Jean Jacques Rambonnet | |
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![]() Jean Jacques Rambonnet as a kapitein ter zee on 9 September 1911. | |
Minister of State | |
In office 13 January 1920 – 3 August 1943 | |
Monarch | Queen Wilhelmina |
Minister of the Navy | |
In office 29 August 1913 – 28 June 1918 | |
Monarch | Queen Wilhelmina |
Prime Minister | Cort van der Linden |
Preceded by | Hendrikus Colijn |
Succeeded by | Bonifacius Cornelis de Jonge |
Minister of the Colonies (acting) | |
In office 8 December 1915 – 17 January 1916 | |
Monarch | Queen Wilhelmina |
Prime Minister | Cort van der Linden |
Preceded by | Thomas Bastiaan Pleyte |
Succeeded by | Thomas Bastiaan Pleyte |
Minister of War (acting) | |
In office 15 May 1917 – 15 June 1917 | |
Monarch | Queen Wilhelmina |
Prime Minister | Cort van der Linden |
Preceded by | Nicolaas Bosboom |
Succeeded by | Bonifacius Cornelis de Jonge |
Personal details | |
Born | Wijhe, Netherlands | 8 March 1864
Died | 3 August 1943 Rotterdam, Netherlands | (aged 79)
Resting place | General Cemetery, The Hague, Netherlands |
Political party | Independent Liberal |
Spouses |
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Alma mater | Royal Naval Institute, Willemsoord |
Profession | Naval officer |
Military service | |
Allegiance | Netherlands |
Branch/service | Royal Netherlands Navy |
Years of service | 1883–1913 |
Rank | Vice admiral |
Commands |
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Battles/wars | Flores Expedition 1904 |
Awards | |
Chief Scout of the Netherlands | |
In office 1928–1937 | |
Jean Jacques Rambonnet (8 March 1864, Wijhe – 3 August 1943, Rotterdam) was a Dutch naval officer and politician. Reaching the rank of vice admiral, he served as Minister of the Navy, Acting Minister of Colonies, and Acting Minister of War. He was also a member of the Council of State and, among other things, a knight in the Military Order of William. He also played an important role in Scouting in the Netherlands and served as the only Chief Scout of the Netherlands prior to 2021.[1]
Rambonnet's great-great-great-grandfather Frédéric Louis Rambonnet (1684–1755) was a member of the Geheimrat of the King of Prussia, stadtholder of Maastricht and the County of Groedenhove, and envoy of the King of Prussia to the Bishop of Liège. His great-great-grandfather, also named Jean Jacques Rambonnet (1713–1768) and the son of Frédéric Louis Rambonnet, was a Walloon minister. Rambonnet's great-grandfather, F. L. Rambonnet (1751–1811), was a member of the legislative body for the Overijssel department.[citation needed]
Rambonnet's paternal grandfather, also named Jean Jacques Rambonnet (1793–1873), was a Dutch Reformed Church minister. His maternal grandfather was Jonkheer Simon Pierre François Meijer, Royal Netherlands Army officer and a knight of the Military Order of William.[citation needed]
Rambonnet's father, Frédéric Louis Rambonnet (1827–1900), was mayor of Wijhe. His mother was Jonkvrouw Sara Maria Cornelia Meijer (1837–1921).[citation needed]
Rambonnet's brother, also named Frédéric Louis Rambonnet (1867–1949), was a vice admiral, and another brother, Henri Gerard Rambonnet (1873–1961), was a major general of artillery. Rambonnet's brother-in-law Henri Marchant (1869–1956) was a minister.[citation needed]
Rambonnet married Marie Jeanne Arnoldine Antoinette Uhlenbeck (1873–1940), daughter of Vice Admiral Christian Elisa Uhlenbeck (1840–1897), and Anna Christina ten Bosch (1843–1921) — sister of, among others, Vice-Admiral and member of the Council of State Pieter ten Bosch (1836–1922) — with whom he had three children. One of those children was Frédéric Louis Rambonnet (1899–1945), who during World War II was active in the service of the Reichskommissariat Niederlande during the German occupation of the Netherlands as commander of the Spoorwacht and district commander of the Landwacht in Overijssel.[2]
The Rambonnet family has been included in the Nederland's Patriciaat since 1939.[3]
Rambonnet was appointed Minister of the Navy on 29 August 1913,[34] succeeding Colijn.[36][37] As a minister of the Navy in the cabinet of the Independent Liberal Prime Minister Pieter Cort van der Linden, Rambonnet visited the Rijkswerf and the institutions belonging to the management of Amsterdam in November 1913.[38] A steam launch brought him to the dockyard, where its director and commander, Vice Admiral G. F. Tydeman, received him.
