From Straits Brokers to Javanese Werek: The Dynamics of Coolie Recruitment for the Deli Tobacco Plantations, East Sumatra, 1880–1915

Abstract

Between 1880 and 1915 the tobacco plantations of Deli, East Sumatra, absorbed tens of thousands of Chinese and Javanese contract laborers, yet the mechanisms that brought them to the estates have received far less attention than the disciplinary regime they met on arrival. This article reconstructs the recruitment of coolies for the Deli tobacco industry from the first Coolie Ordinance (Staatsblad 1880, No. 133) to its revision in 1915. Using the historical method of heuristics, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography, it draws on the 1880 ordinance, publications of the Deli Planters Vereeniging, H. J. Bool’s account of Chinese immigration, R. Broersma’s regional histories, the colonial press, and KITLV photographs. The article argues that recruitment was not a fixed procedure but a shifting system shaped by labor demand, colonial regulation, diplomacy, and the profit imperatives of plantation capital. Chinese recruitment moved from dependence on brokers in the Straits Settlements to direct emigration from Swatow organized through the Immigranten-Bureau after 1888, only to be partly reclaimed by informal intermediaries. As costs rose and Chinese supply faltered, planters turned to Java, where European agencies and village recruiters (werek) worked through promises, deception, and debt, a process reinforced by the emigration program of the Ethical Policy. Read through Marx’s concept of labor-power, recruitment emerges as the pre-production stage of plantation exploitation, and its enduring legacy was the multi-ethnic society of East Sumatra.