The Aceh War is Fake?
Aceh
At the end of the eighteenth century Aceh was a wealthy and independent state, and the region’s most important pepper exporter. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, annual pepper exports from Aceh probably amounted to around 2500 tons out of a total Southeast Asian figure of 9000 tons. The later collapse of the VOC created an opening in the international pepper trade which was filled by foreign traders, notably the Americans and the Chinese.
Aceh’s most important trading connections were across the Straits of Melaka, and particularly to the British trading station of Pinang, whose merchants and traders thus had a vested interest in Acehnese affairs; in particular, they had an interest in seeing that there was no unnecessary interference with the pepper trade there from either the Dutch or local rulers.
Aceh’s wealth brought with it domestic political problems. By the early 1800s the political power of the Sultanate of Aceh had declined considerably from its heyday a century earlier. It still claimed sovereignty over the north Sumateran ports, whose trade was mainly in pepper, manifested in the persistent demand by the Sultan that all trade in pepper pass through his capital. But the Sultan was rarely able to enforce this demand and most of the time, regional chiefs, or uleebalang, based in the north coast ports conducted their own trade in pepper independently of the Sultan. The more pepper they were able to export, the greater their revenues, and thus the greater their independence from the capital. Control of the trade in pepper was very much a political matter, shaping the relations between the centre of the state and its regions.
By the second decade of the century, the conflict between the Sultan and the uleebalang had heightened to the point where the Sultan was considering asking the Dutch to intervene on his side. In an attempt to forestall such a move, Raffles travelled to Aceh and concluded an agreement with the Sultan committing the British to recognising the Sultan as the legitimate ruler of Aceh; in return for this the British were to be permitted to station a consular agent in Aceh and to have free access to all Acehnese ports. Other European and American powers were to be denied the right to establish permanent bases in Aceh, and Aceh agreed not to negotiate any treaties with these powers without British agreement.
However, England did not confirm the agreement. More importantly, in the 1824 Treaty of London the British government effectively gave away the political concessions Raffles had secured. We have already noted that this treaty involved the swapping of Bengkulu in south Sumatera for Melaka, and Dutch recognition of the British position in Singapore. It also provided that the British renounce all previous political connections with Aceh; that the Dutch would respect the independence of Aceh; and that the British would have the freedom to trade anywhere they wished in Sumatera, free from any Dutch interference or discrimination.
From the point of view of the British traders, this was a far better deal than the one Raffles had negotiated: there was no burden of financial or military support for the Sultan, and at the same time they retained their right to trade freely with Aceh.
For Aceh, the treaty was also attractive, as it ensured that neither the British nor the Dutch challenged its independence. And indeed, for the next two decades, there were no direct external threats to Aceh’s independence. This, of course, did not mean that the internal threats to its existence were any the less pressing. Certainly the conflict between the Sultan and the regional rulers did not abate.
The Aceh War
The Sultan of Aceh now began an even more frantic search for allies. He first approached the Italian Consul in Singapore, then the American Consul. The Italians gave the Sultan short shrift, but the Americans clearly had some sympathy for his position. However, the Dutch, on learning of this development, and using the argument that the Americans were about to intervene in Aceh, launched what a century later would be called a pre-emptive strike. In April 1873 they landed a force of 3000 men at the Acehnese capital and proceeded to assault the Sultan’s palace.
This force easily captured the palace, and forced the Sultan to flee. But the Acehnese just as easily regrouped and counterattacked ten days later, compelling the Dutch to withdraw. This did not mean that the Acehnese had won; merely that they had secured an extra couple of months in which to prepare for a second assault, but their subsequent pleas for support from Turkey, Britain, France and the United States fell on deaf ears. At the end of 1873, the Dutch sent in a much stronger expeditionary force, at the same time blockading the Acehnese coast to prevent the movement of goods in and out.
The Aceh War thus started in earnest; it was to last 30 years, and be by far the most costly in Dutch colonial history. At its peak the Dutch force in Aceh numbered over 10 500 men—about one-third of the total strength of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army, the Koninklijk Nederlands Indische Leger (KNIL). The Dutch lost around 15 000 men dead and 10 000 wounded. Acehnese casualties are much harder to estimate, but there were probably about 25 000 killed. The 1873 Dutch expeditionary force found it relatively easy going at first, capturing the capital, announcing that the Sultanate was abolished and that Aceh had been annexed—but this initial success was misleading. Many of the coastal uleebalang were quite willing to submit to the Dutch, since in return the Dutch agreed to lift the naval blockade of their ports and allow the resumption of trade, but when the Dutch tried to move into the interior, where the bulk of the population lived, and establish an apparatus of civil government, they struck trouble. They found that it was virtually impossible to conquer and hold the countryside, and that civil government officials—almost entirely Dutch—were easy targets for guerilla attack.
The Acehnese resistance was led now not by the Sultan or the uleebalang, but by the religious elite, the ulama. The war took on a decidedly religious aspect, Islam being represented as the defender of the Acehnese against the attacks of the infidel Dutch.
