Lhong

Properties2
tagsplace, town, aceh, westkust, aceh-proper, mukim, xxii-mukims, landschap, groot-atjeh, resistance, coast-state, acehnese, aceh-war
aliasesLhong (Aceh West Coast), Lam Ara, Lamara, Lam Ara (XXII Mukims), Loöng, Loöng on the Westkust, VI Moekims Lhong, kust-Moekims Lhong

8 min read

  • medicine
  • 1937
  • agriculture

Lhong — also Lam Ara (= Lam Ara in the mukim records) — carries two distinct identities in the sources: as a place on the West Coast of Aceh it was the setting of the Verzet in Lhong recorded in Oost-Indisch Journael; as Lam Ara it was a mukim of the XXII Mukims in the highlands of Great Acheh, cited by Snouck Hurgronje in The Achehnese as the sole example of a mukim divided between two distinct joint judicial unions.

The resistance at Lhong (West Coast)

At the most recent resistance in Lhong, the colonial army — following the old method — surrounded a house in which the remaining eight exiles had entrenched themselves. The eight exiles, breaking out with the naked weapon in hand, escaped to the caves of the Glé Groetèë, where the band was annihilated. The encirclement, the breakout, the Glé Groetèë annihilation, and the eight holy graves are the set-piece of the Verzet in Lhong — the book’s set-piece Aceh story. Lhong is therefore the place where the colonial army’s surrounding-and-searching method was applied, and where the book’s argument about the failure to use modern methods (tear-gas bombs) is voiced.

Sometimes on such occasions soldiers were wounded or killed by friendly fire, as for example the worthy Kapitein Haga. Captain Haga — wounded or killed by friendly fire during a surrounding-and-searching operation — is the small marker of the method’s danger: the encirclement and searching of gampongs, gampong-complexes and isolated dwellings could kill soldiers by friendly fire.

Lam Ara: a mukim of the XXII Mukims

In The Achehnese, Lam Ara is cited as the sole example of a mukim divided between two distinct joint judicial unions of imeums — the boards of three or four district chiefs whom adat had entrusted with quasi-judicial authority in parts of the sagi too remote from the uleebalang’s headquarters for ordinary appeals. In the Hikayat Prang Gompeuni: ‘the Mukim Lueng Bata (whose brave imeum was sick at the time) and the Mukim Lhong (= Lam Ara) were overcome by the …’

Among the examples Snouck Hurgronje gives for the XXII Mukims are: the union of Lam Lheue, Lam Kra’, Krueng Ma’ and Ateue’; the union of Sibree, Ba’et and part of Lam Ara; and a second union consisting of another part of Lam Ara together with Aneu’ Gle and Jrue’. Thus Lam Ara alone among the mukims of the XXII was split, with one of its sections attached to each of two different judicial boards.

The split at Lam Ara illustrates the essentially ad hoc and territorial, rather than doctrinal, character of adat in the highlands. The imeum (imam) had originally been a religious officer attached to the meuseugit (mosque) of his mukim, but by Snouck Hurgronje’s time his office had degenerated into one of “purely worldly authority.” The joint judicial unions — and the fragmented status of Lam Ara within them — were the institutional relic of that long process of accretion.

The marsbivak on the West Coast

In the early twentieth century the colonial army maintained a temporary marsbivak (marching bivouac) at Lhong during periods of local unrest on the West Coast of Aceh. The bivouac was enclosed with barbed-wire fencing, with a guard post at the entrance and a canteen for the troops; soldiers were required to keep their klewang (the traditional Dutch colonial cutlass) on them even when off-duty. The post illustrates the continued need for military vigilance on the West Coast even after the formal end of the Aceh War in 1904.

Account from Atjeh by H.C. Zentgraff (1938)

Zentgraff’s Atjeh contains the fullest account of the Lhong punitive expedition. After Teukoe Oemar was driven from Leupoeëng, he nestelde hij zich daar weer na het vertrek onzer troepen. The landschap Lhong was fined f 30.000 for its oeléëbalang’s heulling with the enemy. Lhong betaalde niet, kon niet betalen; in dat weinig bevolkte en arme gebied waren onmogelijk 30.000 bij elkaar te krijgen. The high command at Koetaradja, instead of correcting the error, ordered the cattle seized and shipped in prauwen to Koetaradja.

