Sumatra's East Coast Residency Residentie Oostkust van Sumatra | |
---|---|
Residency of Dutch East Indies | |
1873–1942 | |
![]() Malay-language map of East Sumatra Residency (1909) | |
Capital | Medan |
Area | |
• 1930 | 94,583 [1] km2 (36,519 sq mi) |
Population | |
• 1930 | 1,693,200 [2] |
History | |
• Established | 1873 |
• Disestablished | 1942 |
Today part of | North Sumatra and Riau |
Sumatra's East Coast Residency (Dutch : Residentie Oostkust van Sumatra) was an administrative subdivision of the Dutch East Indies with its capital in Medan. It was located in northern Sumatra. [3] [4]
From the early 19th century the Dutch gradually took control of Sumatra, starting from the south. In Eastern Indonesia, the sultanates of Asahan, Serdang, Deli and Langkat were subjugated between 1662 and 1865, and these sultans were subsequently used by the Dutch to indirectly rule the 'native states', as they became known.
The inland Batak areas were under Dutch control by 1895. The East Coast Residency was established in 1873, and took its final form in 1908 after Tamiang, a small area in the north, was transferred to Aceh [5] [6]
In 1863, the first Dutch settler, Jacobus Nienjuys, arrived and began to plant tobacco, nutmeg and coconut. Others followed, and established plantations to grow tropical crops such as tobacco, rubber, palm oil and coffee. These plants grew very well in the region's volcanic soil. By 1938, there were 10,026 square kilometers of plantations in the northern part of the residency, known as the Estates Area. [7]
In 1938, all ten residences on the island of Sumatra were brought together to form the Governement of Sumatra, with Medan as its capital. The head of each residency was a resident. Under the resident, there were assistant residents, controllers and district administrators, who were responsible for the subdivisions of the residency. In East Sumatra, as well as the directly governed areas, there were 34 native states, which were autonomous to a degree, They comprised: [8]
The towns of Medan, Pematang Siantar, Tandjong Balai, Tebing Tinggi and Bindjei were enclaves within the native states. The first two were governed by a mayor, and the latter three by the assistant resident. [9]
Before 1863, when the first Europeans arrived, the region was populated by a few thousand Malays. As labourers from outside the region were brought in to work on the plantations, the population grew rapidly. Initially these immigrant workers came directly from China, and from 1872, Java. In the late 1880s, the number of Chinese labourers brought in by the tobacco companies reached 20,000 per year. The work force on the coffee, rubber, tea and oil-palm plantations, which began to be planted in the late 1890s, was entirely ethnic Javanese. [10] [11]
Year | Europeans | Natives | Chinese | Other "orientals" |
---|---|---|---|---|
1880 | 522 | 90,000 | 25,700 | 2,533 |
1900 | 2,079 | 306,035 | 103,768 | 9,208 |
1915 | 5,200 | 681,000 | 132,000 | 14,320 |
1930 | 11,079 | 1,470,395 | 192,822 | 18,904 |
As of 1938, the "native" population was dominated by ethnic Javanese, mostly from central Java, followed by Bataks. There were also Banjar people from southern Borneo and Mandailing people from west Sumatra. Most of the "other orientals" were from China, but there were also Indians and Arabs. Most of the managers of the tobacco plantations and half the managers of the rubber, tea and oil plantations were Dutch, but there were also other Europeans and Americans. [12] [13]
Medan is the capital and largest city of the Indonesian province of North Sumatra. The nearby Strait of Malacca, Port of Belawan, and Kualanamu International Airport make Medan a regional hub and multicultural metropolis, acting as a financial centre for Sumatra and a gateway to the western part of Indonesia. About 60% of the economy in North Sumatra is backed by trading, agriculture, and processing industries, including exports from its 4 million acres of palm oil plantations. The National Development Planning Agency listed Medan as one of the four main central cities in Indonesia, alongside Jakarta, Surabaya, and Makassar.
North Sumatra is a province of Indonesia located in the northern part of the island of Sumatra. Its capital and largest city is Medan. It is bordered by Aceh on the northwest and Riau and West Sumatra on the southeast, with two different coastlines located on the Indian Ocean and the Strait of Malacca, and a maritime border with Malaysia to the east. North Sumatra is Indonesia's fourth most populous province after West Java, East Java, and Central Java, and is also the most populous province outside of Java Island. North Sumatra is also the third-largest province in area on the island of Sumatra after South Sumatra and Riau provinces. It covers an area of 72,460.74 km2, which is approximately the same size as Sierra Leone or Scotland or Maine.
Binjai, formally Kota Binjai, is an independent city in the North Sumatra province of Indonesia, bordered by Deli Serdang Regency to the east and Langkat Regency to the west. Binjai is connected to Medan, about 22 km to the east, by the Sumatra highway that goes to Banda Aceh, and effectively forms a part of Greater Medan. The city's population was 181,904 in the 1990 Census, 224,516 in the 2000 Census, 246,154 in the 2010 Census, and 291,842 in the 2020 Census; the official estimate as of mid-2023 was 303,272, comprising 151,627 males and 151,645 females. In mid-2023, a further 49,217 inhabitants lived in Binjai District of Langkat Regency, outside the city limits but immediately north of the city.
