Klaas van der Maaten

Portrait photo by Klaas van der Maaten

Klaas van der Maaten in conversation with Waki ​​Wahab

Klaas van der Maaten (* 1861 ; † 1944 ) was a Dutch officer and military writer .

Live and act

Van der Maaten was the son of a painter and he was trained at the Royal Netherlands Academy in Breda . He spent most of his military service in the Dutch East Indies in the Atjeh War (ndl. Atjeh-Oorlog , 1873-1911), which was heavily influenced by the guerrilla warfare of the insurgent local population. Here he dealt intensively with the indigenous culture and the military potential of the inhabitants, whereby he was influenced by the Islam researcher Snouck Hurgronje .

In 1896 his most important work was published, the military manual De Indische Oorlogen. Een boek ten dienste van den jongen officier en het militair onderwijs , which was based on his own experiences in East India and today by the British military historian Ian FW Beckett as being on a par with Charles Edward Callwell's study Small Wars. Their Principles & Practice ( London first edition 1896).

After his retirement as major general in 1914 , van der Maaten moved to Switzerland and published numerous papers on colonial policy , the defense of the colonies and fortifications . He died in 1944; In 1948 the biography Snouck Hurgronje en de Atjehoorlog appeared posthumously .

Publications (selection)

• De Indian Oorlogues. A boek ten dienst van den jongen officier en het militair onderwijs . 3 volumes. Haarlem / Batavia 1896, ( digitized ).

literature

• 1819-1911. Dutch colonial wars , in: Georg von Alten (Hrsg.): Handbook for Army and Fleet. Encyclopedia of War Studies and Related Areas , Vol. 9: Wars from Antiquity to the Present , Berlin 1912, pp. 594f.
• Joop A. de Moor, Hendrik L. Wesseling (eds.): Imperialism and War. Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa , Leiden 1989.
• Maaten, Maj. Gen. Klaas van der (1861–1944) , in: Ian FW Beckett: Encyclopedia of Guerrilla Warfare , New York 2001, p. 139.