Expanded account from The Achehnese, Vol. I — Teunom
Teunom is a place on the West Coast of Acheh mentioned in The Achehnese Vol. I both for its chief’s arbitrary punishments and for its energetic imeum, who is contrasted with the adventurer Teuku Uma as an example of how an entrenched adat-chief could hold his own against a powerful upstart.
The Chief of Teunom’s Arbitrary Punishments
In his discussion of how, “in Acheh and its dependencies, just as in other Mohammedan countries, arbitrary punishments are often elaborated and inflicted by the chiefs,” Snouck Hurgronje cites the present chief of Teunom as a telling example: “Thus the present chief of Teunom used often to cause adulterous lovers to be deprived of their virility by the objects of their passion. He also punished many transgressors of the law as to fasts by having them led about the country on all fours for some days with rings in their noses like buffaloes, and forcing them to eat grass.” The anecdote illustrates the sweeping quasi-judicial authority exercised by West-Coast uleebalangs within their own domains, as well as the grotesque ingenuity of the punishments they devised.
The Imeum of Teunom versus Teuku Uma
The other appearance of Teunom in Vol. I is in Snouck’s discussion of the rise of Teuku Uma from chief of a small band to a regional power on the West Coast. Snouck observes that Uma’s career demonstrated the comparative advantage which chiefs with their own rakans (followers) and material resources enjoyed over mere ambitious military leaders. “Against an energetic chief such as the imeum of Teunom even Teuku Uma could make but little head.” Snouck’s parenthetical note adds: “[An account of the subsequent adventures of Teuku Uma, since 1892, will be found in the Preface.]” The contrast is significant: the imeum of Teunom is the type of the rooted hereditary chieftain, as opposed to the mobile, ambitious Teuku Uma whose power was of the opportunistic, military sort.
Significance
Though Teunom appears only briefly in Vol. I, its double association — with the cruel ingenuity of West-Coast adat-justice and with the strong hereditary chieftainship that kept even Teuku Uma at bay — gives it an illustrative importance in Snouck’s analysis of the political fragmentation of the West Coast. The place is treated more fully in Vol. II of The Achehnese.
Account from The Geology of Indonesia (1949) — Krueng Teunom
The 1922 Zwierzycki observation
Zwierzycki’s 1922 entry for the NW Krueng Teunom locality, as reproduced by Van Bemmelen, records “Seam 2½ ft thick, interbedded with sandstone and shale”. The locality is cited in the standard form “ZWIERZYCKI, 1922, p. 35” and is assigned to the Paleogene series of Atjeh coals. The 2½-ft seam — about 0.75 m thick — is the thickest of the three West-Atjeh Paleogene coal seams recorded by Rinaud and Zwierzycki, the others being the “very thin seams” of the Krueng Kluet (No. 13) and the 3-ft seam South of Tapatuan (No. 14).
Place in the Atjeh coal record
For the wider context of the West-Atjeh coal localities, see the entries on Krueng Kluet and Krueng Raja. The NW Krueng Teunom locality is one of the three West-Atjeh Paleogene-coal localities in Zwierzycki’s consolidated inventory, alongside the Krueng Kluet (No. 13) and South of Tapatuan (No. 14). The Paleogene localities are exposed along the inland margin of the West-Atjeh coastal plain, where the rivers of the West-Atjeh coast emerge from the central mountains and flow across the older Tertiary rocks before reaching the recent alluvium of the coast.
Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)
Schmidt’s clearing of Teunòm was one of the conditions that reduced the disturbed area of the Meulaboh country in 1909 to Beneden Wòjla, Boebon and Seunagan. In later years he executed there the commission to bring in a band more than three hundred strong under T. Bén Boebon and his nephew T. di Rangkoh, with which infantry patrols could obtain almost no contact; knowing the district and its people through and through, he brought about a peaceful submission “without shooting and without laying low.” The people came in in rags, having lived since the raid on their ladang on katèla and palm hearts, and fell hungrily on the rice and fish the marechaussée provided. H. N. A. Swart noted on the journal: “You have achieved a fine result, the more so since no use was made of weapons.” Van Heutsz had once written on a journal of Swart’s: “now it is time for Captain Swart to go to Teunom.”
Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)
Teunom was the landscape on the West Coast of Atjeh whose radja made himself notorious by the capture of the crew of the English steamer Nisero (Nisero affair) — a region whose people of Teunom-Panga, Löh Boeboen and Boeboen kept the surroundings of Meulaboh unsafe through the early 1880s.
Insecurity, 1883
During 1883 the passar and the establishment of the controller at Meulaboh had to endure repeated nocturnal attacks of robber bands; the warship Madura had to come to the rescue before the bands withdrew, to attack Meulaboh again later. It was in the Panga river’s mouth — “Koela Panga” — that the English steamer Nisero stranded in the night of 10–11 November 1883 on a voyage with a cargo of sugar from Soerabaja bound for Suez, where her captain had tried to take in coal at Poelò Breuëh; the crew, once ashore, was imprisoned by the Radja of Teunom and the ship plundered.
The expedition and the closing
When the Radja’s evasions continued, a military expedition under Colonel H. Demmeni steamed from Oelèë Lheue to Teunom on 4 January 1884, opened hostilities after the ultimatum remained unanswered, and administered an exemplary chastisement; the coast was thenceforth kept closed to a wide distance for all import and export, the fisheries were impeded, and Dutch warships fired upon everything within their reach. Only on 10 September 1884, after the negotiations of Governor P. F. Laging Tobias with Mr. Maxwell and the promise of f 100,000 to whoever brought back the prisoners, of the reopening of the harbours and of the lifting of the closing of the surrounding statelets, were the captives delivered up. Parallel to these events ran the treachery of Teukoe Oemar at Lambeusoë, the place to which he had been sent to negotiate with the Radja.
See Also
- Acheh
- Teungku di Weueng
- Chief of Teunom
- Teuku Uma
- Imeum of Teunom
- Atjeh’s Westkust
- Coal in Atjeh
- J. Zwierzycki
- Krueng Antjong
- Krueng Kluet
- Krueng Raja
- Rinaud
- Tapatuan
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1885
- 1922
- H. N. A. Swart
- General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh (1943)
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Atjeh
- Nisero affair (1883-1884)
- Radja of Teunom
- Meulaboh
- H. Demmeni
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Place where Teukoe Oemar settled (along with Woyla). Radja van Teunom held the Niserosschip castaways.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 353, 402.
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.
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 49 (Table 13, coal localities of Sumatra, No. 15).
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 XI, XV.
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 54–57.
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. 353, 402.