Sultan of Koetei — the Muslim sultan of the zelfbesturende landschap (self-governing territory) of Koetei on the east coast of Borneo — is named in Ir. Van der Ploeg’s chapter Mijnbouw in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946) as the contracting party in the 1889 petroleum agreement with J. H. Menten that opened the Borneo side of the Indonesian petroleum industry. The agreement, secured “in 1889” (Van der Ploeg’s date), granted Menten a concession for petroleum extraction in a terrain on the Sanga-Sanga river, later extended by further concessions to cover a continuous strip from Koetei to Balikpapan.
Significance for the Atjeh-adjacent petroleum industry
The Sultan of Koetei’s concession to Menten is named in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk as the Borneo counterpart to the Langkat concession of Zijlker of 1884 on the Sumatra East Coast. The two concessions together — one in the Landschap of Langkat adjacent to Atjeh, the other in the Landschap of Koetei on Borneo — bracket the late-colonial petroleum industry of the Indies at its two principal points of origin. Menten’s Koetei concession was, after his contact with the English capitalist Sir Marcus Samuel (whose Shell Transport and Trading Co. had a petroleum storage and sales business in the East), to become one of the two pillars of the eventual Royal Dutch Shell merger of 1903.
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the Sultan of Koetei’s significance is therefore comparative: his concession to Menten is the Borneo parallel to the Sumatra East Coast concessions of the Sultans of Deli, Langkat and Serdang — the sultans whose self-governing territories bordered Atjeh to the south-east and whose petroleum and tobacco industries shaped the late-colonial strategic significance of the Atjeh region. The volume’s brief mention of the Sultan of Koetei is thus a reminder that the zelfbesturende landschappen of the Indies, including those of the Sumatra East Coast, were not isolated polities but participants in a wider late-colonial system of concession-granting to European and American capital.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij — Royal Petroleum Company
- Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij — Batavian Petroleum Company
- zelfbesturende landschappen — self-governing territories
- zelfbesturende landschap — self-governing territory
- zelfbesturen — self-governing territories
- Landschap — self-governing territory
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Langkat — Langkat
- Deli — Deli
- Serdang — Serdang
- Borneo — Borneo
- Sumatra — Sumatra
- Bali — Bali
- Sanga-Sanga — Sanga-Sanga
- Koetei — Kutai
- Balikpapan — Balikpapan
- merica — pepper (Malay)
- Dr. — Doctor
- Ir. — Engineer (Dutch Ingenieur)
See Also
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg
- J. H. Menten
- H. W. A. Deterding
- Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij
- Royal Dutch Shell
- Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij
- Langkat
- Deli
- Serdang
- Acheh
- 1889
- 1903
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), p. 253 (chapter Mijnbouw door Ir. F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg).