Stories from Deli

1930 and the global economic depression

Ann Stoler, labor in 1930 Through 1930 labor unrest still showed no signs of subsiding. The total number of assaults and threats on supervisory personnel remained virtually the same as in 1929. On the Bah Boetong estate and several neighboring plantations in the far western district of the cultuurgebied, 400 workers participated in a work…
Report from Imperial Ching’s Envoy

Yen Ching Wang on 1886 Chinese fact finding mission In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, China had diplomatic representatives stationed in most Western capitals. The first imperial Chinese consulate was set up in Singapore at the end of 1877. All Chinese diplomats were required by the Ch’ing government to report regularly to…
Girlie man

Deli planters 1920s Emil Helfferich (1878-1974)‘s Südostasiatische Geschichten (Jever/Oldenburg, 1966), is an account of what happened to another German-speaker who made light of girlie-men: He was German, early 30s, and came from a forest ranger’s family in Hannover. If not poverty, then extreme thrift had probably stood at the cradle of him and his numerous siblings. He didn’t…
A letter from Valck

FC Valck, 1876 When I (Frans Carl Valck) was appointed Assistant Resident of Deli, I knew very well that I would not land in a “bed of roses”; but that I would find such an Augean stable as I did here, I could never have imagined. (28 October 1876) It would be a miracle indeed,…
Story from the boats

Pickering, 1870-80s Over decades Chinese laborers came by the millions to help make the Dutch dream of record profits a reality. Chinese coolies—poor, illiterate, and usually among the most forlorn of “voiceless” populations—spoke into the official record, usually in the courts. This selection memorialized by the “Protector of Chinese” in Singapore shows these forces at…
Agreement for Helvetia

Agreement for Helvetia , Dependency of Deli ,Singapore, November 26, 1875 We, the undersigned Chinese coolies, hereby acknowledge from Messrs. Lind, Asmus, & Co., agents of Albert Breker, Esq., the several advances in Singapore as placed and written opposite our names before starting for Helvetia, Dependency of Deli, and in presence of the undersigned two…
Colonial photo
Coolie house

The Javanese pondoks, consisting of a single or double row rooms of 10’ x 10’ of 12’ x 12’ are equal to the pondoks on the yard and are, as the dimensions are quite different, usually built at daily wages. They, if temporary, have none masonry, but ordinary floors and parits, but masonry drinking wells.…
Cultivating Sumatra tobacco

Gibbs, 1940 During recent years the entire production of Sumatra wrapper leaf has been grown by seven companies, of which four, known as the big four, have produced approximately 95 percent of the total. The companies have large estates, a total of 47 in 1937, which are lands held by long-term leases. The total acreage…
Sumatra tobacco

Pratt, 1895 It was in the year 1862 that an Arab drew the attention of a commercial house in Batavia to the district of Deli, on the east coast of Sumatra, a country where pepper and tobacco were being produced, and where a good market could be found for European goods. This led to a…