Tabak in een droogschuur op de Rotterdam plantage, Sumatra c. 1890 - 1900

This photograph shows tobacco leaves drying in a shed on the Rotterdam plantation, Sumatra, and was taken by Heinrich Ernst & Co. The image invites us to consider the global trade networks of the colonial era. Sumatra, now part of Indonesia, was then under Dutch colonial rule, and plantations like Rotterdam were central to the extraction of resources for European markets. These plantations were sites of immense labor exploitation, with local populations and imported workers subjected to harsh conditions. The photograph, with its meticulous documentation of the drying process, speaks to the institutional control and management of resources that defined colonialism. It is a visual record, but it is also a historical document. To understand it fully, we need to consider the economic and political systems that made such plantations possible, researching archives, trade records, and the personal accounts of those who lived and worked there. The meaning of this image emerges not just from what it shows, but from the social relations it implies.