Willem Maurits de Brauw (Jhr. Mr. W. M. de Brauw; not to be confused with the army officer C. A. de Brauw) was the Dutch Minister of Colonies who, continuing the line of his predecessor van Goltstein, defended before the States General the policy of the civil administration at Atjeh and the normal administrative organisation there. Verstege (1886) accused him of political misleading of the natio when he declared on 16 November 1882, when the Trooperschap at Atjeh was at its most miserable, “that there could be no question of a problematic financial state … that we were lord and master on Sumatra” — words with which the paper Het Dagblad van Zuid-Holland en ‘s Gravenhage had rendered his reply; in the pamphlet’s accounting Verstege acknowledged that, by the former minister’s own letter of 27 January 1886, de Brauw’s words of 16 November had in fact been: “De onverdeelde heerschappij over dat eiland hebben wij ons in deze tijden veroverd; het onbetwist en vreedzaam bezit van dat eiland zijn wij bezig ten volle te verzekeren” (“The undivided sovereignty over that island we have conquered for ourselves in these times; the undisputed and peaceful possession of that island we are on the way to secure fully”), and that by this undivided sovereignty he had meant only what the treaty with England of 2 November 1871 gave the Netherlands: the right to rule the whole of Sumatra including Atjeh, to the exclusion of every other European nation.
Statements on the Atjeh condition
From the same minister Verstege quotes the declaration of December 1882 that after the conquest of the XXVI Moekims everything had to be set in train “om de landstreek weder bevolkt te krijgen” (“to get the district peopled again”); the announcement, on 23 December 1882, that governor Pruijs van der Hoeven had asked for his pension, with the addition that this meritorious official had performed excellent services in Atjeh — “the Minister might comfortably have added: to the Atjehers”, Verstege commented dryly; and the counter-memorandum in which de Brauw denied the demoralisation signs of the Indies army which the member de Casembroot had laid before the government in his Nota at the end of 1882, a denial which — Verstege predicted and parliamentary tradition confirmed — would, three years further, be maintained still.
See Also
- Aceh War
- Normale bestuursinrichting (Atjeh, 1881-1884)
- A. de Casembroot
- Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Verstege, 1886)
- 1882
Source
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 72-78, 74 note. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.