Boeloh Blang Ara was a maréchaussée-bivak (bivouac of the Korps Marechaussee van Atjeh en Onderhorigen) lying at the foot of the hills behind Loh Semaweu on the North Coast of Atjeh, reachable from Semaweu entirely by dogcart (a light two-wheeled carriage) over a distance of about twenty kilometres. In November 1913 Moens, in the course of his journey through Atjeh, made an excursion to the bivak, where he was received by the post-commandant and his wife, and where he saw for the first time on his journey something of the military activity still remaining.
Garrison and task
Four brigades of maréchaussée — eighty men — and two officers were stationed in the bivak, which was naturally of a primitive character. So lay still a few such posts, while several maréchaussée bivouacs stood in the high mountains themselves, at 1300–1400 metres above sea level, so that in the delimited mountain terrain patrols could always be kept up. Their task was het vervolgen en steeds zoeken naar de nog aanwezige „kwaadwilligen” — the pursuing and ever seeking of the still remaining kwaadwilligen (ill-disposed), that is, those persons who had not yet given up the active resistance against the Dutch government, reckoned at the time at a following of about seventy men in the mountains.
Significance
Boeloh Blang Ara is significant in Moens’s account as the concrete point at which the last stage of the pacificatie became visible to the traveller: the open country pacified and policed, and only in the mountain border a thin chain of maréchaussée posts still watching the remnant of the armed resistance. It was in explanation of this watch that Gouverneur Swart gave Moens his reasoning: were the kwaadwilligen left alone, they would at once form again a larger band, and the desperadoes of the low country would join them; the government therefore preferred to keep pursuing them until their capture or surrender.
See Also
- Korps Marechaussee van Atjeh en Onderhorigen
- Kwaadwilligen
- Lho’ Seumawe
- Moens’ journey through Atjeh (November 1913)
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- 1913
Source
Reisindrukken van Atjeh, door W. Moens, oud-luitenant ter zee (Amsterdam: Jacob van Campen, 1914), pp. 15–17. OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-99-Reisindrukken_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.