Teukoe moeda Oesoch — also written Oesoeh — was the oeléebalang of Simpang Olim in the underafdeeling Idi, a man of about sixty at the time of Broersma’s visit, ‘met een beetje Chineesch type’ — with a somewhat Chinese cast of feature. Broersma describes him as ‘een joviale baas’ — a jovial chief — and as ‘een handelsman in zijn land en een vaderlijk voorganger’ — a trading-man in his country and a fatherly leader. He is the chief whose succession is narrated in H. T. Damste’s article ‘Een stukje Atjeh-geschiedenis’ (Koloniaal Tijdschrift, 1918).
Background and the Coming of the Dutch
Teukoe moeda Oesoch knew his country from childhood and loved it. He is a handelsman in his landschap, and a fatherly leader. When he is not travelling through his country he is to be found either in his quietly situated, authentically Atjehnese house, or not far away by the mesigit, where the market — the keude — is also held. It is pleasant, Broersma writes, to see how he takes into account the wishes and opinions of his much younger wife and yet gets his own way; still more amusing to hear him talk of what one has to put up with a young wife. His humour befits his figure: ‘hij houdt van gezelligheid, hij houdt van overleg, hij houdt van geven en nemen’ — he loves company, he loves deliberation, he loves give-and-take.
His father was radja when the Dutch government arrived, and Teukoe moeda had to exert himself to ensure that he — and not another with less right — became oeléebalang. He has lived through the transition from the old Atjehnese pepper-trade — when the kojang (twenty-two picol) of pepper was sold at the wasé and other rights for forty rijksdaalders in Mexican dollars (about f 56), giving roughly f 2.50 per picol — to the new trade under Dutch rule, when the pepper was carried in Atjehnese praows to Penang and the price was set by the Penang market. When the Dutch established their ships on the coast, the price rose, because the trade was no longer dependent on Penang alone.
Landschap and Pepper-Gardens
The landschap of Simpang Olim is a settlement caused by pepper-cultivation at most a century old, which brought the wilderness into cultivation. The pepper has known good and very bad days there, and at the time of Broersma’s visit the pepper-planters were still waiting for a paying market-price. They need not come from outside, for the gardens belong to people already settled there, and the oeléebalang has his own interest in them. When the gardens are abandoned, the dadaps — the support-trees — grow up too high and prevent the pepper-vines from fruiting; but the planting is not thereby ruined, for when maintenance begins again the dadaps are pruned and the vines recover their freedom and vigour.
Significance
Teukoe moeda Oesoch is the type of the handelsman-oeléebalang of the eastern coast — the chief whose interest in his landschap is commercial as well as political, and who manages his pepper-gardens as he manages his relations with the Dutch and with his much younger wife. His succession-narrative, recovered by Damste, is one of the few documented cases of a contested chieftaincy at the moment of the Dutch takeover.
See Also
- Simpang Olim
- Idi
- Oeléebalang
- Een stukje Atjeh-geschiedenis (Damste)
- H. T. Damste
- Pepper cultivation in Atjeh
- Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)
- 1873
- 1918
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapter VII, ‘Vriendelijk Idi’, pp. 49–50. Also ‘Een stukje Atjeh-geschiedenis’, by H. T. Damste, in Koloniaal Tijdschrift (1918).