Figures, places, and events in Acehnese history associated with the year 1882.
De Buitenbezittingen Account
1882 was the year in which the management of the small Atjeh railway line between the roadstead of Oelèe Lheuë and the military station at Kota Radja — built in 1875 by the Department of War shortly after the outbreak of the Atjeh-war — was transferred from the War Department to the Department of Civil Public Works (B.O.W.). Under the B.O.W. the spoorbaantje was “narrowed” (versmald) into a trambaan — that is, converted into a tramway suited to lighter, more flexible traffic, marking the first step in the transformation of the original military field railway into a proper tramway network.
This administrative transfer proved short-lived. In 1891, after the construction of the belt-tramway along the postenlinie (line of forts) in 1885, the management of all Atjeh lines reverted to the War Department. The Atjeh lines would only become a permanent civil concern again with the post-1896 reorientation of Dutch Atjeh policy and the long-line construction beginning in 1897.
Significance
The 1882 transfer is the first administrative recognition that the Atjeh railway had outgrown its purely military origins and required civil engineering oversight. The narrowing (versmalling) of the track to a tramway gauge likewise signals the early conceptual shift from a military field railway to a permanent transport infrastructure — even though, in practice, the line would remain under military management for most of the next two decades.
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*.
1882 is the year in which the Billiton Maatschappij concluded a suppletoire overeenkomst — supplementary agreement — with the governor-general F. s’Jacob extending its tin concession on Billiton (Banka-Billiton) for thirty-five years, in violation of the Nederlandsch-Indisch Mijnreglement of 1850 as amended in 1873 (which required public competition for any extension as a rule, with royal authorisation as the exception). The affair provides the immediate background to the Rengers-era Mijnwet debates that, after 1899, would reach into the Gajoland and Pedir oilfields.
The Billiton extension
The Billiton Maatschappij had obtained its original 40-year concession in 1852 under the Nederlandsch-Indisch Mijnreglement of 1850. In 1873 the regulation had been tightened: extensions now required, as a rule, open public competition; royal authorisation was reserved as an exception. In 1882 the Billiton Maatschappij and the governor-general s’Jacob nevertheless signed a supplementary agreement extending the concession by 35 years without public competition — a procedure later cited in the Tweede Kamer as the precedent the Rengers-era Mijnwet of 1899 was meant to prevent.
Connection with Atjeh
The 1882 Billiton precedent is the immediate background to the Mijnwet debates of the late 1890s and early 1900s in which Cremer’s mining law was hammered out. Those debates reached directly into Atjeh: when, after the Mijnwet was enacted, Van Heutsz — then governor of Atjeh — reported that the Perlak Petroleum Maatschappij was letting the Koninklijke work its Atjeh fields for ƒ 2.50 per ton, the resulting controversy led in 1910 to the insertion of a new Article 5a into the Mijnwet requiring legislative approval of government exploitation contracts — including, by clear implication, future Atjeh oil contracts.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
This was the year of the loudest warnings. In the whole country innumerable addresses were laid before the government over the worrying state of Atjeh and the untenable position of the garrison army; the many protests of great and small newspapers — all remained without any consequence (“Doodzwijgen was ook nu de leuze” — “Keeping dead silent was again the watchword”, Verstege writes). On 16 November 1882 the interpellation by Rutgers van Rozenburg, Insinger, Wintgens and de Casembroot forced minister de Brauw to maintain that optimism was foreign to him and “that we were lord and master on Sumatra” (as the newspaper account had it; for Verstege’s correction see the pamphlet’s long note); the member Rutgers van Rozenburg warned: “Zoo als die politiek van denkbeeldigen vrede wordt voortgezet en de goede raad van den militairen kommandant verder wordt in den wind geslagen, dan zal het nog te vergieten bloed komen voor rekening van den onverantwoordelijken Minister van Koloniën” (“If this policy of an imaginary peace is continued and the good advice of the military commander is further cast to the winds, the blood yet to be shed will come to the account of the irresponsible Minister of Colonies”). At the end of the year de Casembroot laid before the government his special Nota on the signs of demoralisation in the Indies army, which the minister denied in a contra-nota. On 15 December 1882 the former minister Fransen van de Putte advised in the Eerste Kamer, “the product of continuous accurate study and ripe consideration”, the retreat to a limited position: Kraton, Atjeh river, Oleh-leh — precisely the position that the experience of the brave Pel had proved untenable. On 23 December 1882 the Kamer was informed that governor Pruijs van der Hoeven had asked for his pension.
See Also
- 1897
- Kota Radja
- Atjeh-tram
- Departement der Burgerlijke Openbare Werken
- 1885
- Oelèe Lheuë
- Departement van Oorlog
- 1891
- Ceintuur-trambaan
- 1875
- Postenlinie
- Billiton Maatschappij
- Mijnwet
- s’Jacob
- Gajoland
- J. T. Cremer
- Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij
- J. B. van Heutsz
- Perlak Petroleum Maatschappij
- Pedirse
- 1850
- 1910
- Mijnwet art. 5a (1910)
- 1899
- 1873
Sources
De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914, Deel I, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), p. 68 (section “De Atjeh-tram”).
Figures, places, and events in Acehnese history associated with the year 1882.
De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914, Deel I, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), p. 68 (section “De Atjeh-tram”).
Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland van 1849 tot 1901, by Mr W. J. van Welderen baron Rengers, 4th rev. ed., Vol. IV: Oost-Indië 1891-1918 by Dr W. H. Vermeulen (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955), pp. 303-306.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 74-78. OCR: DLP-158.