Perlak (Peureulak) was the landscape of the East Coast of Atjeh within which lay the petroleum field of Peureula — the ‘Indische markt’ (Indian market) where oil had been won from four dug wells since time immemorial — and which from the 1890s became the scene of Atjeh’s petroleum industry, exploited by the Hollandsche Perlak Maatschappij, the Zuid Perlak Maatschappij and finally the Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, with the oil city Rantau Pandjang in its interior.
The landscape and its oil
In the landscape Perlak, on Atjeh’s East Coast, petroleum wells had been found which were exploited “in native fashion”; Langhout gives the área the name Peureula, where an Indian market had existed for centuries and the petroleum won from four dug pits was brought to market — the source of the mineral oil which the East India Company in the eighteenth century obtained from the Sultan of Atjeh and which was highly prized in patria as a medicament. The Hollandsche Perlak Maatschappij began its activity here a few years after the Bataafsche had founded Pangkalan Brandan over the border in Langkat (1890); the Zuid Perlak Maatschappij transferred its works to the Bataafsche some years before 1923, and the petroleum concession in Zuid Perlak, exploited by “de Koninklijke”, was the foremost mineral concession of the province under Governor Swart. The K.P.M. called at the Perlak coast, and agents and branches of Medan houses penetrated the district.
Timber and estates
The chiefs of Langsar and Perlak had early conceded exploitation areas to the firm Nolte & Haas, and the N.V. Handelmaatschappij “Deli-Atjeh” received in 1905 extensive wood-cutting concessions in Perlak among the East Coast landscapes (Radja Moeda, Radja Toewa, Manjapahit, Birim Rajeu, Birim Pontong, Bajan, Simpang Anas and Perlak). The Société Financière des Caoutchoucs’ estate-district lay in neighbouring Temyang; the whole coastal belt was served by the Atjeh Tram reaching Besitang in 1915–1916.
See Also
Source
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 68, 83–85, 108, 142, 160–163, illustration caption p. 160.