Teukoe Boestaman was a brother of Mohamad Djohan Alamsjah, the oeléebalang of Peusangan, and held the office of landbouwkundige — agricultural expert — in that landschap. He had been trained at the cultuurschool at Soekaboemi in West Java, and is one of the few Atjehnese agricultural experts of his generation to have received a Dutch agricultural education.
Office in the Landschap
Broersma mentions Teukoe Boestaman in the course of his account of the oeléebalang of Peusangan, noting that the chief ‘vindt steun bij zijn broeders die gelijk hij een goede opleiding kregen en allen Hollandsch spreken’ — finds support in his brothers who, like him, received a good education and all speak Dutch. One of those brothers is the landbouwkundige; another is Mohamad Ali Alamsjah, the oeléebalang tjoet of Djeumpa. The presence of a Dutch-trained agricultural expert in the household of the oeléebalang is, in Broersma’s view, a remarkable token of the new brood of chiefs in Peusangan.
Significance
Teukoe Boestaman is an early instance of the new career-path opening to the younger brothers of oeléebalangs in the post-pacification period: a Dutch agricultural education, followed by an official agricultural post within the brother’s landschap. Such men were intended to form the local cadre through whom the departement van Landbouw could reach the Atjehnese cultivator without the mediation of European officials — a policy Broersma strongly recommends in his chapter on the improvement of the rice-land.
Account from Atjeh als land voor handel en bedrijf (1925)
Teukoe Boestaman was brother of Mohamed Djohan Alamsjah and agriculturalist (landbouwkundige) of landscape Peusangan, trained at the cultuurschool at Soekaboemi.
Role
In Peusangan, with more agricultural feeling than other landscapes, Boestaman served to calculate yields and advise on padi, second crops, and irrigation. He and the oeléëbalang calculated yield on rain-dependent grounds at 31 picol dry padi.
See Also
- Mohamad Djohan Alamsjah
- Mohamad Ali Alamsjah
- Peusangan
- Soekaboemi
- Djeumpa
- Oeléebalang
- Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)
- Verbetering van het rijstland in Atjeh
- Mohamed Djohan Alamsjah
- Paditeelt
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapter X, ‘In het land van Peusangan’, p. 67. Atjeh als land voor handel en bedrijf, by Dr. R. Broersma, Gebrs. Cohen, Utrecht, 1925, pp. 60-62.