1925

The year 1925 was, in Piekaar’s Atjèh and the War with Japan, the year that opened the Bakóngan uprising — the most serious armed rising of the Atjèhnese against Dutch authority in the two decades after the formal conclusion of the Atjèh War, fought in the remote subdistrict of the Zuidelijke Atjèhse Landschappen under the instigation of Teukoe Radja Angkasah — and, with it, the last phase of large-scale religiously motivated resistance before the Japanese invasion of 1942.

The outbreak in Bakóngan

The Bakóngan uprising was “the most serious” of all the resistance actions “which repeatedly flared up after the conclusion of the Atjèh War.” The rising was fought in the wild mountain country of the Zuidelijke Atjèhse Landschappen — the territory of Bakóngan and the landschap of Kloeët — under the leadership of Teukoe Radja Angkasah. Its opening in 1925 inaugurated a two-year pacification that would not be concluded until 1927.

The strategic response

The rising prompted decisive administrative reconstruction. The two landschappen of Kloeët and Troemón were “separated from these subdistricts and, combined into one subdistrict, placed under the administration of the officer responsible for the action at Bakóngan.” The merging of civil and military command in a single Atjèhnese subdistrict — a throwback to the Atjèh War pattern — was the most striking institutional consequence of 1925. “Only in the subdistrict of Zuidelijke Atjèhse Landschappen, the scene of the Bakóngan uprising, the military commander remained entrusted with civil administration.” The extension of the West Coast Road through the Barisan range in the 1920s was likewise justified by “military-strategic considerations (Bakóngan uprising 1925-1927),” which “were decisive.”

The longer arc

The Bakóngan rising of 1925 closed the era of large-scale religiously motivated resistance in colonial Atjèh. The Lhóng action of 1933 would be only a flicker; by 1939, as Piekaar records in his introduction, “the resistance actions … had been extinguished” and “cases of so-called ‘Atjèh murder,’ the typically Atjèhse form of venting internal difficulties, were hardly worth mentioning anymore.” The pacification inaugurated by the suppression of Bakóngan would, in turn, prove illusory: the underlying kaphé-hatred and prang sabi mentality would erupt again in March 1942.

Significance

1925 thus marks the beginning of the end of the long Atjèh War cycle: the last great armed rising of the colonial era, and the event whose suppression allowed the Dutch to believe — for the next seventeen years — that the Atjèhnese had “finally and definitively submitted to Dutch rule.” That belief would be shattered in March 1942.

Account from In Memoriam Maurice Henri du Croo (1951) — 1925

1925 was the year in which Maurice Henri du Croo was posted to Atjeh in the Buitengewesten (Outer Provinces) of the Netherlands East Indies. Du Croo, a K.N.I.L. officer, arrived at his own request and began active service in the ongoing Aceh War, taking part in patrols into the rimboe (jungle). His later co-authored book Marechaussée in Atjeh (with Kolonel Schmidt) would draw on these experiences. The posting of an officer at his own request to Atjeh in 1925 — well after the formal conclusion of the war — underscores the continued active Dutch military presence in the territory during the interwar consolidation period.

Source: In Memoriam Maurice Henri du Croo (1951), p. 5 (biographical timeline).

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

Zentgraff records 1925 as the year the Westkust resistance under Tjoet Ali began. Beginning with the zuidelijke nederzettingen, the onrust groeide into een spanning welke velen nauwelijks konden dragen. In Mei 1925 the strength of some garrisons was verminderd; by October of that same year the opstand uitbrak in het zuidelijke deel der nederzettingen on the Westkust, on a much larger scale than the publiek in Indië ever knew. Holy books were read at night; the hikajat prang circulated from hand to hand. The stilte before the storm was itself a form of resistance.

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

Account from Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)

1925 was the year of publication of the first Bericht on patchouli in Atjeh — Bericht No. 21 of May 1925 of the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum of the Kon. Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut. The Bericht recorded the earliest attempts at indigenous processing of patchouli leaves at Tapa Toean beginning in 1921. The Atjeh patchouli-leaf export was 559 tons in 1925. The Atjeh nilam-oil export was 760 kg in 1925.

Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)

In 1925 resistance broke out again on the west coast of Atjeh, seven years after Swart’s retirement. Swart’s opinion was sought in Holland and recorded by J. Schaap in The Weekly of an Amsterdammer — “Swart’s Atjehsch testament”. In 1925 du Croo was acting controleur of Meulaboh, where he examined the onderstand entries and held his own keutelige inspections; he found roads, bridges and the keudé neglected. Dr. R. Broersma’s Atjeh als land voor handel en bedrijf appeared in 1925.

Account from Over patchouly-olie en patchouly-blad van Atjeh (1925) — Bericht No. 21

In April 1925 the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum of the Kon. Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut published, as Bericht No. 21 of its Berichten series, the pamphlet *Over patchouly-olie en patchouly-blad van Atjeh (Noord-Sumatra)* — reprinted from De Indische Mercuur of 8 and 15 May 1925, and printed in Amsterdam by Druk De Bussy. The pamphlet, composed in the closing months of the four-year Atjeh patchouli experiments of 1921-1925, is the founding document of the indigenous Atjeh patchouli-oil industry.

The Bericht records the discovery — made by Van Vreeswijk, the manager of the Atjehsche Oliefabriek at Tapa Toean, in his letter of 16 August 1924 — that the patchouli (nilam) leaf of Bakongan, grown on the sand-and-swamp conjunction of the Bakongan coastal strip and dried with the care the Bakongan planters had begun to devote to it, was the finest patchouli-leaf of Atjeh. The Bakongan leaf, when distilled by the European essential-oil houses over the winter of 1924-1925, produced oil uniformly judged equal in quality to the best Singapore-Penang product. The Handelsmuseum’s verdict — “prima blad, prima olie; op de winning van het goede blad komt het aan!” — broke the Singapore-Penang monopoly on prime patchouli oil and established the indigenous Atjeh industry on a firm commercial basis.

Source

Atjèh and the War with Japan, by Dr. A. J. Piekaar, translated from the Dutch original Atjèh en de oorlog met Japan (1949) (‘s-Gravenhage/Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve; English edition), Chapter I § 1, Chapter II, Chapter V § 4. In Memoriam Maurice Henri du Croo (1951), p. 5 (biographical timeline).

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), passim.

Over patchouly-olie en patchouly-blad van Atjeh (Noord-Sumatra). Berichten van de Afdeeling Handelsmuseum van de Kon. Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut, No. 21. Overgedrukt uit De Indische Mercuur van 8 en 15 Mei 1925. Amsterdam: Druk De Bussy.

tags	year, resistance, colonial, timeline, acheh, 20th-century, aceh
aliases	Year 1925, 1925 in Atjèh, 1925 AD, 1925 CE, the year 1925, 1925 (year)

Explorer