Selimoen

Selimoen (also written Selimoen, Selinoen) was a kampong on the Atjeh-rivier in the interior of Atjeh, described as “the last refuge of the insurgents” in the Selimoen expedition of 13 August – 15 August 1879, the final Dutch military operation of the first phase of the Atjeh-oorlog. The submission of Toekoe Moeda Daoed at Selimoen, and the flight of Panglima Polem and the Imam Longbatta to the upper lands of Pedir, closed the large-scale operations in Great Acheh; on 5 September 1879 the active columns were dissolved. In Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract De onderwerping van Atjeh, Selimoen is the operational culmination of the Van der Heijden conquest — the village whose occupation closed the campaign that had opened in July 1878 with the XXII Moekims operation and that had continued in 1879 with the XXVI Moekims operation, and whose reduction produced the dagorder of 5 September 1879 declaring geheel Groot-Atjeh ten onder gebragt (the whole of Greater Atjeh subdued).

Background

After the campaign against the XXVI Moekims of 4 July [1879] a last expedition was deemed necessary to pursue the departed enemy into his furthest hiding-places and to drive him entirely out of the territory of Atjeh. Information had been received that some 1,000 persons from the XXII and XXVI Moekims were in the valley of Lamtobah, provided with firearms, ammunition and provisions. The enemy was to be brought to bay from two sides. A column was to be embarked for Lampanas on the north coast east of Kroëng Rajah and Batoe Poetih, and to advance thence to Lamtobah, after which a part was even to push through to Selimoen on the Atjeh-rivier, the last refuge of the insurgents. At the same time a column from Indrapuri over Gleiêng along the river was to approach the same place from the other side.

The Approach and Submission

On 27 July [1879] the troops disembarked at Lampanas and reached Lamtobah on 29 July without much opposition. The Imam of Lamtobah offered his submission. On 1 August [1879] the hostile Kepaja Doewa was punished. This march appeared to have made an impression on the enemy.

On 30 July [1879] two Atjehers with a white flag presented themselves to the Dutch authority at Indrapuri, as envoys of a blind priest, Habib Machmoed by name, who with 25 followers waited outside the fortification and was the bearer of a letter from some chiefs, among whom Toekoe Moeda Daoed, who exercised authority at Selimoen and had hitherto been known as one of the Dutch army’s most stubborn enemies. In that letter they offered the governor and military commander their submission and declared that they would exhort their people to return from the mountains and the woods to the kampongs. By another letter, addressed to Toekoe Kadli, the latter’s mediation with the governor was invoked: “The great misfortune, brought by the war upon the three sagis of the land, makes me decide to offer my submission.”

The Capture of Selimoen

The march to Selimoen, which had first been given up, was now, in order to hasten the somewhat protracted negotiations, undertaken after all. On 13 August [1879] the columns of Indrapuri and Lamtobah set out at the same time. The latter still had to fight at Kepaja Doewa and Lam Soemboeng, and reached Selimoen on 15 August [1879]. The other column had already arrived there the day before. It had met the most serious opposition at Lampisang, where Toekoe di Tiroe with his band had awaited it.

Toekoe Moeda Daoed and other chiefs now submitted; those who, like Panglima Polem and the Imam Longbatta, refused to give up the fight, fled to the upper lands of Pedir. “The return march to Indrapuri resembled a triumphal procession. Everywhere the population showed a peaceful disposition; in all kampongs, even on the commanding hills, white flags were planted; the troops, accompanied by the chiefs who had come in submission, were awaited in the kampongs by men, women and children, and provided with refreshments; all enemy bentings were abandoned.”

The End of Large-Scale Operations

With the march to Selimoen, the operations in Great Acheh came to an end. On 5 September [1879] the active columns were dissolved. “To be sure, the principal among the hostile chiefs — Toewankoe Haschim, who still kept watch over the young pretender to the sultanship Toewankoe Daoed [destined for the sultan’s rank in 1874], Imam Longbatta, Panglima Polem, his son Radja Koelala and others — persisted in their hostile attitude, but their means were scattered and they had placed themselves beyond the reach of our troops, namely at Kemala, in the interior south of Pedir.”

