Samalanga

Properties2
tagsaceh-proper, achehnese, coast, colonial, military-operations, north-coast, north-east-coast, place, region, ulama, landschap, aceh, noordkust, landscape, coastal
aliasesSamalanga (Atjeh), Samalanga region, Samalangga, Samalanga post, Samalanga north coast, Samelanga, Samalanga (north coast)

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Samalanga is a coastal region of Atjeh on the north coast of Sumatra, between Koetaradja and Pedir, mentioned in Kreemer’s *De Karbouw* ([[1956)]] (p. 124) as the locality where, in particular, much dadih — curdled buffalo-milk, the most widely consumed buffalo-milk product in northern Sumatra — was made. The Samalanga reference is part of De Karbouw’s wider account of buffalo-milking and buffalo-milk consumption in Atjeh, which locates Atjeh within a broader North-Sumatran dairy complex that included the Pedir region (where goats were also milked), the Gajoland highlands (where minjaq sapi buffalo-milk cream was boiled down to fat for frying toempi and tjoetjoer), and the Klingalese and Arab communities resident in Atjeh (great lovers of dadih, who knew it by their own terms tairō and halib respectively).

Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Samalanga

Samalanga is a region on the north coast of Acheh mentioned in The Achehnese Vol. I both as the scene of Dutch military operations in the Acheh War and as the geographical designation borne by the influential sayyid preacher Habib Samalanga, one of the chief rivals of Teungku Tiro.

Military Operations in Samalanga

The clearest direct mention of Samalanga as a place in Vol. I is in Snouck Hurgronje’s portrait of the Imeum of Lueng Bata, the adat-chief who took a zealous part in the defence of the capital at the outbreak of the national war in 1873. Of him Snouck writes: “This Imeum [he died in the year 1901 during the military operations in Samalanga] was a rare phenomenon among the dealing with men. Like most of his fellows he sought to be foremost at fights of animals, gambling parties and sanguinary internal forays. At the same time he possessed those qualities whereby an Achehnese may rise to be an uleebalang though not entitled to such a position by his birth.” The death of the Imeum in the Samalanga operations in 1901 — during the renewed offensive that followed Governor Van Heutsz’s taking of direction in 1898 — indicates that Samalanga remained a major theatre of armed resistance into the very last phase of the war.

Habib Samalanga

The other prominent bearer of the Samalanga name in Vol. I is the sayyid Habib Samalanga, one of the principal ulama-rivals of Teungku Tiro during the “concentration” period. Snouck pairs him with Teungku Kutakarang as the two men whose jealousy “may at times have thwarted” the great Tiro’s purposes. Habib Samalanga, “an active [man]”, came to Great Acheh to direct the jihad especially in the XXVI Mukims and to gather the kasadi and other contributions to meet the expenses of the war; “in order to appear in the eyes of his followers as at least the equal and if possible the superior of ‘the Teungku’, he had to distinguish himself by unusual severity of life.” He condemned to isolation in a cave those Achehnese who had submitted to or traded with the infidels, and differed from Teungku Tiro in his opinions on the conduct of the holy war. Habib Samalanga died in December 1901 — the same year in which the Imeum of Lueng Bata fell in the Samalanga operations.

Significance

Although Samalanga as a place is mentioned only briefly in Vol. I, its double appearance — both as a major military theatre of the late Acheh War and as the geographic designation of a leading sayyid war-preacher — marks it as one of the most important centres of Achehnese armed and religious resistance at the turn of the twentieth century. The place is treated more fully in Vol. II of The Achehnese.

Account from Dispereert Niet Vol. XI (1946) — Samalanga

Samalanga is a region of Aceh on the east coast of Sumatra, notable for its role in the Aceh War and the site of the battle of Batêê Iliê in 1901.

Background

Samalanga was a stronghold of Acehnese resistance, particularly under the leadership of Panglima Polem. Its location made it a key region for controlling the interior highlands.

The Battle of Batêê Iliê (1901)

Batêê Iliê was a fortified village in Samalanga that had successfully resisted Dutch attacks for twenty years. In 1901, J. B. van Heutsz personally led an assault on the position. After a hard fight, Batêê Iliê fell, and Samalanga was brought under Dutch control.

