1883

Properties3
descriptionThe year of Laging Tobias's arrival in March 1883, of the May 1883 scheepvaartregeling, of the killing of Njag Hassan in late May 1883, of the August 1883 visit of G.-G. 's Jacob, and of the October 1883 letter to Tekoe Nanta doorschemerende the possible restoration of the sultanate.
tagsyear, timeline, colonial, oil, atjeh, dutch, aceh-war, 19th-century, disaster, achehnese, aceh
aliases1883 AD, the year 1883, 1883 (year), Year 1883, 1883 (Van Heutsz 1893 perspective), 1883 CE, 1883 Atjeh, rapjaar 1883, 1883 Nisero

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Events, people, places, and concepts related to the year 1883, as mentioned in Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 by P. H. van der Kemp (1900).

People

Places

Events

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Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu

Night of 8-9 November: ship ‘Nisero’ stranded at Koeala Panga, 20 km south of Tjalang. Survivors taken to boven-Teunom. 7 died and were buried there (later re-interred at Tjalang).

Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 50.

Source

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.

Events, people, places, and concepts related to the year 1883, as mentioned in Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819 by P. H. van der Kemp (1900).

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. 50.

People

Source

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.

Account from The Geology of Indonesia (1949) — 1883

The Zulkler oil concession

Van Bemmelen’s account of the 1883 Zulkler concession, in the petroleum chapter of *The Geology of Indonesia*, is the only printed source:

“In 1883 a concession for oil had been granted in North Sumatra. The concessionary, J. ZulkER, met with considerable difficulties in drilling on account of an abundant flow of gas and asked the Government Bureau of Mines for assistance.”

The 1883 concession is the first documented oil concession in northern Sumatra, and its granting accordingly marks the beginning of the documentary sequence of northern-Sumatran petroleum exploration. The technical difficulty that Zulkler encountered — “an abundant flow of gas” — is the first recorded encounter with the high-pressure gas zones that would become a recurrent feature of northern-Sumatran drilling. The fact that Zulkler had to ask the Government Bureau of Mines for technical assistance is the first documented instance of the public-private partnership model that would subsequently characterise the entire East Indian oil industry.

Other events of 1883 relevant to Atjeh

The year 1883 is also significant in the wider colonial-geological record for the publication of Verbeek’s Jaarboek van het Mijnwezen 1883 references — Verbeek 1883, p. 564 (Gunung Besie on the Westkust van Sumatra), p. 563 (Aer Dingin and Paningahan), p. 562 (Batu Mendjulur), pp. 252 and 310 (Sungei Lassi) — which form part of the wider late-nineteenth-century geological literature on the Sumatran mineral province of which Atjeh is the northern terminus.

Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923) — 1883

“Dan kan men het verstaan dat in de Atjeh-geschiedenis het jaar 1883 als een ‘rapjaar’ te boek staat; een jaar dat ook voor de economische ontwikkeling van het gewest rampspoedig geweest is” — for Langhout the year showed the bankruptcy of the first civil government: the Atjehnese struggle took on an ever more religious character, trusted chiefs fell away, cholera counted victims by thousands, the earthquake tormented Koeta Radja to a wide distance, and the whole coast had to be closed again but for the six official harbours. The year ended with the Nisero stranded and her crew captive — the affair whose ransom and chastisement would fill 1884.

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

On 16 March the Gouverneur Laging Tobias took over the administration from Pruijs van der Hoeven, who had asked and obtained his discharge; Laging Tobias reported the unfavourable state of Atjeh always truthfully, and soon came to the conviction that the split of the highest authority at Atjeh had been a great mistake. On 21 June the member Rutgers van Rozenburg brought the worrying state of Atjeh into discussion in the Tweede Kamer, with the answer of the government already pointing to a considerable shrinking of the occupied terrain; the member proved that such a retreat would be “a step of the most fatal kind, ruinous chiefly in its consequences for the future of the whole of India”. On 17 July 1883 a number of men of different social positions and tendencies addressed the King in a petition, respectfully and clearly motivating why the concentration had to be dissuaded in the country’s interest, in the first place because the Atjehnese people and chiefs could ascribe it to nothing but impotence and fear; the address was never answered. The Governor-General s’Jacob, who had obtained permission (announced in the Kamer on 22 May and 21 June) to visit Atjeh, departed on 4 August; on 16 August at Kota Radja he declared, thank God, his intention neither to shrink the terrain nor to reduce the troops “as long as the existing conditions continue”; and on 23 August the Netherlands was gladdened by the news that he had returned to Batavia from his Atjeh journey with the report that the state of Atjeh was satisfactory — while four days after the optimistic telegram of 21 June (that Groot-Atjeh was nearly cleansed of enemies) the postholder of Anak Paja had been treacherously murdered with eight pradjoerits. In December 1883 major Kielstra held in the Indisch Genootschap his lecture on the Atjeh question, whose footnote would become one of the decisive texts on the sultanate question and Pel’s letter of 30 April 1875 (see Pel’s missive to the Governor-General (30 April 1875)).

