The quarre — also quarre method — is a French turpentine-tapping system borrowed from the turpentine industry of the Landes in south-western France, and applied — as recorded in the Atjeh-terpentijn pamphlet of 1930 — to the tapping of Pinus Merkusii at the Baleq enterprise in the Gajo-Landen-Atjeh border region from 1924 onward. The quarre method is the principal technical instrument of the early factory-scale production of Indonesian turpentine, and its detailed description — preserved by the Brandts Buys monograph of 1928 — is the principal published source on the practical application of French turpentine-tapping methods in Atjehnese conditions.
The method
The Atjeh-terpentijn pamphlet records that the quarre method involves tapping wounds 10 cm broad and at greatest depth 2½ cm deep, om de drie dagen in opwaartsche richting ververscht (refreshed every three days in an upward direction) met behulp van een eenigszins gebogen timmermansbeitel (with the aid of a slightly curved carpenter’s chisel). The number of tapping wounds per tree depended on the thickness of the trunk: bij een omtrek van 1-1½ m maakt men één wonde, bij 1½-2 m twee wonden en daarboven drie tapwonden — at a circumference of 1-1½ m one makes one wound, at 1½-2 m two wounds, and above that three tapping-wounds.
The French origin
The Atjeh-terpentijn pamphlet records that the quarre is een tapsysteem ontleend aan de terpentijnwinning in Frankrijk (de Landes) — a tapping-system borrowed from the turpentine industry in France (the Landes). The Landes — the forested coastal plain of south-western France, between Bordeaux and the Pyrenees — was the principal European turpentine-producing region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the quarre method was the standard French tapping method for the Pinus Pinaster (maritime pine) that was the principal Landes turpentine tree. The transfer of the quarre method from the Landes to Atjeh was part of the broader colonial transfer of metropolitan silvicultural techniques to the colonies.
The Brandts Buys monograph
The Atjeh-terpentijn pamphlet records that een uitvoerige beschrijving van de quarre en van de daarmede behaalde resultaten (an extensive description of the quarre and of the results obtained with it) is o.a. te vinden op blz. 83 e.v. van de reeds vermelde Mededeeling no. 19 van het Proefstation voor het Boschwezen (is, among other places, to be found on pp. 83 ff. of the already-mentioned Mededeeling no. 19 of the Proefstation voor het Boschwezen). The Mededeeling no. 19 — the Brandts Buys monograph Bijdrage tot de kennis van Pinus Merkusii Jungh et de Vr., meer in het bijzonder in de Gajo-landen — is thus the principal published source on the quarre method as applied at the Baleq enterprise. The pamphlet’s Fig. II — captioned Sumatra-den getapt met de “quarre” — illustrates the application of the method, and the pamphlet’s Fig. III illustrates the Ververschen van de tapwonde (refreshing of the tapping wound).
Significance
The quarre’s significance in the historiography of colonial Aceh is as the principal technical instrument of the early factory-scale production of Indonesian turpentine — the French tapping method that was transferred from the Landes to the Gajo-Landen-Atjeh border region in 1924, and that supplied the raw balsam for the Baleq enterprise from 1924 onward. The method’s detailed description — preserved by the Brandts Buys monograph of 1928 and by the Atjeh-terpentijn pamphlet of 1930 — is the principal published source on the practical application of French turpentine-tapping methods in Atjehnese conditions, and the method itself is the principal example of the colonial transfer of metropolitan silvicultural techniques to the Netherlands Indies.
See Also
- Pinus Merkusii
- Baleq
- Atjeh-terpentijn (Spoor, 1930)
- Atjeh-terpentijn
- C. Brandts Buys
- Proefstation voor het Boschwezen
- ‘s Lands Caoutchouchedrijf
- Dienst van het Boschwezen
- France
- Landes
- 1924
- 1928
- 1930
Source
Atjeh-terpentijn: tegenwoordige kwaliteit en nieuwe beoordeelingen, by Ir. W. Spoon, Berichten van de Afdeeling Handelsmuseum van de Koninklijke Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut No. 57, Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1930, pp. 6–8 (Winning van de terpentijn).
Bijdrage tot de kennis van Pinus Merkusii Jungh et de Vr., meer in het bijzonder in de Gajo-landen, by C. Brandts Buys, C. Japing and D. Fernandes, Mededeeling no. 19 van het Proefstation voor het Boschwezen, 1928, pp. 83 ff.