ABSTRACT
The success of the plantations was connected with the progress of scientific agriculture. The wealth of manpower in certain parts of the Malay lands, particularly Java, Luzón, some of the Visayas, and a few little Molucca islands, was the chief cause of the restriction of European attention to them alone for so long. In Java 7 per cent of the land under cultivation was occupied by plantations, and the variety of produce and of methods of exploitation remained greatest in this, the chief island, with its long experience as a colony. Two facts not unconnected with each other stand out in the process of evolution. First, during the 19th century the cultivation of tea, cinchona, and rubber was added to the long-established crops of sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Secondly, the plantations on the hills and mountains have ended by becoming more important than those on the lowlands.
