1918

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tagsyear, aceh, colonial, administration, constitutional, petroleum, timeline, volksraad, dutch, catholic, achehnese, 20th-century, aceh-war, civil-administration, acheh, pacification, 1918, atjeh, economic
aliasesYear 1918, 1918 Verbraak death, 1918 civil administration Atjeh, 1918 Atjeh, 1918 AD, 1918 CE, the year 1918, 1918 (year), 1918 separation of powers, 1918 Van Sluys, Year 1918 Atjeh, 1918 pepper disease, 1918 import

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1918 was a doubly pivotal year for the Atjeh-focused reader. It was, on the one hand, the year of the handover of Aceh to a civilian Gouverneur by Generaal Swart — the political closure of the Aceh War forty-five years after the first Aceh expedition of 1873 and seven years after the colonne Schmidt had destroyed the last organised Acehnese armed resistance. On the other hand, it was the year of the Carpentier Alting commission (1918) — the commission appointed under the chairmanship of Prof. Mr. J. H. Carpentier Alting to draft a revision of the constitutional foundations of the Netherlands Indies. The two events together — the civil-government handover in Atjeh and the constitutional-reform commission in Batavia — frame 1918 as the moment at which the Atjeh-derived administrative thinking of the Van Heutsz era was to be constitutionalised for the wider Indies. The same year also saw the death of Pastoor H. C. Verbraak at Magelang in central Java — ten years after his departure from Atjeh in 1908 — and his burial with military honours.

People

Places

  • Magelang — place of Verbraak’s death and burial with military honours.
  • Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden — the colonial administrative unit whose military government was replaced by a civil administration in 1918.
  • Koeta Radja — the new bank building; Hollandsch-Chineesche school opened.
  • Gajo- en Alaslanden — Merino sheep experiment disposed of.
  • Tamiang — figures of the SFC estates begin their published series.

Events

  • The death of Pastoor H. C. Verbraak at Magelang in central Java — recorded by the mission jubilee volume in the sketch by S. Kalff. Verbraak was buried with military honours.
  • The replacement of the military administration of Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden by a civil administration — recorded by the *Na 1795* textbook in the chronological entry “In 1918 werd het militaire door een burgerlijk bestuur vervangen, wat de goede verstandhouding tusschen de regeering en de inlanders heeft bevorderd.”
  • The definitive separation of civil and military authority — September (see Separation of civil and military authority in Atjeh (1918)).
  • Accession speech of Van Sluys: rest and no heavier taxes for the population.
  • Opening of the Javasche Bank agency — 2 December.
  • War-time shipping nadir: the scheepvaart traffic nearly stemmed; Sabang’s trough year (423 vessels, 33,583 tons of coal).

Documents

Other

The November 1918 Volksraad address and the Carpentier Alting commission

According to Mr. Dr. Caron’s chapter De bestuursvormen (“The Forms of Government”) in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946), the Governor-General of the day found occasion “in November 1918 in the Volksraad (People’s Council) to deliver an address in which he set out a programme of development for the central body of representation that would bring fundamental changes in the Indies’ forms of government.” To give effect to this promise, “in 1918 a commission was appointed under the chairmanship of Prof. Mr. J. H. Carpentier Alting for the revision of the foundations of government in the Netherlands Indies. This commission submitted, with its report, a draft law on the state ordering (ontwerp-wet op de staatsordening).”

The Carpentier Alting commission (1918)‘s work was to influence the Dutch constitutional revision of 1922 and the eventual Wet op de Indische Staatsregeling (“Law on the Indies State Regulation”) of 1925. The 1922 revision opened the way for the Proeve-Oppenheim — the Leiden commission of professors (Oppenheim, Snouck Hurgronje, Van Vollenhoven, Carpentier Alting and Kleintjes, with the Indonesian Mr. Oerip Kartodirdjo as secretary) that produced a proeve van een staatsregeling voor Nederlandsch-Indië (“trial draft of a state regulation for the Netherlands Indies”). The eventual 1925 law, however, did not live up to the promise of the 1922 revision: as Caron observes, “no autonomous administrative policy was given to the Governor-General, but the Governor-General was bound, in the exercise of general government, to the King’s instructions.”

