The Rise and Fall of Plantations in Southeast Asia during the 19th-20th Century and Their Operation Patterns

In the early 16th century, Portugal was the first country to colonize Southeast Asia. In the 19th century, colonizers introduced a system of forced cultivation in the archipelagic countries of Southeast Asia, establishing plantations to grow specific crops for the needs of the host countries and the international market, with the intention of turning Southeast Asia into a raw material source and market for product dumping. The huge profits from the plantations were channeled back to the host countries, reinforcing the colonial system. With the deepening of colonization, plantations expanded from archipelagic to peninsular countries, and the sovereign state not only controlled the lifeblood of the colonial agricultural economy but also had a sustained and far-reaching impact on the formation and development of the local agricultural pattern. Post-World War II, Southeast Asia formed a pattern of agricultural types in which gatherers, fishers, hunters, nomadic farmers, small farmers, plantations and farms, settlement farmers, and agricultural cooperatives (groups) coexisted. Compared with the other types, plantations created by external forces developed extremely quickly, with high production levels and economic value, but had a relatively short history. In the 1930s, the global colonial system collapsed, plantations lost the support of the colonial regime and declined, and Southeast Asian agriculture was transformed into a smallholder economy. Plantations were an indelible part of Southeast Asia's colonial history. In the post-colonial period, scholarly attention continued to focus on the long-term effects of colonialism on formerly colonized countries. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze and reflect on the historical legacy as well as the potential risks in contemporary international cooperation. To promote the construction of China's overseas agricultural cooperation zones in the post-colonial period, this study begins with a human geography perspective, takes the critical theory of capital as a guide, establishes the theoretical framework of the spatial contestation of colonialism, first-combs through the phases of the rise and fall of Southeast Asia's plantations against the background of colonialism, and finally analyzes in detail the mode of construction of plantations. It was found that 1) with the deepening and expansion of colonial activities, the focus of the colonizers' spatial competition in Southeast Asia shifted from a single material resource to a broader and more complex material and non-material resource, and the establishment of plantations was an effective means for colonizers to maintain their dominant position; 2) the construction of plantations was filled with the colonial regime's competition for colonial land, labor, and resources of the international market, and each kind of resource competition formed the corresponding power spatial relations. 3) The plantation promoted the colonizer's penetration into the local society, and its shaping effect on Southeast Asian countries made the operation of the colonial society fully serve the capital accumulation of the colonial regime and consolidate the colonizer's dominant position.