UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) The course of co-option: Co-option of local power-holders as a tool for obtaining control over the population in counterinsurgency campaigns in weblike societies. With case studies on Dutch experiences during the Aceh War (1873-c. 1912) and the Uruzgan campaign (2006-2010) Kitzen, M.W.M. Publication date 2016 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Kitzen, M. W. M. (2016). The course of co-option: Co-option of local power-holders as a tool for obtaining control over the population in counterinsurgency campaigns in weblike societies. With case studies on Dutch experiences during the Aceh War (1873-c. 1912) and the Uruzgan campaign (2006-2010). 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UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:04 Oct 2021 Part II The Aceh War Proefschrift_Kitzen.indb 175 13-10-2016 9:40:23 Chapter 4 Proefschrift_Kitzen.indb 176 13-10-2016 9:40:23 Chapter 4: Aceh and the first decades of the war, 1873-1893 4.1 Introduction Since the early days of the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, the [Dutch] United East-India Company) in the seventeenth century, the Dutch had learned to rely on co-option of local power-holders for obtaining control over trade and eventually also populations in various The Course of Co-option locales throughout the Indonesian archipelago. An illustration is given by the VOC’s 150- year spice monopoly on the Malukan islands that was the result of both voluntary and forced contracts with local rulers backed up by a continuous threat of punitive expeditions.1 This collaboration method brought the Dutch control of local populations in places of interest and colonial officials were capable of maintaining this control -despite several uprisings- as they continuously adapted their policy to the logic of each specific locale. Dutch colonialism came to a temporarily halt when the Napoleonic occupation of the Netherlands evoked the British to seize control of the Dutch colonial possessions. The British intermezzo ended on the 13th of August 1814 when the East Indies were officially returned to The Netherlands 177 (although the actual hand-over would start in 1816). The Dutch government now took over the helm (the VOC was disbanded in 1799) and over the course of the century established Chapter 4 political authority in the complete archipelago. The Dutch colonial state had to re-establish the collaborative equations with local power-holders as the British intermezzo had left the peoples of the Indies with a ‘rebellious spirit’ and many of the former co-optees had decided not to accept a renewed subjugation to Dutch colonial policy and its economic methods.2 This practice of restoring and extending control in the Indonesian archipelago would require nearly a century of continuous campaigning; it was not until the first decades of the twentieth century that the idea of the ‘Netherlands-Indies’ fully materialized as only then the Dutch succeeded to establish political authority into the last corners of the archipelago.3 One of those territories to be added to the Netherlands-Indies was the northern Sumatran Sultanate of Aceh. Although the Dutch launched a first expedition in 1873, it was not until c. 1912 that the last remaining rebels gave up their guerrilla war and Aceh was finally pacified.4 Thereby the almost forty-year Aceh War became the most protracted campaign fought during the expansion of the Dutch colonial state. Moreover, the war took a heavy toll on the scarce colonial resources as it required the continuous commitment of a vast number of colonial 1 Muridn S. Widjoja, ‘Cross-Cultural Alliance-Making and Local Resistance in Maluku during the Revolt of Prince Nuku, c. 1780- 1810’ (Doctoral Dissertation, Leiden University, 2007), 252. 2 Jaap de Moor, ‘Warmakers in the Archipelago: Dutch Expeditions in Nineteenth Century Indonesia’, Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa, ed. De Moor, J.A., Wesseling, H.L. (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 50. 3 Jaap de Moor, ‘Warmakers in the Archipelago: Dutch Expeditions in Nineteenth Century Indonesia’, 70-71. 