Account from Cool & Hooijer (1889) — the kampong and its terrain

In Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889), W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer — the chief of the staff and the brigade-chief of the Lamtoba column, which bivouacked at Selimoen from 15 to 18 August 1879 — give the only participant’s description of the place. Approached from the north, the kampong row was hidden from the eyes of the approaching column by a ridge of steep, partly crumbled hillocks some ten metres high, stretching along the northern side of Selimoen, “behind which rocky, natural fortifications, between which and over which the footpath wound, they could easily have taken one very strong position after another.” The kampong itself was “far from clean”, overshadowed by a continuous canopy of palm- and other fruit-trees, and was enclosed on the east and south by steep chalk hills: the eastern ones rising between the Selimoen- and Lamkabir rivers, the southern lying in the sawahs between the Selimoen- and the Atjeh rivers. Eastward and upstream of Selimoen the valley-floor narrowed gradually, though still covered as far as the eye reached with rice-fields; by the guides’ information the road to Kemala led through that valley, and the mountain saddle dividing the Atjeh valley from the ground of Segli seemed of slight height. Near the left side-rivulet Kroeng Semilik the ravine of the Atjeh river widened to a fifteen-hundred-metre valley holding the narrow Aloe-er Gintang kampong strip, narrowed again at the little kampong Lip, and at Pantjar entered the wider sawah-ground whence the river ran past kampong Kanalo to Selimoen, enclosed on its right bank by four-hundred-and-fifty-metre chalk hills pressing like a wedge between the Atjeh and Selimoen rivers.

Of the strategic geography the eyewitnesses noted, standing on the plateau edge on 14 August, that the valley of Selimoen was the last important stretch of the Atjeh river’s basin: kampongs might group themselves in the far distance along the Selimoen and the soft slopes might be covered with pepper-gardens, but the valley itself soon became too narrow to support a numerous population with rice — “and in a land as unsafe as Atjeh, even for its own population, no settlement can subsist except in the immediate neighbourhood of the ground on which its food grows.” A footnote adds the later correction: the Selimoen proved to carry too little water to possess, hidden behind the Goudberg, any extensive basin.

The Dutch stay of 15–18 August 1879

The bivouac of the column of Majoor Lubeck had been pitched on 14 August; Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach’s column took in its bivouac on 15 August at ten o’clock, at the kampong’s edge on the right bank of the Selimoen river, Lubeck’s camp lying some eight hundred paces off behind the hills near the Atjeh river. The submission of Toekoe Moeda Daoed took place here — the meeting at the dry slokan, the great white flag, the calm dignity of “the supreme head” in the white jacket — and in the afternoon of the same day Toekoe Tjoet Hadjet, called Toekoe Ajer Alang, a brother of Panglima Polim, came in to submit. Some of the kampong houses, which had served as lodgings for the fugitives of the XXII and XXVI Moekims, were with Toekoe Moeda Daoed’s consent broken up for shelters and firewood; in one of them smallpox-sick were found, and that house was spared. In the kampong’s missigit the hostile chiefs — Massa-an, Panglima Polim, Toekoe Radja Koeala, the Iman Longbattah — had still been assembled on the day before the columns’ arrival, deliberating on what stood before them, before they fled to Reng-Reng. From Gerlach’s bivouac the survey-brigade covered the terrain: the chief went with a patrol to the hills behind Selimoen to take bearings, so that the kampong and its rivers entered the Schetskaart van het boven-stroomgebied der Atjeh-rivier of the book; and on the river the strictest water-discipline was ordered — drinking- and cooking-water and the kitchens upstream, then the officers’, then the soldiers’ bathing-places, then the stretch for the coolies and chain-gangers, with the latrines furthest downstream. In the evening of the 15th some shots were fired on Lubeck’s bivouac; a section of infantry was posted on a dominating hill between the two camps. On the morning of 17 August Lubeck’s column marched back to Indrapoeri with Toekoe Moeda Daoed; on 18 August Gerlach’s column took its return over the mountains — and Selimoen, the eyewitnesses could write in 1889, had not since been entered by a European: “where and how many tens of years an eye may again fall on it, who knows.”

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

In Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract De onderwerping van Atjeh, Selimoen — the village in the Sagi of the XXVI Moekims of Groot-Atjeh — is the operational culmination of the Van der Heijden conquest of Groot-Atjeh, the destination of the multi-column Selimoen tocht of September 1879 whose completion produced the dagorder of 5 September 1879 declaring geheel Groot-Atjeh ten onder gebragt (the whole of Greater Atjeh subdued). The tocht was a multi-column operation — columns from Lamtoba and Indrapoeri visited Selimoen in September 1879 — recorded by the Commandant van het Indische leger in the same September 1879 report that confirmed the geheel Groot-Atjeh ten onder gebragt declaration. Van Heutsz quotes the Commandant’s report on page 20 of the 1893 tract:

“Aan het stoute, met beleid ontworpen operatieplan volgens hetwelk Indrapoeri werd overmeesterd, de rechter rivieroever gezuiverd, Gleinn aangetast, de XXVI Moekims van verschillende zijden binnengedrongen en Selimoen door colonnes uit Lamtoba en Indrapoeri bezocht werd, hebben wij het groote succes te danken” (To the bold, well-designed operational plan by which Indrapoeri was overpowered, the right river-bank cleared, Gleinn attacked, the XXVI Moekims penetrated from various sides, and Selimoen visited by columns from Lamtoba and Indrapoeri, we owe the great success).

