Article

The reminiscences of Colonel Nahuijs. C.E. Wurtzburg

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

The reminiscences of Colonel Nahuijs. C.E. Wurtzburg

C. E. Wurtzburg published these translated extracts from the 1858 English translation of Baron Nahuijs van Burgst’s autobiography in 1950, drawing on a privately printed Arnhem edition of the “Reminiscences of the Public & Private Life (1799–1849)” that had recently come into the possession of H. Eric Miller. The article presents Nahuijs’s first-hand account of the Dutch colonial crisis in Java from 1805 to 1816, centred on the British capture of the Dutch fleet at Batavia, the fall of Dutch Java to Raffles in 1811, and the subsequent restoration of Dutch sovereignty in 1816.

Summary

Wurtzburg’s selection from Nahuijs’s autobiography is organised around the colonel’s two long spells in Java, with the bulk of the text devoted to the dramatic naval and military events of 1806 and 1811. The most substantial extract is Nahuijs’s eyewitness account of the British squadron under Sir Edward Pellew destroying the Dutch fleet anchored at the Modderbank on 27 November 1806. Nahuijs writes with evident bitterness about the passive resistance of Dutch naval officers, who followed Admiral Hartsinck’s orders to abandon their ships rather than fight, and contrasts this with the valiant defence of the frigate Pallas under Captain Aalbers, which was sunk after a fierce engagement with the Greyhound and Harrier. The land forces are described as equally apathetic, with batteries unprepared and rations undistributed even as the enemy approached.

The second major sequence covers the British invasion of 1811 and its aftermath. Nahuijs, then serving in a civil capacity upcountry, volunteered for military service and was appointed staff officer to Brigadier Alberti. He was captured, wounded, captured again, and ultimately shipped to Bengal by British authorities who had been warned by Dutch officers—whom Nahuijs considers deserters—that he was a dangerous enemy. After imprisonment in Reading and his return to Holland in 1813, he again made his way to Java, arriving in 1815 ahead of the main Dutch force and becoming the first to hoist the Dutch flag at Djocjocarta in August 1816.

The final and perhaps most historically significant passage concerns Nahuijs’s reconciliation with Sir Stamford Raffles. Despite having been banished from Java under Raffles’s governorship, Nahuijs hosted Raffles’s brother-in-law Captain Auber and three English friends at his Djocjocarta residency, sent a Javanese pony as a gift to Lady Raffles, and thereby initiated a warm correspondence in which Raffles acknowledged the injustice of his earlier treatment. Wurtzburg speculates that the visiting party may have been Major Travers and his wife, and notes that Travers’s diary confirms the sudden arrival of Nahuijs with the first authentic news of the Dutch restoration, though it does not mention the pony episode.

Key Findings

  • On 27 November 1806, Sir Edward Pellew’s squadron captured and burned 27 Dutch vessels (men-of-war, armed boats, and merchant ships) at the Modderbank, Batavia, with virtually no effective resistance from the Dutch naval or land forces (pp. 127–130).
  • The frigate Pallas (36 guns) under Captain Aalbers offered a “glorious and unequal resistance” against the Greyhound (36 guns) and Harrier (18 guns), losing her commander and first officer Hulsebosch before being disabled (p. 129).
  • Colonel Filz, commandant at Amboina, was shot by court martial in 1810 for capitulating to a force far inferior to his own; General de Kock’s letter of 12 June 1810 describes him as “an honest and worthy man” who erred from “weakness of character” (pp. 130–131).
  • The Dutch fleet carrying the Commissaries-General (Elout, Van der Capellen, Buyskes) and troops left Holland on 29 October 1815; Nahuijs arrived in Batavia ahead of them and was received with extraordinary public enthusiasm (pp. 131–132).
  • The formal handover of Java from British to Dutch control was agreed in August 1816, with the British flag lowered and the Dutch flag hoisted at Djocjocarta upon the arrival of Dutch troops (p. 133).
  • In 1823, Governor-General Van der Capellen refused Raffles permission to land at Batavia for a few hours when his ship called for water en route to Bencoolen, underscoring the hostile Dutch official attitude toward Raffles that Nahuijs’s friendship contrasted with (p. 135).

Conclusion

Wurtzburg presents Nahuijs as a man of “great strength of character” and “considerable charm” whose autobiography provides a valuable first-hand Dutch perspective on the colonial transition of 1811–1816, particularly on the personal dimensions of the Raffles–Nahuijs relationship that ran counter to the prevailing Dutch official hostility toward the British governor.

Context

  • The primary source is the 1858 privately printed English translation (by Nahuijs’s daughter) of his Dutch-language reminiscences, held in the MBRAS library at Malaya House; Wurtzburg’s extracts were made from a copy owned by H. Eric Miller before its donation to the Society.
  • The article complements the earlier JMBRAS extracts (Vol. 19, Part 2, 1941) from Nahuijs’s “Letters” (1826/1827 editions) and draws on Travers’s diary as corroborating evidence for the 1817 visit to Djocjocarta.

References