Just Published: Pioneers and Milestones of Indonesian Geology (2022)
A book entitled Pioneers and Milestones of Indonesian Geology was published by ITB Press in January 2022. It may be viewed as the ‘human interest’ and ‘historic background’ companion to the geoscience literature about Indonesia and the literature listings in the annotated Bibliography of the geology of Indonesia and surrounding areas(2011-2020). The four volumes describe the early history of geoscience of the Indonesian region and the people who wrote much of its literature. In addition, students will find plenty of ‘mini-lessons’ and figures on Indonesian geology, and plenty of references for further studies.
The time period covered in this book is mainly the Dutch colonial period since the early 1800s, but also describes significant events and people during the Japanese occupation of 1942-1945, the first 1-2 decades of Indonesian Independence, and some of the pioneers of the early part of the ‘modern’ (plate tectonics) era after the late 1960.
It will hopefully facilitate the education of the younger generations of Indonesian geoscientists about their geoscience history, which, except for the 1949 textbook by R.W. van Bemmelen, is not well known by most geologists in Indonesia today. This is the result of various ‘decolonization’ measures and practical reasons, like language barriers and underfunded geoscience libraries.
Figure 1. View of the box set of the four volumes of ‘Pioneers and milestones of Indonesian Geology’.
The book contains over 1500 pages and over 2000 figures, and is subdivided into four volumes:
Vol. 4 - Petroleum and Mining Industries, Post-1945 Restart
This book contains 238 chapters on the life stories and accomplishments of men (and some women), who made significant contributions to geoscience knowledge and to mineral and petroleum exploration in the Indonesian region during the Dutch colonial period and the early days of Indonesian Independence. Of the 238 geoscience pioneers discussed in this book 50% were Dutch, 21% German, 7% Swiss, and the remaining 21% from 11 other nations.
The book took three years of full-time research and writing, from late 2018 until 2021. The information uncovered during my research is mainly from my personal literature collection on Indonesia geology, from personal experience, from online resources, from visits to libraries and archives in The Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Bandung, and from information provided by descendants of some of the ‘pioneers’ in The Netherlands, USA, Germany and Switzerland.
Many of the pioneers described here had truly remarkable and often tragic life stories. The (mainly European) scientists that came to the Netherlands Indies found themselves in an unfamiliar, exotic, yet often dangerous world. The field geologists in remote areas often explored areas where no Europeans had gone before, and faced significant logistical, physical and mental challenges. Many lost their lives, to diseases accidents or, less frequently, native aggression. The ones that succeeded were the physically and mentally tough and motivated adventurers.
Figure 2. The covers of the four volumes of ‘Pioneers and milestones of Indonesian Geology’.
Hopefully these books will spark further interest into the history of Earth sciences in Indonesia and the scientists that played major roles in the many discoveries. In addition, I hope that young and old geologists and engineers will learn from it and find inspiration to further advance the knowledge of the complex and fascinating geology of the Indonesian region.
Finally, this book is a non-commercial publication. It was written and produced by volunteers, and is sold at cost. The sales price of around US$ 200 per set may seem expensive, but it is a bargain considering it is the same price as buying five 20-page publications from major publishers like Elsevier or Springer. It was printed in limited numbers, and may sell out quickly.
VOLUME 1
Figure 3. Back and front covers of ‘Pioneers’’- volume 1.
Volume 1 starts with some general history on the Dutch colonial time, which during the first few centuries was focused on trade by the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC), with little or no official interest in natural sciences of the region. The only exception was a German VOC merchant Georg Rumphius, who described the natural world around his home base in Ambon.
Interest in, and government-support for, studies in natural sciences significantly increased during and after the British Interregnum (1811-1815), when Governor T.S. Raffles and his American ‘naturalist’ associate Thomas Horsfield set an example with studies on archeology, history and nature of Java, Bangka and parts of Sumatra.
The book describes about 15 naturalist explorers of the 1800s, who, in addition to geography, zoology and botany, also made early observations on geology. Most of them were German and half of them died of diseases and accidents before their assignments in ‘the Indies’ were completed. Key names of this era included Salomon Muller, Carl Schwaner and Franz Junghuhn.
