Inlandse Crêpe (Dutch: inlandsche crêpe, literally “indigenous crêpe”) referred to the rubber sheets produced locally in the residency of Atjeh from the tapped latex of the Hevea brasiliensis rubber tree in the early twentieth century, and was the characteristic product of the smallholder rubber economy that developed alongside the European plantation sector. The raw latex was coagulated, rolled into sheets, and then smoked to prevent fungal growth, yielding a creased, wrinkled product known as crêpe on account of its crinkled surface. Although of lower grade than the plantation rubber (Dutch: ondernemings-rubber) produced on the European estates of Langsa and the East Coast of Sumatra, inlandse crêpe fetched a respectable price on the world market and contributed materially to the prosperity of smallholder rubber-growing regions of Borneo, Djambi and Atjeh in the boom years before 1930.
Manufacturing process
Latex was collected in the small cups (Dutch: latexbakjes) hung at the base of each tapping cut on the rubber tree, then carried to the smallholder’s processing shed. There the latex was poured into a coagulation vat (Dutch: coagulatie-bak) and mixed with a small quantity of formic or acetic acid (Dutch: mierenzuur or azijnzuur) to separate the rubber particles from the watery serum. After a few hours the coagulum floated to the surface as a soft white slab, which was then passed repeatedly through a hand-cranked sheeting roller (Dutch: wals) to expel the residual water and produce a thin, even sheet about two to three millimetres thick.
The freshly rolled sheets were hung on bamboo poles in a smoke-house (Dutch: rookhuis) for several days, where the smoke of slow-burning coconut husks and damp wood deposited antiseptic phenols and creosotes on the rubber surface. This smoking was the critical step that distinguished inlandse crêpe from the simpler, sun-dried inlandsche droge vel: without it, the warm and humid Atjeh climate would have caused the sheets to spoil with mould within days. After smoking, the sheets were folded, pressed into bales of approximately 100 kilograms, and shipped via Belawan or Sabang to the rubber brokers of Singapore, Amsterdam and Liverpool.
Market role and smallholder economy
Although of lower quality than the European-produced plantation rubber — which was carefully washed, milled and baled under factory conditions — the inlandse crêpe of the Atjeh smallholder fetched a respectable price on the world market. In the boom year of 1910, when Brazilian supply disruptions drove smoked sheet rubber above ten shillings per pound, even low-grade smallholder crêpe from Atjeh earned smallholders their first significant cash windfalls. The trade sustained the prosperity of rubber-growing regions in Borneo, Djambi and Atjeh through the price cycles of the 1910s and 1920s, and was a primary driver of the consumer-goods boom that transformed Acehnese village life in those decades.
The Dutch colonial government’s response to the smallholder rubber boom was ambiguous. The Stevenson restriction scheme of the 1920s, imposed by the British to support rubber prices, was extended to the Netherlands Indies through the International Rubber Regulation Agreement of 1934, which limited smallholder output. The colonial administration regarded the unregulated inlandse crêpe trade with suspicion, since it competed directly with the European estates and was believed to encourage tapping of immature trees. Yet it remained the principal smallholder income source of the Atjeh interior through the depression of the 1930s.
Decline and legacy
By the late 1930s the smallholder rubber economy of Atjeh was under pressure both from the international restriction scheme and from competition with the more efficient, factory-processed pale crêpe and ribbed smoked sheet of the European plantations. The Japanese occupation of 1942 and the subsequent Indonesian revolution disrupted the trade further, and many smallholder rubber gardens were abandoned or tapped only intermittently. The surviving smallholder groves nevertheless formed the basis of the post-independence Acehnese rubber economy, and the inlandse crêpe tradition — wrinkled, smoked, imperfect, but resilient — remains a symbol of the smallholder agriculture that the European plantation sector could never entirely displace.
See Also
- Rubber Industry in Atjeh
- Latex (Aceh)
- Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Langsa
- Oostkust van Sumatra
- Belawan
- Sabang
- Buitengewesten
- Agrarische Wet 1870
- 1910
- 1920
- 1930
Source
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, pp. 13-14.