The handover of Aceh to a civil Gouverneur

The same year 1918 also marked the formal end of the military government of Atjeh — the handover of Aceh to a civil gouverneur. In Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L.’s phrasing: “Daardoor kon Generaal Swart in 1918 eindelijk een rustig gebied overdragen aan een civiel Gouverneur. Er was een eind aan the lingering disease: the Atjeh War.” (“Thereby General Swart in 1918 could finally hand over a quiet territory to a civilian Gouverneur. There was an end to the lingering disease: the Atjeh-oorlog.”) The daardoor — thereby — refers to the cumulative effect of the colonne Schmidt (1910–1911), the killing of the last Tiriō leaders, and the steady pressure of the patrouilles.

The seven-year gap

The seven-year gap between the military end of the war in 1911 and the political handover in 1918 is Oom Ambon’s quiet argument that the military and the political closures of the Aceh War were not the same. The colonne Schmidt had destroyed the Tiriō bende in 1911; but it took seven more years of patrouilles and political work — the surrender of Panglima Prang Polim to kapitein Colijn, the steady attrition of the remaining onverzoenlijken (“irreconcilables”) — before the country was quiet enough to be handed over.

The opheffing of the detailchement Leuhong

The book notes that the detailchement Leuhong (detachment Leuhong) was opheffed (dissolved) in 1918 — a small military detachment that had been maintained at Leuhong was withdrawn, marking the quiet end of a particular military presence. A soldier had written on 22 August 1912 on Leuhong a note about the 1918 opheffing — still legible in 1934, twenty-two years later, on bekas (former) Marechaussee.

The broader colonial context

1918 was also the year of the end of the First World War in Europe. The book notes that after the First World War “de gedachte aan een buitenlandse vijand (Japan) ernstiger werd” (“the thought of a foreign enemy (Japan) became more serious”) and the regular planning of service schedules began. The handover of Aceh to a civilian Gouverneur in 1918 is therefore part of the broader post-war reorganisation of the colonial army.

The Snijders connection

1918 was also the year in which Cornelis Jacobus Snijders — Opperbevelhebber van Land- en Zeemacht (“Supreme Commander of Land and Sea Forces”) since August 1914 and Chef van de Generale Staf (“Chief of the General Staff”) since 1910 — stepped down from both offices on the conclusion of the First World War in November 1918. The simultaneous closure of the European war and of the colonial Aceh War — the handover of Aceh to a civilian Gouverneur by Generaal Swart — gives the year 1918 a dual significance in the biographer’s framing of Snijders’ career: it is the year in which both the metropolitan command that he had held since August 1914 and the colonial war of which his Kota Alam action of 13 November 1874 had been a small early episode were brought to their respective closures.

The Atjeh-adjacent petroleum industry in 1918

By 1918, the Royal Petroleum Company’s Pangkalan Brandan refinery in Langkat — immediately adjacent to Atjeh — had been the operational core of the wider Koninklijke–Shell concern for fifteen years (since the 1903 “Asiatic” sales-organisation merger and the 1906 founding of the Batavian Petroleum Company). The 1911 absorption of the last independent Indies petroleum company (the Dordrecht Petroleum Company) had completed the unification of the Javanese, Sumatran and Borneo petroleum industries under the Royal Dutch Shell umbrella. The formal end of the Atjeh military government in 1918 thus coincided with the consolidation of the Atjeh-adjacent East Coast petroleum belt as the operational core of one of the world’s major petroleum multinationals.

Account from Na 1795 (1924) — 1918

The *Na 1795* school-history textbook of F. Roorda records the 1918 replacement of the military administration of Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden by a civil administration in the canonical chronological entry:

“In 1918 werd het militaire door een burgerlijk bestuur vervangen, wat de goede verstandhouding tusschen de regeering en de inlanders heeft bevorderd.”

The entry fixes the political closure of the Atjeh-oorlog in the canonical Dutch schoolroom memory: the formal end of the military government in Atjeh, and the putative improvement in relations between the colonial government and the indigenous population that the civil administration was held to have brought about.

