T. H. der Kinderen

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tagsperson, colonial-official, dutch, scholar, jurist, administrator, author, colonial, official, 19th-century, atjeh, judiciary, snouck-hurgronje, van-den-berg
aliasesMr. T. H. Der Kinderen, Mr. Der Kinderen, Der Kinderen, Mr. Dor Kinberen, Dor Kinberen, Dor Kin-deren (OCR), Der Kinderen (Atjeh judiciary), Der Kinderen bataviasche firmament

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T. H. der Kinderen was a Dutch jurist and colonial administrator, president of the two high courts of Nederlandsch-Indië, who rendered great service in the drafting of the wetboek van strafrecht voor inlanders (penal code for natives) established by ordonnantie of 6 May 1872, which came into force on 1 January 1873. He was later appointed a member of the Raad van Nederlandsch-Indië and sent to Atjeh in November 1880 as government commissioner for the reorganisation of justice in the possessions outside Java and Madura, where he remained until February 1881 and drafted the proposals for the regulation of justice that came into force with the administrative reorganisation of March 1881. The explanatory memorandum attached to the Ordinance of 14 March 1881 (Ordonnantie of 19 March 1881) with regard to the administration of justice among the native population of Great Acheh (Batavia, 1881) was authored by der Kinderen.

The Penal Code for Natives, 1872

By ordonnantie of 6 May 1872 the wetboek van strafrecht voor inlanders was established, which came into force on 1 January 1873. “Great service in the drafting thereof had the president of the two high courts of Nederlandsch-Indië, Mr. T. H. der Kinderen, who was at the same time charged with the task of drafting and treating the proposals for the regulation of the justice system in the possessions outside Java and Madura.”

The Conversiequaestie

The then directors of inland administration and of justice — Levyssohn Norman and Der Kinderen — who were charged with the drafting of the ordinances for the execution of the agrarian wet of 9 April 1870, had on 25 April 1872 submitted to the Governor-General an ordonnantie for the regulation of the conversion of communal into individual ownership. The Indies government, however, held that this ordonnantie, which wished to promote the conversion forcibly, intruded too deeply into the native household, and that only rules should be set to prevent injustice and arbitrariness in the conversion. From the same idea proceeded the letter of the Minister of Colonies to the Indies government on this subject of 3 August 1872 and that of 17 February 1873. On 23 June 1873 the new director of inland administration then submitted to the Governor-General an ordonnantie, which was consulted on by the heads of regional administration.

The Mission to Atjeh, 1880-1881

For the definitive regulation of the administration in Atjeh, Van der Heyden was placed in commission with A. Pruys van der Hoeven as government commissioners. The governor was yet charged with the submission of new proposals regarding the organisation of the inland administration in Great Acheh, based on an investigation into the existing situation and the institutions under the sultans. He was to consult with the member of the Raad of Nederlandsch-Indië, Mr. T. H. der Kinderen, “who would also come to Atjeh as government commissioner for the reorganisation of justice in the possessions outside Java and Madura, to draft proposals concerning the regulation of justice there.” Der Kinderen arrived in Atjeh in November 1880 and remained there until February 1881. In accordance with the proposals submitted, the definitive administrative organisation of Atjeh came into force in March 1881.

The Ordinance and the “Musapats”

The Ordinance of March 1881, with der Kinderen’s explanatory memorandum, was intended to introduce into Great Acheh a system of native tribunals. In drafting his Ordinance, der Kinderen took the Achehnese word mupakat — the deliberative assembly — and manufactured from it the substantive “Musapat,” which he employed to designate the tribunals he supposed to exist. These “musapats,” Snouck observes, “belong to the realm of fancy.” Since the Dutch government became established in Acheh, justice has in fact been administered by native tribunals under the guidance of European officials, and these courts have been called by the name manufactured by Mr. der Kinderen; “but these ‘musapats’ differ greatly both in the manner of their constitution and their functions from the creations of Mr. der Kinderen.”

The “explanatory memorandum” and Snouck Hurgronje’s Critique

Der Kinderen’s memorandum was sharply criticised by Snouck Hurgronje in the opening chapter of Vol. I of The Achehnese, where the memorandum serves as the foil against which the scientific study of Achehnese institutions is contrasted with what may be accomplished by an “entirely superficial enquiry.”