The dagorder opens: Dagorder. Officieren, Ambtenaren, Onderofficieren en Soldaten! Met den veldtocht tegen de XXVI Moekims, schitterend besloten door den tocht naar Selimoen; is geheel Groot-Atjeh ten onder gebragt (Day-order. Officers, Officials, Non-commissioned officers and Soldiers! With the campaign against the XXVI Moekims, brilliantly concluded by the expedition to Selimoen, all of Groot-Atjeh has been subdued). Selimoen is thus named in the very opening sentence of the dagorder — the village whose occupation was the immediate occasion of the geheel Groot-Atjeh ten onder gebragt declaration. Van Heutsz’s verdict on the chronology is sweeping: In September 1879, nog geen 14 maanden na het begin van zijne zegerijke veldtochten, had Generaal v. d. Heijden aan alle verzet een einde gemaakt, was hij de door den vijand gevreesde overwinnaar van het aloude manfeliklijke Atjehsche rijk, zetelde het Ned. bestuur volgens de Atjehsche begrippen, door het recht van verovering, op den troon van den Sultan (In September 1879, barely 14 months after the beginning of his victorious campaigns, Generaal v. d. Heijden had made an end to all resistance, was he the victor — feared by the enemy — of the ancient manly Atjehsche empire, the Dutch administration sat — by Atjehsche conceptions, by the right of conquest — on the throne of the Sultan).

Selimoen as a route-node

Selimoen was, in Van Heutsz’s later diagnosis of the routes from the Noordkust into Groot-Atjeh, a route-node on the landward path from Pedir through Lampanas or Kroeng Raja and Lambada southward into the XXII and XXVI. Van Heutsz records the route on page 84 of the 1893 tract: De beste en meest gebruikte weg van Pedir naar Groot-Atjeh loopt echter langs de Noordkust en kan men deze naar verkiezing volgen tot in Groot-Atjeh, dan wel tot Lampanas of Kroeng Raja en van een dezer plaatsen Zuidwaarts via Lambada naar Selimoen enz (The best and most-used road from Pedir to Groot-Atjeh, however, runs along the Noordkust, and one can follow this at choice into Groot-Atjeh, or else to Lampanas or Kroeng Raja, and from one of these places southward via Lambada to Selimoen etc.). The Selimoen node was thus the southern terminus of the principal landward route from Pedir through the Noordkust — the route whose closure, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, was the operational prerequisite of the seal of Groot-Atjeh from the Noordkust.

Selimoen and the post-1884 resistance

The Van der Heijden conquest of Selimoen did not, however, extinguish the Atjehnese resistance in the XXVI Moekims. Van der Heijden was dismissed onverantwoordelijk (irresponsibly) in early 1881, and the 1884 Concentratie undid the operational prestige the Van der Heijden conquest had established — ons prijsgeven van de veroverde positie in de vallei van Groot-Atjeh en ons verhuizen op groote schaal (our surrender of the conquered position in the valley of Groot-Atjeh and our moving-house on a large scale) into the geconcentreerde stelling. The post-1884 resistance in the XXVI Moekims was, in Van Heutsz’s narrative, the territory in which Tengkoe di Tirou — the unifier of the Groot-Atjeh resistance after the Concentratie — would establish his wereldlijke vlag (worldly flag) by the over-reach into the worldly authority of the panglima sagi XXVI.

Selimoen and the T. Moeda Rajoet peper of 1890

Selimoen was, in Van Heutsz’s later diagnosis of the post-1884 hoeloebalang-politics of the XXVI Moekims, the opgeschuurde peper (hoarded pepper) of T. Moeda Rajoet — the hoeloebalang whose 1890 request to export peper via Oleh-leh under the condition of a contanten payment and free Dutch military movement through the XXVI Moekims was, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the voorwaarden (conditions) the Dutch should never accept. Van Heutsz records the request on page 106 of the 1893 tract: bezit T. Moeda Rajoet bovendien nog al veel in de XXVI Moekims opgeschuurde peper, die hij in 1890 verzocht te mogen uitvoeren via Oleh-leh, onder voorwaarde dat hij f 10000 contanten zou krijgen en wij dan vrij en ongehinderd met onze troepen door de XXVI Moekims zouden kunnen marcheeren. Voorwaarden mogen ons niet gesteld worden, maar met handigen dwang bereikt men ook zijn doel (T. Moeda Rajoet possesses besides still quite a lot of hoarded pepper in the XXVI Moekims, which in 1890 he requested permission to export via Oleh-leh, on condition that he would receive f 10000 cash and we would then be free and unhindered to march with our troops through the XXVI Moekims. Conditions may not be imposed on us, but with adroit compulsion one also achieves one’s goal). The Selimoen-peper of T. Moeda Rajoet was, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, the fiscal stake whose handige dwang — adroit compulsion — would convert the hoeloebalang from the post-1884 resistance’s passive supporter into the colonial state’s active co-operator.

