E. de Kruyff was a Dutch colonial official who served as head of the Afdeeling Handel (Trade Section) of the Departement van Landbouw, Nijverheid en Handel (Department of Agriculture, Industry and Trade) at Buitenzorg in the Netherlands Indies in the early 1920s, and who was the principal figure on the Indies side of the four-year experimental programme (1921-1925) that founded the indigenous patchouli-oil industry of Atjeh. His correspondence with the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum at Amsterdam — preserved in *Bericht* No. 21 of the Handelsmuseum (April 1925) — is the principal documentary record of that programme.
Career
De Kruyff is first documented in the colonial record as the head of the Afdeeling Handel of the Departement van Landbouw, Nijverheid en Handel at Buitenzorg. The Afdeeling Handel was the section of the Department responsible for the promotion of Netherlands Indies products in European markets, and for the coordination of colonial trade policy with the metropolitan research and trading bodies — above all with the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum at Amsterdam, the trade-museum section of the Kon. Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut.
In the summer of 1921 De Kruyff departed for Europe on leave — his departure, on the eve of the first Atjeh patchouli-oil samples, was the occasion of his carrying those samples personally to Amsterdam. He was in Europe through the winter of 1921-1922, and was in Switzerland when the Handelsmuseum wrote to him on 19 January 1922 with the first synthesis of the three conflicting European judgements on the Atjeh oil.
By 12 September 1923 De Kruyff had returned to the Indies, and was again at his desk at Buitenzorg. He now took the initiative of sending not oil but raw patchouli-leaf, in two bales, by way of the landbouwconsulent at Koeta Radja, raising the question whether the leaf might undergo an “after-fermentation” during shipping. This second initiative opened the second phase of the experimental programme — the systematic distribution of leaf samples that would culminate in the discovery of the Bakongan leaf in 1924.
The Patchouli Correspondence
De Kruyff’s role in the Atjeh patchouli experiments of 1921-1925 was that of the principal Indies-side coordinator. He was the man who, on 6 August 1921, wrote the letter from the Afdeeling Nijverheid (then under acting headship) to the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum announcing the beginning of distillation at Tapa Toean, and who undertook to carry the first samples to Europe. He was the man to whom the Handelsmuseum addressed its synthesis of the three European judgements, and its advice on the three improvements to the distillation process. He was the man who, on 12 September 1923, sent the first raw-leaf consignment and posed the question of after-fermentation. And he was the man who, in 1924, arranged the regular quarterly programme of leaf shipments from Atjeh, and who reported the botanists’ verdict that the patchouli “noch op Java, noch op Atjeh ooit bloeit” — neither on Java nor on Atjeh ever flowers — and that plants had been set out at Tjibodas in the hope that they might flower under montane conditions.
De Kruyff’s tone throughout the correspondence is that of the patient colonial administrator: he is willing to wait for results, willing to delegate the technical questions to the European experts and the factory managers, and willing to organise the practical arrangements — the shipments, the supervision, the advances to the Atjehnese planters — that made the experiments possible.
Significance
De Kruyff is significant for the encyclopedia of Aceh history as the principal Indies-side figure of the founding episode of the indigenous Atjeh patchouli-oil industry. His correspondence with the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum is preserved as the documentary backbone of *Bericht* No. 21 of the Handelsmuseum (April 1925), the founding document of that industry. He exemplifies the type of the post-pacification colonial economic official — concerned with the development of indigenous export agriculture, with the promotion of Netherlands Indies products in European markets, and with the coordination of the colonial state with the metropolitan research-and-trade bodies.
See Also
- Atjeh patchouli experiments (1921-1925)
- Over patchouly-olie en patchouly-blad van Atjeh (1925)
- Patchouli-olie industry in Atjeh
- Afdeeling Nijverheid
- Afdeeling Handelsmuseum
- Koninklijke Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut
- Tapa Toean
- Van Vreeswijk
- Buitenzorg
- Koeta Radja
- Tjibodas
- 1921
- 1922
- 1923
- 1924
- 1925
Source
Over patchouly-olie en patchouly-blad van Atjeh (Noord-Sumatra). Berichten van de Afdeeling Handelsmuseum van de Kon. Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut, No. 21. Overgedrukt uit De Indische Mercuur van 8 en 15 Mei 1925. Amsterdam: Druk De Bussy. OCR-filename: 20260801_233856_DLP-153-Over_patchouly_olie_en_patchouly_blad_van_Atjeh_Noord_Sumatra_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 3, 5-7, 11, 13-14.