It follows with reports on the academic geologic-geographic expeditions which became popular in the late 1800s- early 1900s, to Sumatra (W. Volz), the Moluccas (A. Wichmann, K. Deninger, G. Boehm, etc.), Borneo (G. Molengraaff), Sulawesi (the Sarasin cousins, E.C. Abendanon) and New Guinea (O. Heldring, P.F. Hubrecht; later also J.J. Dozy). Multiple later expeditions to Timor were by G. Molengraaff, J. Wanner and H.A. Brouwer and students. Many of the expeditions from this era spawned classic paleontological studies, which are elaborated in volume 3.
The final chapter of volume 1 is about the oceanographic expeditions, which contributed much to the knowledge of the marine geology of the Indonesian archipelago. These included German, British, Austrian and French world-wide cruises that passed through Indonesian waters in the late 1800s, as well as the Dutch Siboga and Snellius expeditions of the early 1900s.
Figure 4. Back and front covers of ‘Pioneers’- volume 2.
Volume 2 focuses on the Geological Survey/ Bureau of Mines, which was founded in 1850 the Dienst van het Mijnwezen , and which, after many name changes, still exists in Bandung today. Most of the geological information acquired between the late 1800s until 1940 came from this organization.
It started off as a modest organization, named the Dienst van het Mijnwezen, and during the first 50 years it was staffed by only 5-15 professionals, all Dutch mining engineers trained in Delft. Before 1924 its offices were located in Bogor and later in Weltevreden (Jakarta). Its main task was the identification and evaluation of economic deposits of coal and minerals. However, it also had to provide technical assistance to the Bangka tin mines and coal mines in SE Kalimantan and Sumatra (Ombilin), drill of groundwater wells, etc., which did not leave much time to systematically explore the vast unknown areas of Indonesia. Its evaluations therefore tended to focus on areas where mineral deposits were already known from native mining activities. Significant personnel in these early years included C.de Groot, Aquasi Boachi, J. Akkeringa, C.J. van Schelle and W.H. de Greve. The first generation had only limited interest (and skills) in geological investigations.
Things changed in the late 1800s- early 1900s with the second generation of Delft mining engineers, many of whom came with stronger backgrounds and interests in geology. Regional geologic mapping and descriptions became more important, mainly by the ‘father of regional geology of Indonesia’, Ir. R.D.M. Verbeek, but also by R. Fennema, J.A. Hooze, M. Koperberg and N. Wing Easton.
The peak in geoscience activities by the Dienst van het Mijnwezen >(later Dienst van den Mijnbouw) was between 1910 and 1930, when the number of engineers and geologists had gradually increased to 75 by 1930. Non-Dutch geologists were hired with doctorates from top universities in Germany and Switzerland, incl. A. Tobler, J. Zwierzycki, F. Musper and W. Leopold. Dutch mining engineers H.A. Brouwer, L.H. Krol, F. Oppenoorth, W.C.B. Koolhoven, W. Hetzel and J. Westerveld also contributed significant geological studies on various parts of Indonesia.
In the 1920s various specialists (paleontologists, petrographers, geochemists and agrogeologists) were added to the staff. Systematic geological mapping programs of Java and Sumatra began in the 1927, but unfortunately soon after its start these programs were much reduced in the early 1930s, due to budget cuts during the global economic recession. Ironically, the reductions in staff and programs came very shortly after the 1929 opening of the new headquarters and Geological Museum in Bandung. During the late 1930s, a reduced geological mapping program on Java still continued by the likes of J. Duyfjes, C. Harloff, C. ter Haar and R.W. van Bemmelen, but publication of the previously prestigious series Jaarboek van het Mijnwezen came to a virtual standstill in 1930 and never recovered.
Volume 2 ends with chapter of volcano studies and the Volcanological Survey, which in 1920 was charged with studies of volcanoes and volcanic activities, aimed at hazard evaluation and prevention of casualties among the population near the active volcanoes. It started as a department within Mijnwezen, triggered mainly by the disastrous eruption of the Kelud volcano in 1919. B.G. Escher and G. Kemmerling were instrumental in its inception. G. Kemmerling and N. Taverne were early leaders in the 1920. In the late 1920s-1930s the department was run by C.E. Stehn and M. Neumann van Padang. After the unwarranted arrests of the latter two in 1940, volcano watch activities were continued during the 1940s by R.W. van Bemmelen, W.A. Petroeschevsky, and in the early 1950s by G.A. de Neve.
Figure 5. Back and front covers of ‘Pioneers’- volume 3.
