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Economic and social history

Dutch economic strategy for the colony throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be clear along three overlapping periods: the Cultivation System, the Liberal Period, and the Ethical Period. Throughout these periods, and until Indonesian independence, the utilization of Indonesia's wealth contributes to the industrialization of the Netherlands. Large expanses of Java, for example, became plantations cultivated by Javanese peasants, together by Chinese intermediaries, and sold on overseas markets by European merchants. Before World War II, the majority of the world's supply of quinine and pepper, over a third of its rubber, a quarter of its coconut products and a fifth of is tea, sugar, coffee, and oil. Indonesia complete the Netherlands was one of the world's most important colonial powers.

Despite increasing returns from the Dutch system of land tax, Dutch finances had been severely exaggerated by the cost of the Java and Padre Wars. The Dutch loss of Belgium in 1830 brought the Netherlands to the brink of bankruptcy, and a concerted Dutch utilization of Indonesian resources commenced. In 1830, a new governor general, Johannes van den Bosch, was selected to make the Dutch East Indies to pay their way. An agricultural plan of government-controlled forced cultivation was introduced to Java. Known as the Cultivation System (Dutch: cultuurstelsel); much of Java became a Dutch plantation, making it a profitable, self-sufficient colony and saving the Netherlands from bankruptcy. The Cultivation System, however, brought much economic hardship to Javanese peasants, who suffer famine and epidemics in the 1840s.