H. C. Reuter was the oldest Tamiang planter at the time of Broersma’s visit, having been the owner of the rubber estate Tandjong Semantoh in Tamiang before selling it to the Borneo Rubber Compagnie — a Japanese-owned company. At the time of Broersma’s visit he was the owner of the young estate Rimba Sawang.
Significance
Reuter’s career as the oldest planter of Tamiang spans the entire first generation of European planting in the onderafdeeling — from the early tobacco-experiments of the Deli-Mij. and the Tabak-Mij. Arendsburg in the years around 1898, through the transition to rubber and oil-palm after about 1910, to the Japanese acquisition of European estates in the early 1920s. His sale of Tandjong Semantoh to a Japanese-owned company is one of the early tokens of the transfer of European planting-interests in northern Sumatra to Japanese capital in the post-war period.
See Also
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapter II, ‘Tamiang’, p. 7.