Aftermath

After the battle, Panglima Polem retreated into the interior. He was eventually surrounded and surrendered to H. Colijn at Lhokseumawe in 1903.

Samalanga in De Karbouw

The Samalanga passage in De Karbouw (p. 124) runs in full:

“In Atjeh worden van de huisdieren bijna uitsluitend karbouwen door de bevolking nu en dan gemolken; in het Pedirse ook geiten. Voor de bereiding van de verschillende soorten van rijstepap (kandji, een Tamil-woord), die in Atjeh bij bijzondere gelegenheden worden gegeten, wordt buffelmelk of klappermelk gebruikt. Gestremde buffelmelk, ook op N.-Sumatra dadih genoemd, wordt bij de Atjehers soms met rijst of pisang, maar bij de Gajo’s zelden genuttigd. De Klinganezen en Arabieren in Atjeh zijn er echter grote liefhebbers van; de eersten noemen die tairō, de laatsten halib. Vooral in Samalanga wordt veel dadih gemaakt.” The passage locates Samalanga within a layered account of Atjehnese dairy practice: buffaloes are the principal milk-animal (goats additionally in Pedirse), the milk is used in kandji rice-porridge (a Tamil loan-word) at ceremonial occasions, the curdled dadih is sometimes eaten with rice or banana by Atjehnese (rarely by Gajos), and is especially favoured by the Klingalese (who call it tairō) and Arabs (who call it halib) of Atjeh — and Samalanga is the locality singled out for the abundance of its dadih production.

Historical context

Samalanga was, in the period of the Atjeh War of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one of the most stubbornly resistant districts of the Atjehnese interior, and its name figures prominently in the Dutch military and administrative literature on the pacification of Atjeh. Snouck Hurgronje’s Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjehers ([[1893-94)|De Atjehers]] treats Samalanga as one of the principal seats of the Atjehnese resistance. The fact that Samalanga was, in De Karbouw’s ethnographic present, also a centre of dadih production is a small but pointed reminder that the ethnographic and the military-administrative faces of the Dutch encounter with Atjeh were inscribed on the same localities.

Significance

Samalanga’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history is as a documented locality of Atjehnese buffalo-milk consumption — specifically, the place most strongly associated with dadih production in the comparative ethnographic literature. It also figures as one of the most stubbornly resistant districts of the Atjehnese interior during the Atjeh War, a fact that places its ethnographic profile in the same frame as its military-historical profile.

Account from De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893)

In Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract De onderwerping van Atjeh, Samalanga — an Acehnese coastal state on the Noordkust of Atjeh — is the Onderhoorigheden-statelet at which a Dutch post was established in 1877 after heavy fighting, the site of the murder of the Dutch emissary Soetan Maharadja, and the test-case of Scherer’s kruisboot-bangoen method in 1880 — the experiment in which the laying of a kruisboot (a marine patrol vessel) before Samalanga’s harbour brought payment of the bangoen (blood-price) within three days, and so gave Scherer the fingerwijzing on which the entire scheepvaartregeling was constructed.

The 1877 expedition and post establishment

The Dutch post at Samalanga was established in 1877 under the verzoeningspolitiek (conciliation-politics) of G.-G. van Lansberge — the policy of conciliation in Groot-Atjeh combined with gewapend optreden (armed intervention) in the still-hostile Onderhoorigheden. The establishment of the post required hard fighting: Van Heutsz records it in a single phrase in his catalogue of the 1877 Onderhoorigheden coercions: hevig gestreden en een post gevestigd te Samalanga (heavily fought and a post established at Samalanga). The hevig gestreden fixes the Samalanga expedition as one of the harder operations of the 1877 sequence, alongside the two expeditions to Melaboeh, the tuchtiging of Loong on the Westkust, the submission of Langsar and Mojopahit, and the re-expedition to Simpang Olim. The post was garrisoned as part of the dispersed coastal occupation the Pel-plan completion had prescribed, and Samalanga thus entered the catalogue of Dutch-administered Onderhoorigheden-posts from which the controle op handel en scheepvaart could later be exercised.

