F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg

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tagsperson, scholar, dutch, mining
aliasesIr. F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg, Van der Ploeg

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F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg — published as Ir. F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg (i.e., holding the Dutch Ingenieur engineering degree) — was a Dutch mining engineer who, in 1946, contributed the chapter Mijnbouw (“Mining”) to the volume Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk edited by Dr. Wormser (pp. 231–262). His chapter surveys the mining industry of the Dutch East Indies — tin, gold, silver, coal and petroleum — and gives the Atjeh-adjacent East Coast of Sumatra (the sultanates of Langkat, Deli and Serdang) a central place in the history of Indonesian petroleum.

Treatment of the Sumatra East Coast petroleum industry

Van der Ploeg’s account of Indonesian petroleum opens with the early Dutch reports of oil seeps in Sumatra: the Itinerario of Jan Huygen van Linschoten (who brought back from Goa a sample of petroleum “from a spring on Sumatra, that flows pure balm”) and the story of an oil spring at Deli “which burned on the sea and with which two Portuguese galleons were set alight.” But the modern industry, he records, dates from 1884, when Zijlker (so spelled in the volume) secured a petroleum concession in the Landschap (self-governing territory) of Langkat: “The first to drill oil in exploitable quantity was Zijlker, and indeed in a concession in the Landschap Langkat in the year 1884. But it was not until 1890 that the Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij founded on this came into being.” The Koninklijke built its first refinery at Pangkalan Brandan in Langkat.

The chapter further records the parallel rise of the Dordtsche Petroleum Maatschappij (founded by the former governments’ mining engineer Stoop, who began refining oil on Java in 1889), the 1903 merger of the Koninklijke with the Shell Transport and Trading Co. of Sir Marcus Samuel (brokered by Deterding after the death of the Koninklijke’s first director Kessler in 1901), the 1906 foundation of the Bataafsche as the production arm and the Anglo-Saxon as the transport arm, and the 1911 absorption of the Dordtsche into the Royal Dutch–Shell concern. After 1912 American interests also entered the Indies through the Nederlandsche Koloniale Petroleum Maatschappij, which secured good territories in Palembang. In 1921 a mixed enterprise, the Nederlandsch-Indische Aardolie Maatschappij, was created with government participation in management.

Significance

For the Atjeh-focused reader, Van der Ploeg’s chief significance is the placement of the Langkat–Deli petroleum industry — directly adjacent to Atjeh on the Sumatra East Coast — at the head of the modern Indonesian petroleum story. The same East Coast sultanates whose pepper Van Hall’s chapter treats as already important in the sixteenth century are here shown to be, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the site of one of the world’s major petroleum industries. The strategic significance of this for the late-colonial Atjeh question — atjeh as the northern neighbour of the East Coast oil belt — is implicit but unmistakable.

Dutch terms used in this article

  • Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
  • Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
  • Nederlandsch-Indië — Netherlands Indies
  • Dordtsche Petroleum Maatschappij — Dordrecht Petroleum Company
  • Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij — Royal Petroleum Company
  • Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij — Batavian Petroleum Company
  • Nederlandsch-Indische Aardolie Maatschappij — Netherlands-Indies Petroleum Company
  • Nederlandsche Koloniale Petroleum Maatschappij — Netherlands Colonial Petroleum Company
  • Landschap — self-governing territory
  • pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
  • Atjeh — Aceh
  • Acheh — Aceh
  • Langkat — Langkat
  • Deli — Deli
  • Serdang — Serdang
  • Palembang — Palembang
  • Java — Java
  • Sumatra — Sumatra
  • Pangkalan Brandan — Pangkalan Brandan
  • olie — oil
  • merica — pepper (Malay)
  • Dr. — Doctor
  • Ir. — Engineer (Dutch Ingenieur)

See Also

Source

Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), pp. 231–262 (chapter Mijnbouw door Ir. F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg), with the Langkat petroleum reference on p. 252.

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