Kreemer's De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden (1918)

Kreemer’s De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden (“Rice Cultivation in the Aceh Region and Dependencies”) is a 1918 monograph by J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjèh Instituut (Archivist of the Atjèh Institute), published as Mededeelingen No. 6 of the Atjèh Instituut in Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, deel XXXV, afl. 3 (1918), and printed for the Directeuren der Maatschappij ter Bevordering van het Natuurkundig Onderzoek der Nederlandsche Koloniën by E. J. Brill in Leiden. The work is the principal Dutch-language technical and ethnographic study of rice cultivation across the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden — covering Groot-Atjeh, the Noordkust, the Oostkust, the Alasland and the Westkust — and a key source for the early-twentieth-century “rice question” of whether Atjeh could become the rice-storehouse of Sumatra’s East Coast.

Publication Context

The monograph appeared as the sixth in the Mededeelingen (Communications) series of the Atjèh Instituut, the Amsterdam-based colonial research institute that had been founded in 1914 to coordinate scholarly study of the Atjeh region. The series aimed to make available in offprint form the most important specialist articles on Atjeh appearing in the major Dutch learned journals. The host journal, the Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (Proceedings of the Royal Dutch Geographical Society), was the principal geographical outlet of the Netherlands, and its choice as host for the offprint placed Kreemer’s work squarely in the geographical-colonial literature.

The offprint was further “overgedrukt voor de Directeuren der Maatschappij ter Bevordering van het Natuurkundig Onderzoek der Nederlandsche Koloniën” — printed for the directors of the Society for the Promotion of Natural-Science Research in the Dutch Colonies, the parent body of what later became the Koninklijke Vereeniging Indisch Instituut. The printer was the Leiden house of E. J. Brill, the same house that four years later would publish Kreemer’s two-volume Atjèh (1922-23).

Author and Position

J. Kreemer signs himself on the title page as “Archivaris van het Atjeh-Instituut” — Archivist of the Atjèh Institute. By 1918 Kreemer had already spent nearly two decades in close contact with northern Sumatra. He had entered the Binnenlands Bestuur as a Kontroleur B.B. on Sumatra’s Westkust in 1907, had traversed the Gajo-weg in 1917, and would later conduct his twenty-month field research for Atjèh (1916-1917) in Koeta Radja. The 1918 rice monograph thus sits mid-career: after his first field articles but before the great synthesis of 1922-23.

Scope and Contents

The work is organised as a technical-and-ethnographic survey of the entire rice economy of the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. Kreemer systematically treats:

The Typology of Rice Fields

Kreemer opens by distinguishing four kinds of sawah (rice fields) in Atjeh, each with its own Acehnese, Gayo and Alas terminology:

rijstladang’s — dry upland rice fields (called ladang in Malay)
kunstmatig bevloeide velden — artificially irrigated fields (oemòng it peunieuëh in Acehnese; oemo mòc-woih in Gayo; djoemo mèlawe in Alas)
van regen afhankelijke velden — rain-dependent fields (oemòng preh ie oedjèn)
moerassawah’s — swamp-rice fields (oemòng paja; oemo paja or oemo rölöm; djoema rawang)

He also treats abandoned fields (pòk ròh), terraced sawahs (oemòng teurata), and the blang (a complex of fields, named in Atjeh after a nearby gampong; in Gayo called oemo).

The Annual Cycle of Cultivation

Kreemer describes in detail each stage of the cultivation cycle, with the full Acehnese-Gayo-Alas vocabulary: the making of seedbeds (kweekbedden), the two sowing methods (the poela or transplanting method, and the taboe or direct-broadcasting method), the working of the field with plough (langaj), hoe (tjangkòë), and trampling-buffalo (poeblòh), the planting of seedlings, the weeding, the ripening stages (thirteen named stages from manja’ to masak), the harvesting, threshing, winnowing, measuring, storage, drying, and hulling. Each operation has its own extensive vocabulary, and Kreemer systematically gives the equivalents in the three languages of the region.

Rice Varieties

Kreemer lists the named varieties grown in Groot-Atjeh, including late-ripening varieties (padé rajeu’: P. keudah, P. keudah gloempang, P. keudah mandé, P. poetéh rajeu’, P. reunti paja, P. radén, P. lansajé, P. poetrë banan, P. bàh sàmboh, P. peunjaman), early-ripening varieties (padé cut: P. aka, P. poetéh cut, P. seudoët), and glutinous varieties (leukat: L. adang, L. djeuët, L. bring, L. oendé, L. dadéh, L. lidah kendéui, L. boengong seulimèng, L. bin, L. koemoenjan).

Labour Systems

The work documents the four labour arrangements under which the Atjeh rice crop is grown: own cultivation (kòh keudòe), wage-labour (kòh peung-oepah), sharecropping (mawaih, known as mawah in Gayo and blah dudé or boeloeing dudé in Alas), mutual aid (toempoh or bantoe; collective meuseuraja), and reciprocal labour with the obligation of return (taelòng-moclòng or meugantché or meunoerdé; Gayo panggèlò; Alas plingari).