The bulk of Snouck’s attack is directed at pp. 1/18 of der Kinderen’s memorandum, in which the writer represents the Achehnese chiefs as unanimously declaring that there was “no trace of ancient popular customs in conflict with Islam, at least in the sense that would indicate a customary law having its existence in the consciousness of the people, as is the case for example with the characteristic institutions regarding the law of person and inheritance which we meet with among the Malays on the west coast of Sumatra.” The native chiefs, when questioned, “either gave evasive answers, or quoted as such certain rules for the ceremonial in the Kraton, the distinctive appellations of various chiefs etc.” Only one of them, a man of Afghan descent who was no Achehnese by birth, “absolutely denied the existence of any legal institutions conflicting with the Mohammedan law.” To this Snouck replies that “the chiefs were naturally afraid that an affirmative answer might give rise to all kinds of new enactments ‘in conflict with the law of Islam’,” and that they are in any case “as a rule quite ignorant as to whether such is the case or not, being neither jurists nor theologians."

"Salmon in a wash-tub”

Snouck’s general verdict is blunt. The enquiry of Mr. der Kinderen (or, as Snouck parenthetically adds, “of his secretary Mr. L. W. C. Van den Berg”) “has proved abortive.” That he and his friends found “no trace of popular customs in conflict with Islam” or of “a customary law having its existence in the consciousness of the people,” is “as natural as the disappointment of an angler who tries to catch salmon in a wash-tub.” These adats exist all the same; they control the political and social life of Acheh, “but, pace all dogmatic jurists and champions of facile methods, they are nowhere to be found set down in black and white.” They are reached only after “painstaking and scientific research, and not through the putting of questions which the questioned ‘apparently do not understand’.”

The “golden age of Acheh in which ‘the Mohammedan law prevailed’” — to which der Kinderen’s memorandum appeals in its later pages (pp. 10 et seq.) as a lost order against which the present anarchy might be measured — Snouck dismisses as belonging “to the realms of legend.” So, too, the assertion that Teuku Kali Malikon Ade was the “supreme judge” of the kingdom: “Mr. der Kinderen quite missed the mark in finding anything extraordinary in the fact that the ‘hereditary supreme judge’ of the kingdom could neither read nor write. Teuku Kali was uleebalang of 12 gampongs, and shared this ignorance with many of his equals in rank.”

See Also

Sources

  • De geschiedenis van Nederland in onzen tijd, by J. A. de Bruyne, Directeur der Hoogere Burgerschool te Zierikzee. Deel IV. 1872-1883. Nieuwe uitgave. Schiedam: J. F. Dupont, 1912, Hoofdstuk I, pp. 40, 48, 113-115.
  • The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.

