Foreign capital in Atjeh — the Franco-Belgian and French plantation money which opened, between 1908 and 1914, a chain of caoutchouc, coffee-, rubber- and palm-oil-estates in the sub-department Temyang — forms the subject of the penultimate chapter of Joh. Langhout’s book, included “op gevaar af van het nationale karakter van dit werkje geweld aan te doen” (“at the risk of doing violence to this little book’s national character”).
The Société Financière des Caoutchoucs
“Onder Fransch Belgische auspicien is tot stand gekomen de Société Financière des Caoutchoucs, die in Temyang, het onmiddellijk aan de Oostkust van Sumatra grenzende deel van Atjeh, een tiental ondernemingen heeft geopend voor de winning van caoutchouc, koffie, rubber en palmolie” — under Franco-Belgian auspices the Société Financière des Caoutchoucs had come into being, which in Temyang opened a series of enterprises:
- Soengei Lipoet, opened 26 February 1908 with 30 ha, grown to 5,751 ha by 1922 with 3,600 coolies (coffee exchanged for oil-palm in 1918; caoutchouc up to 1,319,800 KG and oil 962,504 KG in 1922);
- Batang Ara, founded 18 January 1911 with 86 ha, 1,739 ha planted for caoutchouc and palm-oil, 742 coolies (291,600 KG caoutchouc and 395,400 KG oil in 1922);
- Semadam, founded 1913, over 515 ha (31,600 KG caoutchouc and 247,500 KG oil in 1922).
The other foreign companies
“Voorts heeft de Fransche maatschappij ‘Palmeraies de Simpang Kanan’ op 28 April 1914 in het Temyangsche een onderneming ‘Simpang Kanan’ geopend, waarop thans 650 H.A. Hevea rubber geplant is en ongeveer 70 H.A. palmolie. Naast haar werkt de ‘Simpang Kiri Cultuurmaatschappij’, opgericht 22 Maart 1913, met ongeveer 600 H.A. rubberaanplant. Tenslotte de eveneens met buitenlandsch kapitaal werkende ‘Tengoelan Cultuur Maatschappij’, die eveneens ondernemingen bezit in het Atjehsche, doch waaromtrent cijfers als bovenstaande achterwege moeten blijven” — the French “Palmeraies de Simpang Kanan” opened her estate Simpang Kanan on 28 April 1914 (650 ha Hevea and c. 70 ha oil-palm); beside her works the Simpang Kiri Cultuurmaatschappij (founded 22 March 1913, c. 600 ha of rubber); and the Tengoelan Cultuur Maatschappij, equally working with foreign capital, owns enterprises in the Atjehnese part, about which figures as the foregoing must remain behind.
Context
The foreign plantations stood in a wider frame of international engagement with the province: the early British support of the blockade, the pepper capital of Penang, the French merchant captains of the Roura type, the Liverpool Blue Funnel ships, and — in the older history — the tin and pepper capital staking the pepper havens since the seventeenth century. Langhout’s attitude is ambivalent: the money was welcome (it had “tot stand gebracht” — accomplished — what Dutch capital could not then finish), but the mechanism of the Sabang harbour agreement of 1909–1910 was precisely designed to keep strategic assets out of foreign hands.
See Also
Source
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 188–190.