The Regional Survey

Kreemer then walks through each of the five major divisions of the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden and gives the area under rice, the type of cultivation, the average yield, and the local consumption-and-export balance:

Groot-Atjeh — ~20,000 ha cultivated, mostly rain-dependent, average yield 8 pikoel/ha
Pidie (Noordkust) — ~16,000 ha irrigated in the Pidie valley, “the rice-granary of Atjeh”
Meureudu — ~3,000 ha, partly irrigated
Bireuen — irrigated around Samalanga, II Moekim Toenòng and Keudé Peudada; rain-dependent eastward to the Peusangan delta
Lho Seumawè — almost all rain-dependent
Lho Soekon — about three-quarters rain-dependent; ~30,000 ha still to be opened
Takengon — only living-water irrigated fields, around the Tawar-meer and the Pegasing valley
Peureula (Oostkust) — ~6,000 ha in cultivation and ~6,000 ha more suitable; ladang cultivation important in Témiang
Blang Kedjérén — usually a surplus in good years
Lokop — produces only about three-quarters of local consumption
Alasland — only living-water fields; surplus exported to Singkel and the Karo highland
Simaloer — almost all rain-dependent, regular rice imports (e.g. 1,394,285 kg in 1915)
Singkel — Benèeten-Singkelsche has some fields but suffers flooding; Simpang Kanan better; Simpang Kiri worse; Troemon largely self-sufficient
Tapa Toean — Laboh Hadji the best rice land; then Meuké and Manggéng; Kloeët often short
Meulaboh — much ladang cultivation in the upper regions; much swamp-sawah in the lowlands; the Seumagan valley on the left bank of the Kroeëng Seunagan, upstream of the Kroeëng Rama, an irrigated complex with good clay soil
Tjalang — mostly ladang and swamp rice; the Daja landschappen a favourable exception
Daja — the historic rice-storehouse of the Westkust
Panté Tjeureumèn — the only landschap on the Westkust with artificial irrigation

The “Rice Question” (Rijstvraagstuk)

The closing section of the monograph addresses the contemporary policy question raised in 1916 in a series of articles in the Deli Courant (Nos. 162, 167, 171, 172, 183, 184) by Ackerstaff, Van Tubergen and J. H. Heyl: could Atjeh, with improved irrigation, become the rice-storehouse of Sumatra’s East Coast, supplying the needs of the Deli tobacco-and-rubber plantations? Kreemer cites the calculation of Landbouwadviseur J. H. Heyl that of the 1.6 million pikoel of rice required by Deli, “nearly half” could come from Atjeh, more specifically from Groot-Atjeh, Pidie, Meureudu, Samalanga, Lho Soekon and Peureula. Kreemer prints Heyl’s table estimating that ~84,160 ha of Atjeh sawah could produce ~1,622,800 pikoel of rice, of which the surplus available for export to Deli would be ~786,300 pikoel.

A Note on Rice Imports

Kreemer notes that despite producing enough rice for the indigenous population, Atjeh imported roughly 200,000 pikoel of rice annually — chiefly Rangoon-rijst imported by the Atjehsche Handelmaatschappij and a few European firms, because Atjeh-grown rice was not preferred by the non-indigenous population (the plantation workers of Langsa, the timber-workers of Sinabang, the naval-coal station at Sabang, and the military garrison, which alone consumed ~14,000 pikoel of foreign rice per year).

Method and Sources

Kreemer’s method combines direct field observation (he had travelled extensively through the regions described), the extensive use of native terminology recorded from informants, the consultation of the colonial agricultural advisors — in particular the Landbouwadviseur J. H. Heyl, whose report in the Deli Courant of 8 August 1916 (No. 183) Kreemer cites — and the prior literature, including Snouck Hurgronje’s Het Gajöland en zijne bewoners (1903) for Gayo rice-names and the Encyclopaedisch Bureau brochure on Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden for rice-import statistics.

Significance

The 1918 De rijstcultuur is significant for the encyclopedia of Aceh history on three grounds. First, it is the most detailed single Dutch account of the rice economy of Atjeh at the moment when the colonial state was beginning to consider the systematic agricultural development of the pacified territory. Second, its dense vocabulary of Acehnese-Gayo-Alas agricultural terms preserves the technical lexicon of highland Sumatra rice cultivation at the close of the long nineteenth century. Third, its closing “Rijstvraagstuk” section is the principal contemporary source for the colonial-era debate on the integration of the Atjeh and Deli regional economies — a debate that would be taken up again in the Atjèh Instituut’s De Rijkdom van Atjeh (1923) and in Joh. Langhout’s Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923).

Source

De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, by J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjeh-Instituut. Mededeelingen betreffende het Onderzoek van Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, No. 6. Overgedrukt uit het Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, deel XXXV (1918), afl. 3. Leiden: Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E. J. Brill, 1918. OCR-filename: 20260801_233856_DLP-151-De_rijstcultuur_in_het_gewest_Atjeh_en_Onderhoorigheden_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 1-24.

tags	document, source-document, agriculture, rice, colonial, dutch, 20th-century, kreemer, atjeh-instituut, kunai, brill, ethnography
aliases	De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, Kreemer De rijstcultuur, Kreemer 1918 rijstcultuur, Rice Cultivation in the Aceh Region and Dependencies, Mededeelingen No. 6 Atjeh-Instituut

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