Kuta Raja was/is a historical capital of the Sultanate of Aceh and the administrative center of Dutch colonial governance in northern Sumatra (modern Banda Aceh).
Historical Context and Role
Serving as the principal military headquarters for the Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger (KNIL) and the Korps Maréchaussée, Kuta Raja contained the central military staff, hospital facilities, administrative offices, and the military cemetery at Kerkhof Peutjoet. The headquarters of the Marechaussee staff remained stationed in Kuta Raja throughout the colonial era.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege’s picture of the capital of the Dutch position is the physiography of the three camps: the Kraton-girdling camp of April 1874 (see Verstege’s folding map of Groot-Atjeh (1886)), with its 3,151 men and one-eighth sick of it; the citadel of Pel’s cordon of April 1875 with 38 posts and 2,750 garrison men within the chain stretching from Oleh-leh to Kota Moesapie; and the “Palladium” cramped in the new line of 1885: 18 posts, 6,700 hectares, 4,500 men — inside which the watch of Penditi stood, the sentry at Panteh Perak was robbed of rifle, patrols were shot at even on the road between Oleh-leh and Kota Radja and in the shop-street of Gedeh, the statue of the Dutch lion in the banquet-hall still showing the Atjeh flag under its claw (September 1880) while the real one had by 1884 been ordered folded away and covered with a mourning veil, and the beri-beri made a third cemetery necessary (see Guerilla raids inside the concentration line (1885) and the contrasting official optimism in Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk (Verstege, 1886)).
See Also
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Capital of Aceh, formerly seat of the Sultanate (Dalem palace). Site of the Grote Moskee (Meusigit Raja), Atjeh-Museum, Legermuseum, Peutjoet cemetery, Gouvernementswoning (on site of old Dalem). Bust of Van Heutsz, Pastoor Verbraak, dominée Thenu. Headquarters of military gewest. Has bookery with standard works on Aceh.Meusigit Raja (Royal Mosque), whose first stone was laid in 1879 and completed in 1881. Genuine Acehnese koepiah caps are manufactured here.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 17, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 48, 49, 156, 166, 187.
Source
Het Korps Maréchaussée in Atjeh: De Atjehsche Garde 1890 - 2 April 1930, Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Extra Jubileum-nummer, Batavia, 2 April 1930, pp. 5–20.
Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 17, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 48, 49, 156, 166, 187.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 48-58, 64-65, 78, 81, 88, 108-110. OCR: DLP-158.