Volume 3 is mainly a tribute to the many paleontologists and micropaleontologists who worked on fossils from Indonesia. The period 1880-1940 may be called the ‘Golden age of macropaleontology’ in Indonesia. Many paleontological studies were produced, mainly by German paleontologists, which 70-150 years later are still significant, as relatively little work has been done on Indonesian fossil faunas and floras since then. The ‘giant’ of Tertiary fossil faunas of Java between the late 1870s and early 1930s was Prof. Karl Martin of the University of Leiden, who was nicknamed ‘The Linnaeus of the Javanese Tertiary’’. Further outstanding work was done on the rich Permian marine faunas of Timor by J. Wanner, F. Broili and others, on Mesozoic marine faunas from Eastern Indonesia by A. Rothpletz, G. Boehm, L. Krumbeck E. Stolley, C. Diener, etc., on Tertiary corals by H. Gerth and J. Umbgrove. Many of them never visited Indonesia (but all were all recognized authorities in their specialist fields at that time) and studied fossils collected by others.
Micropaleontology was a relatively undeveloped field in the late 1800s-early 1900s, and many of its practitioners were hobbyists in Great Britain and France (G. Hinde, C. Schlumberger, H. Douvillé). Larger foraminifera were the first branch of micropaleontology to be used routinely in the Netherlands Indies for biozonations of the Tertiary. Pioneering work on these was done in the early 1900s by K. Martin and L. Rutten, followed in the 1920s and 1930s by I.M. van der Vlerk, J. Umbgrove and Tan Sin Hok.
Micropaleontology (mainly smaller foraminifera) became an important tool for age and facies determinations and correlations in the oil industry in the 1930s. Unfortunately, for competitive reasons, very little of their methods and results were published. Some exceptions were papers by R.E. Koch, W. Mohler, L.W. LeRoy, L. Boomgaart and some Japanese workers.
A chapter on Pleistocene hominids and mammal fossils discusses the well-known pioneers of hominid fossils, including E. Haeckel, E. Dubois, L. Selenka and R. von Koenigswald. A chapter on the relatively understudied field of Paleobotany discusses the work on Tertiary plant fossils and silicified wood from Java and Sumatra (O. Heer, H. Goeppert) and on the famous Early Permian Jambi flora of Sumatra (W. Jongmans).
The paleontology chapters are followed by chapters on other geoscience specialists, like petrographers (H. Vogelsang, W.F. Gisolf, P. Esenwein, etc.), geochemists (E.H. von Baumhauer, H. Willems, etc.), agrogeologists (E.C.J. Mohr, J. Szemian, J. Druif), geomorphologists (A.J. Pannekoek, H. Verstappen) and archeologists (R. van Heekeren, T.L. Verhoeven).
In the Geophysics chapter, special mention goes to F.A. Vening Meinesz, who became world famous for his discoveries of belts of negative anomalies in Indonesia during his marine gravity surveys in the 1920s-1930s. These were interpreted as zones of active crustal downbuckling. Around the same time H.P. Berlage discovered the landward-dipping zones of deep earthquakes below Sumatra, Java, etc., in 1937 (now known as Wadati-Benioff zone). The parallelism with active volcanic arcs was noted and these two came close to combining the pieces of the puzzle and discover the process of subduction, 30 years before the Theory of Plate Tectonics revolutionized Earth Sciences. World War II and its aftermath halted this type of groundbreaking science in Indonesia for decades.
Figure 6. Back and front covers of ‘Pioneers’- volume 4.
Volume 4 contains a mix of topics, the main ones being the histories of the petroleum and mining industries in Indonesia. North Sumatra was the birthplace of the Koninklijke/Royal Dutch-Shell company in the late 1800s. By 1924 this company had gobbled up many small independent oil producers and became the BPM virtual monopoly until the growth of two American oil companies NKPM/Stanvac and NPPM/Caltex. The most important pioneers of the petroleum industry in the late 1800s-early 1900s were J. Reerink (Cirebon), A.J. Zijlker and J.B. Kessler (North Sumatra), A. Stoop (Dordtsche Petroleum; NE Java), J.H. Menten (East Kalimantan) and J.W. Ijzerman (Moeara Enim Petroleum).
