Cloves (Aceh) (Dutch: kruidnagelen, Latin: Syzygium aromaticum) were the dried flower buds of the clove tree, an indigenous export product (Dutch: inheems exportproduct) imported into the residency of Atjeh from the Moluccas and from Zanzibar and almost exclusively re-exported (Dutch: uitsluitend wederuitgevoerd) through the colonial port of Kuta Raja and the free port of Sabang to European and Peninsular Indian markets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although the Atjehnese interior did not itself produce cloves in commercial quantities, the residency served as a redistribution hub for the Indian Ocean spice network, and a substantial import of Zanzibar clove waste (Dutch: kruidnagel-afval) was used locally to flavour the chewing tobacco (Dutch: tjootabak) wrapped in the chewing sticks known as inlandse strootjes.
Trade flow
Cloves arrived at the ports of Atjeh from two principal sources. The first was the Moluccas — the historic centre of clove production since the VOC monopoly of the seventeenth century — which supplied whole, high-quality buds for the European confectionery and pharmaceutical trade. The second was Zanzibar, which by the late nineteenth century had overtaken the Moluccas as the world’s largest clove producer and supplied both premium cloves and the so-called kruidnagel-afval (clove waste) that the Atjeh trade used as a flavouring.
After landing at Kuta Raja, Sabang or Belawan, the cloves were sorted by Chinese and Acehnese middlemen, repacked in mats or tins, and re-exported to Batavia, Padang, Penang and the European markets. The colonial customs regime treated cloves as a transit commodity (Dutch: doorvoer-artikel), and the residency’s import and export statistics therefore record roughly equal quantities entering and leaving Atjeh, with only a small balance retained for local consumption.
Local use: chewing sticks and the inlandse strootjes
A distinctive feature of the Atjeh clove trade was the substantial local demand for clove waste (Dutch: kruidnagel-afval), the broken and lower-grade buds rejected for the European market. This waste was ground and mixed with tobacco to flavour the chewing sticks (Dutch: inlandse strootjes) widely chewed by the Atjehnese population, often as part of the betel quid (Dutch: sirihpruim) that also incorporated pinangnut. The flavour of clove-flavoured chewing tobacco (Dutch: tjootabak) was a marker of Acehnese taste and a small but steady driver of the local spice trade.
Historical significance
The clove trade illustrated the interconnectedness of the Indian Ocean spice network, with Aceh acting as a redistribution hub between the Moluccas, Zanzibar, the British straits settlements and Europe. This role had medieval roots — the Acehnese sultanate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had served as the great entrepôt for the spice trade between the Maluku archipelago and the Ottoman, Mughal and European worlds — and the colonial transit trade of the early twentieth century was a direct descendant of that role. By the 1930s the consolidation of the spice trade through direct steamship lines between the Moluccas and Europe had reduced Atjeh’s redistributive function, though Penang-based Chinese merchants continued to channel cloves through the free port of Sabang until the Japanese occupation of 1942.
See Also
- Nutmeg (Aceh)
- Mace (Foelie)
- Pinangnut (Betel Nut)
- White Pepper (Aceh)
- Black Pepper (Aceh)
- Molukken
- Sabang
- Koeta-Radja
- Dutch East India Company
- Sultanate of Acheh
- 1930
Source
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, pp. 13-14.