Lambeusong — also written Lambeusung — is a coastal settlement on the Westkust of [[Atjeh|Atjèh], the place where, in 1884, the Atjèhse chieftain Teukoe Oema — after being conveyed by the warship Benkoelen from Meulaboh to Rigaih and thence to Lambeusong — massacred the armed sloop of the Benkoelen that had brought him and his companions ashore. The Lambeusong massacre was one of the two principal acts of Toekoe Oema’s pre-submission career (the other being the June 1886 capture of the Hok Canton at Rigaih), and one of the warning signs that the Dutch would later disregard when they armed him as their principal Atjèhse auxiliary in the Pahlawan-klucht.
The 1884 Massacre
In 1884 — before his submission to the Dutch — Toekoe Oema was conveyed by the warship Benkoelen from Meulaboh to Rigaih and thence to Lambeusong. At Lambeusong, after the Benkoelen had brought Toekoe Oema and his companions ashore, Toekoe Oema massacred the armed sloop of the Benkoelen that had brought them.
The massacre — the killing of the crew of a Dutch warship’s sloop by the chieftain whom the warship had just conveyed — was one of the most brazen acts of Atjèhse aggression against the Dutch in the period of the concentration system under Demmeni. The Dutch, however, did not retaliate; and Toekoe Oema, in his later account — when he again feigned good disposition and offered submission — dismissed the massacre as the deed of his youth, done in thoughtlessness.
Significance
Lambeusong is the Westkust coastal settlement that was the site of the 1884 massacre of the armed sloop of the Benkoelen by Toekoe Oema. The massacre was one of the two principal acts of Toekoe Oema’s pre-submission career, and one of the principal warning signs that the Dutch would later disregard when they armed him as their principal Atjèhse auxiliary — and that the defection of 29 March 1896 would expose as the warning signs that the Dutch had refused to recognise.
See Also
- Teuku Umar
- Benkoelen
- Meulaboh
- Rigaih
- Westkust
- Hok Canton (ship)
- Hok Canton affair (June 1886)
- Concentratie-stelsel (1884-1896)
- Demmeni
- Pahlawan-klucht
- Defection of Teuku Umar (March 1896)
- Aceh War
- Atjeh-oorlog
- 1884
- 1886
- 1896
Source
Drie Atjeh-mannen: Snouck Hurgronje — Van Heutsz — Van Daalen, door H. T. Damsté (September 1936). OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-111-Drie_Atjeh_mannen_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, p. 25.