Dutch casualties began to mount. By the mid-1880s, the cost of the war was reaching the level where it was close to politically unbearable in the Netherlands. In 1885, the Dutch commander in Aceh introduced a new tactic, the so-called Concentration System, which involved the building of blockhouses and watchtowers around the capital, linked by a railway and telegraph lines.
This policy did little to save Dutch lives, for although fewer men might have been lost to enemy action, disease within the defended area was rife, leading to many deaths. Dutch morale was low, their troops being cooped up behind wire and fortifications and prevented from retaliating against the Acehnese, who kept making pin-prick attacks on the forts and sabotaging the railway.
It was not until the 1890s that the Dutch finally hit on a successful strategy against their opponents. This strategy had two elements, one military and the other civil. The military element was the formation in 1890 of lightly armed flying columns of Indonesian troops commanded by Dutch officers, armed and trained for jungle warfare. The flying columns were soon recording important victories against the Acehnese forces.
The civil element in the counter-guerilla operations was suggested by Snouck Hurgronje, the very influential colonial government adviser on Islam. Snouck took the view that the religious leaders, the ulama, could never be persuaded voluntarily to cease fighting the Dutch, and thus that they would have to be crushed completely by the army. Then a new locus of regional power would have to be found to take their place. He suggested that the uleebalang be used in this capacity. The uleebalang, he suggested bluntly, could be bought off with promises of important positions in the Dutch administration. He was right, and in this way the Dutch were able to drive a deep wedge into Acehnese society between the religious and secular elites. There followed a bloody military campaign that, by about 1903, brought most of Aceh under the control of the Dutch and their uleebalang clients. The Aceh War is generally reckoned to have ended in that year, though fighting was to continue in some areas for another decade.
At the end of the eighteenth century Aceh was a wealthy and independent state, and the region’s most important pepper exporter. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, annual pepper exports from Aceh probably amounted to around 2500 tons out of a total Southeast Asian figure of 9000 tons. The later collapse of the VOC created an opening in the international pepper trade which was filled by foreign traders, notably the Americans and the Chinese.
Aceh’s most important trading connections were across the Straits of Melaka, and particularly to the British trading station of Pinang, whose merchants and traders thus had a vested interest in Acehnese affairs; in particular, they had an interest in seeing that there was no unnecessary interference with the pepper trade there from either the Dutch or local rulers.
Aceh’s wealth brought with it domestic political problems. By the early 1800s the political power of the Sultanate of Aceh had declined considerably from its heyday a century earlier. It still claimed sovereignty over the north Sumateran ports, whose trade was mainly in pepper, manifested in the persistent demand by the Sultan that all trade in pepper pass through his capital. But the Sultan was rarely able to enforce this demand and most of the time, regional chiefs, or uleebalang, based in the north coast ports conducted their own trade in pepper independently of the Sultan. The more pepper they were able to export, the greater their revenues, and thus the greater their independence from the capital. Control of the trade in pepper was very much a political matter, shaping the relations between the centre of the state and its regions.
By the second decade of the century, the conflict between the Sultan and the uleebalang had heightened to the point where the Sultan was considering asking the Dutch to intervene on his side. In an attempt to forestall such a move, Raffles travelled to Aceh and concluded an agreement with the Sultan committing the British to recognising the Sultan as the legitimate ruler of Aceh; in return for this the British were to be permitted to station a consular agent in Aceh and to have free access to all Acehnese ports. Other European and American powers were to be denied the right to establish permanent bases in Aceh, and Aceh agreed not to negotiate any treaties with these powers without British agreement.
However, England did not confirm the agreement. More importantly, in the 1824 Treaty of London the British government effectively gave away the political concessions Raffles had secured. We have already noted that this treaty involved the swapping of Bengkulu in south Sumatera for Melaka, and Dutch recognition of the British position in Singapore. It also provided that the British renounce all previous political connections with Aceh; that the Dutch would respect the independence of Aceh; and that the British would have the freedom to trade anywhere they wished in Sumatera, free from any Dutch interference or discrimination.
From the point of view of the British traders, this was a far better deal than the one Raffles had negotiated: there was no burden of financial or military support for the Sultan, and at the same time they retained their right to trade freely with Aceh.
For Aceh, the treaty was also attractive, as it ensured that neither the British nor the Dutch challenged its independence. And indeed, for the next two decades, there were no direct external threats to Aceh’s independence. This, of course, did not mean that the internal threats to its existence were any the less pressing. Certainly the conflict between the Sultan and the regional rulers did not abate.
By about the middle of the century the external situation was beginning to change, however, and Aceh’s independence was coming under much more serious challenge. Following the Dutch victory in the Paderi War, Dutch influence by the 1860s extended right up to the southern edges of Aceh, and threatened to envelop a number of states which the Sultan of Aceh claimed as his vassals. Not surprisingly perhaps, the Sultan began to cast around for allies. After advances to France and Turkey were rebuffed, he approached Britain. The British ought to have been a better bet: the Treaty of London, after all, had committed Britain to supporting Aceh’s independence and preserving the right of British merchants to trade freely with it—but at the very time the Acehnese wanted some support, Britain was on the point of changing its policy.
