The Blood of the People: Revolution and the End of Traditional Rule in Northern Sumatra

Chapter II: Dutch-Occupied Aceh

 chapter II Dutch-Occupied Aceh “It is essential that we keep firmly in mind that our authority in Aceh rests primarily on the ulèëbalang, apart from the force of arms… . Without them we will achieve nothing in Aceh in the long run.” Governor Goedhart, 1927 Armed Resistance By 1913, after forty years of war, the Dutch could at last be said to have conquered Aceh. A policy of ceaseless pursuit, control of arms and trade, and fines on hostile villages had brought the traditional ruling class (the royal family and the ulèëbalang) to its knees by 1903. The killing continued, but was now directed exclusively against guerrilla bands inspired and often led by famous ulama. In Dutch eyes the guerrillas were the jahat (baddies), but to the Acehnese they were simply muslimin (Muslims). They had chosen to put their faith in God rather than man, preferring a martyr’s death and its heavenly reward to the shame of living under the heel of the infidel conqueror. Despite the 11,000 Acehnese they had killed since the surrender of the best-known leaders in 1903, the Dutch still counted about 6,000 of these muslimin against them in 1908. They embodied the remaining desperate national pride of the Acehnese, but their days were numbered. By 1913, when 3,000 more had fallen in battle, the two centres of resistance had  Politiek Verslag Atjeh, 1927, p. 2, signed Goedhart, in Mailrapport 221x /28, Colonial Archive of Departement van Binnenlandse Zaken, The Hague. I am indebted to Prof. James Siegel for drawing my attention to this and many other documents in this chapter.  J. Kreemer, Atjeh, 2 vols. (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1922‒23), I, p. 43. 02 BP.indd 7 2/24/14 2:51:00 PM  The Blood of the People been broken—the “Tiro-teungkus” of Pidië and the followers of Teungku di Mata Ië in Keureutoë. The Acehnese had finally been forced to respect Dutch power, but at enormous material and psychological cost. Aceh Besar, the heart of the old sultanate in the valley of the Aceh river, had lost at least three-quarters of its pre-war population by war and fight. The Alas area in the interior,  Teungku is the Acehnese honorific generally used for ulama. Except in eastern Aceh ulèëbalang used the title Teuku (abbreviated T.). Map 1 Aceh: Administrative Divisions under the Dutch 02 BP.indd 8 2/24/14 2:51:04 PM Dutch-Occupied Aceh  conquered in bloody fighting only in 1903, was estimated to have lost a quarter to a third of its menfolk. Every district had its crop of martyrs and heroes, and its bitter memories of houses burned, cattle slaughtered, and fines imposed as the Dutch troops moved through. The more clear-eyed Dutch officials, like Snouck Hurgronje, recognized that the only hope for the sort of tolerance which Dutch rule enjoyed elsewhere in the archipelago was the birth of a new generation of Acehnese unaffected by the war. As late as 1936 the Dutch Governor of Aceh still believed there was within each Acehnese … a fanatical love of freedom, reinforced by a powerful sense of race, with a consequent contempt for foreigners and hatred for the infidel ruler. He fought against the intruder, asking no quarter, but finally failed before superior force, and his religion and his Eastern fatalism have told him that this was right, but only so long as this superior force was really superior. The decades of peace which the Dutch felt they needed proved always elusive, not least because of some Dutch policies. For the ordinary Acehnese the burden of tax became the tangible mark of his conquered state. Under his own rulers he had paid virtually no tax except a substantial levy on exports and imports and occasional assistance to his ulèëbalang, especially in time of war. Nineteenth-century Dutch colonial practice, however, made corvée labour, herendienst (lit.: service of the feudal lord), the basic imposition on the subject. Even though Java, where there was at least a better case for regarding corvée as traditional, was moving away from the system by 1900, the Dutch never felt able to do without it for building roads at their colonial frontier in Sumatra. Tax in money was also applied, to the extent of about one guilder per year per person in 1917, but it was the obligation to...