1949

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tagsyear, colonial, postwar, indonesian-independence, dutch-colonial, knil, geological-survey, publication
aliasesthe year 1949, MCMXLIX, 1949 (year)

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The Tweede Politionele Acti and its aftermath

The Tweede Politionele Actie of December 1948 had been the last Dutch military offensive of the Indonesian revolution. Its aftermath — through 1949 — was the steady realisation that the military offensive could not be translated into a political victory. The Renville Agreement and the Van Mooklijn had failed; the Round Table Conference at the Hague was the negotiation that would produce the transfer of sovereignty.

The Souvereiniteitsoverdracht (27 December 1949)

The Souvereiniteitsoverdracht — the transfer of sovereignty — took place on 27 December 1949. The federal Indonesia the Dutch had constructed — the Negara Pasundan, the Negara Indonesia Timur and the rest — was handed over to the unitary Republic. The K.N.I.L. was dissolved; its Ambonese soldiers were transferred into the Federale Legers and Negaratroepen of the federal Indonesia, and then, with the federal Indonesia’s dissolution into the unitary Republic, into the army of the Republic that had been their enemy.

The abandonment of Oom Ambon

The closing arc of Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L. is the steady disbandment of the K.N.I.L. and the abandonment of its Ambonese soldiers. The book’s quiet point is that the Ambonese soldiers who had served the colonial army since the Aceh War were, in 1949, used in a war whose political outcome would leave them stateless. The transfer of sovereignty of 27 December 1949 handed the federal Indonesia the Dutch had built over to the unitary Republic, and the Ambonese soldiers who had served the Dutch were left without the institution that had made them.

The chapter Tamaela — the last narrative chapter of the book — is the figure through whom this argument is made: the Ambonese korporaal whose tangsi culture was dissolved in the new federal formations, and who was, in 1949, left without the institution that had made him.

The Republic of the South Moluccas

The book’s closing chapters also register the South Moluccas self-determination — the unilateral declaration of independence of the Republik Maluku Selatan by the Ambonese soldiers who refused to be handed over to the unitary Republic. The declaration was the political consequence of the abandonment: the Ambonese soldiers who had served the Dutch and were now to be handed over to their enemy refused, and declared their own state.

Publication of Wagner’s Sierkunst

Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië was published in 1949 as the sixth volume of the Insulinde series — “Serie Handleidingen voor de Kennis van Indonesië” (Series of Manuals for the Knowledge of Indonesia) — issued by J. B. Wolters’ Uitgevers-Maatschappij N.V. in Groningen (Netherlands) and Batavia (Java). The series was designed as a teacher-training manual for Dutch and Dutch-Indies educators, and Wagner’s volume was the volume on decorative art (sierkunst). The other volumes in the series, advertised at the back of Wagner’s book, included: I. K. van der Veser, Producten van Indonesië (5th ed., f 2.50); II. K. van der Veser, De grote cultures van Indonesië; III. J. de Jong, Het geestesleven der volken van Indonesië (3rd ed., f 2.50); IV. J. de Jong, Maatschappelijk en familieleven der volken van Indonesië (in preparation); V. Dr C. Nooteboom, H. C. J. Gunning and Mr J. W. Th. Cohen Stuart, Oost-Indonesië (f 2.50); and VI. F. A. Wagner, Sierkunst in Indonesië (f 5.90). The back-matter notes that the series originated in lectures given at the Indisch Instituut in Amsterdam and at the Ministry of Overzeese Gebieden (Overseas Territories), and that the more recent volumes were “aantrekkelijke monographieën over Indonesië” (attractive monographs on Indonesia) that expanded the original lecture material.

The Atjeh material in Wagner

The Atjeh material in Wagner’s Sierkunst — the anker-motief, the plang, the Atjeh *trawang*, the idja, the Atjeh silk culture, the Atjeh silk yarn import from Singapore and Penang, the Atjeh women’s wide trousers, the Atjeh *koepiah*, the Atjeh rotan shields, the Atjeh powder horns, the reuntjong, the Atjeh brass lamps, the heetsen, the Atjeh silver-wire ornament, and the tjawardi — was, in 1949, the most recent scholarly account of Atjeh decorative art, and it remains, for the present cluster of AcehWiki entries, the founding source. The publication of Wagner’s book in 1949 is, in this sense, the publication of the source from which the AcehWiki’s account of Atjeh decorative art is drawn.

The colonial context

The year 1949 was, for the Netherlands Indies, the year of the formal transfer of sovereignty. The Indonesian War of Independence had begun in 1945, after the Japanese surrender and the Indonesian declaration of independence on 17 August 1945; the war had continued, with intervals of negotiation, through 1945–1949; and the formal Dutch transfer of sovereignty to the Republic of the United States of Indonesia took place on 27 December 1949, at the Round Table Conference in The Hague. Wagner’s Sierkunst, published in the same year, is thus a book of the last year of Dutch rule — a survey of Indonesian decorative art compiled by a Dutch author, in Dutch, for Dutch and Dutch-Indies teachers, in the year in which Dutch rule was formally ending.

