Nederburgh — C. B. Nederburgh — was the Dutch colonial official who signed the [[Bekendmaking Nederburgh|Bekendmaking Nederburgh] — the government declaration prefixed to the second volume of Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjèhers (Batavia, 1894) — by which the Netherlands Indies government dissociated itself from the polemical character of the work. The Bekendmaking, which bears Nederburgh’s name, is the formal record of the ministerial intervention that delayed the publication of the second volume of De Atjèhers and of the satisfaction given to the criticised gentlemen Van den Berg and Der Kinderen.
The Bekendmaking
The Bekendmaking — the government declaration prefixed to the second volume of De Atjèhers (1894) — reads:
“Hoewel de Regeering het initiatief heeft genomen om dit werk als een wetenschappelijke bijdrage tot een vraagstuk van groot en actueel belang ter Landsdrukkerij te doen uitgeven, vindt Zij in het polemische karakter, dat het betoog hier en daar heeft aangenomen, aanleiding om te allen overvloede te verklaren dat Zij niet mag geacht worden aan den inhoud van het werk tot in elk onderdeel Hare instemming te hebben gegeven. C. B. NEDERBURGH.”
(Although the Government has taken the initiative to publish this work as a scientific contribution to a question of great and actual interest at the Government Printing Office, it finds in the polemical character that the argument has here and there assumed, occasion to declare, abundantly, that it cannot be held to have given its agreement to the content of the work in every part. C. B. NEDERBURGH.)
The Note on Nomenclature
The Bekendmaking Nederburgh of 1894 is named for its signatory, the Dutch colonial official C. B. Nederburgh. The name “Nederburgh” is also associated with an earlier Nederburgh — the Nederburgh who, writing in 1886, was quoted by Kruijt in the brochure of 1896 as having observed, regarding the Atjèh-oorlog, that “ons brein wordt meer verbijsterd dan verlicht door den strijd der deskundigen” (our brain is more bewildered than enlightened by the quarrel of the experts). Whether the two Nederburghs are the same person or different persons sharing the name is not resolved by the present sources; the 1886 Nederburgh is the earlier mention, and may be the same person as the 1894 signatory, or a different one.
Significance
Nederburgh is the Dutch colonial official whose signature on the Bekendmaking of 1894 — the government declaration prefixed to the second volume of De Atjèhers — gave his name to the declaration, and so to the formal record of the ministerial intervention that delayed the publication of the second volume of De Atjèhers and of the satisfaction given to the criticised gentlemen Van den Berg and Der Kinderen. The Bekendmaking Nederburgh is the formal price of the publication of De Atjèhers; the work itself, with the Bekendmaking prefixed, is the principal published scholarly source on the Atjèhse people and the principal published residue of Snouck Hurgronje’s diagnosis of the Atjèh malady.
See Also
- Bekendmaking Nederburgh
- De Atjehers (Snouck Hurgronje)
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- L. W. C. van den Berg
- Der Kinderen
- Van Dedem
- Van der Wijck
- Raad van Indië
- Landsdrukkerij
- Aceh War
- Atjeh-oorlog
- 1886
- 1894
Source
Drie Atjeh-mannen: Snouck Hurgronje — Van Heutsz — Van Daalen, door H. T. Damsté (September 1936). OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-111-Drie_Atjeh_mannen_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, p. 19.
De Atjeh-Oorlog: Kort Overzicht van Oorsprong, Verloop en Gevolg, door J. A. Kruijt. ‘s-Gravenhage: Loman & Funke, 1896. Inleiding. OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-101-De_Atjeh_oorlog_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, p. 11.