Oil exploration strategy in the late 1880s was simply drilling of oil seeps, and did not involve geologists. In 1900, after increasing numbers of drilling failures, the significance of anticlinal structures for oil and gas accumulations was embraced by Royal Dutch and others, which then saw a rapid influx of contract geologists, hired for mapping of anticlinal structures in Tertiary basins all across Indonesia. Most of them came from Switzerland (C. Schmidt, A. Tobler, H. Hirschi, A. Heim, F. Weber, E. Kundig, etc.), Germany (H. Bucking, H. Cloos) and other European nations (C. Porro, L. von Loczy), since geological mapping skills were not yet available from the Netherlands.
The chapter on the mining industry describes the long history of native and Chinese immigrant mining before the mid-1800s, and the flurry of activities in the search of gold, coal, diamonds, iron, manganese, copper, nickel, etc. during the Dutch colonial era. The late 1890s saw a short-lived gold-rush, which started in North Sulawesi and spread all over the country. Most of the mining engineers and entrepreneurs in the mining industry appeared to have limited interest in the geological setting of their properties, so their contributions to the geology of Indonesia are limited, but several of the leading characters had remarkable careers and are included in this book. The main industries since the 1800s were the tin mines on Bangka, Belitung and Singkep (key players J.F. Loudon, J. Adam, C. Wilhelm and others), the generally small gold mines in Sumatra, North Sulawesi and NW Kalimantan, coal in government mines in Sumatra (Ombilin, since 1892, Bukit Asam since 1919), SE Kalimantan (Pengaron since 1848, Pulau Laut since 1913, and others) and SW Java (exploitation only during the Japanese occupation
The petroleum/mining chapters are followed by chapters on geoscientists during and after the Japanese occupation. A post-independence academic geoscience program started in Bandung in 1949, initially with Dutch geologist professors (T. Klompe, P. Marks, D. de Waard and M.E. Akkersdijk). This curriculum spawned the first generation of Indonesian geoscience leaders in the late 1950s and 1960s (Soetaryo Sigit, J.A. Katili, H.D. Tjia, R.P. Koesoemadinata, etc.). As a link to the modern era, we included some prominent early pioneers of the plate tectonics era in SE Asia in the 1960s-1970s (W. Hamilton, N.S. Haile, C.S. Hutchison, A.J. Barber and H.L. Davies).
A separate chapter is dedicated to New Guinea, both the Indonesian west half and the independent nation of Papua New Guinea. Pioneering work in the west was done by the NNGPM petroleum consortium in the 1930s-1950s (J. Hermes). Pioneering geologic work in PNG was by A.G. Maitland. E.R. Stanley, A. Wade and others.
The final chapter final chapter XIX discusses some remarkable non-geologists at the ‘fringe’ of geoscience, who were influential in various geoscience projects, and without whom some major companies (Shell) and institutes (Institut Teknologi Bandung) might not have existed. They include J.W. Ijzerman (railroad engineer, Head of the Ombilin coal mines, Head of the Moeara Enim Petroleum Co., one of the principal founders of what is now Institut Teknologi Bandung), A. Janssen (Amsterdam-based entrepreneur who helped save Koninklijke / Royal Dutch from bankruptcy, developer of the Pulau Laut coal mines) and H. Tanakadate (volcanologist and ‘good Japanese’, who saved several of the SE Asia science institutes from being looted and destroyed during the Japanese invasion in 1942).
FOSI IAGI Presentation by J. T. Van Gorsel, June 2020
On June 20, 2020, I was invited by FOSI (The Indonesian Association of Sedimentologists chapter of the Indonesian Geologists Association (Ikatan Ahli Geologi Indonesia - IAGI))
to give a presentation entitled ‘Pioneers and Milestones of Indonesian geology Who were they? Where did they come from? What were they thinking?’. The meeting announcement below gives a very brief overview of the presentation. I have also included on this website a copy of the presentation. For ease of downloading, the presentation is divided into two parts.
FOSI / IAGI presentation announcement and abstract by J. T. (Han) van Gorsel
NEW ADDITIONS TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY
The last update to the ‘Bibliography of the geology of Indonesia and surrounding areas’ was in June, 2020. Additions to the bibliography are currently in progress, and are not available yet. The most current Complete Bibliography in pdf format is available on the home page of this website, (www.vangorselslist.com). Please note, that the June 2020 update was only of the Complete Bibliography. Individual chapter pdfs were not updated at that time.
