Oosthaven — Dutch for “East Harbour” — is a place in the Lampong districts on the southern tip of Sumatra, named in the Dutch pamphlet Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk by Een Ooggetuige (1880s) in the course of the author’s discussion of the sea approaches to Atjeh and of the wider setting of the Atjehnese theatre. The place is named alongside Kroeë as one of the points on the Lampong coast discussed in connection with the Sunda Strait and the sea approaches to the Atjehnese coast.
The pamphlet’s reference
The author of the Beschouwingen names Oosthaven in the context of a discussion of the Lampong districts and of the Sunda Strait as part of the wider setting of the Atjehnese theatre. The reference is made in the course of the author’s argument on the sea approaches to Atjeh, in which the Lampong coast and the Sunda Strait are discussed as elements of the wider geography of the archipelago within which the Atjehnese coast and the Strait of Halakka held their strategic and commercial importance.
Significance
Oosthaven is significant within the AcehWiki corpus as a place of the Lampong districts named in the contemporary Dutch pamphlet literature of the Atjeh War in connection with the sea approaches to Atjeh. The place’s mention in the Beschouwingen is a document of the wider geography within which the Dutch pamphleteers of the Atjeh War framed the Atjehnese theatre.
See Also
- Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk
- Een Ooggetuige
- Kroeë
- Sunda Strait
- Aceh War
- 1880s
Source
Beschouwingen over Atjeh en onzen oorlog met dat rijk, door Een Ooggetuige, met een Kaart van het Oorlogstooneel, de Vaarwaters en vereischte Kustlichten voor den Wereldhandel (Rotterdam: Van Meurs & Stufkens, [c. 1880s]). Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, shelfmark 1830 C17 2611 / 1830 0947 8285.
Note on the source text. The surviving copy of the pamphlet was digitised and processed through OCR (Nemotron-OCR v2). The OCR output is badly damaged throughout. The place-name Oosthaven is legible in the text, but the surrounding context is partially illegible. The article above reports only what can be read with confidence from the legible passages.