1890 Photograph of River Along the Brindjey Tobacco Estate, Sumatra

Tobacco Production on a Dutch Colonial Plantation.

This is a rare c. 1890 set of albumen photographs of the region of Bingai, then home to vast tobacco plantations. They present scenes of river and rail travel, which were the main ways of transporting finished tobacco from plantations to ports and then to markets around the world.

A Closer Look

The photographs, representing the recto and verso of a single card, present scenes from the rivers running through the tobacco plantation of North Sumatra. The top photograph takes in the Bingai River, with local boats in the foreground waiting to be loaded with a pile of what is almost certainly tobacco. The bottom image displays a railway bridge over the Sunggal River (originally spelled Soengal in Dutch) with a multinational group of men, whose white-suited overseers include at least two Europeans. This bridge would have been part of the Deli Railway Company or Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij (DSM), which connected Medan to Bingai. This might be a celebratory photograph taken soon after the completion of the bridge. Such rail lines were a critical part of the growing tobacco plantation economy at the turn of the 20th century, allowing the finished tobacco to be whisked off to ports and then to destinations around the world.

Bindjey Estate

Bindjey Estate (misspelled here as Brindjey, often spelled in a variety of ways including Binjai and Bingai) was a major tobacco plantation from the Dutch colonial era (late 1800s-early 1900s) in North Sumatra, famous for its massive tobacco production, especially for the 'Deli Wrapper' cigar that was considered a top product in Europe and America. This estate was owned by Gustav Engelbrecht, a German from Hanover, who managed the estate in Sumatra before returning to Hamburg, Germany, in 1892. Like other colonial cash crop plantations, the Bindjey Estate relied on cheap labor, in this case Javanese and Chinese 'coolies' who were at best indentured servants and at worst effective slaves. Indeed, workers at Bindjey, as on other plantations, were subject to the Poenale Sanctie, which allowed plantation owners to beat or imprison workers for 'breach of contract' if they were seen as being lax or attempting to run away.

Publication History and Census

These photographs were taken c. 1890. Stylistically, they are similar to the later published works of the famed German photographer Charles J. Kleingrothe (1864 - 1942) and could be early examples of his work, though the captions suggest an English-speaking photographer. We have not identified any other examples.

Condition

Very good. Mounted albumen photographs. Image represents recto (front) and verso (back) of single card.