The book’s late-colonial context is, in turn, the context of the Atjeh material it contains. Wagner writes of Atjeh as a region of the Netherlands Indies, drawing on collections and literature produced under Dutch colonial rule; he notes, in several places, the decline of Indonesian craft traditions under the pressure of “de invoer van goedkope, kleurig bedrukte katoentjes” (the import of cheap, colourfully printed cottons) and “de Westerse geldeconomie” (the Western money economy). The Atjeh he describes is, in this sense, an Atjeh already integrated into the colonial economy — an Atjeh whose weavers work with imported silk from Singapore and Penang, whose gold and silver thread is “tegenwoordig uitsluitend worden geïmporteerd,” and whose craft traditions are under pressure from imported factory goods.

Significance

The year 1949 is significant on two converging grounds in the AcehWiki corpus. From Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., 1949 is the year of the end of the colonial state and the dissolution of the K.N.I.L. — the year in which the Ambonese soldier of the colonial army was used in a war whose political outcome would leave him stateless, and in which the tangsi culture that had made him was, with the disbandment of the K.N.I.L., dissolved. The year 1949 is therefore the book’s political closure: the end of the colonial army, and the abandonment of the soldiers who had served it.

For the present cluster of AcehWiki entries drawn from Wagner, 1949 is the publication-year of the founding source — the year in which Wagner’s Sierkunst in Indonesië appeared, and the year in which the Atjeh material in that book entered the Dutch scholarly record. Its significance in the larger history of Atjehnese studies is that it places the AcehWiki’s account of Atjeh decorative art at a specific moment in the late-colonial record: the moment of the Dutch transfer of sovereignty, the moment of the end of Dutch rule, and the moment of the last Dutch synthesis of Indonesian decorative art. The entries drawn from Wagner are, in this sense, entries drawn from the last colonial source — a source that is both rich in its account of Atjeh craft and marked by the colonial context in which it was produced.

Account from The Geology of Indonesia (1949) — 1949

The publication of Van Bemmelen’s Geology of Indonesia

For the full account of Van Bemmelen’s Geology of Indonesia see the entries on R. W. van Bemmelen and Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949). In summary: the work was published in 1949 by the Government Printing Office (Algemeene Landsdrukkerij) at The Hague, with Martinus Nijhoff as sole agents, as a Special Edition of the Bureau of Mines in Indonesia under the authority of the Departement van Verkeer, Energie en Mijnbouw of the Netherlands East Indies. The work’s publication in 1949 — in the difficult immediate post-war period, when the surviving archives of the colonial mining service were being reconstituted after the 1942–1945 Japanese occupation — gives it an additional historical significance as the principal printed survivor of the colonial geological literature, and as the baseline against which later Indonesian geological work has been measured.

The post-war/post-colonial context

The 1949 publication of Van Bemmelen’s Geology of Indonesia took place in the immediate aftermath of the 1945 Indonesian declaration of independence and during the final stages of the Indonesian National Revolution (which would conclude with the 1949 transfer of sovereignty from the Netherlands to the Indonesian Republic). The work’s publication as a Special Edition of the Bureau of Mines in Indonesia — an institution of the colonial state — accordingly belongs to the final phase of the colonial mining service’s institutional existence, and the work is in this sense both the culmination of the colonial geological literature on Atjeh and the transition to the post-colonial period of Indonesian geological work. The subsequent Indonesian geological surveys would build on Van Bemmelen’s compilation, but the institutional framework within which they operated would be that of the independent Indonesian Republic rather than that of the colonial Netherlands East Indies.

The 1949 NNGPM production start

1949 is also the year in which the N.N.G.P.M. (Netherlands New Guinea Petroleum Company) began commercial oil production in western New Guinea — a development recorded by Van Bemmelen in the petroleum chapter of The Geology of Indonesia. The NNGPM’s 1949 production start is, however, only indirectly relevant to Atjeh, through the NNGPM’s corporate connection (via its parent companies B.P.M., N.K.P.M. and N.P.P.M.) to the colonial oil economy of which the Atjeh fields were the northern component.

Significance

1949 is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is the year of the publication of Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia — the standard two-volume colonial-era survey of the geology of the Netherlands East Indies, and the principal source for the colonial mineralogical record of Atjeh. The 1949 publication marks both the culmination of the colonial geological literature on Atjeh and the transition to the post-colonial period of Indonesian geological work, and it accordingly represents a watershed in the documentary history of Atjeh’s mineral geography. The 1949 publication’s post-war/post-colonial context — the immediate aftermath of the Japanese occupation and the final stages of the Indonesian National Revolution — also gives it an additional historical significance as the principal printed survivor of the colonial geological literature, and as the baseline against which later Indonesian geological work has been measured.

See Also

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), chapters “Onzekerheid,” “Tegen de rood-witten,” and “Tamaela.”

Sierkunst in Indonesië, by F. A. Wagner, Insulinde — Serie Handleidingen voor de Kennis van Indonesië, Vol. VI (Groningen, Batavia: J. B. Wolters’ Uitgevers-Maatschappij N.V., 1949).

The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; sole agents Martinus Nijhoff, 1949). Title page (publication details, Special Edition of the Bureau of Mines in Indonesia).

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