The Bureau of Mines in Indonesia (Bureau van Mijnbouw in Nederlandsch-Indië) was the colonial-state mining authority of the Netherlands East Indies, attached to the Departement van Verkeer, Energie en Mijnbouw (Department of Transport, Energy and Mining) at Batavia and supported by the technical-scientific work of the Netherlands Indies Geological Survey and the Netherlands Indies Volcanological Survey. Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949) was issued as a “Special Edition of the Bureau of Mines in Indonesia”, and the Bureau’s archives and reports are the principal source-base for Van Bemmelen’s treatment of the mineral geography of Atjeh and the rest of the East Indies. The Bureau’s laboratory at Bandung is also specifically cited by Van Bemmelen for the chemical analyses of the Atjeh mineral occurrences.
Structure and functions
The Bureau of Mines was the colonial-state authority responsible for the regulation, exploration and development of the mineral resources of the Netherlands East Indies. Its functions included:
- The granting and supervision of mining concessions under the Netherlands Indies Mining Law of 1899.
- The conduct of geological surveys through the Netherlands Indies Geological Survey (Dienst van den Mijnbouw), whose field-geologists — Zwierzycki, Hövig, Tobler, Jansen, Lindberg, Wolvekamp and others — produced the printed reports on which Van Bemmelen’s compilation depends.
- The chemical analysis of mineral samples at the Bureau’s laboratory at Bandung.
- The compilation and publication of the Verslagen en Mededeelingen (“Reports and Communications”) series, in which many of the field-reports on Atjeh mineral occurrences were published.
- The archiving of the unpublished Geological Survey reports, which Van Bemmelen cites throughout The Geology of Indonesia in the form “Geol. Survey Report, Arch. Bur. of Mines 40/ba” (or similar).
The Bureau’s archives accordingly constitute the single most important unpublished source for the colonial mineralogical record of Atjeh, and the printed Verslagen en Mededeelingen series is the single most important published source.
The laboratory at Bandung
The Bureau’s laboratory at Bandung is specifically cited by Van Bemmelen for the chemical analyses of the Atjeh mineral occurrences. The reference occurs in the iron-ore chapter, in the context of the Gunung Serot tin-bearing magnetite occurrence in the Lampong Districts:
“Application of very precise methods by the laboratory of the Bureau of Mines at Bandung for the chemical analysis of two samples did not show any traces of tin.”
This reference establishes that the Bureau’s laboratory at Bandung was capable of “very precise methods” of chemical analysis, and that its services were available for the verification of field observations (in this case, the verification of the reported tin content of the Gunung Serot magnetite). The Bureau’s laboratory accordingly played a critical role in the quality-control of the colonial mineralogical record, and the chemical analyses of the Atjeh mineral occurrences recorded in Van Bemmelen’s text — including the gold-and-silver assay of the Kr. Geuenteuet magnetite (10 gr Au/ton, 33 gr Ag/ton), the lead-zinc-silver assays of the Krueng Heureueng (76.1 % Pb, 920 gr/t Ag) and Krueng Isep (65.13 % Pb, 680 gr/t Ag) occurrences, and the gold assays of the S. Assai (11 gr Au/ton) and S. Meranging (10.8 gr Au/ton) quartz-veins — were in all probability conducted at the Bandung laboratory.
The 1942–1945 Japanese occupation
The Bureau of Mines, like all colonial-state institutions in the Netherlands East Indies, was disrupted by the 1942 Japanese invasion and the subsequent occupation of 1942–1945. Many of the Bureau’s staff were interned, and the Bureau’s archives and laboratory equipment suffered varying degrees of damage or loss. Van Bemmelen’s preface to The Geology of Indonesia acknowledges that the work was issued in the “difficult immediate post-war period when the surviving archives of the colonial mining service were being reconstituted after the Japanese occupation of 1942–1945”, and the citations of “Geol. Survey Report, Arch. Bur. of Mines 40/ba” (and similar) accordingly refer to the reconstituted post-war archives rather than to the original pre-war holdings.
Significance
The Bureau of Mines in Indonesia is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it was the colonial-state authority responsible for the mineralogical record of Atjeh — the institution that granted the mining concessions, conducted the geological surveys, performed the chemical analyses, compiled the Verslagen en Mededeelingen series, and archived the unpublished field-reports on which Van Bemmelen’s treatment of Atjeh’s mineral geography depends. The Bureau’s laboratory at Bandung performed the chemical analyses of the Atjeh mineral occurrences that are recorded in Van Bemmelen’s text, and the Bureau’s archives (both the printed Verslagen en Mededeelingen series and the unpublished field-reports) are the principal source-base for any modern study of Atjeh’s colonial mineral economy.
See Also
- Acheh
- Atjeh en Onderhorigheden
- C. de Groot
- J. Zwierzycki
- Netherlands Indies Geological Survey
- Netherlands Indies Mining Law of 1899
- Netherlands Indies Volcanological Survey
- P. Hövig
- P. J. J. Jansen
- R. W. van Bemmelen
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1899
- 1949
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), title page (Special Edition of the Bureau of Mines in Indonesia), pp. 7–10 (Mining Law of 1899, Bureau of Mines functions), pp. 211–212 (Bureau of Mines laboratory at Bandung).