T. H. der Kinderen was a Dutch jurist and colonial administrator, president of the two high courts of Nederlandsch-Indië, who rendered great service in the drafting of the wetboek van strafrecht voor inlanders (penal code for natives) established by ordonnantie of 6 May 1872, which came into force on 1 January 1873. He was later appointed a member of the Raad van Nederlandsch-Indië and sent to Atjeh in November 1880 as government commissioner for the reorganisation of justice in the possessions outside Java and Madura, where he remained until February 1881 and drafted the proposals for the regulation of justice that came into force with the administrative reorganisation of March 1881. The explanatory memorandum attached to the Ordinance of 14 March 1881 (Ordonnantie of 19 March 1881) with regard to the administration of justice among the native population of Great Acheh (Batavia, 1881) was authored by der Kinderen. Mr. Der Kinderen (more fully Mr. T. H. Der Kinderen) was a Dutch colonial official and author of the Ordonnantie of 19 March 1881 concerning the administration of justice among the native population of Groot-Atjeh (Great Acheh), together with an explanatory memorandum published at Batavia in the same year. He is one of the principal targets of Snouck Hurgronje’s criticism in Vol. I of The Achehnese, where his account of Achehnese institutions is repeatedly cited as an example of how not to study native custom. The most celebrated of Snouck Hurgronje’s criticisms concerns Der Kinderen’s manufacture of the term “Musapat.” Deriving the word from the Achehnese mupakat (“to deliberate, to assemble together” — itself from the Arabic mutawāfaqa), Der Kinderen turned it into a substantive and altered the first vowel, presenting the “musapats” as native tribunals existing in Acheh. These tribunals, Snouck Hurgronje retorts, “belong to the realm of fancy.” They were a figment of Der Kinderen’s misreading, faithfully reproduced in the ordinance of 1881. After the establishment of the Dutch government in Acheh, real native tribunals were indeed set up under European guidance and came to be called by the name Der Kinderen had coined; but, as Snouck Hurgronje points out in a translator’s bracketed note, these courts “differ greatly both in the manner of their constitution and their functions from the creations of Mr. Der Kinderen.” A second celebrated error concerns the position of the Teuku Kali, whom Der Kinderen mistook for a “hereditary supreme judge” of the kingdom. This notion Snouck Hurgronje traces directly to Der Kinderen’s chief guide, namely the Teuku Kali himself, who, “for reasons not difficult to surmise,” painted an idealised picture of the dignity of his office as it had been at the time of its first establishment some two and a half centuries earlier. Der Kinderen was thus “quite [mistaken] in finding anything extraordinary in the fact that the ‘hereditary supreme judge’ of the kingdom could neither read nor write”: the Teuku Kali was in fact simply the uleebalang of twelve gampongs, and shared his illiteracy with many of his equals in rank. More generally, Snouck Hurgronje takes Der Kinderen to task for the method underlying his whole memorandum. Der Kinderen and his friends professed to find “no trace of popular customs in conflict with Islam” or of “a customary law having its existence in the consciousness of the people” — a conclusion which, Snouck Hurgronje observes, was “as natural as the disappointment of an angler who tries to catch salmon in a wash-tub.” The “golden age of Acheh in which ‘the Mohammedan law prevailed,’” or in which the Adat Meukuta Alam could be regarded as the fundamental law of the kingdom, “belongs to the realms of legend”; and it could only be reached by questioning informants who “apparently do not understand” the questions put to them, instead of by direct observation of the living unwritten law of the country. Snouck Hurgronje’s repeated references to Der Kinderen — scattered through Vol. I wherever the discussion turns to courts, judges, or adat — together form a sustained methodological lesson: that the institutions of Acheh cannot be understood from ordinances and informant-testimony alone, but only from patient study of their actual operation in the gampongs and mukims of the country. The Ordonnantie of 19 March 1881 itself, though abortive in its original intent, retained a perverse afterlife as the name-giver of the very courts it had failed to describe. Mr. Dor Kinberen (the surname appears in the OCR of The Achehnese as “Kin-deren”) was the author of an “oft-quoted brochure” on Mohammedan learning in Acheh, cited and criticised by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese. The brochure, by Snouck Hurgronje’s account, gave an account of the state of Islamic learning in Acheh which he considered to be greatly exaggerated in its pessimism. In a passage of the chapter on the ulamas (p. 