1872

Events, people, places, and concepts related to the year 1872, as mentioned in Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 by P. H. van der Kemp (1900).

People

Account from Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis (1955)

The following account is drawn from the parliamentary history of the Dutch Second Chamber as narrated by Vermeulen in the colonial section of the 1955 fourth revised edition of Rengers’s *Schets*.

1872 is the year in which the Indies government announced to the Sultan of Atjeh the forthcoming visit of a Dutch envoy charged with negotiating a new treaty. The announcement produced an Atjehnese request — relayed through the resident of Riouw — that the mission be postponed on the pretext of internal discord in Atjeh that had first to be settled. The Dutch government acceded, only to discover that the Atjehnese chiefs had used the delay in Singapore to visit the consuls of Italy and the United States.

The 1872 announcement

In 1872, the year after the Sumatra-tractaat of 1871 had freed the Dutch hand on Sumatra, the Indies government announced to the sultan the visit of an envoy “ter onderhandeling over een nieuw verdrag” (for the negotiation of a new treaty). The mission was consistent with the source’s insistence that, in 1871, conquest of Atjeh was not yet contemplated — only the suppression of piracy. The envoy’s brief was, presumably, to convert the failed 1857 contract into a new, more rigorous instrument.

The Riouw pretext

The announcement produced, the source records, an Atjehnese request relayed through the resident of Riouw. Atjehnese chiefs visited the resident to ask that the Dutch mission be postponed, “onder voorgeven, dat er in Atjeh onenigheden waren gerezen, die eerst bijgelegd moesten worden, ten einde een versterking van het Nederlandse gezag te verkrijgen” (on the pretext that discord had arisen in Atjeh that had first to be settled, in order to obtain a strengthening of Dutch authority). The Dutch government acceded to the request.

The Singapore consuls

The Dutch government later learned that the Atjehnese chiefs had used the postponement to visit, in Singapore, the consuls of Italy and the United States. With the American consul, “was zelfs een voorlopige overeenkomst gesloten” (a preliminary agreement was even concluded). The Dutch demand for clarification from the Sultan of Atjeh, and the unsatisfactory response, produced the declaration of war of 26 March 1873.

Significance

1872 is the year of the failed Dutch-Atjehnese diplomatic approach — the last attempt at a negotiated settlement before the slide to war. The Riouw postponement and the Singapore consul-visits are the immediate operational sequence that, in the source’s narrative, transformed the anti-piracy posture of 1871 into the conquest posture of 1873.

Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)

In 1872 the father of H. N. A. Swart was pensioned; the family returned to the Netherlands by the sailing ship Kosmopoliet II in 121 days round the Cape, touching at Mauritius, the Cape of Good Hope, Ascension and Saint Helena, landing at Brouwershaven and settling finally at Kampen. In October 1872 the Dutch believed war with Atjeh unavoidable “without possessing a single even moderately reliable datum concerning the land and its people”.

Nineteenth-Century Historiography & Campaign Analysis

Acehnese Rearmament and Foreign Diplomacy

Beginning in August 1872, as recorded in Dutch parliamentary reports and noted by General G. G. Booms, the Aceh Sultanate accelerated its imports of modern weaponry through British mercantile channels in Penang. Between August 1872 and early 1873, Acehnese authorities imported an estimated 15,000 rifles along with proportionate quantities of gunpowder and munitions, fortifying their coastal positions around Meuraxa and Oleh-leh.

Parliamentary Debates in The Hague

In the autumn and winter of 1872, the States-General in The Hague engaged in extensive debates regarding Dutch relations with Aceh, culminating in the presentation of the Parliamentary Note on Relations with Aceh 1872-1873 by Minister of Colonies I. D. Fransen van de Putte. During 1872, lawmakers discussed the growing inevitability of intervention, though military authorities failed to establish a permanent General Staff of the KNIL to prepare operational plans.

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

Towards the close of the year the Atjeh policy of the coming war was fixed. Verstege cites, from the revelations afterwards made in the secret committee of 1874, the confession of the minister of Colonies Fransen van de Putte in the session of 18 April 1874, that he had written to the Governor-General on 24 October 1872: “laten wij oppassen om in Godsnaam geen oorlog met Atjeh te maken, want het zal ons meer bloed en geld kosten dan geheel Atjeh waard is” (“let us take care, for God’s sake, to make no war with Atjeh, for it will cost us more blood and money than the whole of Atjeh is worth”). Five months later the same minister was nevertheless drawn into the very war against which he had warned — “Inderdaad, wij ervaren het”, Verstege adds (“Indeed, we are experiencing it”). The same author recalls that already in June 1870 the government had laid down a resolute policy towards Atjeh with the hope of soon being discharged of the bond of Atjeh’s independence laid on the Netherlands by the treaty of 1824, the Minister writing to the Governor-General on 24 June 1870 that too little consideration for Atjeh must not be a reason any longer for abstention “where interference is duty” (see the debate of April 1874).

Source

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), passim.

Nederlanders over de Zeeën: 350 Jaar geschiedenis van Nederland buitengaats, onder redactie van Dr. H. J. de Graaf, met medewerking van Prof. G. Gonggrijp, W. R. Menkman en Prof. Jhr Dr P. J. van Winter, 2e geheel herziene druk (Utrecht: W. de Haan N.V., MCMLV), p. 216.

Over de eerste expeditie tegen Atjeh: Een antwoord aan Generaal de Stuers, G. G. Booms, ‘s-Gravenhage: A. van Hoogstraten & Zoon, 1875, pp. 6-11; Atjeh gedurende de tweede expeditie en later, Een Oud Officier, Batavia: Ogilvie & Co., 1876, pp. 5-10.

Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.