Ruijssenaers — den Heer Ruijssenaers (Mr. Ruijssenaers), in Van Heutsz’s later references de assistent-resident Ruijssenaers — was the Dutch colonial official who, as assistent-resident (assistant resident) of Groot-Atjeh from medio 1890 under Generaal van Teijn, became the civil-administrative counterpart to the General’s sluiting-stelsel (closure system) and, in Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract De onderwerping van Atjeh, the ideal type of the colonial civil servant — a man of “helder doorzicht en krachtig initiatief” (clear insight and forceful initiative) who refused the quandême-bestuur (any-cost administration) of the cajoleering-decade (cajoling decade) and, alone among his civil-service contemporaries, “zoo lang mogelijk onder voor hem hoogst moeilijke omstandigheden gestreden heeft voor de handhaving van de sluiting” (fought as long as possible, under circumstances most difficult for him, for the maintenance of the closure). He had been wounded in the Inval van Habib Abdoer Rachman (June 1878) (the incursion of Habib Abdoer Rachman, June 1878) while accompanying a military transport from Pakan Badak to Boekit Seboen; he was the author of a Nota (memorandum) defending the sluiting that the sitting Minister held in high regard; and he was, in Van Heutsz’s parting shot, the assistent-resident who, even as Van Heutsz wrote, “tot dusverre nog geen enkele onderscheiding” (had to date received no decoration whatsoever) had received.
The medio 1890 appointment
Ruijssenaers’s appointment as assistent-resident of Groot-Atjeh was, in Van Heutsz’s narrative, the single administrative stroke of fortune of the Van Teijn governorship. The General had inherited, on taking office at the end of 1886, a civil administration that had been broken by the Concentratiebesluit of 19 August 1884 and the subsequent cajoleering-decade; the assistent-residenten of Groot-Atjeh had become, in practice, the executors of a quandême-bestuur — an administration that governed “even there where, by the Regeering’s (Government’s) system, governing was impossible”. Van Heutsz’s encomium of the appointment and of the man fixes both the date and the character:
“Gelukkig vond voorts de Generaal van Teijn in den medio 1890 als assistent-resident van Groot-Atjeh optredenden Heer Ruijssenaers een man van helder doorzicht en krachtig initiatief”.
The appointment was, Van Heutsz continues, of an official who, “als ambtenaar een uitzondering maakte op den regel en niet quandême wilde besturen, zelfs daar, waar door het Regeeringsstelsel niet te besturen viel” — who, as an official, made an exception to the rule and refused to govern quandême — at any cost — even there where, by the Regeering’s system, governing was impossible. The quandême-bestuur was the civil-administrative pathology of the cajoleering-decade: the execution of policy on the principle that “it must be done somehow”, regardless of whether the system permitted it. Ruijssenaers refused it.
A footnote to Van Heutsz’s text identifies Ruijssenaers as the author of the article De Atjeh-zaak in verband met de laatste gebeurtenissen (The Atjeh Affair in Connection with the Latest Events), published in the Indische Gids (Netherlands Indies Guide, a Dutch colonial-policy journal) January issue of 1890: “Zie Ind. Gids, Januari-aflevering 1890:
The 1878 wounding at Habib’s inval
Ruijssenaers’s standing in Van Heutsz’s narrative rests in part on the credentials he had earned a dozen years before his Groot-Atjeh appointment, in the Inval van Habib Abdoer Rachman (June 1878) (the June 1878 incursion of Habib Abdoer Rachman) — the incursion that had triggered the Generaal van der Heijden’s strategic reversal and the XXII Moekims campaign. Van Heutsz records the episode in a single sentence that pairs the 1878 service with the 1891 steadfastness:
“Telde hij in 1878 zijn leven niet bij den inval van den Habib, toen het er op aankwam een militair transport te vergezellen van Pakan Badak naar Boekit Seboen, bij welke gelegenheid hij zich onderscheidde en zwaar gewond werd, in 1891 bleef hij pal staan voor ‘s lands belangen”.
In 1878 Ruijssenaers had not counted his life as his own when, during Habib’s incursion, it fell to him to accompany a military transport from Pakan Badak to Boekit Seboen; on that occasion he had distinguished himself and had been severely wounded. In 1891 — the closing year of the Van Teijn governorship, when the new post-Van-Teijn administration was already moving to abandon the sluiting — Ruijssenaers stood fast for the State’s interests. The pairing establishes Ruijssenaers’s credentials as a man whose physical courage had been tested under Van der Heijden and whose administrative courage had been tested under Van Teijn’s successor.
The defence of the sluiting
Ruijssenaers’s principal act in the Van Teijn governorship was the sustained defence of the sluiting (closure) of the Noord- and Westkust that Van Teijn had progressively imposed from January 1888 to the beginning of 1890 (see Closing of the Noord- en Westkust (1889-1890)). The closure had, by early 1891, produced “een effect … dat zelfs de verwachting van Generaal van Teijn overtrof” — an effect that exceeded even Van Teijn’s expectation — but it was a measure the new post-Van-Teijn administration was reluctant to sustain. Van Heutsz’s encomium of Ruijssenaers’s defence of the closure is the most direct praise he accords any civil servant in the entire tract:
“Een man van karakter en individualiteit toonde zich in dit tijdvak de assistent-resident Ruijssenaers, die zoo lang mogelijk onder voor hem hoogst moeilijke omstandigheden gestreden heeft voor de handhaving van de sluiting”.
