1880

Properties3
descriptionThe year of Scherer's Nota of 19 April 1880 from Kota-Radja — the foundational document of the scheepvaartregeling concept — and of the high-water mark of the Van der Heijden governorship before his onverantwoordelijke dismissal in early 1881.
tagsyear, timeline, aceh, colonial, military, atjeh, dutch, dutch-colonial, 19th-century, aceh-war, achehnese
aliasesYear 1880, 1880 AD, the year 1880, 1880 (year), 1880 (Van Heutsz 1893 perspective), het jaar 1880

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Figures, places, and events in Acehnese history associated with the year 1880.

People

Account from Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. (1954) — 1880

1880 is mentioned in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. in connection with the Aceh War — “Samalanga in 1880. Three times over…” — as the year of the Dutch attempt(s) on Samalanga, which Van Heutsz would finally capture in 1901. The persistence of Samalanga as a target across twenty years marks the slow pace of the early colonial campaigns.

Source: Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., by G. W. T. Dames, Maj. Inf. K.N.I.L. b.d. (‘s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1954).

Figures, places, and events in Acehnese history associated with the year 1880.

People

Account from Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. (1954) — 1880

1880 is mentioned in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. in connection with the Aceh War — “Samalanga in 1880. Three times over…” — as the year of the Dutch attempt(s) on Samalanga, which Van Heutsz would finally capture in 1901. The persistence of Samalanga as a target across twenty years marks the slow pace of the early colonial campaigns.

Source: Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., by G. W. T. Dames, Maj. Inf. K.N.I.L. b.d. (‘s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1954).

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*.

1880 is the year in which, the source records, “het gehele jaar 1880 werd de rust geen enkele maal verstoord” (the entire year 1880 tranquillity was not disturbed a single time) in Atjeh. The Dutch accordingly made the mistake of considering the war “als gewonnen en afgelopen” (as won and finished). Van der Heyden was replaced by a civil governor; the Dutch reverted to the waiting posture. The lesson — that half-work in Atjeh was “schadelijk en zelfs gevaarlijk” (harmful and even dangerous) — would, in the source’s verdict, be learned only after fifteen more years of war.

The 1880 false dawn

The 1880 calm — a full year without disturbance — was, in the source’s narrative, the type-specimen of the Dutch misreading of Atjehnese resistance. The mistake of treating the calm as the end of the war produced three consequential decisions: (i) the replacement of the military governor Van der Heyden by a civil governor; (ii) the resumption of the waiting posture; and (iii) the implicit assumption that the Groot-Atjeh perimeter around Kota-Radja could be held indefinitely without further offensive.

The Teungku Um resurgence

The calm did not last. “Het duurde niet lang, of de aanvallen van bendehoofden, o.a. van de later bekend geworden Teungku Um begonnen weer” (It did not take long before the attacks of bandit-chiefs, among others the later-famous Teungku Um, began again). The Teungku Um who would, in 1896, defect to the Atjehnese side and unhinge the Dutch perimeter, first appears in the source in this 1880 context as one of several bandit-chiefs whose attacks resumed after the false dawn.

The £100,000 ransom

The British crew of a stranded English ship, the source records, were only released after ten months against a ransom of “f 100,000” (ƒ 100,000). The episode is the type-specimen of the international-commerce cost of the 1880 Dutch misreading: a full year of “calm” produced a fifteen-year war in which even neutral shipping was hostage.

The civil governor’s three options

A newly-appointed civil governor — the source does not name him — submitted an advice to the government offering three options: (i) concentratic achter een versterkte linie (concentration behind a fortified line); (ii) nieuwe agressie (new aggression); or (iii) herstel van het sultanaat (restoration of the sultanate). Although the governor himself “het eerste ten sterkste ontried” (most strongly advised against the first), the States-General chose the concentration option. The concentratie-stelsel thus began — though the source dates the formal beginning to the years immediately after 1880 rather than to 1884.

Significance

1880 is the type-specimen of the false dawn in Atjeh. The calm of that year, the Dutch misreading of it as victory, and the resulting decision to revert to the waiting posture together set the pattern for the concentratie period that would last until 1896 and the defection of Teungku Um.

