Canal Construction in Paya Bakung, North Sumatra, 1900s

Photo: Carl Josef Kleingrothe/National Gallery of Australia

The Netherlands is famous for its world-class water engineering. The country's water management infrastructure is able to make them live in areas that are even lower than sea level. About one-fifth of the Netherlands is below sea level, and half of the area is only 1 meter above sea level. That's why the Netherlands got the nickname of the land under the sea.

More and more Dutch people settled in the Dutch East Indies as transportation and telecommunication technology developed, so cities were built following the Dutch style, including water systems such as canals.

Dutch heritage canals in big cities such as Jakarta, Surabaya and Semarang may be familiar to us. However, it turns out that even a small village has a canal built.

The photo above is the construction of a canal in Paya Bakung Village, Deli Serdang, North Sumatra around the 1900s. Paya Bakung was not an ordinary village, it was the residence of Dutch plantation contract coolies of various ethnicities such as Chinese, Javanese, Tamil and so on. Making Deli the most multi-ethnic area after Batavia at the time.