W. Rooseboom — Willem Rooseboom (1843-1907) — was a Dutch military officer who served as governor-general of the Nederlandsch-Indische archipelago from 1899 to 1904. He was appointed under a liberal minister of Colonies and was succeeded by Van Heutsz, who was appointed by the anti-revolutionary Kuyper ministry after the Catholic De Savornin Lohman had refused the governor-generalship.
The Rooseboom-to-Heutsz transition
The transition from Rooseboom to Van Heutsz as governor-general marks the political-military hinge of the Atjehnese war. Rooseboom — a military officer appointed under a liberal minister — was succeeded in 1904 by another military officer, Van Heutsz, appointed by the anti-revolutionary Kuyper ministry. The appointment was unusual in two respects: Kuyper had first offered the post to the Catholic De Savornin Lohman, who refused; and Van Heutsz was, in the verdict of Vermeulen, “een niet-rechtse militair” — a non-right-wing military officer. The continuity of military leadership thus cut across the partisan alternation.
The Atjeh inheritance
Rooseboom’s governor-generalship covered the period of the Concentratie-stelsel ([[1884-1896)|post-concentratie]] recovery, the Toekoe Oemar’s defection ([[1896)|Oemar crisis]] of 1896 (just before his appointment), and the early Van Heutsz campaigns of 1898-1904. The expedition of Van Daalen of 1904 was undertaken in the last year of Rooseboom’s term and continued under Van Heutsz. Kuyper’s assessment of the Atjeh situation on taking office in 1901 — that the stelsel of the previous decades had been a sequence of unco-ordinated expedients — was, in part, a judgement on the Rooseboom years.
See Also
- J. B. van Heutsz
- Abraham Kuyper
- De Savornin Lohman
- Van Daalen’s Gajo-Alas-Batak expedition (1904)
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Concentratie-stelsel (1884-1896)
- Toekoe Oemar’s defection (1896)
- 1899
- 1901
- 1904
Source
Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland van 1849 tot 1901, by Mr W. J. van Welderen baron Rengers, 4th rev. ed., Vol. IV: Oost-Indië 1891-1918 by Dr W. H. Vermeulen (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955), p. 353, and “Overzicht van de ministers van Koloniën en de gouverneurs-generaal van Nederlandsch-Indië 1848-1918”, p. 375.