A precocious appetite: Industrial agriculture and the fertiliser revolution in Java's colonial cane fields, c. 1880-1914

Abstract

Late colonial sugar cane production in Java was characterised by the heavy use of (chemical) fertiliser in tandem with labour-intensive techniques and industrial work processes in the field. This article provides a useful corrective to an overemphasis on the extractive nature of the colonial economy of sugar and shows the truly industrial nature of plantation production. For students of colonial science and agriculture, the situation has additional ramifications, relating both to the role and ‘diffusion’ of scientific knowledge and to the historical dimensions of agricultural development in ‘the tropics’.