The whole former kingdom of Acheh with the dependencies connected with it is now subject to Dutch rule; all the districts are administered by hereditary chiefs under the constant supervision of Dutch Civil Servants and officials, and the military force is engaged in hunting down and reducing to impotence the last elements of disorder—the irreconcilable fanatics and the incorrigible plunderers—in their own selected hiding-places. The very reciprocal dissensions of the Achehnese, their efforts to impede the subjection of their opponents among their fellow-countrymen, make this work laborious and slow, but no one has any doubt about the ultimate issue, and even the surviving bands no longer delude themselves with the hope of baffling the Dutch for long.
This commentary on the above-debated events of the last few years does not aim at giving the reader an extract of Acheh's most recent history; the treatment of history lies outside the scope of my work. But just as in 1892, for a proper comprehension of the political, domestic, social and religious life of the Achehnese it was necessary now and again to recall certain historical events in order to explain the present by the past, so now it seems desirable not to leave the reader unacquainted with the important changes which have taken place on the political stage at Acheh since the appearance of the Dutch edition of my work. This further thought occurs to me as its writer: that the period separating the two editions of the work has, in all material details, placed the seal of truth upon the diagnosis of the disease made by me in 1892, when many doubted me, while other doctors thought that the complaint was beyond healing. Now no one any longer doubts that the dogmas of Islam on the subject of religious war, so fanatical in their terms, supplied the principal stimulus to this obstinate rebellion; that the teungkus, or religious leaders, came more and more during the war to be masters of the country and terrorized the hereditary chiefs as well as the populace wherever these last were disposed to peace; that only a forcible subjugation followed by orderly control over the administration could bring about peace; that the Dutch Government in Acheh could effect nothing by pressure from outside; that the control of the country through controlling its harbours was impracticable; and that Tuanku Muhamat Dawōt who had been made Sultan as a child, however much he enjoyed the homage mingled with fear that natives are apt to give to the descendants of their tyrants, was a nonentity in a political sense and was in a position neither to do the Dutch much
