Rattan (Aceh) (Dutch: rotan) referred to the flexible, tough climbing palms (Dutch: lianen) harvested from the rainforests (Dutch: oerwouden) of the residency of Atjeh in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and exported in modest but steady quantities as one of the principal non-timber forest products of the Buitengewesten. Two main commercial types were identified: stick rattan (Dutch: stokrotan) — the thicker, more rigid canes used for furniture legs, walking sticks and structural components — and binding rattan (Dutch: bindrotan) — the thinner, more flexible canes used for binding bundles, weaving chair seats, and manufacturing cordage. Rattan products were exported alongside other forest commodities such as kapok fibre and resin, and provided a cash income to the forest-edge villages of the Atjeh interior.
The rattan resource
Rattans are climbing palms of the subfamily Calamoideae, comprising in the Indonesian archipelago several genera — Calamus, Daemonorops, Korthalsia, Plectocomia — and a great number of species. The Atjeh forests were particularly rich in Calamus manan and Calamus caesius, the two species most prized for commercial rattan, and the rainforests of the Gayo uplands, the Alas valley and the West Coast of Atjeh supported some of the most extensive rattan stocks of Sumatra.
The canes were harvested by forest collectors (Dutch: boschproducten-verzamelaars) who climbed the host trees to cut the rattan at the base, pulled down the entire length of the cane — often 50 to 100 metres — and dragged it to the nearest river for transport to the coast. Harvesting was arduous and dangerous work, performed in the dry season when the forest could be entered on foot, and typically by the indigenous forest-dwellers of the uplands rather than by the Acehnese of the coast. The collectors stripped the rattan of its leaf-sheaths, washed it, and dried it in the sun for several days before bundling it for transport.
Types, processing and uses
The two main commercial types of Atjeh rattan were distinguished by their physical properties and their end-uses:
- Stick rattan (Dutch: stokrotan): the thicker, more rigid canes — typically Calamus manan, up to 70 millimetres in diameter — that were crafted into furniture legs, walking sticks, umbrella handles, and the structural components of wicker chairs. The stokrotan was the raw material of the rieten stoelen (rattan chairs) that became a staple of European colonial furniture in the late nineteenth century, and Atjeh canes were particularly prized for their length, straightness and freedom from knots.
- Binding rattan (Dutch: bindrotan): the thinner, more flexible canes — typically Calamus caesius, 10 to 20 millimetres in diameter — employed for binding bundles, weaving chair seats and backs, making baskets and fish-traps, and the manufacture of cordage. The bindrotan was also split (Dutch: gespleten) into fine strands for the weaving of hat-brims, mats and cigarette papers.
After harvest, the canes were washed, scraped to remove the silica-rich epidermis, boiled in diesel oil or coconut oil to suppress fungal attack and insect boring, and dried in the sun. The processed canes were bundled into hanks of approximately 50 kilograms, shipped down the rivers to Kuta Raja and Belawan, and exported to Singapore for re-export to the furniture factories of Batavia, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
Economic importance
Rattan products were exported in modest quantities, often alongside other forest commodities like kapok fibre and resin. The trade was important less for its absolute value than for its role as the principal cash income of the upland forest-edge villages of Gayoland and the Alas valley, where the absence of plantation cash crops made forest products the principal source of monetised income. The Atjeh railway and the Gajoweg, both completed in the early twentieth century, made it easier to move rattan from the interior to the export ports and contributed to a modest expansion of the trade in the 1910s and 1920s.
The colonial forest service (Dutch: boschwezen) regulated rattan harvesting through a system of concession licenses (Dutch: kapvergunningen) and royalties, and attempted — with limited success — to suppress the wasteful practice of felling the host tree to obtain the rattan, which destroyed the cane’s support and prevented regeneration. By the 1930s the combined pressure of over-harvesting, forest clearance for rubber and coffee, and the contraction of the European furniture market had reduced the Atjeh rattan trade to a fraction of its pre-war peak, though the forest-dweller economy of the uplands continued to depend on rattan collection through the depression and the Japanese occupation.
See Also
- Kapok Fiber
- Resin (Aceh)
- Bakau Bast
- Gajoland
- Alaslanden
- Westkust van Atjeh
- Atjehsche Staatsspoorwegen
- Gajoweg
- Koeta-Radja
- Belawan
- Buitengewesten
- 1920
- 1930
Source
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, pp. 13-14.