Medan was the major urban centre and capital of the residency (Dutch: residentie) of Sumatra’s East Coast (Dutch: *Sumatra’s Oostkust*, abbreviated *S.O.K.*) in the Netherlands Indies, and served in the early twentieth century as the primary economic and commercial hub for the neighbouring region of Acheh, drawing the residency of Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden into its economic orbit. Situated roughly 608 kilometres southeast of Koeta-Radja, Medan functioned as the primary destination for Acehnese trade and agricultural exports, with the port of Belawan — situated near the city — acting as the de facto primary seaport for Acheh throughout the late colonial period.
Economic Relationship with Acheh
By the 1930s, Acheh was increasingly orienting its trade toward S.O.K. and Medan. The port of Belawan, situated near Medan, acted as the de facto primary seaport for Acheh: more than one-third of Acheh’s imports and one-quarter of its exports were routed through Belawan and S.O.K., bypassing local Acehnese ports — Olehleh, Sabang, Krueng Raya — in favour of the superior commercial infrastructure of the east coast. The economic dominance of Medan over the northern Sumatran trade was the product of a long colonial investment in the plantation economy of the Deli region — the tobacco, rubber, and palm-oil estates opened under the Agrarian Law of 1870 (Dutch: *Agrarische Wet*) — and in the transport infrastructure that connected the plantation district to the port of Belawan. The Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij network, centred on Medan, carried the bulk of the region’s export crops, and the projected extension of the Atjeh railway to Besitang was intended, by the mid-1910s, to connect the Atjeh system to the Deli network and so to the port of Belawan. The integration of Acheh into the Medan-centred economy was, by the 1930s, the principal fact of the residency’s commercial life.
Labour and Enterprises
The economic dominance of Medan and the wider S.O.K. region was reflected in the enterprise labour statistics of the late colonial period. While only 8.1 % of all employed persons in Acheh worked in corporate enterprise service (Dutch: ondernemingsdienst), the figure stood at 45 % in S.O.K. — a disparity that demonstrated the significantly greater weight of European agricultural and commercial enterprises in the east-coast residency than in Acheh. The Achehnese economy, by contrast, remained dominated by the smallholder sector — the pepper gardens (Dutch: pepertuinen), the rice lands, and the copra groves — that had characterised the residency since before the Atjeh-oorlog. The contrast between the two residencies, in this respect, was a measure of the different paths that the colonial economy had taken in the two regions: in S.O.K., the plantation sector had become the dominant economic form; in Acheh, the smallholder sector had retained its primacy, even as the residency was drawn, through its trade with Medan and Belawan, into the orbit of the east-coast plantation economy.
Significance
Medan’s significance in the encyclopedia of Achehnese history is as the commercial counterweight to the colonial capital at Koeta-Radja — the city to which the residency’s trade increasingly orientated, and the seat of the wider Sumatran economy of which Acheh, by the late colonial period, had become a peripheral district. The proposed administrative reorganisation of the 1913–1914, which would have abolished the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden and incorporated its territories into a new Noord-Sumatra gewest with its capital at Medan, was the institutional expression of this economic reality — a reality that the resistance of the Achehnese establishment and the outbreak of the First World War prevented from being implemented. The city of Medan, however, continued to grow as the principal commercial centre of northern Sumatra, and its dominance over the Achehnese trade was, by the late colonial period, an established fact of the region’s economic geography.
See Also
- Sumatra’s East Coast
- Koeta-Radja
- Belawan
- Acheh
- Dutch East Indies
- Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij
- Atjehspoorweg
- Besitang
- Sabang
- Olehleh
- Krueng Raya
- Agrarische Wet 1870
- Bestuursreorganisatie Sumatra (1913-1914)
- Noord-Sumatra (proposed gewest)
- Aceh War
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
City in East Sumatra, ~160 km from Langsa and ~600 km from Koeta Radja. Has an H.B.S. (higher civic school). Closer to Langsa, making Langsa more attractive as a station. Medan residents have their own bovenlanden (PrapatCapital ofSumatra’s Oostkust; main cattle consumption centre (abattoir); terminus of 217 km road from Alaslanden; headquarters of several firms with Aceh bijkantoren (Deli Courant, etc.).Sumatra’s Oostkust; southern terminus of the road and railway connections from Koeta Radja. European travelers could do Medan-Koetaradja by auto in one day, vs. two days by train.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 15, 77, 79, 80, 89, 90, 287, 292, 293.
Source
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, Part 5 of 5, p. 16.
Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 15, 77, 79, 80, 89, 90, 287, 292, 293.