ABSTRACT
Oil fields can easily turn into battlefields. This concise history illuminates how, from the 1920s on, the South Sumatran city of Palembang, in the former colony of the Dutch East Indies, with its harbor and perfect river infrastructure, gained new importance from the booming oil industry and the growth of a petroleumscape. In relative isolation, Pladjoe, the nearby company town of the BPM/Shell, could expand and modernize undisturbed with the continued presence and oversight of Western managers. After a corporate battle with competitors like Stanvac and Caltex in the 1920s and 1930s, the battle for “black gold” with diplomatic means followed, and finally a military battle for oil was waged in the 1940s. Japanese, Dutch, Allied, and Indonesian forces fought fierce battles over the control of local oil facilities in Pladjoe. While oil attracted military conflict, the goal of the invader was to keep production going. It aimed to inflict little destruction and rebuild quickly, leading to continuity between colonial and postcolonial eras.
