Van Tubergen — Ingenieur Van Tubergen — was a Dutch colonial engineer who, in 1911, conducted the irrigation investigation of Sumatra for the Netherlands Indies government, in the course of which he also visited the gewest Atjèh and brought out an extensive report — the Van Tubergen report — that judged very optimistically about the possibility and the use of irrigation works to be constructed in Atjèh. The report was the immediate cause of the establishment of the Atjèhse Irrigatiedienst in 1912, and the principal Dutch assessment of the irrigation potential of Atjèh in the early 20th century.
The 1911 Investigation
In 1911 the engineer Van Tubergen, in his irrigation investigation of Sumatra, also visited the gewest Atjèh and brought out an extensive report, in which he judged very optimistically about the possibility and the use of irrigation works to be constructed in Atjèh. As a consequence of one and another, a B.O.W. (Burgerlijke Openbare Werken, Civil Public Works) engineer has been working in the interest of irrigation in Atjèh since 1912.
The Limits of the Report
That the executed irrigation works — which more particularly had the purpose of bringing irrigation water to the rice fields for the concerned population and so for the rice cultivation — have yielded less actual results than the optimistic report of Van Tubergen had led one to expect, finds its cause partly in the nature of these works and partly in the nature of the population and its cultivation method. The engineer Van Tubergen could, in his relatively short stay in the gewest Atjèh en Onderhoorigheden, hardly gain sufficient insight into the, from the on Java usual method so differently deviating, way of rice cultivation as it is applied in various parts of Atjèh; and only gradually, after the bringing into use of partially completed irrigation works, did the objections come to light that this cultivation method brings with it for a technical irrigation such as is usual on Java.
But also even before the introduction of irrigation was actually spoken of — when on some places dams had been built without accompanying works, in the belief that the population was sufficiently familiar with the supply and distribution of irrigation water — the results thereof were anything but in accordance with the expectations, and of improvement in the irrigation condition could scarcely be spoken, even though the executed works were in themselves usable.
Significance
Van Tubergen is the Dutch colonial engineer whose 1911 irrigation investigation of Sumatra — including the visit to the gewest Atjèh and the extensive report that judged very optimistically about the possibility and the use of irrigation works to be constructed in Atjèh — was the immediate cause of the establishment of the Atjèhse Irrigatiedienst in 1912. The limits of the report — the relatively short stay, the insufficient insight into the Atjèhse cultivation method — were the principal cause of the disappointment of the high-strung expectations that the report had aroused.
See Also
- Atjehsche Irrigatiedienst
- Rijstbouw
- Sawah
- Pidië
- Meureudoe
- Samalanga
- De Rijkdom van Atjeh (1923)
- 1911
- 1912
- 1923
Source
De Rijkdom van Atjeh, uitgegeven door het Atjeh-Instituut, Amsterdam, 1923. OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-110-De_rijkdom_van_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 20–21.