Carel Herman Aart van der Wijck

Van der Wijck was born a descendant of the Van der Wyck family. He was the son of Mr. Herman Constantijn van der Wijck (1815-1889), member of the Council of the Indies, and Marianne Susanna Lucia de Kock van Leeuwen (1821-1912). He spent the first part of his childhood in the Dutch East Indies and was sent to the Netherlands for further education, where he studied at the gymnasium in Zutphen and then the Royal Academy for the training of Indian civil servants in the Dutch East Indies. He returned to the Dutch East Indies, to Batavia, where he was appointed as second commission in 1864 to the General Secretariat and in 1865 promoted to first commission. In 1866 he was transferred in his position as main committee to the newly established Department of Internal Administration. In 1868 he entered the ranks of the actual Interior Administration by his appointment as secretary of the Batavia residence. In 1873 he was appointed as an assistant resident in Surakarta and in 1876 he transferred in the same rank to Buitenzorg. Van der Wijck obtained a acknowledgement from the government for his decisive action to curb the disturbances in 1878 on the private country of Tjitrap (at the home of inspector Captain Von Balluseck).

He was appointed resident of Tegal in 1880; in this region, where the population was burdened by the burden of the sugar industry, with the administrative constraints attached to it until 1890, he was able to settle the conflicts about the use of irrigation water, which was indispensable for both the manufacturers (water power for the machines) and the population. In 1884 his appointment as a resident of Surabaya followed, where he was involved in, among other things, plans to improve the water management of the Solo Valley. A note from him dated 29 October 1887 on this issue was later published in the Journal of the Royal Institute of Engineers (1890-1891). Van der Wijck was appointed as a member of the Council of India in 1888 and was appointed vice president of this council the following year. He received - at his request - an honorable discharge from Dutch East Indies service in 1891. Back in The Netherlands he became a commissioner of the Royal Paketvaart Maatschappij (KPM). On June 15, 1893, he was appointed on the recommendation of the Minister of Colonies Van Dedem to succeed Pijnacker Hordijk as Governor General of the Dutch East Indies. At his own specific request he left while still employed by the KPM for the Dutch East Indies. Upon arrival, he first appointed a new KPM agent for the Dutch East Indies, local KPM harbor masters, and implemented austerity measures at the KPM office in Batavia before being sworn in as Governor General on October 17 that year.[2]

In Aceh, things had also gotten out of hand in Aceh; Van der Wijck intervened forcefully, dismissed responsible General Deykerhoff and sent a force to Aceh under the leadership of General Vetter, who restored order. Van der Wijck received criticism from the States General for his involvement in the lease of land by the Javanese population to the sugar manufacturers; it was believed that he took too much of the side of the manufacturers who would have turned the private sugar industry into a disguised coercive system. Van der Wijck was able to reconcile himself with the bill drafted by Minister van Dedem in 1893 for the reorganization and decentralization of the Indian administration, although he was of the opinion that it ran a little too fast on some points. He did, however, want the Indian budget to be established in India itself, as a result of which the Netherlands would hand over the budget. A further start was made under the management of Van der Wijck with the introduction of opium control, the monopolization of the production and sale of opium in the Dutch East Indies by the Dutch government.

After returning to the Netherlands, Van der Wijck held a number of positions and supervisory directorships in business; the most important was that of president-commissioner of the Royal Dutch Society for the Exploitation of Petroleum Resources in the Dutch East Indies from 1903 to 1913; he was also chairman of the Mining Council established in 1902 and a member of the Senate of the States General (1904, succeeding Tak van Poortvliet). In his spare time, Van der Wijck was busy with genealogy and made the publication of the book The Münsterse Lineage of Van der Wijck (The Hague, 1911) possible. The Van der Wijck brothers were also influential statesmen: Mr. Herman Marinus van der Wijck was Minister of Marines, Mr. Herman van der Wijck was a member of the Council of State and Mr. Otto van der Wijck was vice-president of the Council of India. His son-in-law, Mr. A.C.D. de Graeff was also governor-general of the Dutch East Indies. Van der Wijck died on July 9, 1914 in his house Thor Wieck in Baarn.

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