200), Snouck Hurgronje remarks: “We may here rest content with observing that Mr. Dor Kinberen (pp. 17–18 of his oft-quoted brochure) terribly exaggerates the decline of Mohammedan learning in Acheh.” Snouck Hurgronje’s correction is double-edged. He concedes that “those who wrote books on theology and law under the wealthy sultans in Banda Acheh were strangers whose influence outside Acheh was at least as noticeable as within it.” That is to say, the great age of Achehnese letters, in the seventeenth century, was sustained chiefly by immigrant scholars such as Raniri and other Arab and Indian men of letters patronised at the court. But he insists that “there are in Acheh at the present time no less than formerly ulamas of native birth who compose works of learning and edification, sometimes in Malay and sometimes in Achehnese.” The native tradition of composition, in short, has not died out, even if it has not replaced the earlier cosmopolitan learning of the capital. Snouck Hurgronje proceeds to reinforce his point by a striking historical observation: “At the time of the coming of the Dutch to Acheh there were numerous schools throughout the country; and it is a notorious fact that on more than one occasion the students from these schools threw themselves, practically unarmed, upon the bayonets of the Dutch troops.” These youths, “inflamed to fanaticism by the teaching they had imbibed in regard to the holy war and the boundless recompense hereafter awaiting the martyr to his creed,” furnish the most dramatic evidence that Mohammedan learning in Acheh, far from having declined into insignificance, retained an active and influential hold upon the youth of the country at the moment of the Dutch invasion. The brochure of Dor Kinberen thus represents the view, common in some colonial circles, that the Islamic culture of Acheh had sunk into irreversible decay; Snouck Hurgronje’s criticism of that view is one of the clearest expressions in Vol. I of his own, more nuanced, assessment of the vigour of native Achehnese religious life. Apart from this single notice, Dor Kinberen is not further discussed in the work; the “oft-quoted” brochure is presumably one of the many Dutch colonial publications of the late nineteenth century that treated Acheh as a problem to be solved rather than as a society to be understood. Mr. T. H. Der Kinderen was a Dutch colonial official and legal scholar who, in 1881, authored the Ordonnantie van 19 Maart 1881 (Ordinance of 19 March 1881) concerning the administration of justice among the native population of Groot-Atjeh (Great Acheh), together with an accompanying explanatory memorandum (memorie van toelichting). The work was published at Batavia in that same year and became one of the principal early Dutch sources on the structure of Achehnese customary and religious law. Snouck Hurgronje draws heavily on Der Kinderen’s ordinance in the chapters of The Achehnese devoted to the legal system of Acheh proper, but he is also at pains to correct what he regards as serious misapprehensions introduced by Der Kinderen’s account. The most important of these concerns the so-called “supreme hereditary judge” of the kingdom, the Teuku Kali bearing the title Kali Malikon Ade (from the Arabic Qadlu Malikul Adil, “Judge of the Righteous King”). Writers on Acheh had become accustomed, chiefly through Der Kinderen, to the notion that this dignitary stood enthroned above all other kalis of the land as a kind of chief justice of the realm. Snouck attributes this misleading picture to the fact that Der Kinderen’s “chief guide in forming this conclusion was the bearer of the title himself”. The Teuku Kali, “for reasons not difficult to surmise”, is said to have told Der Kinderen tales regarding his exalted position that were in flagrant conflict with the truth, painting an idealised picture of the office as it had existed at the time of its first establishment — some two and a half centuries earlier — and passing it off as the actual state of things in the 1880s. In reality, as Snouck demonstrates, the office of Teuku Kali Malikon Ade had long since degenerated into a mere uleebalangship of twelve gampongs near the Dalam (the Sultan’s court). Its holder could neither read nor write — a circumstance that Der Kinderen had treated as unremarkable in a “hereditary supreme judge”, but which Snouck points to as proof of the complete secularisation of the office. The decay had been brought about by the hereditary character of the dignity, by the proximity of its holder to the court, and by the rapid collapse of central power in the sultanate. Snouck thus concludes that Der Kinderen “quite missed the mark” in his interpretation of the Teuku Kali’s position, even though his ordinance remains an important — if partly misleading — record of Achehnese institutions at the moment of Dutch expansion. 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. 18.

