Article

Atché (Sumatra) [Aceh]. . Dyer; with a note P. Kratoska

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Atché (Sumatra) [Aceh]. . Dyer; with a note P. Kratoska

Xavier Brau de Saint-Pol Lias, a French explorer and sometime diplomat, presented this account of the Aceh region of Sumatra to the Société de Géographie in June 1883, during the height of the Dutch military campaign against the Sultanate of Aceh. Translated by Colin Dyer and published in JMBRAS in 2020, the paper offers a vivid first-hand ethnographic and military narrative of the west coast of Aceh, the interior Gayo highlands, and the Dutch colonial administration at Kota Radjah, framed by a closing argument in favour of French colonial expansion.

Summary

Brau de Saint-Pol Lias travelled to Aceh aboard Dutch naval vessels in the early 1880s, accompanying the mining engineer John Errington de la Croix. His account opens with a philosophical observation on indigenous geography: an elderly Acehnese trader named Si-Labo, who had once visited Europe, could not conceive of Sumatra as a single island but named it only as “the country of Klouang,” revealing how the island constituted “an entire world” for its inhabitants (p. 206). The author then describes his journey into the interior highlands of Tampat-Touan, where he encountered a Gayo man named Si-Maoulout who provided the Dutch Controller with detailed geographical information about the interior, including the previously unrecorded “empire of the Karo” and a correction to the supposed source of the Malabou River (pp. 210–212).

The bulk of the paper is devoted to the Aceh War. Brau de Saint-Pol Lias recounts the Dutch conquest of the Kraton in 1873 under General van Swieten, the subsequent resistance, and the establishment of the Controller’s post at Malabou in 1877, which was immediately met with the burning of the entire kampong by the sons of the local Kedjourouan (pp. 216–218). He describes the extreme danger of European life in Malabou, where the population had been reduced from 40,000 to fewer than 1,000, and recounts the exploits of the rebel leader Toukou Umar, who had killed fifty Europeans (p. 216). The author also provides a detailed portrait of General van der Heijden, who commanded the Aceh army from 1877 and survived a bullet wound to the eye at the battle of Samalanggan, coughing the projectile from his throat twenty-six days later (p. 225).

The paper closes with a passage on the Dutch colonial infrastructure at Oulele and Kota Radjah, including the lighthouse at Poulo Bras, the railway, and the Kraton, before turning to a defence of French colonialism. Brau de Saint-Pol Lias argues that colonisation “is the most vigorous source wherein a nation’s strengths can be renewed” and that France cannot afford to remain disinterested in the “sharing between the civilised nations” of the globe (p. 229).

Key Findings

  • The Gayo man Si-Maoulout provided the Dutch Controller with the first recorded reference to the “empire of the Karo,” a region south of the Gayo between the Alas and the Batak, and corrected the believed source of the Malabou River (p. 211).
  • The State of Malabou, which had 40,000 inhabitants before the Dutch arrival, was reduced to fewer than 1,000 after the sons of the Kedjourouan Toukou Tchi burned the entire kampong and drove the population into the mountains in 1877 (p. 218).
  • The rebel leader Toukou Umar, aged twenty-two, had killed fifty Europeans by the time of the author’s visit, and his father’s son Toukou Itam had murdered ten Dutch soldiers by drugging them with opium (pp. 216–217).
  • At Pedir, the last major point of resistance, there were still 20,000 armed warriors equipped with rapid-fire guns and some 80,000 spears, and a child heir of the sultans was being raised to vengeance (p. 219).
  • The “Twelve Colonies” tradition holds that twelve Malay boats from the Kingdom of Menangkebow (Padang) founded settlements along the Aceh coast before the thirteenth century, and their descendants at Tampat-Touan maintained racial purity, disowning any man who married an Acehnese woman (p. 213).
  • General van der Heijden, who commanded the Aceh army from 1877, received two bullet wounds to the left eye at Samalanggan; the second penetrated his skull and was coughed up from his throat twenty-six days later, yet he continued to direct his troops until nightfall (p. 225).

Conclusion

Brau de Saint-Pol Lias presents Aceh as a region of extraordinary natural beauty and human complexity, whose proud and bellicose population resisted Dutch conquest with a ferocity that distinguished it from other parts of the Malay world. His definitive historical takeaway is that the Dutch would ultimately prevail not through superior force alone but through the “complete absence of cohesion among the various tiny States” that composed the Aceh region, which had been at war with one another under the sultans (p. 220). The paper thus serves as both an ethnographic record of a vanishing political order and a contemporary justification for European colonial expansion.

Context

  • The photographs included in this JMBRAS edition are held by the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen in Amsterdam and were not published in the original 1885 Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (p. 205).
  • The editor’s note situates this paper alongside two other French visitors to the region in the early 1880s: John Errington de la Croix, engaged in tin mining in Perak, and Jacques de Morgan, a mining engineer seeking a concession (p. 205).

References