Klewang

Origins

Across the islands of what is now Indonesia, the everyday chopping blade was also a weapon, and the klewang was one of the most common forms. The traditional klewang is a single-edged sword with a blade that often widens and sometimes curves toward the point, fitted with a simple hilt of wood or horn. Different islands and peoples had their own versions. The weapon became important to European military history because of the Aceh War, fought by the Netherlands against the Sultanate of Aceh in northern Sumatra from 1873 until the early 1900s. It was one of the longest colonial wars of the nineteenth century, and Acehnese fighters with klewangs and other blades inflicted heavy losses on Dutch patrols in the jungle.

Design & Construction

In 1890 the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) formed the Korps Marechaussee te voet, small mobile units designed to hunt Acehnese guerrillas in close country. Their men carried a carbine and a klewang, and the army soon produced its own military pattern: a straight or slightly curved single-edged blade of about 21 to 25 inches, a handle of wood or horn, and a brass or steel shell guard with a knuckle bow, much like a short cavalry saber or a naval cutlass. Official patterns, including the model of 1898, were made at the state arsenal at Hembrug and by German firms, and the Royal Netherlands Navy adopted a klewang as its boarding and landing weapon.

Combat Use

The Marechaussee changed the Aceh War. Moving through the jungle in brigades of about twenty men, they could meet ambushes at close range with the klewang rather than relying on rifles alone, and their harsh methods eventually broke Acehnese resistance, at great cost to the population. The klewang stayed in KNIL service through the World War I period and the interwar years. When Japan invaded the Netherlands East Indies in 1942, KNIL soldiers and Dutch marines still carried it, and it was used in the fighting of the Indonesian War of Independence after 1945. Dutch naval klewangs served even longer, and they were carried by the navy and the marines into the 1950s.

Legacy

For Indonesia, the klewang is part of the tradition of resistance that Indonesian national history celebrates, along with weapons like the kris. For the Netherlands, the military klewang is the symbol of the colonial army, and it is still carried in ceremonial use. Dutch military klewangs are collected alongside the Boarding Cutlass and naval swords of other countries, and they are often confused with them, since some navies used near-identical cutlasses; the original Indonesian forms are collected alongside the Bolo Knife and other blades of Southeast Asia. See also Dutch Arms & Weapons.