Stories from Deli

Life in Deli

Yuanxing Coolies Foreign Company

Foreign businessmen set up “foreign companies” in Shantou to do business. The British merchant “Jiahe Foreign Company” was first promoted in 1860, followed by the German merchant “Luyu Foreign Company” in 1861. Lu Yu went to Shantou to run a business and hired Guo Jirong (Guo Runting) as the comprador of the bank. Ji Rong was a…
Strange Easterners

There are three groups of people in Indies according to the division of the law: Europeans, Natives, Foreign Easterners. That has not always been the case. The old Government regulations knew only Europeans and Natives and for each group “those who were assimilated to them”. For the Europeans, these were the Japanese (since the beginning…
The Deli Railway Company

This company has had much to do with the general prosperity of Sumatra, as the facilities offered by it to producers have resulted in a large expansion of the area under cultivation for coffee, rubber, and other tropical products. At the end of 1915 the capital of the company was F. 8,ooo,ooo in paid-up shares…
Huttenbach & Co.

HANDEL MAATSCHAPPIJ HUTTENBACH & CO. The progressive colonization of Sumatra by the Dutch greatly expanded the markets for European goods handled. German firms found a niche in the Dutch East Indies trade. The firm Handel Maatschapplj Huttenbach & Co. was established in 1875 in Labuhan Deli. It became the oldest European business organization on the…
Deli Veem, G.H. Slot

NAAMLOOZE VENNOOTSCHAP DELI VEEM What the Indische Veem and the Batavia Veem are to Java, the Naamlooze Vennootschap Deliveem is to Sumatra. The company was founded in 1913 with a capital of F. 100,00. The head office at ” is installed on the most up- to- date lines and located near the railway, with large…
Lindeteves-Stokvis

COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL LINDETEVES-STOKVIS The home office of this important enterprise of merchants, engineers, and contractors is in Amsterdam, while the head office for the East is at Semarang, Java, and there are large branches at Medan, and at Batavia, Sourabaya, Tegal, Jogjakarta, and Bandoeng (Java), Macassar, in Celebes, and in New York. The Medan…
The Rhemrev Report

THE RHEMREV REPORT by Rudy Kousbroek NRC Handelsblad 27-02-1987 In 1903 J.T.L. Rhemrev, public prosecutor on Batavia, a report on the mistreatment and capture of coolies on the east coast of Sumatra. That report has been covered up. Jan Breman found it during a search in the General Archives. Next week his book ‘Coolies, Planters…
Medan

Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië – Zevende Deel 1917-1939. The site is 3 ° 36 ‘N latitude and 98 ° 40’ E longitude of Greenwich. History. Before the establishment of the tobacco culture on the east coast of Sumatra, i.e. before 1860, Laboean was the capital of the Malay landscape of Deli, which was then counted among…
The history of the Deli landscape

Until the middle of the last century, the present-day region of the East coast of Sumatra consisted of a number of more or less interdependent empires, with little economic significance for the world outside. The scanty population consisted along the coast along some seafaring and trading Malays and further inland from Bataks, who in so…
Deli for about fifty years

Deli Courant, 1935 A low coast looms in the distance. “There is Belawan,” the pilot points out. Medan already appears in the distance. We are already floating above the city. see the slender minaret of the graceful sultan’s mosque and with an elegant flight the pilot lands our loyal Fokker in Medansche airport. We say…