See Also

Source

The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 7 (petroleum history, Zulkler concession).

Account from De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893) — Laging Tobias and the May 1883 scheepvaartregeling

Van Heutsz’s 1893 tract De onderwerping van Atjeh identifies 1883 as the year of Gouverneur Laging Tobias’s arrival in March 1883 — the Civiel Gouverneur who inherited “een zware ondankbare taak” from the Civiel Gouverneur regime of 1881–1883 that had followed the Van der Heijden dismissal — and of the May 1883 introduction of the scheepvaartregeling that Van Heutsz would single out, ten years later, as “alles wat men kon verlangen” — everything one could desire.

Laging Tobias’s arrival in March 1883

Laging Tobias took over the Governorship of Atjeh in March 1883. Van Heutsz describes the situation he inherited:

“In Maart 1883 kwam de Gouverneur Laging Tobias aan het bestuur, die den toestand te Groot-Atjeh zeer ongunstig vond”.

The gloom was Laging Tobias’s own retrospective: in his later article “Het herstel van het sultanaat in Atjeh”, published in the December 1886 number of the Indische Gids, he confessed that “Reeds zeer kort na mijn optreden als gouverneur van Atjeh, kreeg ik de overtuiging dat onze toestand in Atjeh bijna hopeloos was”. The political obstacle Laging Tobias faced was Toeankoe Haschim’s consolidated position at Kemala: Haschim had, in the years of Dutch lijdelijkheid, “den tijd van onze lijdelijkheid, tweespalt en onterredenheid meesterlijk benut” to install his pupil Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed as the recognised successor to Sultan Machmoed Sjah (who had died in 1874).

The May 1883 scheepvaartregeling

Laging Tobias’s second initiative — and the one Van Heutsz most prizes — was the introduction in May 1883 of the scheepvaartregeling that Scherer had first conceived and that Laging Tobias was the first to apply:

“Reeds in Mei 1883 toch, zoo verhaalt ons Scherer, vaardigde hij, onder nadere goedkeuring der Regeering, een besluit uit, waarbij, volgens zijn (Scherer’s) denkbeelden, eene contrôle op handel en scheepvaart werd ingevoerd, die alles wat in- en uitgevoerd werd door onze handen deed gaan en aan ons toezicht onderwierp”.

Van Heutsz’s verdict, in the 1893 tract, is the highest praise he accords any Governor in the entire catalogue:

“de scheepvaartregeling door Scherer voorgesteld en door Laging Tobias ingevoerd gaf alles wat men kon verlangen”.

The May 1883 scheepvaartregeling thus stands, in Van Heutsz’s diagnosis, as the high-water mark of the post-Van-der-Heijden policy — the one measure that, had it been sustained, might have spared the Regeering the policy oscillations of 1884–1892.

The October 1883 letter to Tekoe Nanta and the December 1883 withdrawal

The second Dutch move toward the sultanaat-restoration was the letter Laging Tobias addressed, in the first half of October 1883, to the old Tekoe Nanta of the VI Moekims (also called Tekoe Lampadang) — the letter in which the Governor doorschemerde (let it be hinted) that, in case of submission by the chiefs of the war party, “een herstel van het sultanaat met Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed als sultan wel mogelijk was”:

“liet de Gouverneur van Atjeh daarop in een in de eerste helft van October 1883 aan den ouden Tekoe Nanta der VI Moekims (ook Tekoe Lampadang genoemd) geschreven brief doorschemeren, dat, ingeval van onderwerping van de hoofden der oorlogspartij, een herstel van het sultanaat met Toeankoe Mohamad Daoed als sultan wel mogelijk was, en dit was het eerste blijk, dat de Atjehers van onze zijde kregen omtrent de mogelijkheid van herstel van hun ouden regeeringsvorm, zij het dan ook onder Ned. souvereiniteit”.

The October 1883 letter was, in Van Heutsz’s reading, the eerste blijk — the first indication — the Atjehnese had received from the Dutch side that a restoration of their ancient form of government was conceivable, albeit under Dutch sovereignty. The hint came to nothing: the Indische Regeering, after the December 1883 resignation of Minister van Koloniën van Bloemen Waanders — who had himself raised the herstel idea in his August 1883 letter to G.-G. ’s Jacob — gave the Governor of Atjeh to understand that “van een herstel van het sultanaat niets weten wilde” (wished to know nothing of a restoration of the sultanate).

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. 24, 28–33, 39. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-107-De_onderwerping_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.

Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 50–56.

Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 75-79. OCR: DLP-158.

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