Concerned by the potential threat the Imperial Japanese Navy posed to Dutch interests in East Asia, Rambonnet advocated that the Royal Netherlands Navy adopt a version of the "risk theory" developed by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz for the Imperial German Navy.[37] Rambonnet's version called for the maintenance of a Dutch fleet in the Netherlands East Indies large enough that it would outnumber the Japanese fleet when operating with the forces of a friendly power — which the Dutch hoped would be the United Kingdom or the United States — and be sufficient to deter or block any Japanese invasion.[37] Accordingly, he reconvened the State Committee on 13 November 1913 to begin planning the [[Dutch 1913 battleship proposal |design and construction of a fleet]] adequate for a "risk theory"-based defense of the Netherlands East Indies.[39] At its initial meeting, the committee proposed 22,000-ton ships armed with eight 343-millimetre (13.5 in) guns,[39] During Rambonnet's first several months in office, the committee further modified the requirement, by March 1914 settling on 25,000-ton ships armed with 350-millimetre (13.8 in) guns.[39] The committee submitted the requirements to 11 shipyards for design proposals, received seven responses, and made its final choice from among three of them.[39] By July 1914, Rambonnet's ministry had developed a construction plan in which the Netherlands would build five 24,605-ton superdreadnoughts, five 4,000-ton cruisers, and seven submarines.[37] The Netherlands lacked domestic shipyards capable of building warships larger than cruisers, so Rambonnet's plan called for construction of the superdreadnoughts in foreign yards.[37]
By the summer of 1914, Rambonnet believed he had enough political support for the construction plan to be approved in the 1914 Fleet Law, and he prepared to bring it before the House of Representatives,[39][37] hoping to begin construction of the first of the new battleships in December 1914.[39] Before the House could vote on the plan, however, World War I broke out in late July 1914, and the belligerent powers on whom the Netherlands had to rely for the construction of superdreadnoughts became fully occupied with their own wartime naval construction needs.[37]
Although Dutch shipyards could not build superdreadnoughts, they could construct cruisers, so Rambonnet continued to advocate cruiser construction after the outbreak of the war.[37] Uninterested in following the German doctrine of using cruisers for commerce raiding, he nonetheless was impressed with the capability of Imperial German Navy cruisers to operate independently in remote areas in the early months of the war, outgunning weaker opponents and outrunning stronger ones.[37] With the Netherlands unable to acquire superdreadnoughts until sometime after the war ended, Rambonnet proposed an innovative naval operating concept for the Far East:[37] Rather than using Dutch cruisers to lure an enemy battlefleet into combat with a larger friendly battlefleet on favorable terms, he proposed using cruisers to lure enemy forces into an ambush by Dutch submarines.[40] With this idea, he was able to unite his fellow advocates of "risk theory" and the acquisition of superdreadnoughts with Dutch naval thinkers who preferred that the Royal Netherlands Navy instead pursue a Jeune École strategy with less emphasis on capital ships.[41] He also was able to take advantage of a favorable overall Dutch political disposition toward naval expansion to secure the approval of further naval construction despite the Dutch inability to acquire superdreadnoughts, and his proposal to focus on cruiser and submarine construction until circumstances allowed the acquisition of superdreadnoughts met with widespread approval.[42]
