The Smallholdings and Survival

Abstract

Rubber was the first commercial crop to receive really widespread participation from small farmers in Malaya. Earlier products, such as coffee in the 1890s, had attracted some Malays on the west coast of the Peninsula, but the short life of the boom left them wary of dependence on the market. However, the high rubber prices of the first decade of the twentieth century culminating in the 1909–10 boom swept aside any doubts. Indigenous Malays were joined by migrants from the NEI, together with the Chinese and to a lesser extent Indians, in the rush to plant up land. In Chapter 1 we saw that much of this initial interest merely sought windfall profits from the sale of land to estates. By the First World War the speculative element was easing, and rubber was rapidly gaining a place as a permanent source of income. In some areas, such as Selangor and parts of Lower Perak, the crop became the principal means of livelihood for Malay villagers. Elsewhere, in the Krian district for example, rice cultivation continued alongside rubber. Overall, by the early 1920s an extensive degree of dependence on this product had developed throughout much of the western Peninsula (see Map and Appendix 2).