The Penal Code for Natives, 1872

By ordonnantie of 6 May 1872 the wetboek van strafrecht voor inlanders was established, which came into force on 1 January 1873. “Great service in the drafting thereof had the president of the two high courts of Nederlandsch-Indië, Mr. T. H. der Kinderen, who was at the same time charged with the task of drafting and treating the proposals for the regulation of the justice system in the possessions outside Java and Madura.”

The Conversiequaestie

The then directors of inland administration and of justice — Levyssohn Norman and Der Kinderen — who were charged with the drafting of the ordinances for the execution of the agrarian wet of 9 April 1870, had on 25 April 1872 submitted to the Governor-General an ordonnantie for the regulation of the conversion of communal into individual ownership. The Indies government, however, held that this ordonnantie, which wished to promote the conversion forcibly, intruded too deeply into the native household, and that only rules should be set to prevent injustice and arbitrariness in the conversion. From the same idea proceeded the letter of the Minister of Colonies to the Indies government on this subject of 3 August 1872 and that of 17 February 1873. On 23 June 1873 the new director of inland administration then submitted to the Governor-General an ordonnantie, which was consulted on by the heads of regional administration.

The Mission to Atjeh, 1880-1881

For the definitive regulation of the administration in Atjeh, Van der Heyden was placed in commission with A. Pruys van der Hoeven as government commissioners. The governor was yet charged with the submission of new proposals regarding the organisation of the inland administration in Great Acheh, based on an investigation into the existing situation and the institutions under the sultans. He was to consult with the member of the Raad of Nederlandsch-Indië, Mr. T. H. der Kinderen, “who would also come to Atjeh as government commissioner for the reorganisation of justice in the possessions outside Java and Madura, to draft proposals concerning the regulation of justice there.” Der Kinderen arrived in Atjeh in November 1880 and remained there until February 1881. In accordance with the proposals submitted, the definitive administrative organisation of Atjeh came into force in March 1881.

The Ordinance and the “Musapats”

The Ordinance of March 1881, with der Kinderen’s explanatory memorandum, was intended to introduce into Great Acheh a system of native tribunals. In drafting his Ordinance, der Kinderen took the Achehnese word mupakat — the deliberative assembly — and manufactured from it the substantive “Musapat,” which he employed to designate the tribunals he supposed to exist. These “musapats,” Snouck observes, “belong to the realm of fancy.” Since the Dutch government became established in Acheh, justice has in fact been administered by native tribunals under the guidance of European officials, and these courts have been called by the name manufactured by Mr. der Kinderen; “but these ‘musapats’ differ greatly both in the manner of their constitution and their functions from the creations of Mr. der Kinderen.”

The “explanatory memorandum” and Snouck Hurgronje’s Critique

Der Kinderen’s memorandum was sharply criticised by Snouck Hurgronje in the opening chapter of Vol. I of The Achehnese, where the memorandum serves as the foil against which the scientific study of Achehnese institutions is contrasted with what may be accomplished by an “entirely superficial enquiry.”

The bulk of Snouck’s attack is directed at pp. 1/18 of der Kinderen’s memorandum, in which the writer represents the Achehnese chiefs as unanimously declaring that there was “no trace of ancient popular customs in conflict with Islam, at least in the sense that would indicate a customary law having its existence in the consciousness of the people, as is the case for example with the characteristic institutions regarding the law of person and inheritance which we meet with among the Malays on the west coast of Sumatra.” The native chiefs, when questioned, “either gave evasive answers, or quoted as such certain rules for the ceremonial in the Kraton, the distinctive appellations of various chiefs etc.” Only one of them, a man of Afghan descent who was no Achehnese by birth, “absolutely denied the existence of any legal institutions conflicting with the Mohammedan law.” To this Snouck replies that “the chiefs were naturally afraid that an affirmative answer might give rise to all kinds of new enactments ‘in conflict with the law of Islam’,” and that they are in any case “as a rule quite ignorant as to whether such is the case or not, being neither jurists nor theologians."

"Salmon in a wash-tub”

Snouck’s general verdict is blunt. The enquiry of Mr. der Kinderen (or, as Snouck parenthetically adds, “of his secretary Mr. L. W. C. Van den Berg”) “has proved abortive.” That he and his friends found “no trace of popular customs in conflict with Islam” or of “a customary law having its existence in the consciousness of the people,” is “as natural as the disappointment of an angler who tries to catch salmon in a wash-tub.” These adats exist all the same; they control the political and social life of Acheh, “but, pace all dogmatic jurists and champions of facile methods, they are nowhere to be found set down in black and white.” They are reached only after “painstaking and scientific research, and not through the putting of questions which the questioned ‘apparently do not understand’.”

The “golden age of Acheh in which ‘the Mohammedan law prevailed’” — to which der Kinderen’s memorandum appeals in its later pages (pp. 10 et seq.) as a lost order against which the present anarchy might be measured — Snouck dismisses as belonging “to the realms of legend.” So, too, the assertion that Teuku Kali Malikon Ade was the “supreme judge” of the kingdom: “Mr. der Kinderen quite missed the mark in finding anything extraordinary in the fact that the ‘hereditary supreme judge’ of the kingdom could neither read nor write. Teuku Kali was uleebalang of 12 gampongs, and shared this ignorance with many of his equals in rank.”

See Also

Sources

  • De geschiedenis van Nederland in onzen tijd, by J. A. de Bruyne, Directeur der Hoogere Burgerschool te Zierikzee. Deel IV. 1872-1883. Nieuwe uitgave. Schiedam: J. F. Dupont, 1912, Hoofdstuk I, pp. 40, 48, 113-115.
  • The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.

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