The murder of Soetan Maharadja

The post was the site of the murder of the Dutch emissary Soetan Maharadja — one of the two emissaries (the other being Said Abdellah, murdered at Gighen) whose deaths triggered Scherer’s kruisboot-bangoen experiment. Van Heutsz records the episode: door het gebeurde te Gighen en te Samalanga, waar onze zendelingen Said Abdellah en Soetan Maharadja vermoord waren, en waar men telkens uitvluchten zocht in het betalen van den opgelegden bangoen (bloedprijs) (through what happened at Gighen and at Samalanga, where our emissaries Said Abdellah and Soetan Maharadja were murdered, and where one constantly sought evasions in the payment of the imposed bangoen [blood-price]). The bangoen — the blood-price, the Atjehnese customary-law compensation owed for a killing — was the obligation the Samalanga chiefs had incurred by the murder of Soetan Maharadja; the uitvluchten — the evasions — were the pretextual delays by which the chiefs had avoided payment.

The 1880 kruisboot deployment

Scherer’s solution was to lay a kruisboot — a marine patrol vessel — before the harbour of Samalanga and to collect the bangoen by levying duties on the in- and out-going goods. Scherer requested and obtained from Generaal van der Heijden the vergunning om vóór die havens een kruisboot te leggen en den bangoen te innen door rechten te heffen op de in- en uit te voeren goederen (permission to lay a cruiser before those harbours and to collect the blood-price by levying duties on the goods imported and exported). The result was immediate: Dit hielp; te Gighen betaalde men nog vóór dat de kruisboot er lag en te Samalanga, nadat de kruisboot er slechts drie dagen gelegen had (This worked; at Gighen payment was made even before the cruiser was in place, and at Samalanga after the cruiser had been there only three days). The Samalanga chiefs paid the bangoen after the kruisboot had lain before their harbour for only three days; the Gighen chiefs paid before the kruisboot had even arrived. The experiment was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, the fingerwijzing on which the entire scheepvaartregeling was constructed:

“Dat was voor Scherer eene vingerwijzing en bracht hem op het denkbeeld, dat als slechts alle in- en uitvoer langs onze vestigingen plaats had onder onze contrôle, wij ook het middel in de hand hadden om de hoofden van de verschillende staatjes in het rechte spoor te houden” (That was for Scherer a finger-post and brought him to the idea, that if only all imports and exports took place through our establishments under our control, we should also have the means in hand to keep the chiefs of the various statelets on the right track).

The 1880 Samalanga test was, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the gewichtige antwoord op de vraag van Pel in zijn brief van 30 April 1875 wat, na voltooiing van zijn plan, moest gedaan worden in ons politiek en handelsbelang — the weighty answer to the question Pel himself had posed in his letter of 30 April 1875: what, after the completion of his plan, was to be done?

The 1884 abolition under the Concentratie

The Samalanga post was abolished in 1884 under the Concentratie. The abolition was part of the general withdrawal from the coastal posts that the Concentratie prescribed: de betrekkingen van assistent-resident ter Noord- en Oostkust en van controleur der onderafdeeling Samalanga werden ingetrokken tegelijk met de opheffing der vestigingen op laatstgenoemde plaats en te Telok Semawé (the positions of assistant-resident on the Noord- en Oostkust and of controleur of the onderafdeeling Samalanga were withdrawn at the same time as the lifting of the establishments at the latter place and at Telok Semawé). The abolition of the post and of the controleur der onderafdeeling Samalanga was, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the operational emblem of the Concentratie’s self-defeating character: the withdrawal from the coastal posts removed the very instruments through which the scheepvaartregeling could have been administered. Under the Demmeni besluit of 13 October 1884, the three call-ports of the Noord- en Oostkust — alleen Edi, Segli en Oleh-leh voor de geheele Noord- en Oostkust (only Edi, Segli and Oleh-leh for the entire Noord- en Oostkust) — were fixed in place of the abolished posts, and Samalanga was thus formally excluded from the open-port system the scheepvaartregeling required.

Significance (Van Heutsz account)

Samalanga’s significance in Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract rests on its being the empirical origin of the scheepvaartregeling prescription — the place whose 1880 kruisboot test gave Scherer the fingerwijzing that became the central prescription of the entire tract; the Noordkust statelet at which a Dutch post was established in 1877 after heavy fighting as part of the verzoeningspolitiek-era occupation of the Onderhoorigheden; the site of the murder of the Dutch emissary Soetan Maharadja, whose bangoen (blood-price) the Samalanga chiefs evaded by uitvluchten; and the post abolished in 1884 under the Concentratie — the operational emblem of the Concentratie’s self-defeating withdrawal from the coastal posts through which the scheepvaartregeling could have been administered.

Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)

In June 1913 a fourteen-year-old boy armed with a rentjong forced his way into the canteen at Samalanga and attacked the station master who happened to be staying there — one of the Atjeh murders. The zelfbestuurder T. Tjhi’ Moehammad of Samalanga was the eighth signatory of the letter of 1933.

Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)

Samalanga was a landscape of the North Coast of Atjeh — one of the coastal districts which submitted in the first years of the Acheh War — where Colonel Karel van der Heijden was wounded during his first expedition in 1878, and through which the middle section of the coastal tramway was the last to be built because of the persistent political troubles.

The war years and administration

At the civil formation of the end of 1878 one controller was placed at Samalanga for the north coast. When Colonel Karel van der Heijden took up the post of military and civil commandant of Atjeh on 30 June 1878, it was during his first expedition — directed against Samalanga — that he was wounded. Under the resolution of 29 May 1883 Samelanga belonged to the few harbours remaining open for import and export (with Oelèë Lheue, Sigli, Lho Seumawè, Idi and Meulaboh).

The tramway

In the budget of 1900 funds were granted for the tramway Sigli–Lho Seumawè; because the survey of the middle section, lying in the landscape Samalanga, was not yet possible owing to the political condition, the construction was taken in hand from Sigli and from Lho Seumawè outward. The washing-away of three iron bridges by bandjirs (floods) caused further delay, so that the whole new stretch could be taken into use only in April 1904.

Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)

Verstege gives the warlike reputation of the place its most spirited incident: during the Dutch campaigns against the krijgshaftige volk van Samalangan on Atjeh’s North Coast in 1877 and 1880, the reins of authority there were effectively in the hands of Potjoet Maligoï, “de halve zuster van den door opium-gebruik ontzenuwden Samalanganschen vorst” (“the half-sister of the Samalangan prince unnerved by opium use”), an energetic woman who had the men who would not fight or behaved cowardly “eenvoudig ontmannen” (“simply emasculated”) — “de teugels van het gezag” (“the reins of authority”) going so far, in one example, that the Dutch saw how lad-hearted men are treated there (see Van der Heyden’s Samalangan campaign). In the June-August 1880 campaign against it, which at first was unfavourable for the Dutch, but came at last to a good result, “we had to contend with a stubborn kamp”, Verstege writes (after Kielstra).

See Also

Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu

Detachement under a captain. Plain with barren lands from nearly criminal ‘rooftbouw’ (robber agriculture). Site of the Battle of Batèë Ilië (visible from Batèë IliëRegion whose inhabitants are stereotyped as horsemeat- and snake-eaters.north coastof Aceh where the tertiair heuvelland is absent south of it.Noordkust; site of one of two weefschooltjes (weaving schools) for reviving Acehnese weaving.Landschap/onderafdeeling in the afdeeling Noordkust van Atjeh. Had a controleur from 1878. The zelfbestuurder provided a landing field. Site of a weefschool (weaving school) initiated by the local oelèëbalangRegion; itsoelèëbalang’s supremacy was refused by the onderhoofd of Oelèë Glé. Site of Batèë Ilië fortress and the Samalanga-expeditie.

Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 62, 66, 67, 105, 188, 295, 312, 323, 402, 412.

Source

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.

“Dispereert Niet: Twintig Eeuwen Historie van de Nederlanden”, Deel XI, by A. Algra and H. Algra (Franeker: T. Wever, 1946). De Karbouw — Zijn betekenis voor de volken van de Indonesische Archipel, by J. Kreemer (‘s-Gravenhage / Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve, 1956), p. 124. De Atjehers, by C. Snouck Hurgronje, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1893-94), passim.

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; Appendix.

De Geconcentreerde Stelling in Groot-Atjeh, ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders Van Cleef, 1885, p. 24.

Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 38, 40, 53, 137.

Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 62, 66, 67, 105, 188, 295, 312, 323, 402, 412.

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, 67-68. OCR: DLP-158.

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