Deli Serdang is a regency in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra. It surrounds the city of Medan, and also borders to the west the city of Binjai, which is effectively a bedroom community for Medan. The entire regency lies within the Medan metropolitan area. It occupies an area of 2,497.72 sq.km. The capital of the district is Lubuk Pakam, which is located approximately 30 km east of Medan. The national census of 2000 recorded 1,573,987 people, but by 2010 the regency's population increased by 13.76% to 1,790,431, and at the 2020 Census the total was 1,931,441. The official estimate as at mid 2023 was 2,018,164. Kualanamu International Airport is located in this regency.
The Sultanate of Asahan was a Malay sultanate from approximately 1630 AD until 1946 AD. It was located in the north-east of the island of Sumatra, in what is now Indonesia and covered what is now the Asahan Regency.
The Sultanate of Deli was a 1,820 km² Malay state in east Sumatra founded in 1630. A tributary kingdom from 1630 it was controlled by various Sultanates until 1814, when it became an independent sultanate and broke away from the Sultanate of Siak.
Medan Hokkien is a local variety of Hokkien spoken amongst Chinese Indonesians in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia. It is the lingua franca in Medan as well as the surrounding cities in the state of North Sumatra. It is also spoken in some Medan Chinese migrant communities such as in Jakarta. Medan Hokkien is a subdialect of the Zhangzhou (漳州) Hokkien, particularly of Haicheng (海澄) subdialect. It borrows heavily from Teochew, Deli Malay and Indonesian.
The Sultanate of Langkat was a Malay Muslim state located in modern Langkat Regency, North Sumatra. It predates Islam in the region, but no historical records before the 17th century survive. It prospered with the opening of rubber plantations and the discovery of oil in Pangkalan Brandan.
The Simalungun people are an ethnic group in North Sumatra, considered one of the Batak peoples. Simalungun people live mostly in Simalungun Regency and the surrounding areas, including the city of Pematang Siantar, an autonomous city, but previously part of Simalungun Regency.
The State of East Sumatra was established by the Netherlands after the reoccupation of North Sumatra in July, 1947, during the first of the Dutch "police actions" against the fledgling Republic of Indonesia. In 1949, as part of a peace deal that concluded the Indonesian National Revolution, it joined the United States of Indonesia, of which the Republic was also a component state. In August, 1950, it was absorbed into the Republic as part of the province of North Sumatra. The area covered by the former state included the present-day regencies of Langkat, Deli Serdang, Serdang Bedagai, Karo, Simalungan, Batubara and Asahan, together with the cities geographically within those regencies.
The East Sumatra revolution, also known as the East Sumatra social revolution, began on 3 March 1946. Across 25 "native states", many sultanates were overthrown and mass killing of members of the aristocratic families were performed by armed pergerakan groups. To the opportunistic pergerakan militants, the revolutionary movement was seen as one of the means for East Sumatra to be freed from colonial overlordship and to join the larger Indonesian National Revolution. Participants of the revolution were believed to be provoked by leaders to kill aristocrats and create violence. These belligerents had three prime objectives: to eliminate the sultans and aristocrats, to seize their wealth and to eliminate the region's feudal social structure. The revolution brought about the formation of the State of East Sumatra, which was dissolved when the region became part of the Indonesian republic.
Sultan Alauddin Ibrahim Mansur Syah, also known as Ali Alauddin Mansur Syah was the thirty-third sultan of Aceh in northern Sumatra. He was the eighth ruler of the Bugis Dynasty and ruled de facto from 1838, formally from 1857 to 1870.
Deli Company is a trading and distribution company in the timber, construction product and tobacco industries. It began as large tobacco plantation and production operation established in 1869 by the Dutch in Sumatra. It was granted a land concession by the Sultanate of Deli.
N.V. Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij, was a private railway company that operated near the east coast of Sumatra around Deli. The Deli Company established itself as a tobacco plantation and then expanded into tea, rubber and timber products. The company was founded in 1883. Routes were built in cape gauge. It was the last remaining private Dutch railway when it was taken over by the Indonesian State Railways in 1957.
Pewarta Deli was a Malay language newspaper published in Medan, Dutch East Indies from 1910 until 1941, and again from 1945–6. During its run the paper became a strident anti-colonial voice, sympathetic to the Sarekat Islam and Indonesian nationalism and critical of the cruelty of big business in Medan's tobacco and plantation industries. It also gave space in its pages to Communism and Islamic modernism. The paper had a wide readership in its time, with an influence not only in the Indies, but also among Malays in British Malaya.
Tapanoeli Residency was an administrative subdivision of the Dutch East Indies with its capital in Sibolga. It was located in northern Sumatra and existed in various forms from 1844 until the end of Dutch rule in 1942. The area it encompassed at various times corresponds to most of the western coast of the current day Indonesian province of North Sumatra and parts of Aceh, including much of the traditional heartland of Batak people. Lake Toba, a historically important crater lake, was also within the borders of the Residency.
The Gouvernment of Atjeh and Dependencies was an administrative subdivision (governorate) of the Dutch East Indies located in northern Sumatra in the region of present-day Aceh, Indonesia which existed from the late nineteenth century to 1938. The capital of the governorate was at Koetaradja. In 1938, due to a reorganization of the government structure of the Indies, it no longer had a governor and became a Residency instead, called the Atjeh and Dependencies Residency.
Bachtiar Djafar was an Indonesian military officer and politician who served as the mayor of Medan, North Sumatra between 1990 and 2000.
Tengku Mansur or Tengku Mansoer was the Wali Negara of East Sumatra, as part of the United States of Indonesia. He was also a founding figure and Chairman of Jong Sumatranen Bond (1917-1919).