Rambonnet wanted to depart from the standard Dutch practice of building cruisers to match contemporary foreign cruisers and instead acquire new cruisers which exceeded the capabilities of foreign ones.[43] He chose the Japanese Chikuma-class protected cruisers as the standard that the new Dutch cruisers had to surpass.[43] The result was the Java-class light cruisers.[39][43] For submarines, he supported a plan for the construction of small submarines for operations in Dutch waters and of larger ones for service in the Netherlands East Indies. He secured funding for six coastal submarines — three each of the O 9 and O 12 classes — and 12 larger patrol submarines of the K II, K III, K V, K VIII, and K XI classes.[44]
When the Royal Netherlands Navy budget was discussed in the Dutch Senate in February 1915, Deputy Jan Dirk Baron van Wassenaer van Rosande questioned whether the appointment of flag officers could be carried out in accordance with established rules. Rambonnet responded by calling mistrust in the integrity of the naval authorities unjustified and defending the navy against, among other things, the claims of retired Vice Admiral Frederik Jan Stokhuyzen the way in which Vice Admiral Gustaaf Paul van Hecking Colenbrander had been treated.[45]
While serving as Minister of the Navy, Rambonnet took on additional duties as acting Minister of the Colonies from 8 December 1915 to 17 January 1916 — between the departure of Thomas Bastiaan Pleyte from the ministry and his return to it — and as acting Minister of War from 15 May to 15 June 1917 as the temporary successor to Minister of War Major General Nicolaas Bosboom until Bonifacius Cornelis de Jonge took up duties as minister of war. As Minister of the Navy during World War I, in which the Netherlands was neutral, he had to deal with attacks on Dutch ships and demands from belligerents with regard to shipping traffic. Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Jonkheer John Loudon allowed a British search of a Dutch merchant convoy bound for the Netherlands East Indies, prompting a conflict between Rambonnet — who considered this to be contrary to international law regarding neutral countries — and his colleagues over the extent to which the Netherlands should comply with such demands. The dispute led Rambonnet to resign on 26 June 1918. Queen Wilhelmina emphatically demonstrated her support for him by appointing him as chamberlain in extraordinary service two days after his resignation. He had meanwhile been promoted to rear admiral.
Rambonnet received a lifetime appointment as a member of the Council of State on 13 January 1920 (replacing Vice Admiral Pieter ten Bosch, who had resigned his position)[46] and was sworn in as a Minister of State during the same meeting as another new member, Jan A. Loff.[47]
Rambonnet was an important figure in Scouting in the Netherlands in the years before World War II broke out in 1939. His scouting career started in 1920, when the Royal Commissioner, Prince Hendrik, asked Rambonnet to succeed him as chairman of De Nederlandsche Padvinders (NPV, "The Dutch Pathfinders") which was the Scouting organization of the Netherlands. In 1928, the NPV adopted more rules from the United Kingdom, after which Rambonnet was appointed the first Chief Scout of the Netherlands. He continued to hold this position until just after the 5th World Scout Jamboree in 1937. No one served as Chief Scout in the Netherlands again until 24 September 2021, when Freek Vonk was appointed Chief Scout of Scouting Nederland.[48]
Rambonnet received the Silver Wolf Award for his work in Scouting. The Rambonnethuis ("Rambonnet House"), a model for an ideal group house which stood at Gilwell Ada's Hoeve, the Dutch national Scouting campsite in Ommen, from 28 August 1948 to 19 March 1993, was named after Rambonnet. Several scout groups were later named after him, as is Scouting's first mothership for Sea Scouts, the Dutch vessel MS Rambonnet.
Rambonnet was Vice President of the Royal National Association for Rescue and First Aid in Accidents[49] and received the Grand Cross of Merit of the Netherlands Red Cross for his work. He also was a member of the Honorary Committee for the Naval Monument in 1920.[50]
Rambonnet died on 3 August 1943 and was buried in the General Cemetery in The Hague.[51]