Account from Vierhonderd jaren missie (1934) — 1918

The mission jubilee volume of 1934 records the 1918 death of Pastoor H. C. Verbraak at Magelang in central Java in the sketch by S. Kalff. Verbraak was buried with military honours — a final military recognition of the soldatenpastoor of Atjeh who had departed the colony ten years earlier in 1908. The sketch in the jubilee volume is the principal documentary source for the place and circumstances of Verbraak’s death.

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*.

1918 is the year in which the Volksraad was finally installed in May of that year — almost eighteen months after its proclamation in the Staatsblad of 1916. The year marks the political upper bound of the colonial section of Schets eener parlementaire geschiedenis van Nederland van 1849 tot 1901, the last year covered by Dr W. H. Vermeulen in his Oost-Indië in het Nederlandse Parlement 1891-1918.

Installation of the Volksraad

When, by the end of 1916, the institution of the Volksraad had been proclaimed in the Staatsblad, it nevertheless took until May 1918 before the Volksraad was actually installed. The slowness was characteristic of the ethical-policy colonial state, which “[bijna steeds iets te laat kwam, zodat het psychologisch ogenblik gemist werd]” — almost always came a little too late, so that the psychological moment was missed. The moderate leadership of the Sarekat Islam was thereby weakened; the colonial administration’s own slow tempo did half the work of the radical wing.

Vermeulen’s verdict on the colonial parliament

In his closing chapter Vermeulen offered a retrospective judgement on the role of the Dutch parliament in Indies affairs. The Indische debate, he wrote, “heeft iets van een schimmenspel van ideeën en beginselen” — has something of a shadow-play of ideas and principles. “Maar heel zelden krijgen de kamerleden die niet in Indië zijn geweest, een flits te zien van het leven in Indië zelf” — but very rarely did the chambermembers who had not been in the Indies catch so much as a flash of life in the Indies itself. The colonial civil servants trained at Delft and later at Leiden in the ethical ideas were men of good will, but most “opheffers” — uplifters — underestimated the *gevoel van “zijn” — the sense of selfhood — that they provoked in the indigenous population.

The shadow of Atjeh

In 1918 the conquest of Atjeh was thirteen years past. Yet the pacificatie and the conduct of the Van Daalen expedition of 1904 still resonated in the parliamentary discourse. Snouck Hurgronje’s verdict on the bedrijven — the moral underpinnings of the colonial state — could as well have been written of Atjeh as of Djambi: “Voor onze onpersoonlijke druk mist zij de sympathie van ras- en godsdienstsgevoel” — for our impersonal pressure it lacks the sympathy of race and religious feeling. The Atjehnese war was over; the question of its meaning was not.

Significance

The year 1918 is doubly significant in the encyclopedia of Atjeh history. First, it marks the formal end of the military government of Atjeh — the handover of Aceh to a civil gouverneur — and thus the formal close of the forty-five-year Aceh War that had begun with the first Aceh expedition of April 1873. Second, it marks the appointment of the Carpentier Alting commission (1918) — the commission tasked with revising “the foundations of government” of the Indies, including the constitutional framing of the Short Declaration policy first applied in Atjeh by Van Heutsz and Snouck Hurgronje. The two events together — the civil-government handover in Atjeh and the constitutional-reform commission in Batavia — frame the year 1918 as the moment at which the Atjeh-derived administrative thinking of the Van Heutsz era was to be constitutionalised for the wider Indies. The death of Pastoor Verbraak at Magelang in the same year closes, in family and mission memory, the chapter of the Catholic chaplaincy of the Atjeh war-footing that had begun with his arrival in 1874.

