The year 1933 was, in Piekaar’s Atjèh and the War with Japan, the year of the Lhóng action of 1933 — the “last of significance” of the armed actions “which repeatedly flared up after the conclusion of the Atjèh War,” fought in the remote oelèëbalangship of Lhóng in the sagi of the XXV Moekims of Groot-Atjèh. With the suppression of the rising and the installation of Teukoe Radja Djoema’at as oelèëbalang of Lhóng, 1933 closed the cycle of armed resistance that had run intermittently since 1873.
The rising in Lhóng
Lhóng lies in the wild mountain country where the Barisan range “reaches here, as in the adjacent area of the sagi of the XXV Moekims … right down to the coast.” Its isolation preserved, even into the 1930s, the religious mentality of the Atjèh War generation: “the standstill of time was reflected in the religious instruction. Here no modernization of religious education, as one found in Groot-Atjèh and on the North Coast.” The Lhóng action of 1933 was the last flicker of the prang sabi tradition that had animated the Bakóngan uprising of 1925–1927 and, before it, the Atjèh War itself. Garrisons at Tjalang and Lam Nó and a detachment at Lam Soedjèn in Lhóng had been maintained precisely to make “intensive patrolling possible” in this volatile country.
The settlement
The rising’s suppression inaugurated two decades of peace in Lhóng. The new oelèëbalang, Teukoe Radja Djoema’at, was confirmed as an “energetic forty-year-old” who “had restored confidence and authority in this area and had brought about orderly conditions.” His installation was, in turn, a quiet re-foundation of the oelèëbalang class — the very class that, in March 1942, would be purged by G. F. V. Gosenson in the celebrated “coup d’état,” and again by the kempeitai in 1945.
Other events of the year
1933 was also the year in which a nationalist protest against the introduction of Acehnese as the medium of instruction in the primary school (the so-called Acehnese language controversy of 1931) was still reverberating in the Atjèhnese political consciousness — a controversy Piekaar cites as the first clear expression of an “all-encompassing Indonesian national consciousness” among the more developed oelèëbalangs. The persistent refusal of the oelèëbalang of Ba’ét to pay the customary hari raja puasa respects to Panglima Polem of Seulimeum continued throughout the year, marking the survival of the older antagonisms even in the supposedly pacified sagi of the XXII Moekims.
Significance
1933 closed the era of armed resistance in colonial Atjèh. When the next rising came — the revolt in Great Atjèh of 1942 — it would no longer be a localised, religiously motivated prang sabi in the mountain fastnesses, but a coordinated fifth-column movement aligned with the Japanese invasion.
Account from Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. (1954) — 1933
1933 was the approximate year of the opening anecdote of Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. — the captain of the 1e Divisie Marechaussee uit Blang Kedjeren’s Hotel de Boer story at the Soos in Koeta-Radja — and the year of the kolonel’s visit to Bakongan at which Thijs de Fretes promised the kolonel the tanden of a rogue elephant and shot it at five metres’ distance. It is also the year of the death of the Overste Scheepens — who had been wounded by an Acehnese during a court session in 1913 and died of his wounds in 1933 after twenty years.
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), prologue “Bij ons…” and chapters “Thijs” and “De patrouille.”
Account from Atjeh by H.C. Zentgraff (1938)
Zentgraff records 1933 as a year of new resistance and notable deaths. At Lhong, dertien mannen went over to verzet; one who zich bedacht en zich meldde was rejected by his wife — “Itoe man? Ik heb geen man.” — and the episode produced elf weduwen en twintig weezen, a new kernel of haat for the future. Tgk. Doellah was neergeslagen at Lhong; a hikajat prang was found on his body. Potjoet Barin — oeléëbalang of Toengkob on the Westkust, who had fought the Dutch with a peudeueng (sword) in the field and lost a foot to a Dutch bullet that was later replaced by a wooden leg from Holland — died in 1933.
Atjeh, door H.C. Zentgraff. Gedrukt bij Drukkerij “De Unie”, 1938, Batavia.
Account from Een strijd in Atjeh (1934)
For the medical history of Atjeh, 1933 was the year of the shipboard conversations between the ophthalmologist Dr. J. Tijssen and the journalist C. Graadt van Roggen, and of Tijssen’s tour of the West Coast of Atjeh, Simaloer and Samosir.
February: the voyage of the Baloeran
In February 1933 the steamer Baloeran of the Rotterdamsche Lloyd carried both men homeward from the Indies. The doctor had come aboard at Belawan; the conversations began in the smoking saloon somewhere between Sabang and Colombo, continued through the Red Sea and had to be closed at Port-Saïd, the letters going by the air mail at Caïro. The three letters that resulted, datelined a/b. „Baloeran”, Februari 1933, were published in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant and reprinted in 1934 as Een strijd in Atjeh (1934).
23 August: the West Coast journey
On 23 August 1933 Tijssen came again to Koeta Radja and travelled thence to Bakongan. The governor Van Aken had wished him to go this time to the West Coast, having worked there long years himself; Tijssen thought political motives may also have been decisive. In the short time he was there he helped two hundred and forty-seven people with eye diseases and operated on twenty-four persons with cataract, among them the seven juvenile cataracts between Meulaboh and Singkel. He then visited Simaloer, where twenty thousand people lived without a physician.
The Samosir campaign
At the beginning of the Poeasa Tijssen left the West Coast, since among that devout Muhammadan population one could not work during the fast, and went to Samosir in the Tobameer, where with the Batak physician Gido Siregar he carried out the trachoma campaign, operating on more than two hundred people in one month. Personal circumstances then called him away from Samosir, back to Europe.
The account of the West Coast in that year records the road along the coastal strip flanked by the mass graves of “de vele Atjehoorlogen en den opstand van ‘26,” — the many Atjeh wars and the rising of ‘26, and the great monument marking the place where Teukoe Oemar fell.
Account in du Croo’s Generaal Swart (1943)
On 26 September 1933 thirty-two chiefs of the north coast addressed the letter of the Acehnese chiefs to H. N. A. Swart at Den Haag, drawn up by T. Maharadja Mangkoeboemi and T. Tjhi’ Moehammad Djohan Alamsjah, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday on 12 October 1933, presenting him with a smoking set as a memento.
See Also
- Lhóng action (1933)
- Bakóngan uprising (1925–1927)
- Atjèh War
- Lhóng
- Teukoe Radja Djoema’at
- Colonel Gosenson
- 1925
- 1942
- H. N. A. Swart
- General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh (1943)
- Pacificatie van Atjeh
- Atjeh-oorlog
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
10 July 1933 — Kapitein C. Schmid stabbed to death by a passing Atjeher at Lho’Soekon; the author (then at Sigli) rushed to the scene.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 49, 87.
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 III § 1, Chapter III § 3.
Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad), door Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen, met een voorrede van den heer H. Wanting, redacteur Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg, uitgave van de Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934), pp. 3, 10–14.
Acknowledgement of sources. This article combines material from the publications cited above; the material newly added derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897) and Een strijd in Atjeh (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.
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.
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. 49, 87.