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Plantation Systems, Labour Regimes and the State in M alaysia, 1900–2012
Author(s) -
Kaur Amarjit
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of agrarian change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.63
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1471-0366
pISSN - 1471-0358
DOI - 10.1111/joac.12061
Subject(s) - agrarian society , agriculture , economics , politics , palm oil , market economy , subsidy , foreign direct investment , agricultural economics , business , political science , geography , agroforestry , macroeconomics , archaeology , law , biology
Plantation production systems, plantation labour regimes and a foreign workforce typified E uropean investment in the large‐scale agricultural sector in colonial M alaya. Analogous structures and trends continue to be influential in M alaysia's contemporary commercial agricultural sector. Initially, the politics and organization of the E ast I ndia Company and the pursuit of tropical commodities corresponded with the facilitation and channelling of I ndian migrant labour for coffee and sugar cultivation in M alaya. The subsequent development of the rubber industry represented the first major transition to more highly capitalized large‐scale farming for international markets. In the 1990s, oil palm replaced rubber as the premier crop in a second agrarian transition, consistent with M alaysia's economic and political imperatives, social policy and the global demand for palm oil. There are important continuities in the rubber and oil palm agricultural transitions. These include comparable plantation structures, labour systems and a continuing reliance on migrant labour, despite the growth of the national labour force. The correlation between plantation systems and M alaysia's foreign labour policy should be viewed through the prism of challenges to large‐scale agricultural production and countervailing forces that might be acting on the Malaysian state.