Dutch terms used in this article

  • De bestuursvormen — The Forms of Government
  • Volksraad — People’s Council
  • ontwerp-wet op de staatsordening — draft law on the state ordering
  • Wet op de Indische Staatsregeling — Law on the Indies State Regulation
  • proeve van een staatsregeling voor Nederlandsch-Indië — trial draft of a state regulation for the Netherlands Indies
  • Nederlandsch-Indië — Netherlands Indies
  • Korte Verklaring — Short Declaration
  • zelfbesturen — self-governing territories
  • Landschap — self-governing territory
  • Gouverneur-Generaal — Governor-General
  • Generaal — General
  • Kapitein — Captain
  • Luitenant — Lieutenant
  • Opperbevelhebber van Land- en Zeemacht — Supreme Commander of Land and Sea Forces
  • Chef van de Generale Staf — Chief of the General Staff
  • detailchement — detachment
  • opheffing — dissolution
  • patrouille — patrol
  • colonne — column
  • Marechaussee — Military Police
  • bekas — former
  • onverzoenlijken — irreconcilables
  • rustig — quiet
  • slepende ziekte — lingering disease
  • Atjeh-oorlog — Aceh War
  • Atjeh — Aceh
  • Acheh — Aceh
  • Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij — Royal Petroleum Company
  • Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij — Batavian Petroleum Company
  • Dordtsche Petroleum Maatschappij — Dordrecht Petroleum Company
  • Nederlandsche Handel Maatschappij — Netherlands Trading Society
  • bende — gang/band

Account from Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)

1918 was the year in which a disease appeared in the pepper-crop of Atjeh — ‘in 1918 vertoonde er zich een ziekte in het gewas’ — and the year in which the Sarikat Islam showed a vigorous life in the afdeeling Noordkust van Atjeh. Teukoe Tjhi Mohamad Thajeb of Peureula was a member of the Volksraad in 1918 and 1919; the oeléebalangschap was held by his banta. The H. T. Damste article ‘Een stukje Atjeh-geschiedenis’ was published in Koloniaal Tijdschrift in 1918.

The last incidents

In April 1918 unrest threatened once more in the Boven Wòjla near Meulaboh: the religious teacher Teungkoe Moet, an opponent of vaccination, was killed resisting arrest, and on 25 April three hitherto friendly Acehnese made a klewang attack on the bivouac of the commander of Koeala Bhèë, killing one and wounding seven. H. J. Schmidt’s response — his last action as a marechaussée officer — became the coconut and sugar-cane excursion, in which the population everywhere met the column with gifts of coconuts and sugar cane and no shot was fired: “the time of war and resistance was past”.

On 11 March 1918 the Civil Authority at Lho’ Soekon, lieutenant Schouten, was attacked and soon recovered.

At Swart’s retirement only one onvindbare had remained unfound: T. Radja Tampo’ in the marshes of Seuneu’am and Tripa.

Education

In 1918 there were 250 village schools with 14,751 pupils and twenty girls’ schools with 1,321 pupils, against 106 village schools in 1911.

The handover

By decree of 12 August 1918 Swart was appointed, with effect from September, Vice-President of the Raad van Nederlandsch-Indië, and honourably discharged from military service with a pension of 9,000 guilders a year.

On 2 September 1918, in a solemn gathering in the Governor’s residence, he handed over the government to the civilian Governor resident Van Sluys and delivered his farewell address: with the laying down of his office “an important piece of Atjeh history” was closed, since there would now be “an absolute separation of the civil and military authority, such as exists in all other provinces as well”.

He left Atjeh in the early morning of 22 September 1918 from Oelèë Lheuë aboard the s.s. Nias, the band playing the Wilhelmus and the crew of H.M. Serdang rendering the military salute; he arrived at Batavia to take up the Vice-Presidency.

The verdicts

I. Feenstra wrote in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant: “It was in 1873 that the first general, Major-General Köhler, fell in the first Atjeh expedition. Now it is 1918 and the last general of Atjeh is going. Forty-five years, not yet half a century — it seems so short for the great work that has been done here.”

The Atjeh correspondent of the Nieuwe Courant wrote: “His administration lasted more than ten years, and it was from beginning to end a happy period for the sorely tried province.”

Du Croo dated from 1918 the proof of Swart’s insights: “The history of Atjeh from 1918 to the present proves that Swart’s insights were correct.”

The letter of the Acehnese chiefs of 1933 dated the transformation of Atjeh “from the year 1908 to 1918]]”.

Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923) — 1918

“September 1918 is dan eindelijk de definitieve scheiding tusschen burgerlijk en militair gezag tot stand gekomen. Toen eerst was het psychologisch moment, dat men reeds in het begin van de tachtig jaren meende te hebben bereikt, aangebroken” — only then had the psychological moment come which one thought to have reached in the early eighties (see Introduction of civil government in Atjeh (1881)): “thans zou ‘de kroon’ beter op ‘t werk passen”. The book’s latest school-census belongs to this year (242 schools/13,000 pupils; 28 government native schools; 15 girls’ schools/1,000+ pupils), the tramway’s paying traffic reached f 97,000, the postal land-line (1912) and the administration telephone net (1913) had reshaped communications, and the world war’s shipping stall reduced the exports to near insignificance in 1917–1918 — the trough before the recovery of 1919.

Account from Atjeh als land voor handel en bedrijf (1925)

1918 was year of pepper disease appearance and customs comparison year.

Events

  • 1918 disease in pepper crop exhibited, fairly fleeting investigation Dept Landbouw led not discovery as landbouwleeraar. Landscape head held disease djamoer oepas. Poor maintenance in gardens influence.
  • Tol office receipts: Langsa import vs export etc year 1918 chosen as fairly favorable vs 1921 unfavorable. Import rights nearly doubled 1921.
  • Export figures Idi boomschors 622,914 KG vs 413,894 KG 1921, etc.
  • Also: first civil governor came 1918 hence reduction fist reduction rentelooze advances with service appearance finished. Policy remained friendly cautious toward peaceful population strict against bands.
  • Avros etc? Lho Soekon etc.

Account from De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden (1918) — Kreemer’s rice monograph

In 1918 J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut, published his *De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden* — “Rice Cultivation in the Aceh Region and Dependencies” — as Mededeelingen No. 6 of the Atjèh Instituut, overprinted from Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, deel XXXV (1918), afl. 3, and printed for the Directeuren der Maatschappij ter Bevordering van het Natuurkundig Onderzoek der Nederlandsche Koloniën by E. J. Brill in Leiden.

The monograph is the principal Dutch-language technical-and-ethnographic study of rice cultivation across the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, and is the key source for the “Rice Question” of 1916 — the colonial policy debate, conducted in the columns of the Deli Courant by Ackerstaff, Van Tubergen and J. H. Heyl, on whether Atjeh could become the rice-storehouse of the Sumatra’s East Coast plantation belt. Kreemer’s monograph reproduces Heyl’s calculation that of the 1.6 million pikoel of rice required annually by Deli, “nearly half” could come from Atjeh.

See Also

Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu

Civil administration returned to a civilian (non-military) official. Practical trust in honest Dutch intentions grown throughout Atjeh.

Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 42.

Source

Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, samengesteld en verzorgd onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., onder de auspiciën van het Indisch Instituut, 1946), pp. 195–196 (chapter De bestuursvormen door Mr. Dr. L. J. J. Caron). 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), chapter “De colonne Schmidt” and chapter “De patrouille.” Cornelis Jacobus Snijders (1852–1939): Een leven in dienst van zijn Land en zijn Volk, by D. van den Berg (Voorburg: September 1944), pp. 10–35. Koninklijke Bibliotheek shelfmark 0301 4872. Na 1795: Repetitie-boekje voor de Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis, by F. Roorda (Groningen: P. Noordhoff, 1924), p. 47. Vierhonderd jaren missie in Nederlandsch-Indië, 1593–1934 (Batavia: Algemeen Comité van Voorbereiding tot de Feestelijke Herdenking van 400 jaar Missie in Ned.-Indië, [1934]), p. 133. 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. 351-355. Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923); Atjeh Patchouli-Olie, by Ir. W. Spoon (1932), where applicable. 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), Chapter XII, pp. 128–129; Chapter XIII, p. 134; Chapter XVI, pp. 151–157; Chapter XVII, pp. 158–164. Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 101–104, 106–111, 113–115, 153. Atjeh als land voor handel en bedrijf, by Dr. R. Broersma, Gebrs. Cohen, Utrecht, 1925, pp. 14-16, 33, 41, 125.

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. 42.

De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, by J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjeh-Instituut. Mededeelingen betreffende het Onderzoek van Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, No. 6. Overgedrukt uit het Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, deel XXXV (1918), afl. 3. Leiden: Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E. J. Brill, 1918.

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