1885

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tagsyear, timeline, colonial, dutch, achehnese, military, tramway, oil, coal
aliases1885 AD, the year 1885, 1885 (year)

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People

Places

Events

Completion of the Geconcentreerde Stelling (1885)

1885 saw the completion and occupation of the Dutch geconcentreerde stelling (concentrated position) in Groot-Atjeh. On 1 March 1885, the evacuation of external posts was declared complete and the new fortified line surrounding Kota-Radja and Olehleh was established.

Withdrawal Operations (January–February 1885)

The critical evacuation of distant posts:

Posts in the New Stelling

The completed geconcentreerde stelling included: Kota-Pohama, Pakan-Kroeng-Tjoet, Lamjong, Boekit-Karang, Roempit, Tjot-Iri, Lampermej, Siroen, Lambaroe, Lamrong, Lampeneroet, Ketapan-Doea, Blang, Lamdjamoe, and Lamtih.

Security Measures and Military Reductions

On 1 March 1885, Colonel H. Demmeni established strict strafbepalingen (penal provisions) against weapons possession and introduced a pass system requiring population to pass through designated posts. Three field battalions departed for Java: the 10th Battalion on 24 February 1885, the 11th Battalion on 1 March 1885, and the 2nd Battalion returned in July 1885.

Account from Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. (1954) — 1885

1885 is mentioned in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. in connection with the early Acehnese religious resistance — as one of the years of the resistance that would culminate in the colonne Schmidt of 1910–1911. The career of Teungkoe Sjech Saman di Tiri, whose Tiriō family would sustain the resistance across three generations, reaches back into the 1880s.

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 De Buitenbezittingen (1917) — 1885

1885 was the year in which military necessity drove the construction of the ceintuur-trambaan — the belt-tramway — along the celebrated postenlinie (line of forts) surrounding Kota Radja. According to the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account, the belt-tramway was connected by three straalbanen (radial lines) to Kota Radja, and thereby to the older tramway running to the roadstead at Oelèe Lheuë which had been built in 1875 and converted to a tramway in 1882. The resulting network formed a wheel-like pattern — a circular line with three spokes — that allowed rapid movement of troops and matériel between the central base at Kota Radja and the chain of fortified posts enclosing it.

The postenlinie itself, the famous defensive line around Kota Radja that had defined the geography of the Dutch occupation since the 1870s, was rendered obsolete by the betrayal of Toekoe Oemar in 1896. With the abandonment of the postenlinie, the utility of the belt-tramway likewise disappeared: it was “gradually cleared” (geleidelijk opgeruimd) in the years after 1896. In its place, the long tramway of 1897 onward followed the Dutch extension of authority into the Atjeh Dependencies, binding successive military posts to the command centre at Kota Radja.

Significance

The 1885 belt-tramway marks the high point of the postenlinie strategy — the doctrine that the Dutch position in Atjeh could be secured by a perimeter of fortified posts around Kota Radja connected by rail. Its abandonment after 1896 reflects the deeper strategic shift that opened the long Atjeh campaign of conquest and pacification.

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

The year of execution — in the Koloniaal Verslag’s own formula, “al onze troepen begaven zich toen binnen de nieuwe postenlinie, en hiermede was de concentratie voltooid” (“all our troops then went inside the new line of posts, and with this the concentration was completed”). Verstege reconstructs the year from the official journal: between 5 and 14 January the northern forts (Djerir, Indrapoerie, Gle Kambing, Long Lemoh, Tjot Basetoel, Samagani, Lepong Ara, Pantej Karang) were returned to the field; from 10 to 20 January the evacuation south of Anak Galoeng cost 4 dead and 30 wounded with offensive actions on 15 and 20 January; between 12 and 28 February followed Boekit Seboen, Boekit Lampaja, Kroeng Raba, Toengkoep, Anak Galoeng with Boekloe, Senelop, Montassik and Pakan Badak; from 9 to 26 February the clearing of the 1000-metre free strip alone cost 3 dead and 15 wounded, from 12 to 31 March 8 killed and 25 wounded. The line was occupied on 1 March 1885: eighteen semi-permanent posts (from Kota Pohama over Lamjong, Boekit Karang, Roempit, Tjot Iri, the Wachthuis aan de Lingkar, Lampermej, Siroen, Lambaroe, the watchhouse of Lamsajoen, Lamrong, Lampeneroet, the watchhouse of Lamara, Ketapang Doewa, Blang, Lamdjame to Lamtih) enclosing 6,700 hectares and requiring about 4,500 men (see Completion of the concentrated position (March 1885)). On 2 February Toekoe di Tiroe proclaimed from Anak Galoeng that the sign of victory was revealed by the retreat of the unbelievers (see Proclamation of Toekoe di Tiroe (2 February 1885)); on 25 February the watch of Penditi was surprised in bright daylight. The government report of 4 March declared that the concentration had finished in the most favourable way, “marvellous” — but the soldiers abandoned with tears of rage and pain the bentings they had defended so long, “some with house and all given to the flames” — and majoor Perelaer’s chronicle (see Guerilla raids inside the concentration line (1885)) then shows how the Atjehnese attacked watches and patrols inside the line almost weekly, broke up the Décauville tramway, cut the telephone wires, fired on Oleh-leh and even on the blockhouse at the Kali Lengkar, so that on 15 October the navy had to fire to protect the roadstead, and beri-beri made a third cemetery at Kota Radja necessary — while the English Straits Times of 2 December 1885 explained these reverses with insinuations of corrupt military authorities. On 8 December 1885 the former minister Fransen van de Putte declared in the Eerste Kamer that the concentration had turned out excellently, that the reports were not at all disquieting, and held out to the country the prospect that “when a generation or two will have passed, the rest in Atjeh will be restored”. And at the year-end the Dutch public was edified with the news that the English negotiator of the Tenom affair, Maxwell, had been raised to the peerage, and Sir Julian Pauncefote decorated, while the Penang Chinese Koh Thian Poh got a golden watch (see Nisero affair (1883–1885)).