The reasons for this change can be found in the establishment of what became British Liberal policy in the Indies in the 1850s and 1860s. One reason behind the British signing of the Treaty of London had been preservation of access to Acehnese ports. But as trade in the Indies was being freed-up following the general liberalisation of colonial policy, Acehnese independence became less crucial to the British: they could get access to Acehnese trade even if Aceh was under Dutch control.
Moreover, it was evident that the Dutch were not the only ones with their eyes on Aceh: the French and the Americans both had designs on the place. London’s view was that it was better that the Dutch control Aceh than either of these more formidable colonial powers.
Thus in 1871 the British and the Dutch concluded the Sumatera Treaty, which in effect revoked the provision in the Treaty of London by which the British and Dutch guaranteed the independence of Aceh. The way was now open for the Dutch to intervene in Aceh without fear of any formal British reaction. Since the Sumatera Treaty also provided that British traders would be treated equally with Dutch traders in any territory in Sumatera brought under Dutch control, there would be no protest from British commercial interests either.
The Sultan of Aceh now began an even more frantic search for allies. He first approached the Italian Consul in Singapore, then the American Consul. The Italians gave the Sultan short shrift, but the Americans clearly had some sympathy for his position. However, the Dutch, on learning of this development, and using the argument that the Americans were about to intervene in Aceh, launched what a century later would be called a pre-emptive strike. In April 1873 they landed a force of 3000 men at the Acehnese capital and proceeded to assault the Sultan’s palace.
This force easily captured the palace, and forced the Sultan to flee. But the Acehnese just as easily regrouped and counterattacked ten days later, compelling the Dutch to withdraw. This did not mean that the Acehnese had won; merely that they had secured an extra couple of months in which to prepare for a second assault, but their subsequent pleas for support from Turkey, Britain, France and the United States fell on deaf ears. At the end of 1873, the Dutch sent in a much stronger expeditionary force, at the same time blockading the Acehnese coast to prevent the movement of goods in and out.
The Aceh War thus started in earnest; it was to last 30 years, and be by far the most costly in Dutch colonial history. At its peak the Dutch force in Aceh numbered over 10 500 men—about one-third of the total strength of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army, the Koninklijk Nederlands Indische Leger (KNIL). The Dutch lost around 15 000 men dead and 10 000 wounded. Acehnese casualties are much harder to estimate, but there were probably about 25 000 killed. The 1873 Dutch expeditionary force found it relatively easy going at first, capturing the capital, announcing that the Sultanate was abolished and that Aceh had been annexed—but this initial success was misleading. Many of the coastal uleebalang were quite willing to submit to the Dutch, since in return the Dutch agreed to lift the naval blockade of their ports and allow the resumption of trade, but when the Dutch tried to move into the interior, where the bulk of the population lived, and establish an apparatus of civil government, they struck trouble. They found that it was virtually impossible to conquer and hold the countryside, and that civil government officials—almost entirely Dutch—were easy targets for guerilla attack.
The Acehnese resistance was led now not by the Sultan or the uleebalang, but by the religious elite, the ulama. The war took on a decidedly religious aspect, Islam being represented as the defender of the Acehnese against the attacks of the infidel Dutch.
Dutch casualties began to mount. By the mid-1880s, the cost of the war was reaching the level where it was close to politically unbearable in the Netherlands. In 1885, the Dutch commander in Aceh introduced a new tactic, the so-called Concentration System, which involved the building of blockhouses and watchtowers around the capital, linked by a railway and telegraph lines.
This policy did little to save Dutch lives, for although fewer men might have been lost to enemy action, disease within the defended area was rife, leading to many deaths. Dutch morale was low, their troops being cooped up behind wire and fortifications and prevented from retaliating against the Acehnese, who kept making pin-prick attacks on the forts and sabotaging the railway.
It was not until the 1890s that the Dutch finally hit on a successful strategy against their opponents. This strategy had two elements, one military and the other civil. The military element was the formation in 1890 of lightly armed flying columns of Indonesian troops commanded by Dutch officers, armed and trained for jungle warfare. The flying columns were soon recording important victories against the Acehnese forces.
The civil element in the counter-guerilla operations was suggested by Snouck Hurgronje, the very influential colonial government adviser on Islam. Snouck took the view that the religious leaders, the ulama, could never be persuaded voluntarily to cease fighting the Dutch, and thus that they would have to be crushed completely by the army. Then a new locus of regional power would have to be found to take their place. He suggested that the uleebalang be used in this capacity. The uleebalang, he suggested bluntly, could be bought off with promises of important positions in the Dutch administration. He was right, and in this way the Dutch were able to drive a deep wedge into Acehnese society between the religious and secular elites. There followed a bloody military campaign that, by about 1903, brought most of Aceh under the control of the Dutch and their uleebalang clients. The Aceh War is generally reckoned to have ended in that year, though fighting was to continue in some areas for another decade.
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