Figures, places, and events in Acehnese history associated with the year 1916.
People
Account from Atjeh up to date (c. 1914) — 1916
1916 was a year of projected administrative maintenance in Acheh, situated within the Dutch East Indies. Amidst the global disruptions of the First World War, the Dutch authorities in Sumatra relied on long-term budgetary projections to maintain governance and the ongoing pacification efforts following the Aceh War.
Statistical and Administrative Record
The year 1916 is primarily documented in the Atjeh up to date compilation through multi-year colonial spending plans. The surviving ledgers from this period focus on standardized, predictable provincial budgets:
- Budgetary Projections: Colonial ledgers outline specific allocations for 1916, recording initial project or administrative spending at 99,900 guilders, with a broader aggregate budget category reaching 249,750 guilders.
- Administrative Consolidation: These figures reflect a colony transitioning from the extreme, unpredictable costs of active guerrilla warfare to a stabilized, revenue-generating colonial province. The financial overhead of maintaining the KNIL garrisons and local infrastructure was being absorbed into routine multi-year provincial budgets.
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*.
1916 is the year in which the installation of the Volksraad was proclaimed in the Staatsblad of the Nederlandsch-Indische government. The Volksraad, intended as a first representative advisory body for the Indies, would not be actually installed until May 1918 — a delay that, in the verdict of Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis, made it harder for the moderate leadership of the Sarekat Islam to restrain its radical wing. The year is also notable for the Van Heutsz speech of January 1917 (formulated in the immediate aftermath of 1916’s defence debates) on Indies defence.
The Volksraad in the Staatsblad
By the end of 1916 the institution of the Volksraad was proclaimed in the Staatsblad. The instrument was, however, not actually implemented until May 1918, when the Volksraad was finally installed. The delay was a recurrent pattern of Dutch colonial governance in the ethical-policy era: political concessions came too late to capture the “psychologisch ogenblik” — psychological moment — at which they could have anchored moderate opinion.
The Sarekat Islam context
The slowness of Volksraad implementation made it difficult for the moderate leadership of the Sarekat Islam — the major indigenous political association of the period — to keep its radical wing in check. Snouck Hurgronje’s hoped-for associatie of East and West required, as its complement, the stimulation of indigenous spiritual and political activity; yet the colonial state reacted to the first radical utterances of Indonesian nationalism with alarm. In 1916 Snouck himself, in an advice on an uprising in Djambi, formulated the misgivings: “De offers in arbeid en goed, die ons bestuur van de bevolking eist en waarin zij voor zichzelve geen enkel belang gelegen acht, zijn op zijn minst even zwaar als die, waartoe de tyranniekste anak-radja’s haar ooit hebben verplicht” — the sacrifices in labour and goods that our administration demands of the population, and in which it perceives no interest of its own, are at least as heavy as those to which the most tyrannical of the petty rajas ever compelled it.
Defence debates
In 1916 overste Van der Weyden propagated the priority of the land army over the fleet for Indies defence. In January 1917 his father-in-law Van Heutsz — the former conqueror of Atjeh — told a meeting of the Bond van Vrij-Liberalen that the implementation of the proposals of the 1913 staatscommissie on the fleet would be “een ramp” — a disaster — and recommended the formation of an indigenous militia (inlandse militie). It was a striking reversal for the man who, eight years earlier, had declined to consider such a militia.
Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)
In 1916 the smallpox epidemic was brought to a standstill; a redactor of the Deli Courant visited Atjeh and described in ten articles, Atjeh in Vogelvlucht, a country wholly at rest and in flower. In December the Sarekat Atjeh was founded at Koeta Radja under Swart’s patronage. Schouten attempted to bring in T. Radja Sabi; unrest at Linggö in the Meergebied was suppressed and Penghoeloe Möngkör laid low by the population in September. The tram clerk Beets was fatally attacked. On 7 April 1916 Swart was made Adjutant in Extraordinary Service to the Queen.
Account from De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden (1918) — the Rijstvraagstuk of 1916
In 1916 the Deli Courant — the daily newspaper of the Deli planters, published at Medan — ran a series of articles on the Atjeh rice question, in issues Nos. 162, 167, 171, 172, 183 and 184. The series, known as the Rijstvraagstuk of 1916 — the Rice Question of 1916 — was conducted by the contributors Ackerstaff, Van Tubergen and J. H. Heyl (the last in his capacity as Landbouwadviseur to the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden).
The debate concerned whether the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden could, by systematic development of its rijstbouw (rice cultivation), become the rice-storehouse of the Sumatra’s East Coast plantation belt, and so supply the Deli tobacco and rubber plantations with the rice they required for their imported workforce. Heyl’s article of 8 August 1916 (No. 183) gave the first systematic calculation of the Atjeh rice surplus available for export to Deli: of the 1.6 million pikoel of rice required annually by Deli, “nearly half” could come from Atjeh, more specifically from Groot-Atjeh, Pidie, Meureudu, Samalanga, Lho Soekon and Peureula.
The Rijstvraagstuk of 1916 is the principal contemporary source for the colonial-era debate on the economic integration of Atjeh with the rest of Sumatra — a question that had been moot during the long decades of the Aceh War (1873-1913) and that became pressing in the post-pacification period. The debate is reproduced in summary form by J. Kreemer in his *De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden* (1918).
See Also
- 1915
- Atjeh up to date
- Acheh
- 1917
- Dutch East Indies
- Sarekat Islam
- Bond van Vrij-Liberalen
- Djambi
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Volksraad
- 1918
- J. B. van Heutsz
- 1913
- H. N. A. Swart
- General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh (1943)
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Atjeh-oorlog
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
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.
Atjeh up to date (Statistical and Administrative Compilation, c. 1914). Archival reference DLP-10. Fragmentary OCR extraction containing financial projections and colonial budget tables for 1916.
Figures, places, and events in Acehnese history associated with the year 1916.
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. 344, 353-354.
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 rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, by J. Kreemer (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1918), pp. 22-24 (the Rijstvraagstuk section). Also: Deli Courant, 1916, Nos. 162, 167, 171, 172, 183, 184.