4 Anthony Reid, The Contest For North Sumatra, Acheh, the Netherlands and Britain 1858-1898 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 282. Proefschrift_Kitzen.indb 177 13-10-2016 9:40:23 forces and claimed a substantial part of the colonial budget.5 A campaign of such magnitude and duration was unprecedented and therefore the Aceh War is unique in Dutch colonial history. Moreover, winning this war turned out to be crucial for the establishment of the colonial state of the Netherlands-Indies as the approach developed to win the Aceh War was the key to ‘unlimited expansion’.6 This brought the colonial government control of the populations in the various locales throughout the archipelago, which sufficed for embarking on a process of further development of the colonial state.7 It is this new approach to colonial warfare that emerged during the Aceh War that matters to us in the context of this analysis; which methods and means were instrumental for obtaining control of the population in the rebellious northern Sumatran Sultanate? The first two decades of the Aceh War proved disastrous to the Dutch. Despite tremendous efforts the colonial army did not succeed in pacifying Aceh. We will discuss these years later in this chapter in order to provide a background for a more detailed analysis The Course of Co-option of the Aceh War. Here it suffices to mention that the Dutch did not succeed in establishing effective collaborative relationships with local power-holders in Aceh’s fragmented societal landscape and that after twenty years of warfare Dutch control was limited to a fortified 178 line surrounding the capital Kutaradja (as the Dutch called it) and its port Ulèëlheuë.8 The situation changed for the better when the Dutch gradually adopted a population-centric strategy during the latter part of the 1890s. This new strategy, that was later dubbed the ‘Aceh strategy’, prescribed pacification through combined military and political actions under command of a single military officer who embodied both civil and military authority.9 Chapter 4 Mainstay of this approach was a thorough ethnographical analysis of the local population as brought to perfection by the colonial government’s advisor on Islam and indigenous affairs, Dr. Christiaan Snouck Hurgonje. Considering the nature of the Aceh strategy, it is not surprising that Brocades Zaalberg and De Moor have referred to the Aceh experiences as ‘the roots of Dutch counterinsurgency’, and that other scholars have categorized the Dutch 10 colonial ethnographic studies that supported this strategy as ‘counterinsurgency research’. 5 See, among others, Jaap de Moor, ‘Met klewang en karabijn’, 217-218, Ger Teitler, ‘De Krijgsmacht in offensief en defensief verband’, Imperialisme in de Marge, ed. Van Goor, J. (Utrecht: HES Uitgevers, 1986), 78. 6 Joop de Jong, De Waaier van het Fortuin, De Nederlanders in Azië en de Indonesische Archipel, 1595-1950 (Den Haag: SDU Uitgevers, 2000), 338, see also, Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, ‘Dutch Expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago Around 1900 and the Imperialism Debate’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 25:1 (March 1994), 98. 7 Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, ‘Dutch Expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago Around 1900 and the Imperialism Debate’, 111. 8 Acehnese names and titles are spelled as suggested either by Anthony Reid in his work An Indonesian Frontier, Acehnese and other histories of Sumatra (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2005), or James T. Siegel in The Rope of God (Ann Harbor: the University of Michigan Press, 2000). As there exists no plural form of Acehnese words, the original term is unchanged in plural. 9 See, among others, H.W. van den Doel, ‘De ontwikkeling van het militaire bestuur in Nederlands-Indië. De officier-civiel gezaghebber, 1880-1942’, Mededelingen van de Sectie Militaire Geschiedenis Landmachtstaf 12 (1989), 49. Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, ‘Dutch Expansion in the Indonesian Archipelago Around 1900 and the Imperialism Debate’, 98, Joop de Jong, De Waaier van het Fortuin, 334-336. 10 Thijs Brocades Zaalberg, ‘The roots of Dutch Counter-Insurgency, Balancing and integrating military and civilian efforts from Aceh to Uruzgan’, The U.S. army and irregular warfare 1775-2007: Selected papers from the 2007 Conference of Army Historians, ed. Davis, R.G., (Washington: Center of Military History, 2008), Jaap de Moor, Westerling’s Oorlog, Indonesië 1945-1950 (Amsterdam: Balans, 1999), 54, Frances Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900-1942 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995), 44, W.F. Wertheim, ‘Counter-Insurgency research at the turn of the century – Snouck Hurgronje and Proefschrift_Kitzen.indb 178 13-10-2016 9:40:23 Just like their British and French contemporaries the Dutch colonial officials introduced the principle of minimum force, or so-called ‘functional force’ or ‘surgical force’, in their new strategy.11 Under influence of major (later general, and ultimately Governor-General) Joannes Benedictus ‘Jo’ Van Heutsz the idea of the selective use of force as a measure against malevolent elements among the population exclusively became firmly rooted in the Aceh strategy.