The M.A.E.M. (Marsman’s Algemeene Exploitatie Maatschappij, also written Marsman’s Algemeene Exploratie Maatschappij — the “Marsman General Exploitation/Exploration Company”) was the gold-mining subsidiary of the “Marsman Interests” — a Dutch colonial mining conglomerate headquartered (in its late form) at Manila, Philippine Islands — that, in 1940, began production on the Geudong Concession in the Meulaboh coastal basin on the West coast of Atjeh, and that was, at the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, one of only five Sumatran gold mines still in production (alongside Simau, Lebong Simpang, Mangani-Marsman, and Bengkalis). The M.A.E.M.’s Geudong Concession dredges represent the only colonial-era gold-dredging operation on Atjeh territory, and accordingly the only Atjeh locality for which colonial-era gold production figures are recorded.
The Geudong Concession operation
For the full technical description of the M.A.E.M.’s Geudong Concession operation, see the entry on Geudong Concession. In summary: production started in 1940 with two bucket dredges (buckets of 6 cubic feet) with a joint capacity of 270,000 cubic yards per month; the deposit contained 55–60 % boulders (the largest of which “could just be handled”) and 40–45 % fine material; there were two types of gold (fine gold with higher silver content, easily amalgamated; and coarse gold with lower silver content, difficult to amalgamate); the platinum byproduct was some kilograms per month; treatment was by amalgamation and Wilfley tables.
The 1941 mercury observation
The M.A.E.M.’s Geudong operation is also the source of the De Groot 1946 observation that the dredges were gaining mercury with each clean-up — the documentary evidence that the West-Atjeh alluvial deposits contain native mercury and cinnabar in addition to gold and platinum. For the full account see the entries on Mercury in Atjeh and Basin of Meulaboh.
The corporate identity
The acronym “M.A.E.M.” is spelled out in Van Bemmelen’s gold-and-silver chapter (in the Meulaboh subsection, No. 14 of the West Coast gold-mining list) as the Marsman’s Algemeene Exploitatie Maatschappij — the Marsman General Exploitation Company. Van Bemmelen’s account of the related Mangani-Marsman mine (No. 6a of the same list) further notes that “Marsman’s Algemeene Exploratie Maatschappij” took over the concessions of the Mining Company “Aequator” in 1940 and was “a subsidiary of the ‘Marsman Interests’, Manila, Philippine Islands”. The two spellings (Exploitatie/Exploratie) appear to be interchangeable variants of the same company name; the present entry follows the “Exploitatie” form as the more probable original, given the context of a producing (rather than merely exploring) company at the Geudong Concession.
The Marsman Interests were accordingly one of the larger Dutch colonial mining conglomerates of the late-colonial period, with operations extending from the Mangani mine on the Westkust van Sumatra (taken over from the Aequator company in 1940) to the M.A.E.M. dredges at Meulaboh on the Westkust van Atjeh, and with a corporate headquarters at Manila (rather than at Batavia or The Hague) — a detail that places the Marsman Interests among the more internationally-oriented of the Dutch colonial mining groups.
Pre-war exploration in the West-Atjeh valleys
Before commencing production on the Geudong Concession in 1940, the M.A.E.M. conducted an extensive exploration campaign in the West-Atjeh river valleys. Van Bemmelen’s account reads:
“The M.A.E.M. (Marsman’s Algemeene Exploitat[i]e Maatschappij) explored these placer deposits by means of the 4-inch Bangka drill and pits in the valleys of the Teunom, Woila, Meureuboh, Seunagan… However, the valuable data obtained by thousands of drillings and testpits were destroyed at the Japanese invasion in 1942.”
The destruction of the M.A.E.M.’s drilling data in 1942 is one of the principal archival losses of the colonial mineralogical record of Atjeh: the thousands of Bangka-drill and test-pit records that the M.A.E.M. had compiled across the Teunom, Woila, Meureuboh, and Seunagan valleys would, had they survived, have provided the most detailed picture ever compiled of the West-Atjeh alluvial gold-platinum-mercury deposits. Their loss means that the printed record of the M.A.E.M.’s exploration is reduced to Van Bemmelen’s brief summary and to the De Groot 1946 report.
The 1937 Kesri-Kiri quartz-vein sampling
The M.A.E.M. is also recorded in Van Bemmelen’s text as having sampled the abundant quartz-veins in the headwaters of the S. Kesri-Kiri (a West-Atjeh river) twice in 1937: “The abundant quartz-veins in the headwaters of the S. Kesri-Kiri have been sampled twice by engineers from ‘MaRsman’s Algemeene Exploratie Mij’ in 1937, but grade and remote location did not leave any possibility for further exploration.” The sampling was accordingly unsuccessful — the grade was too low and the location too remote for further development — but the episode is the earliest documented M.A.E.M. activity in the West-Atjeh interior, predating the 1940 commencement of production at the Geudong Concession by three years.
Significance
The M.A.E.M. is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it was the operator of the only colonial-era gold-dredging operation on Atjeh territory — the Geudong Concession in the Meulaboh coastal basin, with two bucket dredges and a joint monthly capacity of 270,000 cubic yards. The M.A.E.M.’s operation represents the high-point of the colonial mineral economy of Atjeh, the moment at which the residency’s geological potential was, for the first and only time, translated into actual industrial gold production. The M.A.E.M.’s operation also produced platinum as a byproduct (“some kilograms per month”) — the only recorded colonial-era platinum production on Atjeh territory — and its dredges supplied the De Groot 1946 observation of native mercury and cinnabar in the West-Atjeh alluvial deposits, the only documented colonial-era observation of mercury minerals on Atjeh territory. The M.A.E.M.’s parent organisation, the Marsman Interests, was also the operator of the Mangani-Marsman gold mine on the Westkust van Sumatra, and the M.A.E.M. is accordingly part of the wider Marsman mining conglomerate that played a significant role in the late-colonial Sumatran gold industry.
See Also
- Acheh
- Atjeh’s Westkust
- Basin of Meulaboh
- C. de Groot
- Geudong Concession
- Gold and silver in Atjeh
- Meulaboh
- Mercury in Atjeh
- Platinum in Atjeh
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1940
- 1941
- 1946
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 121 (Basin of Meulaboh, Production subsection, M.A.E.M. Geudong Concession operation), p. 223 (West coast of Atjeh mercury, De Groot 1946 observation of the M.A.E.M. dredges).