Account in Hooijer’s De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897)

The Selimoen was a river of Groot-Atjeh which joins the Atjeh-stroom in the deepest part of the Atjeh valley, named by G. B. Hooijer as the far limit of the view enjoyed from the Dutch post at Anagaloeng.

In Hooijer’s description

Contrasting the drier and healthier ground of the XXII Moekims with the marshes of the XXVI Moekims, Hooijer wrote that the free view over the mountain masses — als coulissen achter elkander wegschuivend tot daar, waar de Atjeh-stroom en de Selimoen-rivier zich vereenigen in het diepste gedeelte der vallei — sliding away behind one another like stage wings to the point where the Atjeh-stroom and the Selimoen river unite in the deepest part of the valley, disposed the mind more to cheerfulness and vitality than the wild vegetation with which the lower lands were covered.

Maréchaussée station (1898)

the 1930 jubilee number of Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië records the localisation of the Korps Maréchaussée in 1898: Staff at Koeta Radja; 1st Division at Selimoen; 2nd Division at Indrapoeri; 3rd Division at Tjot Mantjang and Glé Broet; 4th Division at Tjot Goet; 5th Division at Lam Baroe and Lho’-Nga. Selimoen was the station of the 1st Division.

By 1910 the corps had been redistributed to Blang Kedjeren, Meulaboh, Takèngan, Lam Meulo and Lho Soekon.

In the eye survey of Groot-Atjeh (1937)

Seulimeum was one of the two onderafdeelingen of the afdeeling Groot-Atjeh covered by Dr. C. E. Gomperts’s eye survey of 1937, its estimated population for 1937 being 26,786 — 8,580 men, 9,748 women and 8,458 children, the larger of the two subdivisions.

It was one of only four places in Groot-Atjeh not populated exclusively by Atjehnese; and one of the districts where, Western influence having penetrated further and traffic being busier, Gomperts looked for — and did not find — the concentration of conjunctivitis follicularis that would have been expected had that condition been a form of trachoma.

The Volkstelling 1930 had supposed that in the onderafdeelingen Seulimeum and Lho-Nga a slight natality had long existed, connected with a slight fertility of the women through factors not certainly known — avitaminosis among this population group was suggested — and with great child mortality. In the xerophthalmia data Seulimeum appears among the valley moekims whose rice harvest in 1936–1937 was less favourable, yet whose xerophthalmie frequency was practically equal to that of Lam-Teuba with its rice surplus.

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. 107-108.

De onderwerping van Atjeh, door J. B. van Heutsz, Majoor der Infanterie, gewezen Chef van den Staf in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef; Batavia: G. Kolff en Co., 1893, esp. pp. 18, 19, 20, 22, 84, 106. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.

De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh, door G. B. Hooijer, Gep. Luit.-Kolonel O. I. Leger, met 24 platen (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam. OCR-filename: 20260719_140140_DLP-134-De_verlaten_posten_in_Groot_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, p. 42.

Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 44-58. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.

Acknowledgement of sources. This article is a single consolidated account combining the material previously held in this entry (De Bruyne 1912; Van Heutsz 1893; Hooijer 1897) with the eyewitness account given by W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer in Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889). Dutch terminology has been rendered in English, the original Dutch being retained only in direct quotations and in bibliographic citations.

Het Korps Maréchaussée in Atjeh: De Atjehsche Garde, 1890 - 2 April 1930 (“The Corps of Maréchaussée in Atjeh: The Atjehnese Guard”), Extra Jubileum-nummer of Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië issued for the fortieth anniversary of the corps (1930), pp. 1-16. Offprint DLP-143, Bibliotheek KITLV, accession 621 116 794.

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.

tags	place, kampong, acehnese, aceh-war, atjeh, 19th-century, sagi-xxvi, village, groot-atjeh, river, geography, marechaussee, medicine, public-health, 1937
aliases	Selinoen, Atjeh-rivier Selimoen, Last Refuge of the Insurgents, Selimoen-rivier, Seulimeum, the Selimoen river, the kampong of Selimoen, Selimoen kampong, onderafdeeling Seulimeum

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