies in 1932 and was promoted to Majoor in 1933. He served in Magelang in 1934 and was promoted to Luitenant-Kolonel in 1935. He retired in 1939 with the rank of Kolonel and was appointed head of the Luchtbeschermingsdienst (Air Protection Service) to organise it; on 1 June 1939 he was relieved of that function at his own request and repatriated definitively to the Netherlands.
Literary and Journalistic Work
Throughout his career du Croo wrote for newspapers such as De Locomotief, the Soerabajaasch Handelsblad, and the Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad. He published strategic articles in the Indisch Militair Tijdschrift. From 1940 to 1942 he was editor of the periodical Oost en West. Under the pseudonyms “Brammetje” and “Abraham Exodus” he produced a body of literary work drawing on his colonial experiences. His collaboration with Kolonel Schmidt produced two military-historical volumes: Marechaussée in Atjeh and Generaal Swart — the latter a biography of the Aceh War general General Swart.
Significance
Maurice Henri du Croo is significant as a figure who combined active military service in Aceh during the late colonial period with a literary and journalistic output that preserved and interpreted the Dutch experience of the Aceh War for a metropolitan readership. His career spans the transition from the active pacification era into the inter-war “consolidation” period, and his writings — particularly Marechaussée in Atjeh — constitute a primary source for the mentality and self-image of the K.N.I.L. officer corps in the late colonial Atjeh. His co-authored biography Generaal Swart likewise preserves the memory of the Swart administration under which the Aceh War was brought to its formal conclusion.
Personal presence in the book
Du Croo appears in his own text in the first person, abbreviated d. C., wherever he inserts his own recollections of Atjeh. He served in the province in the 1920s and drew on that service for several passages of testimony.
As acting controleur of Meulaboh in 1925 he was struck by the improbably numerous entries on the budget headed onderstand (support) to relatives of chiefs, to Teukoe Gam and Teungkoe Poetoes. It looked, he admitted, strange and wrong, and seemed to confirm the accusation that the resistance had been bought to rest. But diligent search in archives, reports and memoranda showed that each of those items had its own history and its own “the why and the wherefore”, and that they had as a rule been just and wise policy, “a practical and inexpensive bridge to normal conditions.”
The same year at Meulaboh gave him his sharpest illustration of what happened when Swart’s pressure was withdrawn. He had nowhere, not even in muddy Timor, encountered such a “varkensstal” as the keudé of Meulaboh — and yet one could see that it had been well, regularly and neatly laid out and built. The “drang-van-boven” no longer existed, the Governor who travelled everywhere “keutelig” and punished with expensive paint no longer went about, and neglect had followed: along the coast road the iron bridge railings had everywhere rusted away because they were no longer painted. Du Croo then held “keutelige” inspections himself; the third, after thorough warnings, brought in 168 guilders in fines, since the keudé-holders had naturally waited to see whether the toean would really punish. Then the painting was done and the rickety roofs of petroleum tins were set in red lead — “en dat was geen façade maar noodzaak.”
In 1926 the great Teukoe Keumangan of Seunagan acknowledged to du Croo that T. Radja Tampo’ had indeed been present on the pasar at Djeuram, and that this had come to his ears, but that it could not be required of him, the oelèëbalang, that he betray so holy and at that time harmless a figure — “the oelèëbalang who did so could not remain a territorial chief in Seunagan.”
Also in 1926 he watched a genuine toean of the Swart school travel through his old Acehnese district after ten years, and saw how the Acehnese “streamed together from far and near” to see him once more. In the evening an old keutjhi’ told him with quiet, respectful inward amusement how his toean (“master, sir”) had once forgiven and forgotten a debt of fifty guilders in embezzled tax money, reading the man his toeroenan (genealogy) aloud and then giving him fifty guilders with the words “village head, you are a good chief and you are also a good friend of mine — go home! I have forgotten this.” To du Croo’s question whether the money had ever been repaid or withheld from his income, the old chief could only stare in astonishment: “his master was a truly generous master!”
Method and sources
Du Croo built the biography on interviews with Swart himself, then seventy-nine years old, whose spoken recollections are quoted at length throughout; on the collaboration and memories of H. J. Schmidt; on official documents including the Koloniale Verslagen, the Maandverslagen, Patrouilleverslagen en Rapporten and the extract from Swart’s service record; and on a published literature listed in the appendix Geraadpleegde boeken, brochures, artikelen, enz..
He emphasised that Swart had preserved no letters and no notes, possessed no archive and no diaries, so that recovering even the private correspondence with Schmidt required effort. He borrowed extended narrative passages from H. C. Zentgraaff’s Atjeh — notably the deaths of Pang Nanggròë, Tjoet Meutia and Tgk. di Barat — and from Marechaussee in Atjeh, and from J. C. Lamster’s Atjeh article in the Haagsch Maandblad for the survey of the pacifying administrative work.
Judgements
Du Croo was frankly partisan for Swart and against the detractors, whom he grouped as katjauers (gossip-mongers) and vergissers (those who erred). His most pointed passage concerns Snouck Hurgronje, whose condemnation of Swart in 1908 he quoted at length and then answered: “the facts and the years from 1918 to 1939 have proved that Swart could indeed do it, that he broke the resistance and, where necessary, broke it hard, and that besides this, as regards the pacification, he was precisely a pacifier of the first order.” The professor, who had spared many vergissers in and around Atjeh none of his sharp criticism, but forgot that he was himself no administrator and probably no great judge of men, “demolished Swart before he could possibly be competent to judge of Swart.”
At the same time du Croo did not conceal the cost of the war to the Acehnese, quoting Zentgraaff’s judgement as the epigraph of his chapter on the patrols: “the Acehnese, men and women alike, have in general fought splendidly for what they saw as their national or religious ideal.”
Significance (du Croo, 1943)
Du Croo’s book is the fullest single account of the pacification years 1908–1918 from the Dutch administrative side, and preserves — in Swart’s own spoken words, in the maandverslagen it quotes, and in the private letters it prints — a mass of detail on the last phase of the Atjeh-oorlog that survives nowhere else in so connected a form. Written and published in 1943, during the Japanese occupation of the Indies, it is also a late monument of Dutch colonial self-understanding.
See Also
- Marechaussée in Atjeh (book)
- Generaal Swart (book)
- Schmidt (Kolonel)
- H. N. A. Swart
- Aceh War
- K.N.I.L.
- Korps Marechaussee van Atjeh en Onderhorigen
- 1925
- 1927
- H. J. Schmidt
- General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh (1943)
- Military Constabulary in Atjeh (1943)
- G. K. Dijkstra
- H. C. Zentgraaff
- J. C. Lamster
- Teukoe Keumangan
- T. Radja Tampo’
- Meulaboh
Source
In Memoriam Maurice Henri du Croo (1951), biographical timeline and tributes by J. W. Meyer Ranneft and Johan Luger.
Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Foreword; Chapters X, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI; List of works consulted, pp. 93, 117, 130–131, 142, 145–147, 177.