Account from De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893) — Scherer’s Nota and the high-water mark

Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract De onderwerping van Atjeh identifies 1880 as the year of Scherer’s Nota of 19 April 1880 — the Nota, gedagteekend: Kota-Radja, 19 April 1880 by which the acting assistent-resident on the Noordkust of Atjeh first articulated the principles of the scheepvaartregeling that Van Heutsz would, twelve years later, adopt as the central prescription of his 1893 tract — and of the high-water mark of the Van der Heijden governorship that the Nota was designed to consolidate.

Scherer’s arrival on the Noordkust (1879–80) and the Gighen–Samalanga test

The intellectual origin of the scheepvaartregeling is the Noordkust tour of Scherer as wd. assistent-resident in 1879–1880. Van Heutsz’s encomium, in the 1893 tract, fixes the arrival and the originality in a single sentence:

“op dit tijdstip was juist, als wd. assistent-resident, op de Noordkust gekomen de man — de tegenwoordige resident Scherer — uit wiens helder brein het eerst het denkbeeld van eene rationeele regeling voor handel en scheepvaart in verband met onze vestigingen op de kusten, is gesproten”.

The empirical origin of the scheepvaartregeling lay in the Gighen and Samalanga episodes of 1880, where two Dutch emissaries — Said Abdellah and Soetan Maharadja — had been murdered and the local chiefs had repeatedly evaded payment of the bangoen (the blood-price) by excuses. Scherer’s solution was to lay a kruisboot (a marine patrol vessel) before the harbours of Gighen and Samalanga and to collect the bangoen by levying duties on the in- and out-going goods. Van Heutsz records the result and the inference Scherer drew from it:

“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. 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”.

The Gighen–Samalanga test was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, 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?

Scherer’s Nota of 19 April 1880

The Nota’s dateline — Kota-Radja, 19 April 1880 — fixes its provenance in the seat of the Atjeh government at the moment of Van der Heijden’s high-water mark. The Nota’s central proposal was the controlled routing of all Atjehnese maritime trade through Dutch-administered ports, with the in- and out-flow of goods placed under Dutch contrôle and duties levied on the trade as the instrument of coercion over the hoofden van de verschillende staatjes. Van Heutsz’s formulation of the principle:

“Geen in- noch uitvoer toelatende, dan op de plaatsen waar wij gevestigd waren en daar alles geplaatst onder onze contrôle, zouden wij het heft in handen krijgen, omdat wij dan, zooals thans reeds in meerdere brochures is gezegd, op de geldkist zouden zitten. Wij zouden daardoor in staat zijn zoowel tot beloonen als straffen, wij konden daardoor dwingen tot gehoorzaamheid, tot volgen van bevelen”.

The op de geldkist zitten formula — sitting on the cash-box — was Scherer’s own phrase for the political-economic mechanism the scheepvaartregeling would establish: by routing all trade through Dutch-administered ports and levying duties on its in- and out-flow, the colony would acquire the middel tot beloonen als straffen — the instrument of reward and punishment — and the middel om de hoofden van de verschillende staatjes in het rechte spoor te houden. The Nota thus proposed a stelsel that would, in Van Heutsz’s reading, complete what the military conquest of Groot-Atjeh had begun.

The high-water mark of the Van der Heijden governorship and the dismissal of early 1881

The Nota of 19 April 1880 was the policy culmination of the Van der Heijden governorship that had begun in June 1877 and had produced, by September 1879, the day-order declaring “geheel Groot-Atjeh ten onder gebragt”. Van Heutsz’s verdict on what the Nota, had it been implemented, would have achieved is the most sustained counter-factual of the 1893 tract:

“zeker is het niet te veel gezegd dat, ware het den Generaal van der Heijden gegeven geworden, dit op een juisten grondslag berustende stelsel uit te voeren, hij, die reeds over het brandpunt van het verzet winnaar was van Groot-Atjeh, hij, de alom gevreesde, maar tevens zeer geëerbiedigde veldheer en krachtige bestuurder, de man met het vaste karakter en individualiteit bij uitnemendheid, zou in korten tijd het geheele rijk den voet op den nek gezet, het eerst tot volkomen rust en vrede, daarna tot welvaart hebben gebracht”.