See Also

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 1885.

People

Places

Events

Account from Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. (1954) — 1885

1885 is mentioned in Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. in connection with the early Acehnese religious resistance — as one of the years of the resistance that would culminate in the colonne Schmidt of 1910–1911. The career of Teungkoe Sjech Saman di Tiri, whose Tiriō family would sustain the resistance across three generations, reaches back into the 1880s.

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 De Buitenbezittingen (1917) — 1885

1885 was the year in which military necessity drove the construction of the ceintuur-trambaan — the belt-tramway — along the celebrated postenlinie (line of forts) surrounding Kota Radja. According to the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account, the belt-tramway was connected by three straalbanen (radial lines) to Kota Radja, and thereby to the older tramway running to the roadstead at Oelèe Lheuë which had been built in 1875 and converted to a tramway in 1882. The resulting network formed a wheel-like pattern — a circular line with three spokes — that allowed rapid movement of troops and matériel between the central base at Kota Radja and the chain of fortified posts enclosing it.

The postenlinie itself, the famous defensive line around Kota Radja that had defined the geography of the Dutch occupation since the 1870s, was rendered obsolete by the betrayal of Toekoe Oemar in 1896. With the abandonment of the postenlinie, the utility of the belt-tramway likewise disappeared: it was “gradually cleared” (geleidelijk opgeruimd) in the years after 1896. In its place, the long tramway of 1897 onward followed the Dutch extension of authority into the Atjeh Dependencies, binding successive military posts to the command centre at Kota Radja.

Significance

The 1885 belt-tramway marks the high point of the postenlinie strategy — the doctrine that the Dutch position in Atjeh could be secured by a perimeter of fortified posts around Kota Radja connected by rail. Its abandonment after 1896 reflects the deeper strategic shift that opened the long Atjeh campaign of conquest and pacification.

Account from The Geology of Indonesia (1949) — 1885

The Telaga Said drilling

For the 1885 Telaga Said drilling see the entry on Telaga Said drilling (1885). In summary: in 1885 the government crew under Fennema’s leadership, despatched with drilling equipment to assist the private concessionary Zulkler, drilled the Telaga Said well to “an outstanding success” — the founding technical episode of the northern-Sumatran oil industry, and the originating act of the corporate sequence that would lead to the 1940–1941 production of the East Atjeh, Tamiang and Atjeh oil complex oil fields on Atjeh territory.

The Rinaud West-Atjeh coal survey

1885 is also the year of Rinaud’s survey of the coal seams of the West coast of Atjeh — the earliest systematic colonial-era observation of Atjeh coal, and the earliest evidence of the colonial state’s scientific penetration of the Atjeh coastal zone after the military consolidation of the early 1880s. Rinaud’s survey recorded three West-Atjeh Paleogene coal localities: the Krueng Kluet (No. 13, “very thin seams”), South of Tapatuan (No. 14, “Seam 3 ft thick… 10 places”), and NW-Krueng Teunom (No. 15, “Seam 2½ ft thick”). For the full account see the entry on Rinaud.

The Fennema Bukit Sunur topographical survey

1885 is further the year of Fennema’s topographical survey of Benkulen, in which “a great number of outcrops of old miocene coal were located” in the Bukit Sunur area. The Bukit Sunur coal field would subsequently be distinguished into four fields by Philippi (1918), but the original discovery and topographical recording is Fennema’s. The Bukit Sunur field is in Benkulen rather than in Atjeh, but it is part of the same Sumatran coal province of which the Atjeh coals are the northern component.

Significance

1885 is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is the year of the founding technical episode of the northern-Sumatran oil industry (the Telaga Said drilling) and of the earliest systematic colonial-era observation of Atjeh coal (the Rinaud West-Atjeh survey). The combination of these two events in a single year marks 1885 as the founding year of the colonial mineral economy of northern Sumatra — the year in which both the oil and the coal records of the region begin, and the year accordingly in which the documentary sequence that leads, via the 1890 founding of Royal Dutch and the 1907 amalgamation with Shell, to the 1940–1941 production of the Atjeh oil fields is inaugurated.

See Also

Source

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”).

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, Fennema drilling), p. 49 (Table 13, Rinaud 1885 West-Atjeh coal localities), p. 55 (Fennema 1885 Bukit Sunur topographical survey).

Account from Atjeh by H.C. Zentgraff (1938)

Zentgraff describes the Tengkoe Sjech Saman di Tiro’s ultimatum letter of September 1885 to resident Van Langen at Koetaradja as weinig minder dan een ultimatum: hij stelde de zaak zeer simpel: of tot den Islam overgaan en met de Atjehers in vrede leven, of met geweld te worden verjaagd met het vooruitzicht nà dit leven de Hel! The letter opened with the Arabic formula: De lof zij aan ALLAH alleen, die zijne belofte gehouden, zijnen dienaar tot overwinning geleid. The Dutch reply came three years later, in the kabinetsbrief of 15 August 1888, citing Sura 2 verse 257: “Laat geen dwang in den Godsdienst zijn.”

Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia.

De Geconcentreerde Stelling in Groot-Atjeh, ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders Van Cleef, 1885, pp. 26–45.

Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 65-87, 72-74, 92-95, 108-110. OCR: DLP-158.

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