The Handelsmaatschappij “Deli-Atjeh” was the trading company whose origin lay in the firm Nolte & Haas, established in 1897 at Medan — the Deli firm which supplied the tobacco planters with wood for drying sheds and whose Atjehnese wood-cutting contracts of the Van Heutsz period were the first model of just concession policy — converted in 1905 at Amsterdam into a Naamlooze Vennootschap under its Atjeh-and-Deli name.
The firm Nolte & Haas
With the Deli firm Nolte & Haas, which provided the tobacco planters in Deli with wood for drying sheds and other buildings and sheds, the Atjehnese government made an arrangement under which to the chiefs of the landscapes where that company cut wood a retribution was allowed. The firm closed with the landscape chiefs a contract approved by the government, enabling her to arrange the affairs on a fixed basis and to extend them. “Op strikt rechtvaardige wijze ging Van Heutsz bij de totstandkoming van deze contracten te werk” — Van Heutsz proceeded on strictly equitable lines: the retribution was fixed amply, and the companies concerned were forced to fulfil the stipulations of the contract in the smallest particulars. Thus an agreement was concluded with the chief of Langsa, whereby the firm was enabled, only against very ample payment and with reservation of the population’s right to take what it needed for its own use, to exploit the extensive nipah forests present in his landscape.
The N.V. of 1905
In 1905 the company received extensive wood-cutting concessions in the landscapes Radja Moeda, Radja Toewa, Manjapahit (Modjopahit), Birim Rajeu (Birem Rajeu), Birim Pontong, Bajan, Simpang Anas and Perlak — terrains which had already earlier been conceded for exploitation by the chiefs of Langsar and Perlak to the firm; all lay on the East Coast of Atjeh, as did the atap-concession Radja Toewa, one of the few complexes in the Indies for which such a concession had been issued, because elsewhere the nipah trees, from whose leaves the atap is made, mostly belong to the native population which then exploits them itself. The wood was cut by the Atjehnese, loaded into cargo-prauws and shipped by steam barges from the several rivers mostly to Belawan Deli, to be used for tobacco sheds; in the last years the export of the bast of those trees — containing much tanning- and dye-stuff — importantly increased. In Amsterdam the N.V. was formed in 1905 under the direction of her members, the heeren H. J. Nolte and J. H. Haas, the latter still acting as director in 1922–1923.
Establishments
The Handelmaatschappij “Deli-Atjeh” knew gradually to extend her business in Atjeh and possessed, beside her head office at Amsterdam, establishments on Tandjong Balei (Asahan), Belawan, Langsar, Koeta Radja and Sibolga (Tapanoeli), with Medan as head office for the Indies — a company which, Langhout notes, “gelijk haar naam aanduidt, haar ontstaan te danken heeft aan haar werken in het gouvernement Oostkust van Sumatra” (“owes her origin, as her name indicates, to her works in the government East Coast of Sumatra”), now rooted in both worlds.
See Also
Source
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 84–85, 184–185.