The phrase “in dit tijdvak” — in this epoch — fixes the defence of the sluiting as the defining act of Ruijssenaers’s Groot-Atjeh tenure. Ruijssenaers’s Nota on the state of Atjeh at the time of Van Teijn’s departure and the policy to be followed thereafter — In eene belangrijke Nota heeft hij bovendien zijne denkbeelden ontwikkeld omtrent den toestand te Atjeh tijdens het vertrek van Generaal van Teijn en de verder te volgen gedragslijn — was the textual form of the defence, and was the document on which Van Heutsz, in his own correspondence with the General, relied for his account of the post-Van-Teijn situation.
The assistent Ruijssenaers at Telok-Kroet
Ruijssenaers’s standing as an authority on the no-firearms rule — the strict G.-G. van Rees maxim that “Ieder geweer aan Atjehers, waar, bij welke gelegenheid en onder welke omstandigheden ook verstrekt, wordt te eeniger tijd tegen ons gekeerd” (every rifle supplied to Atjehnese, wherever, on whatever occasion, and under whatever circumstances, will at some time be turned against us) — is attested in Van Heutsz’s later refutation of Scherer’s bondgenoot-policy (ally-policy). The Telok-Kroet achterlaadgeweren (breech-loading rifles) incident — in which fifty breech-loading rifles had been issued to the chief of Telok-Kroet on the assistent-resident’s assurance of their return and the chief had nonetheless refused to return them — was the empirical proof Van Heutsz cited against the policy. The rifle-recovery effort had fallen to Ruijssenaers:
“ook zijn opvolger, de assistent Ruijssenaers, deed bijna anderhalf jaar lang vergeefsche moeite … de assistent Ruijssenaers kan in dit opzicht van ondervinding spreken en door zijn toedoen werd dan ook nimmer een vuurwapen verstrekt”.
Ruijssenaers spent almost a year and a half in vain effort to recover the rifles, ultimately succeeding under conditions Van Heutsz declines to specify; he had, Van Heutsz notes, “ervaring” (experience) to speak of in this regard, and through his intervention no firearm was ever again issued to an Atjehnese bondgenoot (ally). The Telok-Kroet episode established Ruijssenaers as the authority whose experience — and whose refusal to repeat the experiment — became Van Heutsz’s empirical warrant for rejecting Scherer’s proposal to “arm the weak and oppressed” coastal statelets against the strong.
The verwijdering and the parting shot
The post-Van-Teijn administration’s response to Ruijssenaers’s defence of the sluiting was his verwijdering — his removal from office. Van Heutsz records the removal in a single clause: “Trouw heeft hij woord gehouden, totdat hij verwijderd werd” — he kept his word, until he was removed. The new Governor, whose name Van Heutsz does not here record, had abandoned the sluiting-stelsel of his predecessor; Ruijssenaers’s insistence on its continuation had become, in the new administration’s eyes, insubordination; and his removal was the means by which the new policy was imposed.
The parting shot of Van Heutsz’s chapter on Ruijssenaers is the observation that the assistent-resident had received no decoration: “De assistent-resident Ruijssenaers ontving tot dusverre nog geen enkele onderscheiding” — the assistant-resident Ruijssenaers had, to date, received no decoration whatsoever. The observation is Van Heutsz’s indictment of the Regeering’s recognition of its own civil servants: the man who had been wounded in 1878 in the service of the State, who had refused the quandême-bestuur of the cajoleering-decade, who had defended the sluiting under the most difficult circumstances, and who had been removed for his pains, had received no public mark of recognition. The decoration was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, the least the State could have granted; its absence was the measure of the State’s failure to recognise its own servants.
Significance
Ruijssenaers’s significance in the Aceh Wiki History record rests on four things: he was, as assistent-resident of Groot-Atjeh from medio 1890, the civil-administrative counterpart to the sluiting-stelsel of Generaal van Teijn — the man whose “helder doorzicht en krachtig initiatief” made the closure administratively enforceable in the field; he was the author of the Nota on the state of Atjeh at the time of Van Teijn’s departure that Van Heutsz treats as the canonical defence of the sluiting against the new administration’s abandonment of it; he was the assistent at Telok-Kroet whose year-and-a-half effort to recover the fifty achterlaadgeweren issued to the chief of Telok-Kroet furnished Van Heutsz with the empirical warrant for rejecting Scherer’s bondgenoot-policy; and he was, in Van Heutsz’s parting shot, the colonial civil servant who, having been wounded in 1878 in the Inval van Habib Abdoer Rachman (June 1878) (the incursion of Habib Abdoer Rachman) and having stood fast for the sluiting in 1891, was verwijderd by the new administration and received no decoration. Ruijssenaers is, in the 1893 tract, Van Heutsz’s ideal type of the colonial civil servant — the man who refused the quandême-bestuur and who paid for his refusal with his office.
See Also
- Van Teijn
- Groot-Atjeh
- Kota Radja
- Scherer
- Scheepvaartregeling
- Van der Heijden
- Habib Abdoel Rachman
- Inval van Habib Abdoer Rachman (June 1878)
- Closing of the Noord- en Westkust (1889-1890)
- Van Teijn’s active defense (September 1889)
- Concentratiebesluit (19 Augustus 1884)
- Van Rees
- Telok Kroet
- Boekit Seboen
- Indische Gids
- De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893)
- 1878
- 1890
- 1891
Source
De onderwerping van Atjeh, door J. B. van Heutsz, Majoor der Infanterie, gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders Van Cleef; Batavia: G. Kolff en Co., 1893, esp. pp. 50, 60–61, 74–75, 86. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.