Marasa was a district and kampong string in the VI Moekims of Groot-Atjeh, immediately south of the Dutch capital, whose population submitted at the very beginning of the hostilities after the Second Aceh Expedition of 1874, and alone of the whole pacified zone of Groot-Atjeh had remained faithful under the Dutch in 1874–1876.
The position of 1874–1876
The population of Marasa had, as H. F. Meijer records in Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876 (1883), come over at the beginning of the hostilities — and also alone of all the inhabitants of the subjected district — had much to suffer from the continual robbing and murdering raids of her everywhere-fear-spreading hostile countrymen. The village and its people lay between the Dutch works of Lampasei and Blang-Oë, whose first purpose was to protect the faithful population of Marasa against the enemy. In those days a road lay from Olehleh through Marasa into the IV Moekims, which — after the submission of the VI and IV Moekims — became busier with trade, and was watched by the Dutch post at Pakan Badak, where every arriving person had to appear with a pass.
The friendly heads
Dutch influence had in Marasa its nearly only local anchor: Toekoe Nja Hamza, the son of the known-of-both-expeditions chief Toekoe Neg Radja Moeda Setja; and Toekoe Nja Mohamad, the son-in-law of Toekoe Neg and chief of a couple of kampongs in Marasa, with the more important Toekoe Lampasei, were, as reproduced in the official records, the only Atjehnese hostile-to-the-enemy chiefs on whose active help the Dutch could count in these years — though that help generally amounted to one or two guides knowing the way through the XXV Moekims for Dutch columns.
The posts of the inner ring round the establishment (Lampasei, Blang-Oë) were largely kept for the protection of this never-unfaithful district, which lay within calling distance of the enemy bands of kampong Pinang and the roads over which they moved.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege records two facets of the moekim Marassa: the physical tableau of its population —“iedereen, die te Oleh-leh zijne intrede op Atjeh doet, valt het op, hoe de welgebouwde inboorling der Moekim Marassa u met eerbiedig opgeheven gestalte … aanstaart, zonder in het minst de oogen neer te slaan” (“everyone who makes his entry at Atjeh at Oleh-leh is struck by how the well-built native of the moekim Marassa faces you with proudly erect bearing… without in the least lowering his eyes”), “en dat zijn Atjehers die zich zonder strijd aan ons gezag hebben onderworpen, dus geenszins het meest energieke deel der natie” (“and those are Atjehers who have submitted to our authority without struggle, thus by no means the most energetic part of the nation”, from the manuscript of the contrôleur Kroesen) — and the sacrifice of its alliance: on 27 April 1874, one day after van Swieten’s departure, the enemy punished the area of Marassa, the Dutch allies of the first and second expeditions, and laid seven kampongs in ashes (see Punishment of Marassa (27 April 1874)).
See Also
Source
Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876, door H. F. Meijer (Breda: P. B. Nieuwenhuijs, 1883), introduction (p. IX–XI) and chapter I (p. 33).
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 15, 50. OCR: DLP-158.