Toekoe Djoe Raman was the Achehnese chief of the kampong Thingkun, outside the valley of Lamtoba at the foot of the Goudberg, who came into the Dutch bivak at Lamtoba during the final week of the occupation, in August 1879, and willingly offered to follow the column — being connected by marriage with the house of Panglima Polem — as recorded in W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889).
Arrival with a gift
During the absence of the main column on the Selimoen expedition, on a morning in mid-August 1879, Toekoe Djoe Raman arrived in the bivak at Lamtoba, bringing with him a sappi (a head of cattle) as a gift for the column-commandant. He was summoned, together with the other wakils and kampong-heads of the valley, to appear again before the commander on the following day.
Kinship with Panglima Polim
The book records the family relation that marked the chief’s significance: a younger sister of Toekoe Djoe Raman was married to Radja Koeala, the son of Panglima Polim. It was with an eye to this connection that, when the hostages for the valley were nominated on 21 August 1879, the column-commandant let him know that he desired him to follow the troops — “toonde zich dadelijk bereid de colonne te volgen”: he showed himself immediately ready to follow the column. While the Rijksbestierder Panglima Banten fled in the morning of 22 August and had to be replaced by his captured son, Toekoe Djoe Raman marched with the troops as a willing companion.
Significance
The willing adherence of a chief allied by marriage to Panglima Polim’s house was one of the quiet political gains of the Lamtoba occupation: it extended the network of the submitted into the very family of the most obdurate of the war-leaders of Groot-Atjeh, and it illustrates Generaal van der Heijden’s policy of binding the chiefly class of the valley in person to the new order.
See Also
- Panglima Polem
- Radja Koelala
- Lamtoba
- Thingkun
- Evacuation of the Lamtoba valley (21–23 August 1879)
- 1879
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 64-65. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.