Peunajong — a Dutch colonial fort (Dutch: benteng) in Atjeh — was the military post at which the Ambonese Protestant Inlands Godsdienstleraar (Dutch: indigenous religion teacher) Ds. Thenu established a school for the children of soldiers and conducted much of his pastoral work among the colonial troops of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (Dutch: *Indische Leger*) in the closing decades of the Atjeh-oorlog of 1873–1904. The fort’s connection to the chaplaincy of Ds. Thenu places it among the principal sites of the colonial military religion in the residency (Dutch: gewest) of Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, alongside the garrison church at Koeta-Radja and the military hospital of Panteh Perak.
Educational Role
Ds. Thenu organised regular schooling within the fort, ensuring that the soldiers’ children — who would otherwise have had no access to formal education in the war-footing of the colonial garrison — received basic instruction in literacy, numeracy, and the Protestant religion. The school at Peunajong was one of the small but significant institutions by which the colonial state, through the chaplaincy, sought to reproduce the moral and educational foundations of its military establishment in the forward posts of the Atjehnese residency. The chaplain’s school was, in effect, the institutional counterpart of the garrison church and the military hospital: a structure of care that the colonial state provided for its soldiers and their families in the remote stations of the Atjeh-tram postenlinie. The presence of the school at Peunajong is recorded in the biographical literature on Ds. Thenu as one of the markers of his long and devoted service to the soldiers of the Atjeh garrison — a service that, together with the parallel ministry of the Catholic soldaten-pastoor Pastoor H. C. Verbraak, defined the chaplaincy of the Atjeh campaign.
Military Context
During the military action under General Van Heutsz — the intensified military operations of 1898–1904 that brought the Atjeh-oorlog to its close — Peunajong remained a strategic outpost of the colonial line, and Ds. Thenu’s presence there exemplified the integration of spiritual care with military operations that characterised the colonial chaplaincy of the period. The chaplain’s work at Peunajong — schooling the children, visiting the sick, holding services for the garrison — was carried on in the immediate vicinity of the military operations that the fort supported, and his presence in the field was as much a part of the chaplaincy as his work in the schoolroom. The fort thus belongs, in the wiki, to the same network of forward posts as the Atjeh-tram postenlinie and the Pante Perak military hospital — the network of stations through which the chaplains of the Atjeh campaign carried their ministry to the colonial troops.
See Also
- Ds. Thenu
- Pastoor Verbraak
- Koeta-Radja
- Pante Perak
- Atjeh-tram
- Aceh War
- Van Heutsz
- Indische Leger
- Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Pacification of Atjeh
- Peunayong
- Veldprediker
Source
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, pp. 5–6.