The Van der Heijden governorship had, Van Heutsz argues, given Van der Heijden “in werkelijkheid wat niemand vóór hem en tot dusverre nog niemand na hem heeft gehad, te Groot-Atjeh den brand onder den voet” — what no one before him and so far no one after him has had: in Groot-Atjeh, the fire under the foot. The governorship was, however, cut short “in het begin van 1881 op onverantwoordelijke wijze” — Van Heutsz’s verdict on the dismissal that opened the post-Van-der-Heijden decade. The 1893 tract’s most quoted line is the counter-factual that fixes the dismissal as the original sin of the post-Van-der-Heijden decade:

“ware hij niet in het begin van 1881 op onverantwoordelijke wijze ontslagen, dan behoorde de Atjeh-krijg thans reeds lang tot het verledene”.

The dismissal was the act of G.-G. van Lansberge, against whose policies Van der Heijden had repeatedly closed the havens on his own responsibility; the immediate consequence was the appointment of a Civiel Gouverneur and the abandonment of Van der Heijden’s scheepvaartregeling programme. The Nota’s stelsel was, for the next two years, deferred: “tot eeuwige schade en schande voor Nederland, dat hem van zijn voetstuk liet afrukken” — to the eternal shame and disgrace of the Netherlands, which let him be torn from his pedestal — and the first partial application of the scheepvaartregeling would come only in May 1883 under Laging Tobias.

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. 22, 26–28, 30, 99, 102, 114. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.

Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)

On 16 October 1880, aged seventeen, H. N. A. Swart engaged as a volunteer soldier for six years with a bounty of eighty guilders in the 8th Regiment of Infantry at Deventer. In 1880 the costs of the Atjeh-oorlog amounted to 115 million guilders.

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

1880 was the year of the Dutch column’s advance into the northern part of the XXVI Moekims of Groot-Atjeh, in which the kampongs (villages) of Siem and Kroeng Kali were burnt after two days of fighting.

In Hooijer’s account

G. B. Hooijer recorded that the column which in 1880 had to penetrate the northern part of the XXVI Moekims had daar reeds een krachtig verzet ondervonden en eerst na twee dagen strijd de kampongs Siem en Kroeng Kali kunnen naderen en in vlammen doen opgaan. When the population that had fled returned after some time, the head appointed over it by the Dutch was murdered by Toekoe Nja Hassan. The post subsequently erected at Kroeng Kali by General van der Heijden remained a thorn in the enemy’s eye and was later slighted by a new governor.

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

From Kielstra Verstege cites the verdict that in this year the war had really ended: “Sedert September 1879 viel van geen onzer versterkingen een schot” (“Since September 1879 no shot fell on any of our fortifications”). On 24 January 1880 the Panglima Sagi of the XXV Moekims, Toekoe Nja Abbas Setia Oelama, was sworn at Kota Radja; in July Toekoe Moeda Daoed guided the hoeloebalang Potjoet Abbas from the XXII Moekims to Kota Radja to submit; on 4 October 1880, after the close of the fast, a great number of heads came together at Kota Radja to pay homage to general van der Heyden; many exiled heads, mostly from the XXII Moekims, came progressively to submit. On 19 April the general had handed to the government his important Nota over the form of administration in Groot-Atjeh with earnest warnings — that were not heard. Against Samalanga a stubborn campaign had to be undertaken (June-August), at first to the Dutch disadvantage but finally to good result (see Potjoet Maligoï). In September the general was recalled to Batavia on high command and given a brilliant feast at the Concordia, where Van Kinsbergen had decorated the hall with the Dutch lion pressing the Atjeh flag into the dust under its claw, the lance to which that flag was fixed broken — “Helaas! hoe zijn de rollen sedert veranderd!” (“Alas! how the roles have changed since!”), Verstege comments. On the Tenom river the two French travellers Vallon and Guillaume had been murdered on 9 March 1880. In November the commissioner der Kinderen came to Atjeh for justice re-organisation; and at the end of the year the government received the first warnings, soon repeated in February and March 1881, of the revival of religious zeal fed from Turkey among the Muslims of the archipelago (cf. Proclamation of Toekoe di Tiroe (2 February 1885)).

See Also

Sources

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. 217.

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.

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. 26.

Acknowledgement of sources. This article is a single consolidated account combining the material previously held in this entry with the account given in De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897) by G. B. Hooijer. Dutch terminology has been rendered in English, the original Dutch being retained only in direct quotations and in bibliographic citations.

Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 66-69, 70-71, 33. OCR: DLP-158.

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