Ketapang Doewa was a fortified kampong southwest of the Kraton and near Bital. During the early Aceh War, it was one of the key hostile positions on the western side of the Dutch center. Dutch troops attacked it on 15 February 1874, captured it, and then abandoned it again. The place was later taken more firmly during the Dutch offensive of 1875–1876.
Why the place mattered
Ketapang Doewa stood on high ground that could affect the western side of the Dutch position around the Kraton. That is why later Dutch critics treated it as an important lost opportunity.
The attack of 15 February 1874
Three days after the operation against Bital, the Dutch mounted a larger attack against Ketapang Doewa. According to Borel, the fighting was harder than at Bital and Dutch losses were greater. Even so, the Dutch carried the position.
The problem came afterward. The position was not held. Critics argued that this gave away the main advantage of the success.
Later criticism
Brutus used Ketapang Doewa as one of his main examples against Jan van Swieten. He argued that the Dutch had enough strength to hit the enemy hard but still failed to turn success into lasting control. Borel added that the high ground should have been kept as a permanent post.
Later conquest
Ketapang Doewa remained contested after 15 February 1874. It appears again in later operations and was finally taken more firmly during the larger Dutch offensive under Pel at the end of 1875.
Significance
Ketapang Doewa is significant because it shows how a small place could become central in a larger military argument. It was not just a kampong on the map. It became an example of the difference between capturing ground and truly controlling it.
Account from H. F. Meijer (1883) — the kampong and its post, 1876
Meijer gives Ketapan Doewa its situation on the right bank of the Kroeëng Daroe, with a good, restored and later renewed bridge across the river; over that bridge went the old Atjehnese paved dike, one metre wide, crossing the marsh to kampong Garoet, and the way for the later straighter Dutch road past the kampong. The weekly head of the kampong was Mat Saïd, whose failure to supply the ordered bridge materials and whose suspicious travels led to the arrest of 8 May 1876. South and west of the fort the ground is low and swampy and at times of high river a mud pool. Between it and Garoet there stood, in the days of springs, a stone dike of Atjehnese work; on the falls before the dike the enemy’s bandits repeatedly took their stand for attacks at the Dutch posts in the year.
On 20 April 1876 the post was alarmed in vain by night; on 23 April a small band of Atjehers tried to steal up on it in daylight, three quarters of an hour past noon, and was driven back for the first time wholly without losses; on 17 July the last great fight of the road between the post and Boekit Daroe took place, with the destruction of the escort of corporals Wensting and Wijnen; and its garrison and the terrain around were the enemy’s habitual watching ground, as Meijer’s record of the month’s steady spying on the post shows.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege names Ketapang Doewa one of the eighteen posts of the line of 1885, a node of the new tramway development: from Kota Radja the steam tram was lengthened to Ketapang Doewa, and from here in two directions — to Lamdjame and to Lambaroe (see Atjeh-tram); on 11 August 1885 the night watch of six men returning from Lamara to Ketapang Doewa was attacked: six wounded, of whom three died the same day, with two rifles lost to the enemy (see Guerilla raids inside the concentration line (1885)).
See Also
- Expedition to Ketapang Doewa (15 February 1874)
- Bital
- Kraton of Aceh
- J. L. J. H. Pel
- Jan van Swieten
- Brutus
- G. F. W. Borel
- 1874
- 1875
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel (The Hague: D. A. Thieme, 1878), pp. 54–57, 64–66, 179, 266.
Open brief aan den Generaal Knoop over de Atjeh-kwestie, door Brutus (L. van Bakkenes en Co., 1874), pp. 18–19.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 81, 83, 109. OCR: DLP-158.