Dutch blockades channeled Acehnese men into plantation labor southward

Evidence

In 1873, after years of treaty negotiations between the British, Dutch, and Acehnese over the terms under which Aceh and the principalities to the south—the future plantation belt—would be made accessible to British trade while subject to Dutch sovereignty, Dutch authorities mounted a military campaign against Aceh that was to last for some thirty years and to be considered among the most destructive of colonial wars. Southern Aceh, abutting the Langkat district in the northern plantation belt where Luhmann’s plantation lay, was the corridor through which an increasing number of men moved south to seek estate work as more trading activities were cut off by Dutch blockades. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1098