Kapitein Van Daalen’s pencil-notes from Bivak Tamoen, 22–27 April 1897, record his disgust: “Teukoe Lehong heeft nog geen cent betaald. ‘t Is bepaald komisch zooals die heele geschiedenis hier loopt door het slechte beleid van de hooge lui te Koetaradja.” On 25 April: “‘t Is beschamend en ik verlang daarom ook om hiervandaan te komen.” On 27 April: “Arme drommels!” Part of the assembled animals died before embarkation from lack of food. When the cattle still did not cover the fine, a house-to-house search was made and the women’s gold and silver ornaments — ankle-rings, bracelets — were seized. The women stood trotsch en vol felle haat […] tusschen de geladen geweren der soldaten, en zij spuwden hen hare woede en minachting voor de voeten. Het was geen oorlog meer doch eene wraakoefening, deels op onschuldigen, welke tevens eene beleediging van ons leger werd.

In 1933 a new rising — eleven widows and twenty orphans — broke out at Lhong; Tgk. Doellah, killed there in 1933, was found with hikajat prang booklets on his body. In 1935 the resistance flared again. Zentgraff quotes his own article in Sumatraantjes: “Zóó spuwden de vrouwen van Lhong in 1897, en zóó spuwden zij in 1933 voor de voeten van den gouverneur en den militairen commandant.”

Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia.

Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)

The murder, committed by seven persons of the landschap who fled to the mountains with two of the overseer’s sporting guns, was for Swart “a very sharp and painful disappointment indeed — after the attack at Daja, now murder and band-formation in quiet Groot Atjeh as well.” The plain of the IV Moekims Lhong was about three hours’ walk broad, backed by an inhospitable complex of limestone rocks, outliers of the Boekit Barisan, in which a band could hold out only in a few caves. H. J. Schmidt’s investigation traced the affair to Nja’ Asém and behind him to Teukoe Mamat; the band was destroyed at Koeala Daja on 5 August 1914 and the last nine members submitted on 18 August.

Sources

De geschiedenis van Nederland in onzen tijd, by J. A. de Bruyne, Directeur der Hoogere Burgerschool te Zierikzee. Deel IV. 1872-1883. Nieuwe uitgave. Schiedam: J. F. Dupont, 1912, Hoofdstuk I, pp. 87-88.

In the eye survey of Groot-Atjeh (1937)

In Dr. C. E. Gomperts’s eye survey of 1937 the VI Moekims Lhong appear as one of only two districts of Groot-Atjeh — with Moekim Lam-Teuba — whose sawah fields were irrigated by mountain streams that supplied enough water even in the dry season. Since the rest of the afdeeling depended on rainfall, the long drought of 1936–1937 caused the paddi planting to fail everywhere but in these two.

In the coastal moekims of Lhong, accordingly, “de voedselvoorziening (rijstvoorziening) niet te wenschen overliet” during the survey period, in contrast with the other coastal moekims. Gomperts used the contrast as the first of three tests of whether food supply governed the frequency of xerophthalmie, and found that in Lhong “deze invloed van de voeding niet duidelijk tot uitdrukking komt in de xerophthalmiefrequentie.”

In the moekims Lhong, Lho-Nga and Lam-Kabeuë, xerophthalmia was known among the Acehnese population under the name penjikit sisë — Tijssen writes siseh — while elsewhere in the surveyed area the condition bore no such name; there sisë meant only kulit ikan, the scales of a dead fish, or kaki ajam, a chicken’s foot.

See Also

Source

  • Oost-Indisch Journael: Palaver om de tafel met het gat, by Merac, Toekan-Serie no. 2, ed. G. L. Tichelman (Haarlem: De Gulden Pers, 1947), chapter Sloebers.
  • The Achehnese, Vol. II, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
  • DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, p. 8.

Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XII.

Oriënteerend oogheelkundig onderzoek bij de Atjehsche bevolking van Groot-Atjeh gedurende 1937 (“Orienting Ophthalmological Survey among the Atjehnese Population of Groot-Atjeh during 1937”), by Dr. C. E. Gomperts, offprint from the Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Afl. 19, Deel 80 (1940), pp. 1191-1238 (Batavia-Centrum: G. Kolff & Co.). Received by the editors 25 October 1939. Offprint DLP-157, Bibliotheek KITLV.

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