Pelantoengan — a Javanese place-name, from lantoeng (in Old Javanese / Javanese, “earth-oil”, i.e. petroleum) — is the toponymic evidence cited by Ir. Van der Ploeg in his chapter Mijnbouw in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946) for the indigenous Javanese knowledge of petroleum before the arrival of the Dutch. Van der Ploeg’s wording: “Crude petroleum was in the Indies already long known to the natives. The Java-wide-occurring name Pelantoengan points to this; lantoeng namely means earth-oil. Also from Palembang, in ancient times, a quantity seems to have been brought to China as medicine.”
Significance for Atjeh
For the Atjeh-focused reader, Pelantoengan is significant chiefly as the Javanese counterpart to the early Atjeh-adjacent petroleum finds. The same chapter of Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk records that “the first to drill oil in exploitable quantity was Zijlker, and indeed in a concession in the Landschap Langkat in the year 1884” — that is, in the Landschap of Langkat, immediately adjacent to Atjeh. The Javanese Pelantoengan toponymy is the older, indigenous evidence of petroleum knowledge; the Langkat concession of 1884 is the modern, industrial exploitation of the same resource, here placed by Van der Ploeg at the head of the Sumatra East Coast petroleum industry.
The early Dutch reports of Sumatran petroleum seeps — the Itinerario of Jan Huygen van Linschoten, who brought back from Goa a sample of petroleum “from a spring on Sumatra, that flows pure balm”, and the story of an oil spring at Deli “which burned on the sea and with which two Portuguese galleons were set alight” — are, in Van der Ploeg’s account, the European counterpart to the indigenous Pelantoengan toponymy. Both traditions of petroleum knowledge predate the industrial exploitation that began with Zijlker’s 1884 concession in Langkat.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij — Royal Petroleum Company
- Landschap — self-governing territory
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Langkat — Langkat
- Deli — Deli
- Palembang — Palembang
- Java — Java
- Sumatra — Sumatra
- lantoeng — earth-oil (Old Javanese)
- Pelantoengan — Earth-Oil Place (Javanese toponym)
- Dr. — Doctor
- Ir. — Engineer (Dutch Ingenieur)
See Also
- Zijlker
- Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij
- A. J. B. Kessler
- H. W. A. Deterding
- J. H. van Linschoten
- Langkat
- Deli
- Acheh
- F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- 1884
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), p. 252 (chapter Mijnbouw door Ir. F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg).